Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one? Sony blows it. Can IA fix it?

I have seen some stupid advertising, but this is just the latest. Apparently Sony is releasing a PSP in all white. Oooooooooooh! I know, it’s wild. Anyway, they decided the best way to begin their ad blitz was to place a billboard in the Netherlands, of all places, because we all know who buys and plays more video games than anybody, the Dutch.

Anyway, Sony’s billboard went a little something like this, the billboard “portrayed a white woman aggressively grabbing the face of a black woman and read "PlayStation Portable White is Coming." Click the link for a picture of this billboard.

I am sure that this seemed like a good idea at the time, especially considering there are no black people in the Netherlands. The ad execs were probably in a big conference room and they were saying to each other, “How can we grab the Dutch, nay, the world and show them how powerful this new, white, game system will be?”

Then one exec stood up and you could see by the light bulb that hovered over his head, that he had the perfect idea. “Why don’t we get this very tall, very powerful, white as white can get, white woman and have her manhandling this small black woman."

Then the room exploded with, “Brilliant!!!” "Bully!!!" and "'At's what I'm talkin' 'bout!!!"

Someone mailroom clerk probably said, “Um, don’t you think in these very politically correct days and times that this will be very offensive to your big target demographic of rappers and sports stars?” That mailroom clerk was promptly fired. Then the execs ran with it.

The most amazing thing about this is that the ad execs saw nothing wrong with this, and then the Sony execs checked it out and said in a voice reminiscent of Tone Loc, “Let’s do it.” I am beginning to wonder about the health of Sony. We have this amazing display of stupidity and we are going to seemingly have to pay a quarter of a million dollars for the new PS3, that doesn’t seem to even be coming out in the next 6 years. I think someone is asleep at the wheel.

I think we here at IA should come up with our own advertising campaign for the new PSP White. We can have a contest for the NEXT most offensive campaign (because Sony already has the MOST offensive campaign) and a legit really cool campaign.

Here’s a quick one from me to get the ball rolling.

Playstation Portable White, it’s the new White meat. Then on the billboard you could have the same huge aggressive white woman strangling a pig with one hand and a chicken with the other. That would definitely offend PETA.

2 comments:

Travis said...

How about an animated white PSP saying, "Sorry I ruined your Black Panther party?"

BRATCH said...

The ultimate PS3 white ad campaign is Ian McKellan as Gandolf the White promoting it.

I am geek, here me roar.

But it is a good idea.