Advertising

Sony needs to hire somebody, anybody, to make their ad campaigns better. I mean come on. Who wants to sit around for a minute and twenty-one seconds and watch some guy repeat "P-S-P" over and over. To make matters worse, this is all part of a horrible viral marketing campaign rooted in a fake fansite, which was created by Sony's marketing firm. Here is the goal of the "fansite":

i (charlie) have a psp. my friend jeremy does not. but he wants one this year for xmas. so we started clowning with sum not-so-subtle hints to j's parents that a psp would be teh perfect gift. we created this site to spread the luv to those like j who want a psp!

Are we actually supposed to believe that someone went out of their way to create an entire website simply to "spread the luv" of PSP? Who uses the word "luv" anymore?

[All Sony Wants For Christmas Is A Better Marketing Company via Kotaku]

If you commonly watch ABC's Dancing with the Stars, good for you. For the rest of us, tonight might be a good night to tune in. The first of four Wii ads is scheduled to air tonight during the show. From the press release:

The commercials feature two Japanese men who show up at homes across the United States and announce: "Wii would like to play." The fun ads demonstrate the motion-sensitive abilities of the Wii Remote controller while a cool Japanese pop tune plays.

All four 30 second spots will eventually end up on YouTube and Nintendo's website.

Here's an advertisement for Gears of War that's been running on TV. It has no audio other than Gary Jules' cover of the song Mad World. The affect of the song combined with the absence of other sound makes the ad rather stirring. Gears of War will be in stores on November 7.

Imagine if Rockstar threw something like this into GTA 4. Talk about in game advertising.

[Thanks, Dylan]

It's disguised as a friendly and innocent FAQ page, created by extremely experienced professionals for helpless consumers. But in reality, the Best Buy Gaming Q&A page on Gamespot it's an advertisement! Don't worry, they fooled everyone. Luckily, the sharp eyes over at Cheap Ass Gamer made a parody of it. The Best Buy execs are probably watching with envy, wishing they could use phrases like, "If by better, you mean "more expensive", then yes, PS3 is better."

[via Kotaku]

Reports of more inappropriate (and confusing) ads from Sony come from across the pond. Some users of the public transportation in the UK stand face to face with billboards like the one pictured. It's not clear exactly what the ad is suggesting, but I'll leave you to come up with some possibilities.

This isn't the first time that Sony has taken some criticism about their risque marketing techniques. Back in October, I blogged about how "a PS3 ad depicted a guy wearing a crown of thorns." Sony also went on a graffiti spree throughout New York during January, which got them in trouble with the City Council.