Over the last couple of weeks, a billboard advertising campaign promoting Sony’s PSP has copped plenty of criticism and Sony has been blasted for being thoughtless, insensitive and socially irresponsible. Let’s face it; a billboard in the London Underground which reads ‘Take a running jump here’ was never going to win any awards for political correctness, but are the British just being overly sensitive? Is this a case of ads gone wrong or whinging Pom?
At first glance some of these ads might seem as sensible as an ad posted near a busy road urging you to ‘play in the traffic’ or a sign pasted on the inside of an airplane door urging you to ‘enter exciting new worlds’. Incidentally, that's exactly what a 33-year old female passenger from Gatton, South Queensland allegedly tried to do on a flight between Brisbane and Sydney earlier this month. Virgin Blue is always up for a wacky stunt, but letting passengers exit the plane while it’s still 10,000 metres off the ground isn’t one of them, and the woman was arrested and charged by the Australian Federal Police following the incident.
Last year, Nintendo proved to the world with the DS, that 'touching is good', but that didn’t mean they started pasting the slogan on oven doors, car radiators, venomous snakes or on the walls of ‘sexual harassment in the workplace’ seminar venues.
Mixed Messages?
So did Sony overstep the mark? One of the PSP ads states, “your girlfriend’s white bits here”. Sure, it seems a little disturbing at first but remember, this is England. When the sun shines they move the weather report to the front of the news bulletin. Everyone is pale, so chances are, all of your girlfriend’s bits are white. Sure the ad could simply have said, 'stick a nice photo of your Aunt Beryl' on the PSP, but it possibly wouldn’t have made you rush out and buy one. If you're interested you can find more of the PSP ads here.
Could it be then, that the English really are being overly sensitive? Turns out, even the new Aussie tourism ad was too risqué for the Poms. The line ‘where the bloody hell are you?” was just too much for British sensibilities. The British Broadcasting Advertising Clearance Centre initially banned the ad. The ban was only overturned last Saturday after intense lobbying by Australian Tourism Minister Fran Bailey and the beautiful Sydney model Laura Bingle, the bikini-clad woman who delivers the offending line in question.
As I drove to work last week I passed one of Canberra’s public buses plastered with an advertisement promoting public transport, urging all that read it to ‘Take your eyes off the road’. I’d hoped to snap a photograph of the bus in question in time for this week’s column. My quest was unsuccessful, and not for the reasons you might think. It wasn’t because, every time I approached the bus, I’d follow the advertisement’s urging and literally take my eyes off the road and end up rear-ending the closest vehicle, but, for rather less dramatic reasons. I simply couldn’t find it. I did have a look at the local bus interchange, but there’s only so much time you can spend lurking around a busy public transport depot with a camera around your neck, without being arrested on suspicion of terrorism-related activities, or even worse, being mistakenly thought of as a ‘bus spotter’.
Perhaps, like some of the Sony PSP ads, the ACTION bus advertisement was deemed too dangerous for the modern age we live in, and was withdrawn? And that’s the trouble. We live in a world that attempts to legislate stupidity out of existence, or, at the very least protect people from themselves. Last time I checked, ads were aimed at getting exposure and selling stuff. To be successful, they need to ‘cut through’. That’s advertising jargon for ads that get your attention by being a little different, by using humour, by being unexpected. Against those measures, the PSP ads are successful.
Definitely not the Sony ad...but perhaps this one would have been better received?
TBWA/London, the advertising agency credited with the Sony campaign calls its advertising philosophy ‘Disruption’ which it describes as ‘a process of finding ways to inspire, refresh and defy current marketplace conventions’. The PSP ads may have been slightly irresponsible, but as the controversy continued, and the media scrutiny intensified, Sony’s UK PSP campaign attracted worldwide attention and exposure. Far from a failed campaign, TBWA/London is more likely toasting its success. To that, I say, ‘bloody well done!’
Really big news
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock in the Australian outback all last week you would have heard the really big news. Naturally, you would have read about it first right here.
After weeks of endless speculation, rumour and anticipation, Sony held a press conference and actually told us things we didn’t already know. As a working journalist I’ve covered more stupefyingly boring seminars and press conferences than any one person should ever be subjected to, just hoping to glean something that's actually newsworthy. You attend these things hoping for a big announcement; a cure for all cancers, or news that Elvis has been found alive and well at the Biggest Loser auditions, only to be disappointed time and again. So it was a refreshing change indeed to discover a whole bunch of stuff that we hadn’t expected, and that hadn’t all been leaked days or months before.
Sure, the Americans and the Japanese may have shed a few tears on news that the console would be delayed from its originally anticipated Spring launch window in NTSC regions, but for PAL gamers, the news of a worldwide launch in November was pure gold. Without wanting to sound PAL centric….(to hell with it, this is PALGN after all)….a November 2006 launch in Europe and Australia was more than we could have hoped for, and certainly earlier than had been speculated by the gaming press. On a personal note, my birthday is in November. If there is a god, then this is most definitely a sign that I need to get a PS3 pre-order forthwith.
At the time of the announcement last Wednesday there was a nice degree of symmetry for Australian gamers. Eight days for the Xbox 360 or eight months for the PS3. Sure, eight months is still eight months, but we have a date now. We can circle November on the 2006 calendar and count down the days. I’d have to say the announcement couldn’t have come at a worse time for Microsoft’s launch of the 360 in Australia. Sure, those of us who want our next generation gaming now will still be buying the 360, but those sitting on the fence, may sit there a little longer now that the PS3 is just over the horizon. Had the Xbox 360 launched when it was originally meant to, and when the PS3 launch was still undated, then Microsoft may have made greater inroads into the Australian market.
It’s been interesting to follow the mainstream press coverage since last Wednesday’s announcement. Media mogul, Rupert Murdoch, recently described the age we live in as the ‘second great age of discovery’. - a digital future that puts the power in the hands of the individual. In an address last Monday in London to the Worshipful Company of Stationers And Newspaper Makers, he said, “Power is moving away from the old elite in our industry – the editors the chief executives and let’s face it, the proprietors”.
He may well have been foreshadowing this week’s coverage by the mainstream press including his own News Limited newspapers. If you wanted any decent intelligent coverage of the PS3 press conference you'd be well advised to stick with PALGN. Both news.com.au and the News Limited newspaper, The Australian, ran a story from The Times London (another Murdoch paper). If they had bothered to write and research a story locally for an Australian audience they may have reported that the November worldwide launch was great news for Aussie gamers. Instead the downbeat article reported that we 'face a six month wait', when in truth, we were never likely to get the PS3 during its originally anticipated Northern Hemisphere Spring launch. As reported earlier by PALGN, the news.com.au report goes one better by including a photo, not of the PS3 but a three year old mock-up produced, not by Sony, but by an eager fan.
There’s really no excuse for that kind of blunder, and it’s all the more exceptional because last year Murdoch’s News Corporation purchased the US video gaming website IGN Entertainment for $650 million. Perhaps Rupert Murdoch needs to purchase an Australian gaming website to help ensure his mainstream media operations in Australia are better informed. Of course I can’t speak for the PALGN team, but Mr Murdoch; if you are reading this and you’ve got the chequebook handy...
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