I’m a big fan of games systems.
Over the years I’ve had a whole bunch of them … Philips G7000, Intellivision, Atari 2600, SNES, Megadrive, 3DO, Saturn, Playstation [1,2 & 3], Xbox [1 & 2], Wii … you name it, I’ve probably had it or played on it.
Now even though I am not very good, especially compared to a 15 year old kid in South Dakota who kicks my arse on FIFA every bloody night … it’s an activity I love, if only for the fact it gives the whole range of my emotions a bloody good workout.
One of the greatest ads that captured this spirit was this one by TBWA …
Brilliant … in just 59 seconds, they have not only captured the range of emotions people experience when playing a video game, but they have also captured how for many people, ‘life’ is a series of events that highlight their slow descent into conformity, self-censorship and frustration.
Bleak?
Yep … but you can’t be that surprised given we live in a society that says what we do/say/think/wear has more influence in how our lives will turn out than what we achieve, believe and follow.
Anyway this isn’t about that … this is about the ads of Playstation.
In short, the work was brilliant.
Built on real and powerful insights and married to a brand personality bursting with barely contained youthful arrogance – it was the voice of a generation, the closest thing to punk they’d probably experienced.
Now we have to remember this all came from SONY – a brand that has its heart in ultra-conservative [especially in terms of business] Japan.
So how did it happen?
Well, while the guys at TBWA can take some credit – if anyone has read EDGE magazines fantastic article about the background of Playstation’s launch – then you’ll know the real driving force was that SONY’s hierarchy thought the brand was going to fail and didn’t want a thing to do with it, hense they actively encouraged the people involved to not associate it too strongly or closely with the SONY brand.
And now onto the real point of my post …
As we all know, Playstation went on to be a huge success – at its peak, contributing approx 90% of Sony’s entire profit – which is where things started to change because rather than try and deny it’s existence, SONY’s senior management started to take a much closer and more influential interest in how things developed [probably to associate themselves with success given that prior to Playstation, the company was in a bad way] which, in my opinion, ultimately led to the downfall of Playstation’s powerful, pragmatic and insight-driven creative.
I bring this up because I recently saw an ad for SONY’s new portable PSP.
OK, so PSP’s ads were never very good in the first place – and the World is in a different place to when the original Playstation launched – but when I read copy like the stuff being churned out below, I realise SONY don’t care about resonating with gamers, they just want everything to fit in with their adult-orientated, industry-generic, brand voice.
Let’s look at some of the highlights shall we?
“Bored? You must be. You should get a PSPgo. You could be watching ‘Transformer: Revenge Of The Fallen’ instead of reading some ad in a magazine. Brilliant.”
How terrible is that …
No passion, no hunger, no emotion, no nothing.
It’s cold, clinical, contrived, humourless, immature wallpaper advertising at its worst and it becomes even more painful when you compare it to the ‘Double Life’ ad above – an ad for the same company, for pretty much the same product.
[Acknowledging the original PS was purely a games system whereas the more modern incarnations are much more multimedia, even if they are still predominantly used for gaming]
Sure one is a television commercial whereas the other is a print ad, but that doesn’t mean it should be bereft of all attitude, hunger or gaming mindset – afterall, some of the early Playstation print was fantastic as you can be reminded of here and here.
I think the thing that bothers me the most about this awful ad is that the person who either wrote it or approved it, didn’t take any time to really understand what gaming means to people.
It doesn’t matter how old you are, what gender you are or what you do for a living … you don’t play games as an antidote to boredom, you play them as an antidote to life …
So the moral of the story is if you want to do work that will truly infiltrate society, then you have 3 options available to you …
1/ Choose brands that have a heritage of great creative.
2/ Choose brands that are the enfant terrible within the organisation.
3/ Get a planner involved.
Maybe this insightless approach has come about because SONY’s marketing people think the brands new joke of a positioning line Make.Believe empowers them to do whatever they want, regardless of relevance or resonance – and if that’s the case, then God help us all – however there is one bit of light and that is a dear friend of mine has recently been appointed head honcho for Playstation out of Japan and if his first bit of work is anything to go by [with WK] then in the coming months gamers, creatives and planners might be able to breathe a sigh of relief.
I believe.
