Fair Game: Sony's History of Sordid Publicity

Article - Anyone for a dead goat?

"By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising... kill yourself. Thank you. Just planting seeds, planting seeds is all I'm doing. No joke here, really. Seriously, kill yourself, you have no rationalisation for what you do, you are Satan's little helpers. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now. Now, back to the show. Seriously, I know the marketing people are thinking: 'There's gonna be a joke comin' up.' There's no fuckin' joke. Suck a tail pipe, hang yourself... borrow a pistol from an NRA buddy, do something... rid the world of your evil fuckin' presence."

Bill Hicks (1961-1994)

Although award-winning television commercials, street-side billboard campaigns and glitzy PR events may live a while in the memory, it's not difficult to believe that advertising and marketing executives are keen on intentionally venturing beyond the boundaries of taste and decency in order to conjure up a concentrated level of invaluable product focus that no 'inoffensive' ad could ever sustain.

Moreover, while Sony's "This is Living" and Microsoft's "Jump In" marketing drives leave something of an imprint because they're largely obscure oddities thriving on consumer bewilderment, all the major videogame heavyweights have been known to sidestep the notion of morals and principles for the sake of a quick buck built on courting controversy, insinuation and even borderline racism.

Everyone would like to benefit from the sweet smell of success at some time in life, but can any of us really quantify its particular aroma? There may be those who think it's captured by the plush Italian leather interior of a growling Lamborghini, while others might find it within the bubbles frothing forth from a freshly popped bottle of Dom Perignon. Yet, for Sony, recent advertising and marketing assaults have seen it outperforming its console rivals in terms of seeking out and securing its own concoction of rancidly fragrant fortune.

In November of 2004, the Japanese gaming giant was forced to duck behind protective sand bags after an ad for Vietcong Purple Haze was harangued for openly referencing the deadly incendiary gel napalm, which was regularly used by the U.S. during the Vietnam conflict. Specifically, billboards for Take-Two Interactive's PlayStation 2 release proudly displayed an Official PlayStation Magazine review quotation proclaiming that: "Napalm never smelt this good."

After receiving a number of complaints, the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) instructed Take-Two to remove the billboard campaign in question on the grounds that the ad was "likely to cause serious or widespread offence," to those viewing it.

In bowing to the ASA, publisher Take-Two (itself no stranger to controversy thanks to its Grand Theft Auto series) insisted the review quote was added because it came from a respected industry publication and alluded to a similar line made famous in Francis Ford Coppola's classic 1979 Vietnam movie Apocalypse Now.

Regardless of justification, the clearly selective and inflammatory quote plucked from a seemingly positive Official PlayStation Magazine review was likely placed to help boost exposure for an otherwise mediocre game open to sinking like a trace without urgent marketing support. Case in point, Vietcong Purple Haze garnered a Metacritic average of just 48/100, while the posted quote from the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine's 30/100 review warned: "I can't help but grimace every time I think about someone dropping 40 bucks on this thing."

If there's one unquestionably sensitive area that marketing and advertising folk should never meddle, it's religion. However, in September of 2005 Sony duly deemed angering the Catholic Church to be little short of the perfect foil for commemorating a full decade of trading blows with games industry rivals.

This particular print advertising campaign, which carried the line "Ten years of passion" was designed to convey Sony's longstanding pride in the PlayStation brand and featured the image of a young man staring provacatively off the page while wearing a crown of thorns punctuated by the four face button icons made famous by the PlayStation controller.

Members of the Catholic community were subsquently incensed by the ad, with Antonio Sciortino of Christian Family accusing Sony of overstepping the boundaries of decency with its conduct and telling the Corriere della Sera newspaper "they've gone too far... if this had concerned Islam, there would have been a really strong reaction."

Quick to withdraw the campaign from circulation, Sony Computer Entertainment issued an apology for the resultant religious controversy via an official statement, but had the temerity to insist the "spirit of the message was misunderstood."

Shifting up through the gears of its own unbridled ambition, Sony soon found itself back in the spotlight after it infamously hired graffiti artists across various major U.S. cities and tasked them with spray-painting urban buildings with dizzy-eyed images of cartoon kids utilising the PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld as though it were a skateboard, a paddle or a rocking horse.

Launched in December of 2005 to forge a connection with the street-savvy demographic most likely to enjoy the mobility of its newly released portable format, Sony's boardroom and street-based designs were soon as vandalised as the buildings it had purchased advertising space on for the greater good of gaining a foothold in the handheld market.

Appearing in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco, the psuedo-hip PSP ads (which were devoid of Sony or PSP branding) promptly found themselves targeted by the same audience they were cooked up to attract, with examples of Sony's campaign openly defaced by 'genuine' street artists.