The new white PSP is coming to Europe soon, and Sony’s marketing department has put together an ad that will certainly be “controversial” (read: racist). The billboard shows a white woman, white hair and white clothes “abusing” a black individual. I bet she’s thinking “white PSP power”. Clearly this doesn’t appeal to anyone else than Starbucks Moccachino-drinking buzzword-throwing Manhattan marketers. I feel like getting rid of my (black) PSP in protest.
Sony has responded to the criticism while speaking to gameindsutry.biz, defending the ad campaign:
“A variety of different treatments have been created as a campaign to either highlight the whiteness of the new model or contrast the black and the white models.
“All of the 100 or so images created for the campaign have been designed to show this contrast in colours of the PSPs , and have no other message or purpose.”
Sony is saying there are no racial intentions, but there’s a reason many people have expressed discomfort over this. Sony also said that they have no plans of running the ad in the UK. Perhaps because the black poplulation is far greater in the UK than in Holland?
Sony has now removed the controversial ads from their Dutch PSP site. I think that’s the last we’ll see of it.
Now US civil rights group NAACP has criticized the ads as well, saying;
“The latest Sony ad conjures up bad memories of when stereotypical and offensive images of people of color were accepted means of selling a product. Sony should immediately apologize and discontinue these archaic advertising tactics.”
It is clear (from reading many of the comments people posted on DigitalBattle), that the ad is offensive, something the NAACP president Rick Callender agrees on:
“I can’t begin to determine Sony’s motivation but I believe this marketing strategy is unnecessary and is clearly offensive to many in our community.”
Source: http://www.digitalbattle.com/2006/07/07/more-problems-for-sonys-psp-ad/
Offensive Nitendo Parody Ad (this time shapist)
Thanks to Ctrl+Alt+Del's Tim Buckley, we now have a good idea what Nintendo would have done if given the same billboard for PSP Dual Screen Lite. Good photoshopping skills.
Source: http://kotaku.com/185768/offensive-nintendo-parody-ad-this-time-shapist
4 comments:
I went to look at some comments from the website for the nintendo ad. many of them reacted very negatively about the ad. however some people find it funny and creative. i guess it is a good way to attract people to talk about the ad, but somehow it also reflects on the company's image.
people ended up talking about obesity, debating on the issue rather than the product itself. the ad might end up hurting people's feeling, or might also influence the society's view towards a certain group of people.
yes so, advertising is impactful. not directly promoting a product, but also raise some issues for people to discuss on..
Talking about sony's racist ads, this reminds me of one they had some time ago about Japanese. They do think that this idea really sells don't they? Not sure if you have seen it but here's the youtube link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBpYih7Auns
SInce you are dealing with controversies and advertising, i have one site that you might want to look at. It has ads that had been rejected by clients on aesthetic, commercial or strategic grounds. This website broadens the original concept by including rejected, banned, spoof and most complained about ads and commercials. It's quite interesting, take a look!
http://www.bestrejectedadvertising.com/html/
cheers,
Jackie(jiaqi)
I haven't been to bestrejectedadvertising for some time and I explored around.
see this
http://www.bestrejectedadvertising.com/html/?page=tv&type=rejected&id=170
OMG.
I'm not pervertic I'm just too shocked.
Too shocked to say anything.
OMG.
cheers,
jackie
talking about good photoshopping
Post a Comment