People invest millions into these campaigns, and the people putting them together think foremost about the “viral” impact of their campaign.

That was a bad move that leaves me to wonder whether Sony has ethics at all!

before you start beating me down - I am not white. I am me.

It is the ad agency’s responsibility to understand the audience. The audience should never be expected to understand the agency.

Bill board ads, by their very nature, are expected to be a stand alone piece. I can totaly understand viewers confusion. To me, this is just another bad decision by Sony. They seem to be working overtime to offend everyone these days…

But NOT because of the picture, OR the sentiment.

The company has used the term ‘white’ (which is a shade) and then created an assocation with the word as a descriptive statement on race (white, as in caucasian). This is where the offensive part occurs.

And anyway, there doesn’t need to be a comma. The capital letter does the trick just fine.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-02/25/xin_170202251648429315428.jpg

There is this tendency to create something that will be talked about. That is what advertising is all about. If you create an eye-catching ad, then people will talk. I mean look at all of us discussing this PSP ad. Whether or not it offends us, the fact is we are discussing it. I myself am not a gamer, so I am not their target audience. As fmk stated, the audience would probably be males ages 12-25. Of course you have those few men that cannot give up video games at the age of 60.

Beside the point, advertisers want to make a stir. They want to get their name out there and get talked about. I mean look at the company Go Daddy.com. It took them 14 tries to get a Super Bowl ad that was not demeaning and distasteful. A PR tactic to get people to talk about the domain names that they offer, or just bad taste? Whatever the reason, they were the topic of conversation by many media stations. Who knows the outcomes, but all-in-all advertisers want their products out there in discussion because that is what gets products sold.

That said, if Sony really, really wanted controversy, all they needed to do was add a comma to emphasise a racial threat, ‘Playstation Portable, White is coming’.

S.

the interesting interpretation of the third and final image you show is that the standard black psp is gonna beat the shite out of the lippy white psp, which is just a big girl’s blouse. so i think i’ll pass on going out to buy the new product …

btw - at a guess, what is the gender breakdown on psp users? would it be fair to guess it’s a male-dominated environment? in which case, why the need for hot girl-on-girl inter-racial s m lesbian action in the advertising? why not two guys getting into a catfight? or. better still, show us the bloody product!

If people took the time to put things into context before shouting their mouth off, maybe we wouldn’t have so much controversy.

Ah, but is it not about understanding your audience, not demanding they understand you? You have about 5 seconds, maybe less to get peoples attention with an ad.

If a small but vocal part of your audience is going to come out and accuse you of racism then you have to be ready for it or utilize it in some way. There’s plenty of proven ways of generating controversy to get attention but you have to generate the right controversy and be ready for it.