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Sony Paid for Fake PSP Graffiti?
Eli Gottlieb writes "It would appear that the Sony Corporation (known for their world-class rootkits) paid graffitists to paint pictures of children using their new PSPs on city walls. Sony "artists" (corporate operatives?) have even been caught in the act of painting advertising campaigns on public walls. Note that these are not paid-for billboards or advertising media, but illegal graffiti in the first place. Beyond that, Sony is attempting to co-opt the subculture and possibly even artistic integrity of real graffists to sell more PSPs! Luckily, people have started to paint back and show that corporate vandals are not welcome." Though it does appear the vandal depicted is copying the image off of a sheet of paper, there's no real proof of Sony's complicity. Take with a grain of salt.
Remember the whole IBM/Linux graffiti fiasco?
Blue skies, Barthy Burgers, girls...
Any word on Sony actually being tied to this? I mean, yes it's highly unlikely that anyone would promote the PSP other than Sony, but I'm curious if this was a decision they actually approved or supported.
attempting to co-opt the subculture and possibly even artistic integrity of real graffists
Yes. That admirable artistic integrity that comes with vandelizing other people's property! Oh my - we wouldn't want to unfairly shed such people in a bad light!
This sounds like a repeat of the XBOX launch. In my city (melbourne) Microsoft spray painted a lot of streets with the green "X" logo, causing a huge fuss in the media about it being graffitti. Seems companies never learn....
"... people have started to paint back and show that corporate vandals are not welcome."
You mean "competing vandals have started to paint back", surely?
Or do you mean that vandalising is OK as long as it's not done for profit? If so, grow the fuck up.
Slashdotters were all cheering and happy when IBM sent guys around at night, painting those "Peace, Love and Linux" icons all over sidewalks what -- coopting pacifist culture? Is this another example of selective outrate where it's not what's done that gets people mad, but who's doing it?
The graffiti characters all match, despite having been done by different artists. They're what marketers call "on message."
The idea that multiple graffiti artists in different locations simultaneously designed the same PSP using characters and then.... it's so laughable I can't even finish that sentence.
As long as these photographs are genuine, there is *no* way that this isn't centrally coordinated. I suppose it's possible some fanboys might have decided to promote the PSP this way, but it doesn't really seem like fanboy behaviour. It's too organized and the graphic design is too well done.
Nintendo occasionally gets that kind of grass-roots support, but only for their legendary characters, not for a current product shot. Two story Mario 1 mural, sure. Nintendo DS graffiti, no.
For the launch of MSN 8 there were the MSN butterflies everywhere. Here are some pics.
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
I presume it's the same everywhere but our city centre streets are continually blighted by illegal posters for records & tours etc.
/ 4376267.stm
Here's one such story with an Iron Maiden poster
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london
The big record companies pay organised criminal gangs to ruin our streets and then WE have to pay to have it cleared up.
Makes me sick
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Between this and the rootkit, it's obvious Sony doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone's rights. Not the rights of the owners of the property they are vandalising, not the rights of the owners of the computers they rootkitted, and not their customers. They just don't care. At this point, if all the prepaid PS3 orders come in as boxes filled with paper mache, it wouldn't completely surprise me. No ethics at all.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
... that Sony paid for this. I mean it's the same looking characters holding PSPs appearing in cities all over the US. If it's not Sony then these are some really dedicated PSP owners out there pushing the brand.
:p
Then again, given the lack of decent games and homebrew on the PSP I'm sure these guys have plenty of spare time to use in trekking across the country shilling for Sony.
sony = swastika; linux = virgin mary
vandalize vertical surface = bad; vandalize lateral = good
paint = sin; chalk = virtue
I think this was reported about a couple weeks back on This Week In Tech or somewhere else (not sure where). Although the link to Sony wasn't very clear then either.
I wouldn't be surprised if this was true though. The PSP marketing blitz hasn't done them much good, so I guess they're thinking a grass-roots / subliminal campaign might be a better option than in your face advertising.
Insert Sig Here
No offense, assholes, but your vandalism is unwelcome, corporate or otherwise.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
So it's true, videogames do influence people ...
Dam you Jet Grind Radio!!!
You've turned Mindless Coporate Drones into Mindless Coporate Drones that illegally paint on the side of buildings.
...I personally wouldn't put it past a different company competing with Sony (say MS, who just had a big product launch, or Nintendo who compete directly with the PSP itself) to pay for something like this to make Sony look bad. But then I am incredibly cynical.
:D
Oh, I also work for Sony. But I didn't spraypaint anything
Game dev and music blog
There was also an episode of The Apprentice, where Sony wanted the team to paint a street graffiti picture on the side of the building advertising GT4. I guess they just took this to the next step.
http://www.woostercollective.com/2005/11/sony-psp- ads-what-do-you-think.html
This site is dedictated to street art. Often times they'll cover when corporations pay street artsists to do ads. This is one such example
Do we have proof that Sony did this? There is a story of a guy caught in action, but the story never confirmed he was from Sony or anything else.
Look carefully at the pictures. They do not depict the PSP in a positive light. The PSP is like a toy to the children. And in each picture, the children are not even looking at their PSP. Their gaze is elseware as if they were hypnotized. The swirl look in their eyes resembles the Microsoft 360 logo.
These pictures appeared in the major Xbox 360 launch cities of Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Philadelphia all around the Xbox 360 launch. And Microsoft has done this type of activity before with MSN.
The more I think about it, the more it appears that Microsoft is behind this. It is even better how their rival, Sony, will get the blame for the graffiti.
I'm a Sony employee. It's so embarrassing that the company is doing this, and it saddens me. I also think it's totally unjustifiable.
I'd just like to say sorry for some of the idiots who work for us. Most of the rest of us are actually nice guys, honest.
The grafiti does seem to be affiliated with Sony (as the articles suggest) heres the link: http://www.woostercollective.com/2005/11/sony-psp- ads-what-do-you-think.html
Sony need to stop trying to attract the kind of people who enjoy graffiti and rebelling against the system, because they will only be seen as the enemy if they try to take their corporate marketing to an anti corporate audience.
Business Voyeur
for one although they are done by different artist they are the same cru .. tats cru, and second no it was not paid for by sony, and if you pay attention to to the actual art you see that each of the kids are zombies (zombies to the machine) the whole point of the piece is to show that kids nolonger have creativity and everything they do is attached to videogames, the only reason it is a psp that they all have is because it is now the most recognized hand held and the most portable, as far as fake graff,, that it is not, its urban art .. there is 1 pieces of aresol that is 7ft tall and about 6 wide of 3 of the kids, so no .. sorry to smash your whole theory but as far as it being a ploy from sony that it is not (i know some of the writers from tats) and things go alot deeper than that ..so becareful before accusing a graff cru of selling out to sony. incase there is any dispute on the matter you can check out what exactly the fus is about i have some of the Bill post which Z is talking about (bil post is also a urban art the quickest of the throw ups)
Around 13th and South Street in Philadelphia. There is a tatoo shop that usually has grafitti on the side and while bar hopping I noticed it.
Three chracters using a psp with different thinks like licking a psp on a stick or using is at a paddle ball.
I thought perhaps the artist was just being over zealous over a pop statement about his personal psp and his friends, but perhaps it was one of these paid adds.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
It's not graffists or graffistis, it's GRAFFITI ARTISTS or graf artists
and tons of graf is done on completely legal surfaces. I think people are getting pissed and always do when corporations use invasive advertising. Graffiti artists are trying to create art and a statement against corporations, and when they turn around and use it against them it's like a slap in the face. There is a code and many kids (and I use kids b/c your 26 yr old graf artist isn't doing it) don't follow it.. don't paint on private property or federal property, don't paint over the numbers on trains, etc. what's the harm of painting underneath a bridge, or on a train? It makes boring urban "design" loook better.
because vandalising private property is a criminal offence, wether you do it or pay someone to do it,
the residents whos property has been damaged should be calling their local police and pressing charges, perhaps when a few Sony people are sitting in jail they might think about their actions a bit more, but that wont happen, seems the pathetic public is all to accepting of large gangs ( aka corporations) doing whatevr the fuck they like, perhaps the residents should be tracking down Sony executives and spraying their property
Call them what they are: vandals. I don't care if they paint on the side of a church or on the undercarriage of a bridge that nobody will ever see: IF IT IS NOT YOURS, YOU DON'T DEFACE IT. People generally have a wide variety of tastes when it comes to art. How dare you push your art onto others? Would you like it if I came into your house, went into your bedroom, and painted a big fucking picture of David Hasselhoff above your bed? Oh wait, you mean you PREFER the bland, white ceiling to my amazing art??
more problems at sony:0 ,3749240.story?coll=la-home-headlines
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-sony4dec04,
Documents released by Spitzer charged that bribing radio programmers with plasma TVs, vacations and laptop computers in exchange for airplay was not only commonplace at Sony BMG, but also had "been tolerated and facilitated by senior executives."
Pepole got into trouble for that in Germany - and had to reverse there work or beeing fined. Without the city concils permission you are not allowed to do gardening on public ground.
If it's not yours you are not allowed to change it! There are no two ways around it.
Martin
How do you know? Prehaps the owner has hired a real Artist do do some work on the wall. He might me sceduled to arrive tomorrow - only he won't be able to start because the vandalism has to be cleand up before hand.
Unless you ask the onwer for permissing you won't know his planns for the wall.
Martin
The way you write... it's so painful. What the fuck is .. supposed to be? Are you aiming for an ellipses, or are you just really excited when you get to end a sentence with a period?
I could try and translate what you have wrote into something more legible if you'd like.
... is good publicity...
:)
Sony is good at generating bad publicity, and percieving that as good PR.
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Wouldn't it be fun to walk around their parking area/building with a spray can and do a little of your own advertising. And you might want to bring some mace in case their rent-a-cops come after you. You might even target the most compensatory SUVs, as those probably belong to the marketing wanks who came up with this stupid idea. Too bad we can't do it because it is against the law.
ha ha ha ha. I can't get enough :)
No, it's not OK, but normally, illegal tags are created by bored (and possibly stupid) kids who mark their territories like dogs pissing on corners. What exactly is Sony's excuse for behaving like that?
Um, yeah. It's very much Sony's fault for creating and distributing this software. Most people don't read these EULAs, and no normal person expects a rootkit to be installed when they're simply trying to listen to music. Sony knew exactly what would happen to its users (to the very people who gave Sony money, nota bene!), and they went ahead anyway.
But even if you think that this is just OK and the user's fault, how Sony reacted to the whole thing and "fixed" it by making it even worse destroys any last shred of credibility they still had.
I would like that very much. When are you free?
I saw posters here, nothing on raw walls. The kids look like they are on drugs and the PSP in each image is not being used as you would expect. Skateboard, Paddleball, etc.
Personally it wont sway my choice of handheld game device, but it's interesting to see a corp take this kind of risk. Can't the city sue them?
good stuff. like how Sharpe James hired supporters for the Camden mayoral election and bussed them in from philly. it's a funny kind publicity. some kind of fake-ass street cred
Having known more than a handful of taggers and sticker-slappers in my time, I assure you that not all of them are stupid, and hardly any of them were bored. Often, specifically with 'message' pieces, the artists (and yes, they are artists, no matter how illegal their work may be) are doing what they can do to 'speak out' against any number of social ills and injustices. The gang tags that you are likely referring to are inconsequential in this argument, as not everyone with a bag of paints and a roll of stickers is a violent criminal trying to up his rep with the leaders of the pack.
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
I know. I used to spray murals, too, a few years ago. I was talking about the tags (the smaller paintings which are usually done in one color and contain not a lot more than the name of the person doing it), not about murals. Even though I'll be the first to freely admit that painting murals - especially on private property - is really stupid (whether the one doing it is smart or not), and had I been caught, I sure as hell wouldn't have complained about it.
Sony's stupid little crappy pictures are clearly not comparable to murals, which are all unique and require quite a bit of planning and time, sometimes even taking more than one night's work. I still like checking out murals, and there are some truly amazing artists in my home town.
Even so, I want to repeat that I think creating murals in illegal places is stupid, no matter what your motivation is. Many people don't like them, and you're basically forcing people to pay money to remove them.
So, I'm torn on the issue of murals, but not on the issue of tags and of Sony's ads.
It's possible that Sony paid for some of them (but even that is disputed), but definitely not for all of them. Some of the pictures are clearly in public places which do not belong to any private entity.