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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.
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....
In some places - here in Gainesville, FL, for instance - there are walls where graffiti is permitted. So these people could be subverting the legitimacy of actual "graffists" both by painting corporate advertising and by painting in illegal places.
Some people hire graffiti artists to paint pictures on their walls. Not all graffiti is the illegal kind.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
"... 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.
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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.
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...
...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.
If that were the case, these "graffiti artists with high integrity" wouldn't be the slightest bit concerned with these Sony graffitists. After all, how is there any difference in the integrity of two similar illegal acts that have nothing to do with your legal art?
Or maybe they don't have the integrity they claim they do and it's the commercial act rather than the illegal one that they feel affects them.
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.
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
Well, then in that case there's nothing for anyone to complain about anything.
Except the guy who owns the wall they're using.
You seem to be reading at a threshold above 0 - you missed this post.
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.
very informative. I thought that it might have been something more legit than sony advertisments.
[20:36] wwwdot/.dotorg
sorry if i sounded kind of heated but i guess i got kind of excited when i saw the misconception.
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??
While it may be illegal, it is also art. Not "tagging", though. Seeing "joe" scrawled crappily on a pole isn't what I call art. Not that Joe pisses me off or anything. He's a cool guy.
This article claims otherwise. (Scroll down a bit, it was posted Dec. 4 at 2:10 AM)
According to the article:
-The drawings are ads, not anti-Sony art.
-Tats Cru is in fact responsible for the ads on the East Coast, but they were hired by Sony to paint them.
-Tats Cru obtained the permission of the store owners before painting the ads.
This doesn't explain the ads in Chicago, Los Angeles, or San Francisco, so it's likely that Sony hired other local artists in those areas. It sounds like the whole setup is fairly legal, assuming that all local artists got permission to do this. Still, it's kind of deceitful on Sony's part... but I guess that's their specialty these days.
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
Indeed I am. Damn rare valuable AC posts. ;)
Which prompts the new question: If they're not vandalizing, what's the big deal?
sorry i beg to differ on that for real . the bill postings that run on grant and w.broadway in nyc are definitly not authorized there is one building side that is infact authorized, not because of sony, but just because it is a permission wall, other cities = colab , if you want an actual example of promotional graff look at the store side cocacola ads .. pure product , children as zombies .. hmmm 2 +2 is not six .. sorry guy
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.
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?
Well, the legality of the drawings may still be in question, but I think it's fairly obvious that these drawings are promotional material.
It's unlikely that a New York-based team would organize an effort to draw identical graffiti all over the nation. If they were really trying to make a point, surely they would have been creative enough to come up with more than three or four drawings. It's far more plausible for a company with a worldwide scope to organize such an event, and the characters seem to fit in very well with Sony's PSP ad campaign.
Also, if the artists are simply trying to make a statement about videogames, why would they use such a precisely drawn replica of a PSP? Wouldn't it be more effective to draw a generic game console, rather than increasing Sony's mindshare with an official-looking drawing?
Sorry, but the article I linked to earlier seems to have the facts pretty straight. It sounds like they've actually talked to some of the artists, as they have some specific information about the contract. Until some official word comes out (which is unlikely), I think it's safe to assume that Sony is behind this.
You clearly know jack shit about the street culture art community. The opinion that they are all vandals is tired old 1980's bullshit, wake up man! Try picking up a hip-hop mag some time and finding out what the worlds been up to for the last 10 years you've been staring at your monitor. Do you think IBM/Sony/M$ would all throw money into this advertising scheme if there wasn't something there beyond annoying vandalism? M$ recently got a new strategy after getting fined for the graffiti in NYC by paying a guy in London to actually scrub dirty sidewalks clean w/ the XBOX 360 logo. It's all lame. It's like some geezer trying to refer to jewelry as "bling-bling" to his nephews and thinking he's hip. I suppose if people are stupid enough to fall for this type of ploy they deserve to be duped but is still raises my hackles by the dillution of the mostly anti-corporate stance of said artists.
Please stop using M$, that's the same kind of ten years out of date silliness you are railing against.
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)
OK.. what's the new slang for us too lazy to type that corporations full moniker?
MS?
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.
What is extra ironic about the Jet Grind Radio connection is that SEGA help a graffiti contest to celebrate the release of the game here is San Francisco. The Mayor flipped out at them and told them to stop promoting graffiti. Now Sony comes along and does this and the city is completely quiet.
Talk about a double standard.
A blog about stuff.
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.