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Sony Graffiti Ads Draw More Anger
Philly.com is running the confirmation that Sony paid a vendor to lease wallspace for their PSP graffiti ads. Philadelphia groups are slamming the ads as affronts to clean urban spaces, and the Licenses and Inspections Department in the city is planning to cite the business owner. From the article: "Jake Dobkin, copublisher of the Gothamist Web site, considers himself a street-art aficionado. He said the Sony campaign hit his SoHo neighborhood in Manhattan a few weeks ago with not only 'dozens' of spray-painted murals but 'hundreds' of posters of the same cutesy youths. He took aim at Sony for trying to dupe people like him. 'It's clearly a large campaign, and deserves a thoughtful, measured response,' he wrote on his blog. 'Here's mine: corporate graffiti sucks.'"
Just go round and spray $sys$ infront of all the adverts.
I welcome our spray-painting Sony Overlords... and so does the anti-spraypaint police.
I thought the basic problem with graffiti that people were complaining about was that it is usually done to other people's property. If the property owner is consenting to this, where's the problem? Seems to me, it's a bunch of people who don't like graffiti itself using the property arguing as a ruse to get their way.
Complaining won't work. Spraypaint swastikas on the ads, they'll be erased in no time.
(not that they're nazis, but swastikas always get the clean-up crews in action.)
Trolling is a art,
Vandalous graffiti sucks.
He said the Sony campaign hit his SoHo neighborhood in Manhattan a few weeks ago with not only 'dozens' of spray-painted murals but 'hundreds' of posters of the same cutesy youths.
Oh... Myabe because graffiti in NYC is classified as... You know... A felony.
With a entire office of police devoted to graffiti crime.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Sony did not get permission ahead of time for its graffiti ads, the L&I office confirmed yesterday.
L&I intended to issue a violation to the property owner and inform Sony that such advertising required a permit, said a department official who asked not to be identified.
Putting up posters isn't much better when you don't get permission. Push the case hard enough and you can claim its graffiti by saying its lowering the value of your property or because its covering legitimately used wallspace without permission. And then of course, there are walls that are marked 'Do not put up posters' all over nearly every major city.
They think they're being cute and getting their product into the public memespace, whatever the hell that is. They kind of are, but it's backfiring.
The problem is, it's not backfiring quickly enough to suit me. So I propose we help them. We need to co-opt and corrupt the vacant-eyed gamins, in their style, and make them completely abhorrent to the general public. Only then will Sony achieve the vicious, visceral backlash and legal ass-reaming that these jokers are begging for.....
...say. Ass-reaming? I think I know where to depict the PSP being played with in this new campaign...
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
that the only graffiti that I've ever liked was the old Palm OS graffiti. Most spray painting is pretty lame, IMO.
... if you work in advertising, please, kill yourself. Do it for the good of everyone.
henry -- the human evolution news relay
>"It's clearly a large campaign, and deserves a thoughtful, measured response,' he wrote on his blog. 'Here's mine: corporate graffiti sucks.'"
To which I would add: "Sony Sucks!"
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Donald Trump already did this on The Apprentice, but I'm sure that they had purchased the ad space for it. I think it was for Gran Turismo...
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
The approximately 380 murders that have occurred in Philadelphia in 2005.
We have more murders here "per capita" than New York City. I can stand the "little sony dudes" murals if there wasn't a person being killed by gunfire every day in the streets.
Sure, Windows PCs dominate the market. But so do cheap toupees.
Exec #1: Well, our ads aren't getting enough people to buy our PSPs. What can we do?
Exec #2: We can improve the product, give it better battery life, better screen, like Nintendo did with the GBA SP!
(All execs laugh at him.)
Exec #3: We could try to keep it real in the hizzouse with graffiti! We'd license space on corporate buildings and spraypaint these awesome tags on the wall! We'd be the hippest gangstas on the planet and get more urban punks to buy our stuff!
Exec #1: Marvelous idea! We'll do that, whatever he said.
Exec #2: WTF.
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It's a billboard in slightly different kind of ink. Big deal. If you haven't previously noticed that advertising can be deceptive, cheapen the arts, and degrade the aesthetics of our living spaces, then you have been numbed.
I noticed on my commute to work the other day that there was a ridiculous, even offensive number of advertisements all over the place on the way. The roads are littered with ads, on highwayside billboards, roadside billboards, sandwich signs outside stores, and even gaudy storefronts themselves. Surely legal graffiti (meaning: the space was paid for, so it's just like a billboard) is no less crass.
... the saddest thing is, it must be true. Sony, in every advertising campaign, has always tried to appeal to the 14-18 demographic that wants to look, act, and think like they're older. So why not actually emulate the gangsta lifestyle? Their customers are moronic enough to find this cool.
I'm actually surprised they still haven't don ad campaigns featuring a bong-smoking, animated CG bob marley saying "Yo mon, thees playstachion stuff trench town rocks! Fight the power, be a rebel, buy SONY."
I would hate to see what people would be saying if Microsoft did this for the 360, it would have made the main page, and have alot more posts all pissed at MS.
Whiners and graffiti elitists and ghetto wannabes suck more than corporate (i.e., consentual) graffiti. The businesses agreed to host advertisements on their walls. Whether it was spray cans or posters portraying the message, Sony is just spending its advertising dollars. As much as you hate to admit it, ballerz and poserz and playaz and playa-hataz all want Sony's PSP. They all already have PS2's and talk shit about how badass they are at Madden or Soul Calibur or Gran Turismo and they're all eager to buy PS3 next year.
/. group-think (or knee-jerk) would stop demonizing entire huge companies for admittedly noteworthy poor decisions made by some middle managers... especially because the decisions are highly unlikely to even have an adverse effect directly on the person posting how much they hate X. Hardly anybody here really got rooted or suffered a breakdown due to graffiti. I agree it's crappy some music CD's had rootkits on them. It does appear some Sony music executives (just like all other major recording industry executives) are willing to bend or break laws to attempt to put the MP3 cat back in the bag. That doesn't mean PlayStation sucks. Similarly, PlayStations are sweet gaming machines even if some advertising is cheesy or campy or tries too hard to be cool. Microsoft's J Allard is all about pandering to the "Remix Generation" with custom skins and themes and tunes and configs and how ultra-hip the "HD Era" is. What an astonishing surprise it is that cutting-edge hardware is advertised as the coolest stuff ever!
I can understand if you were crying because Sony defaced your personal property illegally but retards like you don't deserve the floor just because you were "deceived" by Sony's attempt at cool advertising. Sony is a cool company that makes lots of cool products. It's a huge company with divisions all over the planet doing tons of different things. All of Sony does not suck because one advertising campaign offended some weakling's fragile sensibilities. Similarly, Sony (as a whole) does not suck just because a tiny portion of the company decided to put rootkit-laden copy-protection on some audio CD's. Maybe Microsoft is more evil than good. Maybe Sony is too. Even still, there could be quite a bit of good therein considering their similar enormity.
I wish more of the
So to all the Sony haters using this as more ammo: Why don't you first think a little about what matters before whining about what doesn't? PSP is a fscking cool gaming device. Sony can (and should) spend their advertising dollars how they want to and private businesses that want to host them should similarly do what's in their interest. How are your sports heroes telling you what products to buy any different?
-Pip
I guess this tells us how Sony feels about product placement.
"You're an idiot"
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.