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Sony Pulls Controversial PSP Ad, Issues Apology
xenongamer writes "Sony has finally stepped up and pulled the racially controversial PSP ads out of the Netherlands. 'We... recognize that people have a wide variety of perceptions about such imagery and we wish to apologize to those who perceived the advert differently to that intended. In future, we will apply greater sensitivity in our selection of campaign imagery, and will take due account of the increasingly global reach of such local adverts, and their potential impact in other countries,' said Sony in a statement."
They released ads in one country, and people with guilty social consciences complained in a totally different country. People need to get a grip, not every country in the world is socially obsessed with black vs. white race relations.
Now pull this one.
How do people from the Netherlands feel about the advertisement? I'm more interested in their opinion than politically correct America. What was the reaction in the Netherlands?
The billboard ads, which debuted last week in Holland, depicted a white woman forcefully grabbing the face of a black woman in a "racially charged" manner according the ad campaigns critics. Sony asserted that the ads were designed to show the contrast in colors between the original black PSP and the new Ceramic white PSP with "no other message or purpose."
The music is all around us. I can hear it. Can you?
Specifically, one of the ads (there were three) was deemed racially insensitive because it showed a white chick in a dominating position over a black chick. Example article with image here. What people haven't talked about so much is that there are two other ads; one with the black chick in a dominant position over the white chick, and one where they're on equal footing.
--trb
Not only was the social outcry from other countries, virtually every article and discussion that decried the campaign focused on the white over black advertisement.
As was stated by others in the earlier discussion, would there have been a huge outcry if there existed only one advertisement, and it was black over white?
My opinion? I seriously, seriously doubt it.
they should trademark...'shooting yourslef in the foot'.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
This is my opinion, I have nothing to back it up but I think Sony released these ads with the intent of causing unrest. As pointed out in prior comments on Slashdot, they got some great coverage with this advertising campaign.
But the ads rely entirely on imagery. The pictures I saw didn't even have words on them, just two women. One completely white and one completely black in all respects. As also pointed out earlier there were three images with only the white-on-top-of-black one being controversial.
Why did they pick humans? The humans are supposed to represent PSPs, an inate object? I don't understand why this decision was made to use human beings. Put a black wolf and a white timberwolf in the image. Put a black demon and a white angel in the image. Why would you put two ethnicities of the human race that have obvious baggage attached to them. Even if it doesn't offend anyone you know, there are people alive today that are still suffering from the effects of racial tensions either directly or indirectly.
Why did they pick women? Again, the women are representing a PSP, you're just inviting people to speculate that women are objects. And to gamers, this might be "ok" or welcomed but when you throw it on a billboard, you're only drawing heat.
Why is there a struggle between these two subjects? Why would different colored PSPs fight each other? Are they incompatible? Is one better than the other? Again, I don't understand why they made the decision to pit them against each other in the images.
In retrospect, no matter what their motives or realizations were, I f*cking hate marketing and all forms of it.
My work here is dung.
It wasn't racist at all. Here's why:
Sony had three ads - one where a white woman was holding a black woman by the chin, one wherre the black woman was overpowering the white one, and one that looked more neutral. Of course, everyone screamed "racist", spread the news about the first one, but not the other two. It just took me five minutes to find a site that had the other images. If you go to Google News and search for "sony racist ad" you'll overwhelmingly see only the first image.
FC Closer
They targetted the ads for a very specific area, and that area doesn't seem to the be the area that is throwing a hissy fit over it.
This is just a PR move, through and through, even if the apology is slightly bitter.
The one race to rule them all! ;)
It's time to take the position that if the ad or the box has better art than the game does, it's false advertising. There's no excuse today for bad in-game art, and games now generate HDTV resolution output, so if the box or ad has better art, it's willfully deceptive.
Now if that scene of the white girl giving the black girl a hard time had been in the game, the picture would have been fine. It would fit well into, say, the next generation of GTA.
(This got me thinking. Very few games today allow players to touch. We don't have good wrestling games, or martial arts throws, or football pileups. You can hit other players, but can't shake their hand. Or hand them something. Or cooperate in carrying something. Yet collision detection and motion planning technology is good enough to do that now. Something to work on.)
Interesting move. I can see that the advertisement is quite harmless (read: I don't give a shit what color their ads/devices are). I wonder what products are going to cost more to cover this move? What other advertising misfires will we be subjected to? I've already writen off Sony products, though I have been enjoying my PS2 (still!).
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
think people need to lighten up. This is another case of pulling the race card when race was not involved. While Sony should have seen it coming an never released the ad; the reaction of various racial organizations was to over-react. What if the ad had a black woman grabbing the face of a white woman? I bet nobody would be bothered by that right?
Nintendo has just released the Rainbow coloured DS Lite. It was heard that they are a multicultural hand-held company and won't make the same mistakes Sony has.
Or more likely the other way round.
Google Images to the rescue:
http://www.sfgate.com/blogs/images/sfgate/techchro n/2006/07/11/sony_ad300x225.jpg
http://publicvoidlife.blogspot.com
Mod parent up. This is the first time I have seen the other images in this "series", and when seen together, they tell a different story. I'm interested in seeing what the text is for the other ads.
Respect the laws of physics, for the laws of physics have no respect for you.
i spotted this when it had 2 replies. by the time i tried to submit a reply, all those 1:40/41/45/46pm replies hit - mine never did make it ... well, that one, anyway ...
Looks like the PSP marketing types earned their pay this month.
Create cheap but 'controversial' add campaign - just a photography session and a couple models - CHECK
Let the 'storm' brew for a short while - CHECK
'Pull' the adds in response to the 'outcry' - CHECK
Sit back and enjoy the massive publicity for your product - CHECK
Love it! It's like watching a baseball game - walk, bunt runner to second, single scoring the runner - repeat.
Those DS fans out there screaming about Japan sales better double check the worldwide sales numbers for PSP vs DS...And with the PS3 coming out being able to broadcast stream movies and music to your PSP over wireless and all sorts of other media features come November...
It's about time you got your head out of your ass and looked at the other two images.
FC Closer
This is pretty clearly a case of viral marketing. Sony's ad agency for this piece was TBWA, who market themselves as 'disruptive idea makers.' As has already been stated many times, why spend cash on a huge campaign when you have the collective dissemination might of the media giants to do it for you. Down to the brass tacks here folks - Do you really think little Billy and Jane give two craps about the socio-political aspects of this ad? All they want is the new Pokemon Digi-farm 2007 Gold Extra Special Photo Pack 12... Even if you make the argument that the PSP is marketed at older gamers, say 21-30, the ad is still effective. Most people here are gamers, and you all know as well as I do that gamers are a decidedly amoral lot - junkies. They might complain about the lack of black people in Warcraft on the forums but they're still logging in every day to loot that next epic. Same philosophy as the 'anti-smoking' ads that the Tobacco Co's put out - the CONTENT of the message means nothing because at the end of the day its still 30 seconds spent talking about smoking.
I'm a firm believer in the idea, "never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."
I deal with my company's marketing department often; they inevitably display all the forethought and insight of a mentally challenged rutabaga. The chances of this being a consciously racist ad are virtually zero.
Furthermore, it's not like the PSP is doing poorly in the sales department; they really don't need to generate this kind of controversy just to get their name in the media. The planned prices for PS3 is doing that just fine.
At the end of the day, this just strikes me as another attack of the stupids.
Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
humankind will be able to look at that advertisement and see 'new white PSP coming soon'. Everyone who complained the image was racist, oops - you're accidentally racist. Pointing and screaming at these things extends the institution's life. Ad agencies and visual artists will be doubly careful to use the right races in the right way as long as this incident is in the public mind, which is discrimantory itself. At this rate combining ethnicities will be risky for decades to come - as long as someone is willing to shout that, maybe, someone else could be offended or someone else might harm another race if they see this. In short: Sony's ads could potentially be considered racist, depending on the viewer's background and mindset. Crying about what that white person is doing to that black person is definitely racist. We aren't working very hard to truly 'erase racism' (as if whining about consumer ads was the place to start).
Of course Sony, famously out of toes left to shoot, could have exercised more discretion.
Humor is: white Americans in America complaining about Dutch advertisements featuring black people in the Netherlands. Police the world, much?
My problem with spontaneous human combustion is that never seems to happen to the "right" people.
Once, a few years ago, they had some ad with a really attractive woman shaving her face with some new razor, saying, "ooh, is this the sensitive part... poor baby." Obviously, the purpose of the ad wasn't the shaving (or they would have some gruff, bearded man shaving).
So, all the controversy? It was about people totally not getting the ads.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
"Art does not exist without context."
It's a shame you're too unbelievably retarded to understand the context of this entire campaign.
The only possibly racist thign about those ads was that the woman had an afro, then again maybe afros are popualr among black european women.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
The fact of the matter is that we can argue until we're blue in the face about whether these ads were "racist" or not.
But the fact that they were racially problematic is pretty much indisputable. As the above comment said, why would they use a black person and a white person? Why would they be fighting? Are they really so naive as to not recognize that, given the history of racism, colonialism, genocide, fascism, etc. that have preceded our current worldwide race relations, that presenting an ad which simulates violence between a black person and a white person might, I don't know, be kind of a bad idea?
If the other two images aren't always displayed alongside the questionable one, the fact of their existence is irrelevant. It may prove that the people at Sony aren't racists, but it doesn't prove that they aren't idiots.
You can go on as long as you want about hypersensitivity and whether there was intent or blah blah blah, but the story here was never that Sony had joined the white supremacist movement. The story all along is that Sony had done something stupid. The offense taken by some people is perhaps pointless, but there wasn't any need for Sony to stir up that offense in the first place.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
But otherwise, yeah, you're right. Taken -out- of the context of the ads, and without the unfortunate "White is coming" tagline, they actually make for a pretty good art series that doesn't look racist, actually the opposite. I don't know if the artist intended them to be ordered as such, but if you start with the one with them squaring off and snarling at each other, followed by the white woman grabbing the other woman's face in what's both an aggressive and intimite gesture, followed by the white woman more supine with the black woman over her. Looks like two people who perhaps don't like each other or are just aggressive like that but are attracted to each other succumbing to their passions.
Now obviously this doesn't eliminate the fact that race is an element of these pictures, and the racial tension that is implied. But of course a piece of art that involves racial tension is not necessarily racist. Just as the women's anger and tension seems to be leading up to a sensual release, so too are the racial tensions that the viewer is going to be seeing and feeling. Very provacative.
Sadly, it is in the context of an ad, and with the unfortunate tagline, and really was just a bad idea on Sony's part. Er, other than it being a ridiculously successful advertisement, of course.
The enemies of Democracy are
And yet the other 2 images were not slapped on 30 foot billboards with the slogan "white is coming". I would rather have seen the 2nd image (the 2 facing off on equal grounds) than the first or last. It just makes more sense than having 2 women assaulting each other. I doubt these guys are racist, but they did make a pretty big boneheaded mistake.
P.S. why did they feel the need to personify the PSP with people in the first place? There are literally thousands of other ways to show the contrast of these 2 colors than using people. A good idea would have been to use an eclipse.
From Rick Callendar, president of the San Jose NAACP.. "Their attempt to contrast colors clearly created controversy and sparked painful feelings in the global community."
My socks never match each other. Should I steer clear of this guy?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
...would have been to tell the people bitching and moaning to grow up or shut the hell up. Seriously Sony needs to grow a backbone.
"It wasn't racist at all. Here's why:"
Here's a much simpler reason:
You can't be unintentionally racist.
You can unintentionally offend people.
There is a difference.
Offense does not redefine motive.
I agree with you and the poster who you mention, however I would go further - showing violence between two people is always stupid - why have people fight at all, why make such a big deal of the skin colour of the people in the ad? why not just let the product speak for itself... I know people were saying about "oh, but it's become viral"... this has made me not like them one bit more (after the rootkit they are already at the lowest they can get in my view)
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Oh, but the fact that they are of different races means it's insensitive. You wouldn't have a problem with the ad if it were two persons of the same race and gender.
Um, yes, obviously. Or two races who had never had any kind of conflict, say Hawaiians and Arabs. That's called "context" and it's important. These ads don't exist in a vacuum. They exist in our world in which one race dominating, slaying, and enslaving another has been one of the continual themes of history. The ad itself pairs two races who have had such a history even up to today. That's significant. That can't be ignored.
This hypersensitivity is actually serving to perpetuate racist views. It is forcing people to consider race as an issue when people really shouldn't have to.
Race is an issue in many places in the world, and pretending otherwise is not going to make it go away. Racism and racial tensions exist in many parts of the world, and black vs white racial tension and racism exist here in the United States. Anyone who says it isn't is in denial or living somewhere where they don't have to deal with it.
Race is an issue in these ads. This is just undeniable. Racial tension is also an issue. Sony can talk about "color" in the abstract sense of their PSPs as much as they want. These women aren't just white and black, they're European and African. Going at each other. Racial tension? Yes.
But is it racism? I'd certainly say not. If you look at the whole series, it actually looks very passionate. They may be aggressive and combative, but they practically end up on top of each other. As someone else pointed out, the ad is basically about sex. Aggressive sex, but that doesn't make it hateful. Do you think interracial lovers sometimes feed off the racial tension between them? Certainly. In that sense the series is almost cathartic. The artist was using the implied tension towards their goal.
So is hypersensitivity the problem here? Yeah, probably. It's a bit much to call the ads 'racist', though with the "White is coming" tagline and news articles only showing the white-gripping-black billboard, I can see how people would get the wrong impression. Remember though that like most kinds of hypesensitivity this arose from "over-stimulation" from actual racism and racial violence.
Is hypersensitivity perpetuating racism? Well, somewhat perhaps. I had an aquaintence once get mad at me for making reference to the fact that she's black. That act of sensitivity certainly made me more self-conscious of race, but we got along fine after that. I've had another aquantence tell me that he hated having black people around and thought we should deport them back to Africa. Dropped him like a bad habit, of course, but what about when he has kids? My point is -- to whatever extent hypersensitivity perpetuates racism, actual racism perpetuates racism much, much more.
So I suppose I'm going to have to come out in the middle on this issue. No, they aren't racist and the reactions were overblown. Yes, race is an issue in the ads and pretending otherwise is just avoidance or ignorance or whatever. In any event I don't feel sorry for Sony because appology or no they're getting exactly what they wanted from the ad.
The enemies of Democracy are
All three are offensive. There are many relevant ways they could have advertised the availability of a new colour. This "race war" campaign was totally uncalled for.
And yet more of the mindset that people have a right not to be offended. That in itself offends me, so I demand retribution.
FC Closer
The ad wasn't intentionally racist, but Sony that that correlating PSP colors with skin color (race) was clever, when it's not; it's just lame.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Um from the comments I saw, yes, all 3 were on billboards. Not right next to each other, but all were displayed at the same time IIRC.
There's a hater for everything. Everything bothers SOMEONE. Guess Sony's not so big and bad when people start crying and pulling out the race card. FFS the damned thing was ART. I've seen far worse topics get PRAISE. :(
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I bet if they were naked the ad wouldn't look racist, just sexy! Sony needs to take some cues from Victoria's Secret ads. yum!
If they'd used two white people, one in black clothing, then you'd have people bitching because the ads aren't "diverse" enough.
I think we just need to ban all use of the colors white or black for any purpose other than referring to race. Problem solved, right?
Why would they use a black person and a white person? Um, maybe because they were advertising the new white PSP, which will be "competing" against the older black PSP? What other possible similar situation could you think up that would not be worse than this one?
Fucking oversensitive bastards.
FC Closer
If you think that squirrel was offensive, then you're nothing but a noob.
Your failure to understand my comment offends me ;)
If one sells Corn Flakes, for instance, one does not cover the box with caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed. Not because it's illegal, or because it's wrong, but because it's pointless. You know that you'll offend people, so even if you don't consider it a legit offense, you can't really expect it to improve sales.
In this particular issue, those defending Sony almost seem to be saying that Sony had an obligation to not consider the fact that people would be offended. I believe that's just as ridiculous as the notion that people have a right to not be offended, though both are straw men.
I'm the first to defend someone who is using art to make a point and happens to offend some people; that's part of the debate in our society. But Sony's ad isn't a part of that; they are just trying to sell a handheld game console.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Enh. That doesn't exactly follow. Racists typically would in fact emphasise the black dominating the white image - it fits into their idea of the minorities oppressing the majority white population. All three of the images promote the 'race war' idea that is pretty much emblematic of racists, as well as coincidentally scoring the cat-fight angle vs feminists.
Nor is it true that there is no racism issue in Holland - there is certainly a strong religion one, and it flows from the Theo van Gogh case and so on, and this sort of thing tends to flow into racism as well.
In the end, can anyone truly suggest that the reaction to the ads wasn't exactly what was intended?
You can't be unintentionally racist.
Wow. This statement is mind-bendingly igorant.
Can you even explain what the difference is between "intentional" and "unintentional" racism?
Hello, Apologist!
How, exactly, does that reasoning work?
Shut the fuck up, cracker.
Because that photo violated the rules that whites are supposed to live by in the US.
Please note that I understand why these rules are in US society and why they must exist. Anyone who witnessed the oppression blacks experienced before the civil rights movement would understand that this is a necessary penance whites must endure so as to prevent any reoccurance of those troubled and frankly evil times.
But there seems to be many folks accross the pond that don't understand why the furor, why the angst? For those folks, I'll list a few of them. I'm not being funny, I'm not trying to incite a flame war though I'm sure it will happen. I'm not saying anything should change. I'm just listing the rules that we live by. The rules so deeply ingrained in some that is has become their only way of thinking.
Learn these rules well because I'm fully expecting that Europeans will soon have the same rules applied to them, not for blacks but rather for Muslims. This seems to be already happening in Sweden and possibly France.
Black pride - okay
White pride - racist
Scholarships only for blacks - okay
Scholarships only for whites - racist
TV show only has blacks - okay
TV show only has whites - racist
School only for blacks - okay
School only for whites - racist
Job openings only for blacks - okay
Job openings only for whites - racist
Black family doesn't want white son-in-law - funny movie
White family doesn't want black son-in-law - racist movie
Black comedian in white face - funny
White comedian in black face - racist
Besides these unspoken rules we live by, we are also supposed to avoid mentioning any negative association between blacks and crime, blacks and welfare, or blacks and rioting.
It keeps going from there but you get the point.
Any white person violating one of these rules is automatically a racist. Actually just mentioning them makes you a racist. Thats why race relations in the US will never improve, we simply can't talk about this without somebody yelling "Racist!". We just have to accept it with our mouths shut or suffer social stigma.
Blacks are free to do so, but are treated like lepers afterwards by their own community.
Inaction against someone violating these rules also labels you as a racist. Thats why politicians in the US are so vocal over what's happening in a completely different country. It's not that they're affected or offended. As political entities they have no choice. It's just them living by the rules.
lol darkies
Can you even explain what the difference is between "intentional" and "unintentional" racism? Have you seen all three of the adds? When I saw the adds I saw two people fighting. It might have just as well been two white people or two black people, or two a red and a blue person. With the way that the white person was very white and the way the black person was very black, it was very surreal. It was not realistic at all. Anybody offended by it was attaching their own meaning to it which is entirely possible, and people can't help it. But there are people like me who were brought up being blind to race. Seeing people as people. Personifying the fight of the black psp vs the white psp isn't inherently racist unless you bring your own baggage along. The only thing I got out of it was "Cool another sony product I'm not going to buy."
i could not think of anything clever.
Oh well, maybe I've been deprived of soft, gentle sex... but I'm having fun anyway.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Isn't it "Myanmar-Shave" now?
Aha. So white women are by default racist?
Yes, I have seen all three "adds". And you didn't come anywhere near addressing the issue I raised in my original post, you just repeated the childish apologist line that pretty much just sums up as "if I close my eyes really hard, all racism will go away!"
There is a difference between being insensitive and racism. There is a difference between flatout defaming a racial or ethnic group and doing something that irritates people. People are going to bring their own interpretation when viewing things. How much of the uproar is from creator and how much is from the viewer? Where do you draw the line?
i could not think of anything clever.