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PlayStation Marketer Explains PS3 TV Ads
Newsweek's N'Gai Croal writes "In a two-part Q&A, Playstation marketing chief Peter Dille discusses the PS3 ad campaign, Microsoft's blogger superiority, why Ludacris is his kind of celebrity and more." From the article: "Emotion is a big part of the category. You've seen the baby spot, which kicked off the TV effort. The whole thought behind that was, look at the wide variety of emotions the PlayStation 3 can elicit. The other theme we're setting up is that the power of the PlayStation 3 is so awesome that anything placed in close proximity is witness to this awesome power. So this baby doll is whipsawed through a gut-wrenching range of emotions, from laughing and crying to reverse crying. That's going to set up a series of spots where you'll see the power of the PlayStation 3 in this white room environment." N'Gai also has a great piece up looking at why screenshots are no longer effective marketing for next-gen games.
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
The baby was supposed to elicit emotions? as in more then fear or horror? Actually at first i thought that the commercial was for a new survival horror game.
here's a summary of his answer: "we're an asian company...what, you've never seen anime?"
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
These commercials are all pretty creepy. Definitely not something makes me want to buy it.
On the other hand, I had in the past dismissed several times Red Steel as being probably a dumb game. However, the recent commercials for it with the funny "master" with the white beard making all the wise cracks actually made me reconsider. I'm going to buy that one now, along with Zelda, whenever I get around to picking up a Wii.
Morphing Software
Chiat Day does the ads for both Apple and PlayStation. Why have the Apple ads been far more memorable?
Because I wasn't there?
What a glowing self-endorsement of his skills...
This guy's the limit!
Marketing is like a joke. If you have to explain it to your audience, it's failed.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
I want to see what games are available at launch for a console. I don't want to see what some marketer thinks the effect of a PS3 should be on people. I don't buy a new console for the overwhelming effect it has on me (pffffffft) but for the GAMES. And, strangely enough I am quite impressed with some of the games they have lined up. Why would they think that an ad for say, White Knight wouldn't be more effective than a silly ad cooked up by some markedroid?
If Sony thinks the console is going to sell itself, they have a problem. The games are what matter. What is odd in this case is that many of the games are good, so I don't know why Sony doesn't just go with the games.
These PS3 commercials are pretty lame but not as bad as those annoying PSP commercials. How hard is it to create a decent commercial for the most powerful game console ever? I'd be most impressed if they took real-time, non FMV, footage actually cranked out from the PS3 so we can really see how good it'll look. They say it's the best so I say for them to prove it in their ads. Make me drool and ache with need.
Overly stylized commercials are just stupid. At most I'd do something like for the Matrix where you never say exactly what the product is but you give little teasers that really hook people and make them want to see more.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Short answer: Because it's made by advertising people, not gamers.
Long answer: How many people in the Ad business do you know that are also hardcore gamers? Not many. In general, advertising people are artists - right brained folks, while gamers tend to be more technical and logical left brainers. Especially at places like slashdot. This guy is talking about trying to appeal to emotions in the advertisements, but he's doing it in a way that is fairly abstract. Logical people either don't get it or don't like it. Average Joe Sixpack tends to be neither artistic nor logical. He just wants to laugh, and the ps3 ads are nowhere close to the humor of the average superbowl beer commercial.
So, unless Sony is trying to reach out to the artistic - creative people and convince them to buy a PS3, the current advertising is not going to be that effective. After all, how many artists are going to be emotionally moved by the crying baby AND have enough spare cash sitting around to afford a PS3?
"Chucky want Playstation 3. We'll be best friends till the end!"
except you're having it.
These ads are all subjective to where they simply evoke emotions that you want to feel. Automakers, and pharmaceuticals create commercials like these and those sell the car. People want to feel good, etc. So, selling the PS3 as something that will make your jaw drop and feel ephereal need not go any further, according to the commercial. Some people will feel this way when they buy it and play the games, and some people won't. Simple as that.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
a dancing baby, that would attract more people
This Sony PR flak says:
All of our research shows that price is a barrier. They might say it's not the ultimate barrier, because they've been charging people, but our research suggests that it is a barrier.
And they price the device itself into the stratosphere?
Holy double talk batman!
So... you wanted to illustrate that 'anything placed in close proximity is witness to this awesome power' by placing a baby who would probably be endlessly entertained with a game of peek-a-boo next to the unit. Then you illustrated the AWESOME computing power of the PS3 by having it solve a Rubick's cube in 20 seconds. Maybe next you can illustrate how wonderful the HD resolution is by having people run out to by 90" TV's so they can finally compare it to the 360.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
"We're targetting 12-15 year olds by animating a completely stripped baby doll's face."
"We couldn't use the already produced, much better commercials used in other regions because of our huge fucking egos."
If you have to explain your ads, then they didn't work.
It's a good thing they explained that baby commercial...I was REALLY begining to wonder about their target demographic :O
Not that i understand why crying is related to gaming. Exactly what game makes one cry ?!? I was kinda hoping for FUN from a PS3 personally but to each his own. The only thing i can relate to is when EA shutdown the MCO servers... So sony will get me wrapped up in a game and then take it all away? Umm, that isn't gonna get me to pluck down $600 anytime soon.
WTF is reverse crying? I don't work for an ad agency.
Still creepy no matter what some drugged out ad exec thinks.
It's browbeating you with broad strokes of concepts and emotions.
* It will make you feel emotions, refresh the genre (baby)
* It will be very powerful (hovering self-solving rubix cube)
etc.
They place the stuff in a stock gray room which forces you to interpret and accept these concepts. Then the use the weird sound effects and music and make the monolith, i mean system hover: THE PS3 IS GOING TO BE VERY GOOD HEY THIS LOOKS KINDA LIKE 2001 SPACE ODYSSEY NO?
This isn't art. This is hype and hackery. It isn't clever, or introspective. It just makes the same outlandish claims about a product only in a new shell. It's only supposed to make the viewer _feel_ like they are clever and "got it". It's like the Matrix. There isn't anything to get. Philosophy and art 101, with a masturbation option.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
So.. they didn't learn a damn thing from the PSP commercials.. and we saw what a huge hit didn't become.
Another poster was correct.. if you have to explain the commerical.. it is a falure.
is why are there TV ads in the first place? There's obviously going to be a shortage of PS3s, the last thing Sony should be doing it creating more demand until they can catch up in terms of supply.
Sure, you can argue that in theory PS3 commercials may make people who were going to buy a 360 or Wii this holiday hold off for for a PS3. Is there really any substance to that idea?
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
What I want to see is video and of actual gameplay to sell me on a game...
The reason being is screenshots have been notorious for being touched up.
Also, theres the deceitful practice of using screenies of pre-rendered cut scenes to make a game look a lot prettier in an advertisment when the actual gameplay graphics aren't nearly as good.
On top of that, a static shot doesn't show you things like the smoothness (or lack of) of the game's animation, anti-aliasing, and clipping issues.
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
Actually, no one will be buying anything, since my brother received the shipment of PS3's for his Toys R Us and they got a grand total of... three.
They got 15 pre-orders, so it should be an interesting weekend.
To be fair, apparently they are supposed to receive five more today.
Of course, what makes it all the more interesting is that apparently one dude pre-ordered four of them.
Sony's PS3 billboards aren't any better. The other day, I saw one billboard that looked like it had "///7" written on it. Nothing else. No "Sony", no "Playstation 3", not even their stupid "PLAY B3YOND" tagline. If you didn't already know about the PS3 and know when it was being released, you'd have no idea what the ad was for - and worse still - no way to find out. Sony's TV ads don't even really explain what the ad is for. Is it for the baby doll? (it does get more screentime than that black blocky thing in the corner) Is it for a new horror movie? Maybe a new Silent Hill game? What's the story we're supposed to take away from the ad? "Playstation 3 - it'll really creep the bejeezus out of you!" or maybe "Possessed naked baby dolls can levitate black blocky objects -BEWARE!" Maybe it's just as well the ads are horrible. Sony's shipping so few units to the US that they could drive people away - and still sell out.
It's a well-established, very basic business-school case study. Coke and Pepsi advertise only against each other, and only so that people think that there is really a choice, while the government pretends that there's not an oligopoly in place. It's like Republicans and Democrats. They both know that they have half of the market, they're both very happy with half of a huge market, and they'd both like to keep it that way. Coke and Pepsi don't market to get more customers. They have virtually 100% brand awareness at this point. They're doing it just to maintain the illusion of competition.
Marketing is like a joke. If you have to explain it to your audience, it's failed.
You sir, are clearly not in marketing, because you're 100% wrong. The goal of marketing is to get people to remember your product. If a marketing campaign is confusing, it may very well be successful, so long as the campaign and the product are memorable. This is Marketing 101.
I guess no one is noticing the obvious tie in to 2001, a space odyssey. Black monolith, star child, sterile white room.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Oh, right! The PS2 has an "Emotion Engine" chip! This guy is just recycling the old "Emotion" part for the PS3 via marketing.
The PS3 is just a console, get over it.
the funny thing is that this post would have been modded funny if you didn't say "Fuck Metal Gear"
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
I don't understand why Sony would need a marketing campaign at all, other than to just demonstrate it's making some kind of effort.
The media hype is sufficient to inform people there IS a new PlayStation, and it's coming SOON... what else is needed?
They can't fill demand for the product as it is, and if the 360 is any indication, stores won't have a problem of units sitting on shelves for more than 24 hours until late Spring, probably later.
A good marketing campaign for the PS3 would be something that actually stengthened the entire SONY brand, at least in North America and Europe.
And this current silly, vague, nondescript marketing campaign only exemplifies how blindly arrogant SONY has become, which is one of the major complaints customers have developed in the past year.
SONY, you any cool, you're chilly, and chilly ain't never been cool.
That ad campaign is creepy. Creepy like the end of 2001 creepy. I think they're the good kind of creepy, but I of all the people I talked to, no one else thinks that. They think the ads are the bad kind of creepy. The kind of creepy that heralds something demonic.
How is "Reverse Crying" an emotional response? Can you remember the last time you bawled backwards? Seriously, emotion was the LAST thing I took away from that spot, more like disturbed fuckedupedness.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
I'm a commercial producer myself, and even though the baby commercial (the only one I've seen aired so far) may be disturbing, it's memerable and sticks with you. Disturbing isn't neccessarilly a bad thing in advertising, because it means the spot is hard to forget. Now, I totally disagree with their reasoning behind the ad... "emotion"? Wow, he really did have to explain that for me to understand it. But for what it is, the fact that we're talking about it here is a pretty good indication of its success.
A similar example that all of my sales staff and I have been talking about is Yahoo's "Lawn Fertilizer" commerical, in which, after using a type of fertilizer bought off of Yahoo, the familly's previously dead dog jumps up from out of its garden grave, with an exclamation from a little girl, "Fluffy, you're alive!" *Shivers* that shit doesn't leave you.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
The fact that you are a commercial producer yourself means that you are not the target demographic for which these ads are a complete and utter failure.
"the fact that we're talking about it here is a pretty good indication of its success"
No, we're talking about it here because these ads have failed so badly that the people behind them are having to come out and explain why we should give a damn about a baby crying in an empty room.
When the commercials start showing amazing gameplay footage non-stop, only then Sony will have an ad campaign that actually serves the interests of its target demographic.
The PC fanboys would claim that you can already do this: instead of putting four players in a split screen on one large monitor fed by one system, put four players on four smaller monitors fed by four networked systems. However, this would not help for games like Smash Bros. or Bomberman that show most of the playfield all the time anyway.
Sephiroth kills Aerith. (Nooooooo, you bitch! You bitch!)
Bullshit. People watching TV, casually, are much less interested in seeing the product in action, then seeing unique presentations like skits, and the like... since they're most likely watching TV for entertainment in the first place. As I always tell my sales staff, content is fairly irrelivant in ads, they're about establishing identity and a unique style that separates a business from everyone else. This goes for local spots and national spots alike.
And the Sony execuative only came out and explained it AFTER it got a lot of press. Ever heard of the phrase, "there's no such thing as bad publicity?", well, that's especially true in advertising. You may not like it... hell, I fucking hate the commercial, but I'll definitely remember it... and that's basically 95% of the success of an advertisement. Now, if I was to walk away from the commercial with a strong opinion, but not knowing what the commercial was for (like a certain Pepto Bismal commercial I researched into), that would be a different matter, but this one is very forward about what it is.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
I don't know, with all the crap being, posted Zonk doesn't seem to be enjoying his Microsoft branded one....
The ad says nothing about the product, it doesn't have to. As long as you (Mr General Public) now know that the P$3 has begun the launch campaign, it has succeeded. Obviously the more targeted and 'informative' advertisements will follow suit, but for now they only need to place their products name in the markets mind.
axis discrepancy indicates hexagons beyond control anomaly
Maybe that's true for the mouth breather demographic that you advertisers primarily target, but for the rest of us, we find your 'skits' to be an uninteresting, often insulting, waste of time.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Launch ads for consoles exit just to keep the marketing buzz up. Everybody who is going to get one on the launch day knows about it already and the people who are going to pick one up over the holidays are going to be convinced by Mainstream media news pieces and reviews not adverts. As soon as the launch period finishes advertising budgets shift completely to new games and eventually Greatest Hits re-releases with major pushes happening for the killer-app games. The consoles themselves are no longer front and center.
Nintendo fans make better commercials than Sony's marketing team.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Are they advertising the product? NO! They are advertising themselves as a kickass ad agency! Look at how beautiful our ad was. Look at how many awards it won. Look at how much business it generated. Do you remember who the ad was for?
Every time I see an ad like this I think of Homer Simpson's high-brow Mr. Plow ad.
Marge: Was that your ad?
Homer: I... don't... know.