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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.
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?