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Sony Behind Fake YouTube Viral Campaign
Wowzer writes "Sony is up to the same old tricks again. Following in the footsteps of their fake PSP Graffiti campaign, Sony has hired marketing company Zipatoni to set up a YouTube-based viral marketing scheme for the Sony PSP. The company did this by registering the domain alliwantforxmasisapsp. There are no disclaimers to show it isn't 'real', but the website's whois points out it's setup by Zipatoni." From the C&VG article: "The lies don't end there, fake comments have been posted at Kotaku only linking to the Youtube video to increase its pageviews: 'Good call on DJ max. Regarding music: if changes were to be made for westerners, this guy should be considered - LOLZ'" Update: 12/13 02:37 GMT by Z : The Washington Post has an article stating that the FTC will look into situations like this, if they perchance to come up.
... it is not lying... it is, and has been for many years called marketing.
the beer commercial shows you that when you open up one of their beers you get 20 naked women to show up at your party, but the "other" beer brings balding middle aged men.
This is no different from any other commercial on any other form of media.
Hell, Some drug ads never say what they do (so they don't have to give side effects) similar to Sony not saying this is an ad.
Is it my imagination or is Sony's strategy for their playstation line to attempt to make their product 'cool' rather than to make it a good product for gamers. Over the life of the PSP it has been outsold by both the GBA and Nintendo DS and has failed to make a larger impact largely because it is not a particularly good portable videogame machine. Had Sony put the effort into it the PSP would have a larger library of good games, and in particular a library of unique 'portable gaming' content for the PSP, which would make the system sell far better.
As consumers we feel we have a right to know where our advertisements are coming from. When we don't know who's advertising what, we get annoyed. Some of us even associate it with evil like SPAM marketers.
Essentially what it comes down to is Sony trying to present third party opinions of their products but not only are these opinions biased and untrue--they may be monetarily compensated for saying these things. They essentially lose 'street cred' among gamers. They aren't doing anything illegal, they're just using tricky marketing tactics that make the news. Some people hate it, some people might gobble it right up. Either way, I just spent two minutes talking about it to you.
My work here is dung.
This here's a must-read if you haven't read it yet... Bill Hicks's rant on marketing.
http://sennoma.net/main/edits/Hicks.html
This is how it starts... "By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself."
It only gets better.
Some poor lawyer had to pretend to be a subliterate 14-year-old while adding a disclaimer to that mess!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Marketroids are duplicitous, unscuplulous, charlatans
Not to mention you're fucked without the ice beam.
I know I'll get tagged flamebait, troll and whatnot, but this is pretty much the way Apple's products are being marketed. The items are made "trendy", they are sold via the way of being "hip" and "cool", and that everyone wants one because they're hip and cool. How many ads do you know that talk about the features and unique things the iPod can do? How many of the accessoires that you can buy for it do really have additional value to it?
/.er, I've had my share of problems and (needless) lawsuits with them. But what they do here is exactly what marketing is about today. Creating a hype. Making the product cool and thus making people want it. Not because it is technically superior or offers more utility than the competition, but simply because "so many say it's cool, so it's gotta be cool".
Aside from the ITMS, which a good deal of iPod users never touched, what's the advantage over other MP3 players on the market? I mean, technically, not from being "cool".
Now, I hate Sony maybe even MORE than the average
If you have an iPod, ask yourself why. Because you compared it and you actually found it REALLY superior to the other products in that market sector, or because someone told you it's cool and that you should have it? You needn't answer. Just ask yourself and try to be honest with yourself.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Just because someone is bad at lying to you doesn't mean you should excuse their attempts to lie.
The big difference of course though is that Apple and Nintendo currently don't NEED to do this. They didn't need to create fake blogs to get people to talk about current or upcoming products, because there are plenty of real ones that do this for them. Sony of course doesn't always need to do this either........ if you have a successful or in-demand product like the PS3, you don't need to create a website like alliwantforxmasisaps3.com.
Outside of that though, historically speaking, Apple and Nintendo haven't really had to do this, or even when you could say they had to do, it isn't the kind of thing they normally would do. I mean, remember, the Mac has minuscule marketshare, all things being equal. Nintendo's GameCube came in third place. But Apple and Nintendo haven't used that as an excuse to create some goofy fake site to try and add hipness or something to their product lines.
And really, Sony doesn't have to do that either. The other tact to take with the PSP is to keep releasing high quality titles like MGS: Portable Ops, and get REAL buzz going again for the platform from real people.
This to me just demonstrates the quality of the advertising and marketing industry. They produce this sort of garbage more for their own reputation and portfolio than they do for the good of the client.
They want to demonstrate that they're capable of doing extreme, creative work but the end result is lame and far from being creative. It's like they produce the first crappy idea someone comes up with. And it seems they're obsessed with Adult Swim and Youtube.
I'm curious is Sony openly embraced these campaigns or if they were forced into it by the marketing company. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the latter. From personal experience, I've found the people at many of these advertising companies to be very arrogant. I also get the distinct impression from their surveys that they seem to have a habit of fabricating market research which somehow always demonstrates that their way of doing things is the most effective.
I realize everyone seems to enjoy bashing Sony and I can't say I disagree with much of what is said. That said, I can't say this is unique to Sony. I'd say most consumer goods companies use this sort of advertising. To single out Sony for this over anyone else is a bit foolish to me. What I do hate is this sort of advertising, to me it's an insult to my intelligence. But then, I hate advertising in general.
i think you have your terms confused.
when a prominent media figure uses lawyers and journalists to avoid telling the truth, that's called spin .
when a government official enlists the help of others to not tell the truth, that's called a national security .
when a huge multi-national corporation doesn't tell the truth, that's called marketing .
when a regular person, doesn't tell the truth and has no money, politcal affiliation or legal representation that's lying .
lying is bad. spinning, marketing, and national security are what keeps us safe at night.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
This sentence of my creation highlights something everyone who's ever used IRC, read Barrens chat, or hacked the e-mail of a 14 year old knows. People who use ur and luv and similar shortcuts and mispellings will not be using proper punctuation, spelling and grammar. It doesn't happen.
Yet, here is what we have from the website. I will be pointlessly dissecting it.
People do not use colons on the internet. That key is the jaded and lost son of the realm of QWERTY. People also make assumptions, assumptions such as their identity being well known. They won't be specifying that they are "charlie", you should already know that. If you don't, you're a noob. Jeremy fails to be derided for not having a PSP. Lastly, no one speaking like this would specify "this year", or type "one" out. Number keys are there 4 a reason.
No one on the internet can spell subtle, let alone know where to use hyphens. A common thing to notice is the use of larger words here were smaller ones would have sufficed. "started" could be "were" or "did". "created" is two syllabels longer than "made". The last sentence would more improperly be "we maed this site 2 giv luv 4 u who want a psp liek j!"
Again with the long words. Very few words over 2 syllabels are in the common lexicon on the internet. "consider", "personal", "holiday", "whoever", all unknown to the internet mind. Again with the hyphens as well. There are no "girl"s on the internet, only "gf"s, and when was the last time we saw "granny"? What kid this supposed age would have a "boss"?
Anyone who uses ur is not going to type out "you". "you" is four characters too many as it is. Also, the kind of comraderie shown in this last sentiment is completely foreign. This is the internet, not a high tea. There are no favors, there are only noobs and 1337 h4x.
if ur goin 2 b 1337 u hav 2 b cool like m3 lol
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
"Ah, but you forget, it is now "cool" to hate Sony and talk about how much you hate them at every chance you get."
It wouldn't be cool to hate them if their products were more worthwhile.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Sadly, you are right. And I did forget. I wonder what the half-life for that phenomenon is. (Probably the length of time between the rootkit and the first breakout hit for the PS3. Or Spiderman 3, whichever comes first.)
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
After looking at the site I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Do middle school kids really talk and act like that today or is this just some marketing dweebs wet dream. No other middle school generation could've ever been this dorky as what I saw on Sony's web site.
The "Snakes on a Plane" buzz/meme was started by an actual blog that was making fun of the name. It was unexpected by the producers, who actually wanted to change the name. It was basically Sam Jackson's hilarious remarks and a bunch of actual internet nerds who created the viral campaign - not the company. They did later take advantage of this, but through more traditional means, like Jackson't interview on The Daily Show.
... and then they built the supercollider.