The Ten Worst PlayStation Ads
By Chris on Saturday, May 31st, 2008 at 7:32 PM PST In Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Gamer Life, Portable, Sony, Sony, Videos
Over the past several years, Sony has had a variety of PR problems, as any company in this business will from time to time. But their marketing campaigns at times have been so utterly horrifying that you seriously have to wonder if the people responsible for them wanted Sony to crash and burn.
So what site better than PSP Fanboy to compile a list of the various disturbing, bizarre, nonsensical and downright stupid advertisements that Sony has issued to “promote” the various PlayStation products.
The scary baby above didn’t even top the list, so that should be a good indicator of how awful things have been at times.
As for number one? I’ve got eight words for you: All I want for Christmas is a PSP.
(pee-ess-pee, pee-ess-pee… that song will never leave my head.)
It really does make me laugh that people think Sony’s PlayStation ads are bad
They are absolutely 100% about brand awareness and the fact that people are still talking about them years later is proof of how clever their marketing is.
I would have put the “Lets replace a mans penis with a thumb” ad at #1, but thats just me
@Norbit
Just because people remember the ads doesn’t mean they’re not bad. For instance, just about every gaming site around has made fun of game covers before. We still remember those game covers. Not because the creators were going for brand awareness, but because they were so amazingly bad.
I agree: The PS3 advertisements are dreadful. Don’t get me wrong: There’s nothing wrong with ads that are odd or enigmatic. But, when advertisements are simply unnerving to watch and next to impossible to interpret, well, something’s wrong. Even worse, I guess, the PS3 ads come across as being blatantly pretentious, making their appeals not to the gaming base’s dominant demographic, but to techno-elitists. All around, the ads are both interesting and awful. As to whether they’ve helped to sell PS3s, probably — but then again, the ads have probably turned off as many potential customers as they’ve turned on.
The ads are brilliant. What is the main purpose of them? To raise product awareness. Any idiot can show a picture of a console of a video of people playing a game for an ad but Sony make ads that serve to make people remember the brand. The simple fact that this article is essentially a giant PlayStation ad is proof of that. The ads are self perpetuating. You make a Wii ad showing people playing on the Wii and a week later every person who has seen it has forgotten it ever existed. You make a PlayStation ad of a guy with a thumb for a penis and people are emailing it to each other doing the advertisers work for them. You make a weird video and people are uploading it to YouTube and loads of other places. Can you imagine how much it would have cost Sony to show the ads to as many people who have now seen them if they had had to pay?
The idea that a gamer has been put off buying a PlayStation because of the ads is ridiculous. I can understand an imbecile being put off by an advert but a ‘gamer’? You are suggesting that some people see adverts as more important than the games? You can certainly say Sony make bad adverts from a purely artistic viewpoint because that is down to your personal tastes but in terms of advertising they are brilliant.
ps3 wins end of.
What about that anooying little bastard that followed people around commenting them on their PSP? He annoyed the sh*t outta me but he got the word across:
If you buy a PSP people will annoy the sh*t outta you.
All I’m gonna say is this: I remember the Head-On commercials, and there’s no way in hell I will ever buy that stuff.
Sony’s advertisements haven’t helped them much this generation now have they? What good is it to advertise if it doesn’t help you sell your product??? That’s one of Sony’s problems, they are so damn arrogant they feel that they are such a household name that they don’t need to advertise.
And Norbit before you open your mouth I happen to know this for a fact that Sony feels this way……my father-in-law retired as a salesman from Sony three years ago and he told me Sony doesn’t feel the need to advertise because they feel their brand is so well known that they don’t need to…..maybe that is why they are losing this generation….because they are a bunch of arrogant pricks.
It’s actually fitting that you support Sony as much as you do Norbit….your thinking is the same in many regards…
Go Marlins!!!!