Sony PSP White is Coming
OK. This is bound to get you racial bloods running but its doesnt bother me one bit. It would have been better if the other person on the left was a handsome male model dressed in black. Then Sony won’t get blasted…
The latest in a long line of questionable marketing decisions by Sony, this ad — gracing the streets of Amsterdam and the Dutch PSP site — promotes the upcoming white PSP with the racially charged image of a white woman grabbing a black woman’s face. Other images on the website (embedded after the break) offer additional avenues of interpretation.
Sony PSP White is Coming source
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POSTED IN: Announcements, Gaming
3 opinions for Sony PSP White is Coming
jean
Jul 13, 2006 at 5:50 pm
Nice post - what ever were they thinking?!?!
Blogged you at ThisNext, and would love to invite you to come join our cloesd beta - email me for the invite!
Christopher King
Jul 14, 2006 at 6:39 am
It’s a combination of things, but your black male model is one way to address it. Another might be for the black woman to be more of an equal, like spy vs. spy. That would have been cool.
Here’s my take on that, and other things:
http://christopher-king.blogspot.com/2006/07/kingcast-applauds-sony-for-pulling.html
Peace.
wim wiskerke
Jul 18, 2006 at 1:28 pm
There are/were other images as well. Like this one:
http://www.bright.nl/upload/06/07/060707-pspwhite-gr2.jpg
There seem to be about 100 images in total.
The campaign was meant for Holland, Europe. And shown only there.
The complaint came from the NAACP in San Jose, CA, US.
The campaign has not been shown there. And was not meant for the US nor the UK according to a Sony spokesperson.
The friendlier of the dutch commentary on the web is along the line: let the americans please keep their touchiness to them selves. The unfriendlier ones are uhm… well unfriendlier ;-)
So what were they thinking? The dutch are not that squeemish yet.
Having said that, most of the discussions on the dutch blogs is rather intelligent and not one sided at all.
So here are the two classic Benetton moments again: discussion AND a lot of attention.
The Toscani campaigns were of course far superior!
http://www.ciadvertising.org/studies/student/98_fall/theory/blouin/toscani/toscani.html
regards, wim
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