Sony's been a very naughty boy. PSP campaign embarrassment

Mike Bantick
Thursday, 14 December 2006 10:42

Your IT - Entertainment

Sprung! A deceptive PSP fan site has had its cover blown by investigative clickers.  But is the negative reaction to this discovery warranted?  Perhaps a little bit.

The PlayStation Portable is no stranger to controversy when it comes to Sony advertising techniques for the funky gadget – Remember the PSP street art saga this time last year? when Graffiti artists where hired to slogan the city with vaguely PSP related imagery.

Now comes the blog site supposedly aimed at helping “Jeremy” getting a PSP for Christmas, by touting the hand-held’s hip features.  All in language, it turns out was just a little bit on the nose to be true.

Suspicious visitors have traced the domain registration back to Sony hired marketing company Zipatoni.  From then on a number of finger pointing posts appeared on the blog.

Today, Sony have suspended the critical blog posts, and posted the following statement admitting to the faux PSP promotion.

"Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn't a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP.

Sony Computer Entertainment America"

How embarrassing!  But really is it that big of a deal? Dragging the big electronics company over the coals has been a favoured past time of late.  And even though this episode does add to the weight of evidence, indicating that Sony may be mishandling its demographic.  It is hard to be too punitive on them for giving a marketing company license to do something a little different.  Is it deception, if all that occurred was to talk up actual features of the product?

The problem in a lot of ways with this campaign, was simply how lame it was, and  how obvious that it wasn’t a true fan site.  Is it possible that all those crying foul, have been fooled into giving Sony even more publicity by discovering a secret that was supposed be be discovered?

And if that is true, then, Doh!, I have just added to the publicity – Hey Sony, where is my cheque ?   :)