A little look at advertising

The PlayStation generation. April 14, 2006

After a short missing, I will present you the continuation of my chronicle about PlayStation advertising. The previous article of this chronicle was about the changes in video games advertising through PlayStation communication. This article will now present how Sony succeeds in killing the main competitors of the market: Nintendo and Sega. One bad solution would be to attack them from the front like others have tried to do and broke their teeth. Indeed, we just have to think about Panasonic with its 3DO, and Atari with its Jaguar. This fact prevents of start from a traditional communication policy based on messages only addressed for players. How could Sony dare to claim doing better than the inventors of Sonic and Mario. The only solution was to create a new style which was more mature. Indeed, Sony takes into account that the first fans of video games, which were between ten and twelve years old at the beginning, were at this period older. These players have become teenagers or even adults. Thus, they were in a age category which was more sensible with subtle messages and universal topics like violence, sex or social status. It was time to talk about video games with less childish terms which could attract the general public. PlayStation tried to cause the pleasure. However, what is more interesting than forbidden items. And that was the subject of the first campaign of the Sony TV commercial which showed members of the C.A.P. ( Committee Against PlayStation). It was called the S.A.P.S. campaign (society against PlayStation campaign) in English countries. The spectator could see scientists handling with a great precaution the new console of Sony. They were obviously afraid by this latest one. Each spot was concluded by a slogan which is now famous: "Do not underestimate the potential of PlayStation". That intrigued the consumers who wanted to know more about this machine presented as dangerous. This message has a great success with its target audience which was the 15-24 years old who were looking for strong feelings. This campaign allows Sony to start with a great success, but the company had to keep this fashion phenomenon…This link enables you to see photos from this communication campaign:http://uk.PlayStation.com/pdcf/index.jhtml?locale=en_GB&jumpTo=ps2/news_record/storyid:107091_en_GB_FEAT