Ad critic: Sony's racially charged PSP ad [update 1]

I think this contains no racism at all. I just see two girls in a fighting stance promoting a Japanese product. I think this ad is as cross-cultural as it gets. Over here in Holland there is no controversy about it whatsoever and i dont think there will be, because in my opinion racism (as opposed as I am to it) can be everywhere if you choose to see it.

The images alone, to me, do not convey any overt messages of racist intent. Being somewhat familiar with the world of fashion photography, I don't find it difficult to understand these photos as iconic, exaggerated set-ups. But I must admit to find the ad in its entirety—coupled with the copy, "White is Coming," a little unsettling.

I don't think this is blatant racism. I do, however, think it's a poor ad from a marketing point of view. I am unsure of the PSP's projected image in Holland, but it seems like Sony is all over the place with their advertising. There's never a consistent message.

And getting back to what's important: white or black, where are the games?

Aussiedude:

Wrong. You're not thinking of "race", you're thinking of "nationality". Australian is not a race. It's a nationality. Yes, that's a fact. So, I guess i can "get stuffed".

I don't know what most of you are whining about. I like the ad. I think it's stylish and cutting edge. Maybe you people should quit being so easily offended.

im dutch. i lived in the usa 6 years. its important to remember dutch people dont have the concept of slavery as in the usa. when americans view this add 'a white person grabbing a black person' they *might* have associations like 'white person - master, black person - slave' making this add incredibly UN-PC. For dutch people who see this add, these associations dont come at all, or maybe after long consideration. So for dutch people this is just what it seems - a white person grabbing a black person. The thing that comes to mind is "whats going on in that picture, let me take a closer look". which i guess is the intention of the sony add.

And yet the ad is doing exactly what Sony wants, Generating discusssion about a product that they are trying to launch. I'll bet it made all kinds of headlines in the news,and got free publicity. I do think that the ad is probably racist,(it would never fly in the US)but is getting poeple talking and in 6 months will anyone even remember it?

"why would Sony -- and their "disruptive" advertising partners at TBWA -- think this ad appropriate?"

Sony doesn't care who they hurt, as long as they get money from people.

I'm half offended cuz I'm half black, half white. But still this should've had some serious thought. (now any thought I had about getting a PSP is dead, forever)

From an American point of view, the ad is in VERY poor taste. Any marketing company worth their salt should know that skin color is not an issue that you want to play with, especially on a huge billboard.

If anyone look at the other images of the campaign sees that the campaign is not racist. There are images of the black women dominaiting the white and others that they are in equality.
Joystiq chose as american and Nintendo lovers choses to call racism here. Its juts adds, and well done indeed..

#127

Aussiedude, that is just about the silliest outbreak of political correctness I've encountered in quite a long time.

Anecestry and its indication of geographical origin is at the heart of racially driven friction. Or to putter it another way, do you think anyone ever called the African born and raised Charlize Theron any racial epithet associated with persons having dark skin and African born ancestors within the last five or so centuries? You can be technically correct conversationally referring to the pale and blonde Ms. Theron as African-American, and her claim on that hyphenate is more genuine than the majority who are thus identified in the US, but it's going to generate giggles every time.

The only reason you can know pale skinned Aboriginals is that where once a person would seek to pass as white if they could due to official and non-official policies, in recents years it's become fashionable to make the claim. Which is as blatant aform of rascism as any other when people seek to latch on to a once shunned group because it now serves to make them cooler by association.

The legacy continues and race is part of your culture as much as ever. And you've just the one culture. The other are resident aliens who refuse to assimilate. It doesn't matter what religion they practive or other chosen weirdness, those aren't what places Australian in common, nor in any other nation. You have more of a shared culture here on this site than you do with many of your neighbors.

Well personally I see nothing wrong with this advert. If equality is a thing to be accepted now-a-days, there's nothing suggested about this adertisement.

It's simply two colours fighting it out, black versus white.

However it can be interpreted incorrectly, but then so can many things. Like video games causing violence, it's all down to personal opinion, in the end there will be idiots.

Am I the only person who thought they were about to have sex???

Why do people worry about color of skin so much? It's ridiculous. When I look at a PSP I don't think of a person of African American descent. And when I see a Nintendo DS Lite I don't think of a caucasian person. Unbelieveable! I hate when people use the racial card. Sony is smart as they know this ad will get people talking about the new white PSP.

I am a firm believer that something is only racist when people say it is racist. I think the title of this article is spot on. The ad is "racially charged" which means it is very likely to be interpreted as racism. Sony must have known that this would upset a lot of people.

Putting the racism angle aside, it's still an idiotic ad campaign.

I'm not saying that Sony is copying Nintendo, but they have the absolute worst timing ever. The motion controller being announced after the Wii-mote and now this being announced soon after the release of the DS Lite. It makes Sony look pretty pathetic in my eyes.

It’s a part of a bigger picture. Since black PSP is still on sale, we should expect the next installment in this campaign: Wesley Pipes slapping the white biatch (like he did in Passenger 57), saying «Always bet on black!»

Racism is still alive and well in US of A. Especially when we can still read about church burnings in the south as recent as this year. What a lot of you don't understand is throughout the history of the US there has been a constant situation of white dominating black. Many black people would never accept that willingly. That's what the KKK and other similar groups are for. Control through fear and hatred. To "remind" these black people that they have no power and if they step out of line, they'll be hanging from a tree faster than they can say damn. This didn't stop a hundred years ago, this was within our generation. Do any of you know who James Byrd Jr. is? Look it up and see how he was murdered and this happened in 1998.

I live in Philly and I still hear stories about how police were using dogs on black children, fire hoses were used on black men, women and children, how some black men are wrongly accused and arrested with the mentality of "you're guilty of something." The beatings, the assaults, the murders, the excuses, the cover-ups the denials...all within a generation, no 100 years ago, try 20 years ago, 10 years ago.

The point is many black people will never forget this and certainly not forgive it. Personally, I'll never forget or forgive because racial bull@#$ still happens today. One aspect that I haven't seen anyone mention is the fact that it's two women in the ad. Ask any number of black women how they feel about perceptions of white women being better than black you'll open up a serious can of worms. I asked a few people what they thought of the ad and one woman said " that's f'ed up, let some white woman step to me like she's better because I'm darker than her and I'll beat her ass like I was the hand of God."

The point is the ad is terrible. People that constantly cry about "getting over it" need to fall back because they have no clue as to how serious an issue race still is.

To me it looks as thought they're about to get nasty with each other, in the good way ;)
Hmmm, I wonder if they made a tv ad with them?

I'm a man, and I like this commercial. Two sexy models fighting in a sexy way.... mhhmmm. Now people will say that I'm sexist, but no, I just really like and respect women.

sony aren't stupid enough to put out a purposefully racist advert. i don't like sony, but what is racist about showing a white woman and a black woman fighting? it isn't saying the white is better than black, or vice versa.

obviously it has offended people, and hopefully sony will do the right thing and pull the advert as a result, but if you think it was on purpose then you're mistaken.

the black people and white people are not black and white as we all know, in this adverts their colours are accentuated to show the colour of a new portable. should i be offended as a white person for the white person to be shown a ghostly white colour?

i'd go so far as to say it's insensitive, but i don't think there's any intent here, just carelessness and ignorance.

sony want to sell to black people too you know.

( shakes head ). I guess to put my 2 cents into the debate I don't think the ad is "racist" per se. But in very poor taste, if you are trying to appeal to the general public I think racialy charged imagery isn't the best of choices. I do enjoy an awesome racial debate on the internet though, always brings out the best in people.

"Most places do not have the history and racial tension we do, particularily between black and white."

Uh, don't African soccer players have racial slurs shouted at them on the pitch at European soccer matches? Why don't you ask a gypsy about whether there's racial/ethnic tension in Europe? Or the rioting African immigrants in France last year. Or the Pakistanis living in England. Or a Turkish immigrant living in Germany. Or...

Thank you. Racism is alive... and not just in the United States.

That "black man" looks more like a woman to me...

Either way, kinda tasteless, but it will get people talking, which is the point of advertisements...

Michael Jackson (young) vs. Christina Aguilera

"I'm not saying that Sony is copying Nintendo, but they have the absolute worst timing ever. The motion controller being announced after the Wii-mote and now this being announced soon after the release of the DS Lite. It makes Sony look pretty pathetic in my eyes."

Tom, perhaps you're not quite aware of what goes on outside your country, namely Japan where all of these mystifying little consoles come from, but the White PSP has been selling there since september, and the Lite only showed up in march. If anything the slick black/white thing can be chalked up to Nintendo imitating Sony.

Ask yourselves, would the Lite *really* exist if the PSP wasn't there to look pretty, if nothing else. I bought a Lite the other day (black one, am in UK ^^!), and the plastic looks and feels exactly the same (which means they're both bitches for thumbprints), but they match, which is pretty sexy. =P Honestly, in terms of general use to the masses the DS is obviously the winner, but with homebrew, better PSP titles and the DS recently getting a makeover I'm struggling over which one I prefer.

Oh, yeah, the ad thing.
I definitely think Joystiq's and many posters reactions are overly politically correct, I mean I didn't see anything wrong with the ad until I read the article, didn't change my mind much.
Now those who say that it may not be outrightly racist, but think of it from the point of view of race abuse victims particularly in the south, and you'll see where it's insensitive. This ad is run in Holland, right? There you can guarantee the reaction won't be such as this, and the only ways the US are really seeing this ad is by internet coverage from places like Joystiq.

I could go on, but posters like epobirs are making excellent points, I'll just say that I also showed my friends in shock. Not at the adverts, but at the ludicrous response, primarily from white Americans (from them stating as such).

My only problem is that the girls could have been a bit hotter...

Sorry I have to jump in and make a few stupid comments.

1) This ad is offensive because people STILL keep saying that it's a black man and a white woman.... It's two chicks. Now knock it off.

2) I can think of a way that Sony could get a two-fer and offend more people! Let's have a black woman on a white man having sex. Or a black man on a white woman having sex. And have the caption under it. "Black was good, now white is coming."

Seriously now.
Anyone who doesn't think this racial is an idiot. Cause it's blatantly obvious what they were trying to do. For crying out loud they're wearing white and black clothes. They could have plain as day dressed up people of ANY nationality in white and black clothes and done the same thing. But oh well they didn't.

Am I offended by the ad as a black man? No. It's an effective ad, gets the point across. It just offends some people(and not cause of my comment earlier.)

In response to SiN?

Don't you realize that that is stirring up just as much controversy amongst female gamers as the racist issue?

I'm concerned about the number of people who think this isn't racist, or at least displaying racial tension.

The new white PSP is coming out, and Sony is no doubt hoping that it will prove a popular alternative to the black PSP. So what they've done in the adverts is to take these two colours, replace them with people of those colours (taboo in itself, yes, even in all of Europe) and create a conflict.

It's not that "OMG white person is gonna beat up black person! Racist!!", but it's that hundreds of years of racial tension have been reduced to an advert for Sony's new PSP. No country in the world is ready for an advert like that.

I see that many people are sick of being "force fed" racism. Maybe you should live in a major city. After Sony's despicable graffiti campaign targeting poor, predominantly black neighborhoods, this sort of thing is definitely inappropriate. This is "edgy?" Is it addressing some sort of tough issue? No. It is trivializing race relations by associating their products with racial tension. It is not funny, and in light of Sony's previously insensitive and criminal behavior, it should not be tolerated.

MrTroy, think an Asian dude dress in white and an Indian dude dressed in black would have been nearly as effective?

Well even if it was as visually effective, they'd have to have some foreign people in it, because a couple of white people trying to promote the white PSP would be disastrous.

Besides. the people most offended by this ad for whatever stupid reasons aren't even the ad's target audience, this isn't gonna be on billboards in South America. Wake up.

Oh no, a black person and a white person pictured together. Everyone run to their little politically correct holes, and cower in fear of offending someone. On a day of national pride, this just illustrates a glaring problem with our country. We are losing our independance, because everyone thinks we have the right not to be offended. Maybe we should outlaw pictures so this travesty never happens again. ...ridiculous

"It's not that "OMG white person is gonna beat up black person! Racist!!", but it's that hundreds of years of racial tension have been reduced to an advert for Sony's new PSP. No country in the world is ready for an advert like that."

Sorry for the frequency of posts, but I needed to get this straight. So it's not about the white person being aggressive towards the black person and vice versa, it's about the fact they noticed that white people and black people are indeed, (shock horror) the colours white and black respectively and used them as symbols in their advert for their consoles competing against one another?

Is that right?

Woah woah nr. 75 (Enigma) Holland was NOT the country responsible for the cartoons of the profit Mohammed.. That was Denmark, yes Europe is not a country, and we're not all the same. Hard to Believe eh?
Careful what you say before you piss off a whole bunch of Dutchmen ;)
But it would have been interesting to see the general public reaction if the white PSP came out before the black one. Or if a pink one comes along and a gay guy grabs the white womans face! :-D

Trying to keep myslef from passing judgement too quickly on this I put into perspective this way:

If this were to be advertised in the U.S. where would it more easily be accepted? In NY city or northern cities with diverse ethnic groups? Or in Booneville Mississippi where you can still see posters hailing that "the south shall rise again!"

Sadly, this ad placed in the wrong place could start a riot!

^^ @ above 170 and counting comments

The ad obviously worked. People underestimate the abilities of professional marketing teams for massive corporations. The marketing team at work here didn't mean malice by the ads, but they did want them to be contraversial and hotly debated. They knew what they wanted and how to get it. This is exactly what they wanted to do, offend about half the people here. Mission Accomplished. I mean, it isn't like this is their only controversial ad recently. I mean, it is their freakin strategy right now.

Notice how it is just offensive enough to spark hot debates in gaming forums(longest Joystiq thread I've seen in a while), but not long enough to really get the national media to drag their name through the dirt.

Well played Sony, well played.

Had this ad not been a blatant attempt to evoke feeling of racial tension I might have been able to over look it.

Where the white model has the black model by the face their expressions are that of dominance and fear respectively. In the photo with the black model on top she's smoking a cigarette. An image of a thug or bad ass. It's meant to evoke these emotions. As art I think the photos are beautiful and interesting. As a corporate marketing campaign I think they a dangerous and inflammatory.

Alright, honestly, this ad is racist. Sure it's symbolic and all that...but they should have advertised it differently. It wasn't too smart to sell it like this. You can see it as offensive, discriminative, & racist whether you're black or white (but black people will probably feel it the most because of the "white is coming" slogan part).

However, I don't think it was intentional. Sony's sales are doing bad enough already...why would they purposely offend half their customers? I think they should have just asked themselves "Hm, will this ad be offensive in any way?" before releasing it. There are plenty of other ways to tell people the white PSP is coming out, it's their fault they never considered any of them.


I never liked Sony from the beginning.

(and why do my lines always mess up when I submit these comments!?...nm, don't answer that.)

I'm a Nintendo fanboy, through and through. However, I think that this is a brilliant advertisement. Anything that uses people's ethnicity is automatically racist these days. I see no racism in these ads. There are ads which contain the black guys in a negative connotation toward the white woman, and vise versa. It's simply to show that white is as "cool" as black.

People will always be touchy when it's in regards to race. It's pathetic though. It's only colour.

*****

EVERYONE, PLEASE REFER TO THIS COMMENT, MADE BY A DUTCH CITIZEN OF THE JOYSTIQ COMMUNITY (and remember that this ad is in Amsterdam, so the Dutch opinion of it is what matters here).

Posted by niels (#149):

"im dutch. i lived in the usa 6 years. its important to remember dutch people dont have the concept of slavery as in the usa. when americans view this add 'a white person grabbing a black person' they *might* have associations like 'white person - master, black person - slave' making this add incredibly UN-PC. For dutch people who see this add, these associations dont come at all, or maybe after long consideration. So for dutch people this is just what it seems - a white person grabbing a black person. The thing that comes to mind is "whats going on in that picture, let me take a closer look". which i guess is the intention of the sony add."

*****

wow! just wow!

First of all, all of the posters that are called the black person a man are obviously showing that they haven't fully looked at the ad campaign. The black woman is clearly looking feminine in her skirt and heels in the third ad. Given the number of people that have made that mistake, I am suspect of how many people really put any thought into the subject before they just decided that the ad was racist.

I am black. GASP! A shocker I know... and I am unfortunately familiar with race. I contend with racism on a nearly daily basis. I don't feel that the ad is racist. Edgy? Great? Probably not. I personally don't feel like it's racist.

If I only saw the ad that has everyone in arms, I would be more inclined to believe that the ad was racist. However, if everyone would stop looking at things in a vacuum you would notice that there are three ads. One set has the women on even footing, one has the black woman in the dominant role, and of course there's the one that everyone is complaining about.

If the ad had the white woman battling a set of ninjas dressed in all black, would people have the same mindset? Perhaps if the woman was fighting a group of guys wearing stereotypical "urban clothing". Would that ad also be considered racist? See, these are the things that as a black gamer I come into contact with quite often. What do I do? Turn the game off? Ignore the overtones? You pick and choose your battles, otherwise EVERYTHING will come to upset you. It's up to the individual to determine what you pull out of a game.

Personally, I am more offended by the surge of "urban" video games and the stereotypes they perpetuate than I am of this ad. At least they dressed the black woman in something reasonably fashionable for a change. It's two runway models wearing clothes fit for the runway.

Honestly, most of the comments here seem reasonable and don't care as much about the racial undercurrents. That's good. I was starting to lose my faith in gamers after there was an initial backlash when it was announced that the main character in the last grand theft auto title would be black. "I'm not black, so a black lead character will diminish my immersion". I still get migraines over all the racist talk behind that one.

It is not racist. Just a bad concept that's all. I agree their ads campaign lately have sucked. Anyhow, to those that want to tap to some deeper meaning there is not. The black chick is one product(PSP) and the white is the other. Some people are just dumb.

I personally find this add sexist. How dare they show a woman abusing a man! Sony must hate men!...or Black people, you can choose your own totally irrational knee-jerk reaction to this.

You Americans seem to be offended by almost everything. You're so into the "politically correct" mindset that everything is just a little over your "safe standard" (which is "yours" and not a global standard!) and bang, it's a scandal! :)

As an Italian reader of American blogs, I find it very funny that there're gamers offended by these images. In Italy this image would probably pass without any problem because we usually have a different sensitivity on racism. This is just an ad, a quite nice one, with a good idea behind it. And it's used in the UK, not in the USA so why complain about it?

Now Sony Europe has to think also what gamers from USA, Canada, Mexico, South Africa, Japan and Australia will think of their ads? I don't think so and I don't hope so. For example, here there're some tv ads with half naked girls, i.e. with their breast exposed, (usually for bubble bath or something like that) and no one EVER complain. Would it be the same in the USA?

Different markets, different ads. IMO it's stupid to complain about the one that are targeted to other countries where there's a different culture.

Yeah right... so the black iPod and MacBooks must be racist too ¿right? I mean, you have to pay more to get a black one...
Come on...

Isn't it just a catfight between two women who happen to be of different races? That's not racist, thats hot.

Seriously though,I don't really see what is so horrible about it. I haven't seen the entire thing, just images. It just looks like a catfight to me, and they aren't even saying "WHITE IS SUPERIOR", as the white chick seems to be losing in one of the images. If it was reversed, and black was the new color, I am almost certain there would be very little controversey.

If it were the other way around it would be ok. We make it racism. The fact that we all care if it is "black" or "white" is the issue. Let's face some facts, we are all different - colors, genders, races, creeds, religions, sexuality. If your black YOUR BLACK, if your YOUR WHITE...who gives a crap. Let history die already.

To say this ad is effective because a bunch of gamers on a video game blog are posting about it is just stupid. We'll talk about just about any god damn thing that's even remotely related to games, so no. Why not use chess pieces for the add instead? Like, the color juxtoposition is already there, there aren't any negative associations with white and black chess pieces. A black chess piece lying down with a white one standing would be so much simpler, and have absolutely no controvesial undertones.

Racism exists not only because it is taught, but also because it is ignored by the only recently enlightened, as is illustrated by all the posters who stated that they didn't see the ad as racially insensitive. It was sony's intention with the ad to draw those lines, and if you didn't see them, you didn't see the ad. If sony hadn't put out the beaner dust ball ads, as well as the black squirrels ad, this could be seen simply as an aberration, but sony just keeps going "there." I feel that this ad could have been so much hotter, had the white psp's hair not have looked like a nasty greasy mullet. Not all white people have mullets!

The 3 pictures - only when seen together - do not really favor either race; they come off as neutral, white dominant, and black dominant. Though the background is black and makes the black character less noticeable, this can be argued as showing that the black (PSP) has been the existing color and the white is the newcomer. Sony's thoughtlessness is the metaphor itself: equating color of consoles to color of race; this would not be a bad in a racism-free world and would just be a humorous metaphor. What happens if they make red, or yellow? Will racial stereotypes also be employed there?
What would have been better would be characters spray-painted top to bottom in black and then white and perhaps with masks on their faces or something similar; more symbolic, less literal. The characters' races would not be visible at all, indeed unknown - both could be white, black, etc.

We're missing the point. How does that ad "work"?

In order to work, Ads like this depend on a specific historical understanding of race. In this regard, race comprises "opposites" --and always black v. white, regardless of country, because the history of black v. white resonates everywhere, doesn't it? Without this history, and without a cultural understanding of this history, the ad wouldn't make sense. The ad relies on a cultural, historical meaning of race to mean what it means. In other words, it relies on a history of racism (in which the mark of skin color could determine whether you were on "top" so to speak) to convey meaning.

If we care at all about being accountable to history, then we are offended by a contemporary company using our (and I mean the global "our" here) violent history and turning it--to sell it back to us as advertisement even as it uses that history to sell us a product.

Wow, people have got a lot of opinions on this set of adverts. I think it's clever, striking and it obviously makes people both talk about it and think more deeply about it than if it was just a picture of the console. It also appeals to gamers and non-gamers alike. If you think it's racist, well, that's your opinion. Each of them seem to represent confrontation and has an undertone of sexuality and each different ad has one of them taking the upper hand. I don't see anything wrong with this at all. Much like beauty, racism is all in how we percieve it. Much more thought behind it than that stupid squirrel set!

The point is moot whether someone feels another is being too sensitive or not or a particular individual cannot see why this ad is distasteful.

The entire purpose of advertising is to build positive buzz for a product and to drive sales. The advert is a failure if it succeeds in alienating a broad customer base, for whatever reason. It would have been far better for Sony to produce an ad that had little eye-catching appeal than produce this one that triggers negative reaction. It is better to have potential customers remain neutral than for them to hate your guts.

An advertisement needs to have the following to be considered a viable choice:

1. Target the proper audience.

Sony placed an outdoor advertisement, so by default, they will get potential customers to see it.

2. Be noticable.

Sony got this one right. It is hard not to notice a huge billboard with a woman getting ready to beat down another.

3. Have positive appeal.

This one isn't a success. Sony did not consider the socio-political environment when green lighting this ad. The simple fact that so many are offended by this is evident.

So, it doesn't matter that this advertisment is clever, it isn't appealing. Advertising is meant to build a positive customer flow, not turn them away and convince current customers to leave.

I personally find this add sexist. How dare they show a woman abusing a man! Sony must hate men!...or Black people, you can choose your own totally irrational knee-jerk reaction to this..