Advertising Age reports Sony Computer Entertainment of America kicked their ad agency of 13 years to the curb yesterday. TBWA/Chiat/Day was eliminated from the review of the $150 million PlayStation account. After all the numerousincidents over the years and the disastrousPS3 launch ads, the company finally turned things around for this holiday season. Looks like it was a day late and $150 million dollars short.
There's still some questions that'll probably be clarified when an official announcement of the new ad agency is made. For example, all information on the issue speaks directly to Sony America, however TBWA is also responsible for the twisted, disruptive, ridiculous, and sometimes racist, European ads as well. Sony has yet to comment.
They've made a very good choice, all those arty/weird/pretentious ads just weren't aimed to the main playstation crowd, which is made out from pretty average people who just look at the price of a console and how easy it is to hack it (at least here in Spain). Just cause it's popular it doesn't mean it's seen as COOOOOL, Sony (only the 1Up crew is so stupid to believe that :P)
You know what I love. People always give credit to advertising agencies for work when they actually don't do a thing.
Most of the time they hire a designer or design group from the outside and charge a buttload on top of thier fee to the company they are representing.
Sony is smart to drop the middleman and go straight to the source that actually created the good ads. After all the actual artwork and design is what you are buying. Not a bunch of idiots that sit in a room telling you how great they are, and can bring you a fantastic advertising campaign.
PS3 has sold at the same rate (worldwide) in its first year as 360 did, and up against the semi-established 360 and the red-hot Wii. Oh, and this despite the PS3 not even being available in Europe for 5 of the first 12 months of existence. It missed an entire Christmas there.
I don't understand how joystiq assumes their negative opinions of Sony's ads are universal truth. In as much as the effectiveness of any ad can be measured by sales, the PS3 ads have stood up as well as any.
