PixlBit

Sony may be the once and future king (we'll see), but they've had some stinkers for ad campaigns...

Sony had a lot to prove.

It’s common knowledge these days that Sony wouldn’t have even gotten into the ring if Nintendo hadn’t backed out on their deal to have a CD-ROM add-on for the Super Nintendo. Considering the climate at the time (SEGA had already been pumping out expensive new components for their Genesis console to lukewarm results), the “Nintendo PlayStation” would likely have come and gone with little fanfare, and that would have been that. Instead, Nintendo went after the Phillips CD-i, and Sony was left twisting in the wind with a half-finished console.

We all know what comes next.

Sony made all the right moves getting into the console market, at least when it came to R&D and securing huge exclusive titles like Tekken and Mortal Kombat 3. However, Sony has historically been really bad with their marketing campaigns leading up to their system launches.

Take Polygon Man, for instance. Before he was the final boss in PlayStation All-Stars Polygon Man was the first ever face of the console brand. He was the lead in the “edgy” type of print ads that were such the norm in the ‘90s. He would taunt gamers with the power of the PlayStation and how the games would crush them. Oh, he also informed people that Sofia from Battle Arena Toshinden was “every gamer’s wet dream.”

The print ads were just as raunchy and filled with ‘90s ‘tude as anyone else’s back then. The TV ads on the other hand were equally head scratching, at least in the beginning. Early commercials had the tagline “eNOS Lives”, which most people assumed was some clever backwards way of saying “Sony Lives.” However, the red “e” was a main part of the early campaign, and the actual meaning of this phrase was “ready ninth of September.” This was used in conjunction with the slogan “UR Not e”.

No, it wasn’t a great ad campaign, but Sony had the games to back up their own hype machine. Additionally, in what would become a trend, Sony followed up their rather embarrassing debut with an inspired dig at Nintendo. The Naughty Dog-created Crash Bandicoot seemed like the perfect mascot for Sony, in a time when people cared about game companies having mascots. The series of commercials involving a man in a Crash outfit calling out Mario was just the thing to make the PlayStation come across as the next big thing.

In many ways, it was. Through aggressive courting of third party exclusives, the power of CD-ROM technology, and a series of excellent marketing campaigns (we eventually forgot all about Polygon Man), Sony ran over their competition. The little grey box that many believed would be an also ran ended up as the number one console by a fair margin by the time the dust settled.

                         Sony published a little game called Final Fantasy VII, also. No biggie.