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Editorial   

Marketing 101: Sony

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

The PlayStation 4

For the first time since the PlayStation became a brand, Sony has finally moved towards a launch with its best foot forward. “Greatness awaits” is the opening volley in what is sure to be a long and drawn out war with the Xbox One, and it focuses on the characters and worlds to explore on not only the PlayStation 4, but the PlayStation platform as a whole. Visually interesting, these early ads recall some of that magic seen in the “Michael” ad.

Does this mean that Sony will start strong and fail to stick the landing? Perhaps, but for now the company seems to be doing everything right. Only time will tell how the upcoming console generation shakes out. Come back soon as we put Microsoft under the microscope.

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Comments

Jon Lewis Staff Writer

11/13/2013 at 03:45 PM

I love the Perfect Day ad. Its catchy, in a good way. 

transmet2033

11/13/2013 at 04:27 PM

Sony has such a fantastic collection of first and second party developers that their software sells the system nowadays.  I picked up a PS3 specifically to play the Insomniac games.  

gensurvivor

11/15/2013 at 04:48 PM

Interesting article. It's cool to see all of these old commercials. I draw different conclusions in some areas. For one thing, we have to look how the landscape changed. In the infancy of the PlayStation the industry was still fighting for shares in the emerging home console market featuring a myriad of companies including but not limited to Turbo Grafx, 3DO, and Atari. Sega and Sony both tried to distance themselves from the industry leader, Nintendo by being the most avant garde, which would by default make them more mature than Nintendo as kids do grow up. Sega, even before Sony reflected this attitude with campaigns like "Welcome To The Next Level" and eventually with "Fly Play Thing, Fly" which was Saturn's response to the PlayStation.

The PS2 and PS3 campaigns reflect this edgier ideology. But the times changed. Consoles are commonplace now. They have to perform other functions like watching date movies on Netflix and checking e-mail. Consoles are horribly mundane now. You can't have a toy baby crying the apocalypse in font of a levitating PS3 obelisk. Agreed. It's too upsetting to the average consumer who can't think on that level. They need death neatly wrapped in a bow. Look at the "Greatness  Awaits" commercial. It's a dude in a suit getting out of his crashed BMW to play war games. It could easily be that NES-era kid all grown up. Sony knows the demographic now: the majority. The days of PlayStation One were about rebel culture. This is even reflected in Sony's hardware choices. The Cell, the Emotion Engine, are all gone in favor of a plain old PC. They don't have to innovate on that end anymore. It's too expensive and no one cares. We all got second or better paying jobs and I'm going to pay less in real dollars for a PS4 than a PS2. All Sony has to do is make some great exclusives to go along with the cross-platform favorites and they will be solid.

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