2007 July archive at Advertising Pawn

Fifteen years ago, this article would have been guilty of uninspired science-fictioning straight out of nerdy wet dreams. Ten years ago, it would have been guilty of being a blind glorification of a brand that unapologetically became synonymous with its category by deftly shaking its conventions upside down and planting its shapes onto our collective unconsciousness. Three years ago, this article would have been guilty of glossing about an unbreakable advertising formula harvesting both commercial success and peers’ metallic gratitude.

Unfortunately, we are today. And what was once an undisputed hegemony has seen its lasting empire crumble, its throne mortgaged by rivals, its golden aura severely tarnished, ringing the bell for a quick retrospective of its past.

The line of thinking behind the PlayStation’s advertising revolution serves pretty well as “the ideal disruption case study”, focusing on a more adult audience and embracing is irreverent underlying philosophy. They don’t filter advertising. They mock it. Hence the switch of focus from pure product appraisal to the actual outcomes resulting from its usage.

What makes someone play? What guides someone’s desire to venture into virtual lands? We play to escape our normal lives. To take us above our unchallenging daily routines. We play to experience places we usually only dream of. Places where we can release our frustration, freed from our constraining physical boundaries and our fear of the unknown.

We play because we can’t – or don’t know how to – experience life in full. We crave for Carpe Diem without even knowing how it really tastes like.

(Un?)surprisingly, the pinnacle of this strategy came very early in the brand’s existence, with the “Double Life” commercial for the original PlayStation, fantastic marriage of poetic writing, carefully selected imagery and remarkable insights.

The idea of escapism was then explicitly embedded in the PlayStation 2’s motto: The Third Place. The Third Place is where you go to when you’re gaming. This is neither home (the first place) nor work (the second), rather whatever you want to do or whoever you want to be.

The surrealistically oppressive David Lynch directed launch campaign for the PlayStation 2 also happened to mark PlayStation’s bizarre era where versatile identity bordered on schizophrenia – appearances are purposefully deceiving – cult of shapes verged on fetishism, and where escapism pushed to the limit ultimately led to the end of death. Afterall, in these worlds, you never really die.

Ad after ad, the PlayStation universe astutely blurred the lines between the virtual and the real, via an eerily believable artistic direction, so strong that any familiar eye would recognize a PlayStation ad without even waiting for the logo to fade in. Advertisers might not be artists, but remove the logo from most of these ads and it would certainly qualify as such, in a Picasso/Dali/Bosch/Brueghel way.

PSP and PS3 launch campaigns were shockingly far more obscure in their purposes, trading meaningful quirkiness and wit for elliptic, far-fetched stories that clumsily leaned on old hard selling (PS3 white room campaigns insist on specific features of the hardware) or on abstract randomness hard to decipher (PSP’s ever-transforming red-shaped creatures), whereas previous campaigns mastered the art of blissful non-immediacy to create a stronger bond between the brand and its audience, relying on the glorious seconds that happen between the moment when your eyes catch the ad and the one when your brain satisfyingly gets the obvious – but delicious – irony of it.

Every new PlayStation campaign still manages to garner attention and get people talking, however you can’t help but notice the controversy effect vanishes into predictable monotony with every new iteration, as another sign of a campaign struggling to feel fresh again and create imaginaries worth plugging in.

And because of the intensity with which the TBWA network pressed its golden fruit (the award tree) and the fervency with which the whole advertising world desperately tried to replicate this winning formula, the brand fundamentals themselves now feel worryingly tired to the bone, desperately waiting for a braver creative leap of faith.

Enjoy the – non exhaustive – absolute brilliancy of this exquisite brand while it lasts. After all, who knows how this article would look like if it had been written two years from now?

Update (November 2007): As if we were of ill omen, Sony has awarded the PlayStation account to Deutsch, ending its long-term partnership with agency of record TBWA\Chiat\Day.