14 DAY TRIAL // Yeah, we're looking at the 14 seconds of this PSP ad and I still can't shake off the "What the?!" feeling... It may be a Japanese commercial, but still it doesn't appeal to all of the gamers, featuring the sound of a man trying to release himself of God knows what torture (translation Kamehameha from Dragon Ball Z) and then the sound of someone taking a leak... It might just be my imagination, but the PSP and the guitar that follow seem to be an entirely different concept...
So, Sony's not that great when it comes to advertising their products, but they did a mighty fine job with the new PSP, making it slimmer and lighter (minus 91 grams as the ad says). Could this sort of unconventional commercials be the newest trend for Japanese companies? A couple of days ago we saw an ugly girl featured in another Sony ad, this time for a camera.
It seems that we've got a lot to catch up till we get to understand the Asian cliches and culture... Let's leave the advertising to the Europeans and the US companies and let the Asian developers do all the hard work when it comes to software and hardware. This PSP ad catches one of the less important features of the new portable console: its thickness, leaving aside tons of other functions and cool new improvements.
However, when you're advertising such an important media product, you'd probably want to keep it simple, original and create an ad that fits the launch area's culture and habits. If I were evil, I would say that Sony is about to throw the towel and that they're quite a frustrated company, since they keep twisting their laundry, but that's just me and my interpretation of a pretty silly ad.