Sony Behind Fake YouTube Viral Campaign

Wowzer writes "Sony is up to the same old tricks again. Following in the footsteps of their fake PSP Graffiti campaign, Sony has hired marketing company Zipatoni to set up a YouTube-based viral marketing scheme for the Sony PSP. The company did this by registering the domain alliwantforxmasisapsp. There are no disclaimers to show it isn't 'real', but the website's whois points out it's setup by Zipatoni." From the C&VG article: "The lies don't end there, fake comments have been posted at Kotaku only linking to the Youtube video to increase its pageviews: 'Good call on DJ max. Regarding music: if changes were to be made for westerners, this guy should be considered - LOLZ'" Update: 12/13 02:37 GMT by Z : The Washington Post has an article stating that the FTC will look into situations like this, if they perchance to come up.

Trying to make it 'cool'

[HappySqurriel]

Is it my imagination or is Sony's strategy for their playstation line to attempt to make their product 'cool' rather than to make it a good product for gamers. Over the life of the PSP it has been outsold by both the GBA and Nintendo DS and has failed to make a larger impact largely because it is not a particularly good portable videogame machine. Had Sony put the effort into it the PSP would have a larger library of good games, and in particular a library of unique 'portable gaming' content for the PSP, which would make the system sell far better.

Re:The Apple way

[JonLatane]

I know you said I needn't answer, but I feel that I should nonetheless. The reason I bought an iPod (an iPod nano, actually) is because of the simplicity of managing my music with iTunes. I had owned several Creative (and before that, Rio) players and after the last one broke I started looking more and more at iPods. Both their music management systems are bloated and buggy - say what you will about iTunes's memory footprint, it has never once crashed on me, and with 1GB of RAM the 40-50MB it takes while playing is inconsequential.

Its music management systems are sublime. I can make any playlist I want, and smart playlists, while not a new concept, are exceptionally simple in iTunes. Since I have over 30GB of music and a 4GB MP3 player, managing my music should have been horribly difficult - and it was, even when I had a 20GB Nomad Zen. However, I just have smart playlists set up that contain about 500MB of my least-listened-to, highest-rated songs, 3GB of my most-listened-to, highest-rated songs, 250MB of random stuff that I may just have not gotten around to rating, which I can rate when I hear it on my playlist and then re-sync with iTunes, and some extra space reserved for things like data and extra playlists (for example, I'm currently preparing to play piano for a production of Evita at UNC Chapel Hill, and I have the soundtrack in that extra space so I can make sure I've gotten to know the music).

This simplicity is added to the fact that there is essentially no better MP3 jukebox on Windows, Linux or Mac, at least none that I have found. Songbird may approach it someday (but man, if you want to talk about memory footprints...), and MusikCube is alright but not as simple. WMP is, of course, a joke.

So anyway, what I've been ranting about is that there are some very, very good reasons for the non-trendy, technical guy to buy an iPod.

The problem people have here is that Sony is attempting to market a bad product, with minimal software (well, aside from their perpetual anti-homebrew updates, if you call that software), to people who aren't familiar enough with it (parents, grandparents, etc.) to understand that it's so terrible. The desire for iPods developed before I ever saw an ad by Apple, whereas Sony is trying to create such desire.

Re:It's called Marketing

[fistfullast33l]

Okay stop drinking the kool-aid. Here's a nice article from IGN [ign.com] on a viral-marketing campaign by Sony in 2000. Promoting what game? Perfect Dark [ign.com]. Where does the site DataDyne.com point to now? Rare [datadyne.com], developer of Perfect Dark. Everyone's reaction? Smartest thing ever!!!!!! So, when one company uses a little bit of hidden marketing it's perfectly fine, but when another more evil company does it, it's the end of the world and we need to protect the children.

Re:It's called Marketing

[HCase]

As for War of the Worlds. It was a book before being broadcast on the radia, and when adapted and broadcast it was announced, multiple times, that it was fictional. When it was realized that some people were taking it as actually happening announcements were made in the middle of the broadcast to assure them that it was not real. Welles also said afterwards that he didn't think they would do something like that again because it hadn't been their intention to scare people.

Re:Snakes on a plane

[dangitman]

The "Snakes on a Plane" buzz/meme was started by an actual blog that was making fun of the name. It was unexpected by the producers, who actually wanted to change the name. It was basically Sam Jackson's hilarious remarks and a bunch of actual internet nerds who created the viral campaign - not the company. They did later take advantage of this, but through more traditional means, like Jackson't interview on The Daily Show.