VIDEO: Yay, yet another lame viral ad aimed at gamers
Matt Hawkins If there’s one form of entertainment in which its advertisements, perhaps more so than anything else, firmly establishes in the first 0.5 seconds that those peddling stupid junk have absolutely zero clue who the audience is, it’s video games.
First off, I hate viral ads. Even the best examples give me douche chills, because it’s basically the people on the street, the consumers, doing the job of highly paid advertising executive. Granted, that’s how anything succeeds, i.e. word of mouth, but when it’s so orchestrated… though we also live at time in which everyone has to be an evangelist for whatever they like, to the point of nauseam. Trust me when I say that I love Apple products, but am NOT the prototypical Apple fanboy who wants to suck of Steve Jobs and buys everything they make.
Even worse are bad examples of viral marketing, like this recent one for some peripheral company…
I don’t even know where to begin. The fact that you get the impression that this is supposed to appear legit is genuinely mind-blowing. Granted, this city has seen its fair share of semi-similar nonsense; cuddle parties instantly come to mind. What I find most hilarious is how there’s this constant underlying impression that “this is how things roll in New York City!” With the dude with the kippah being just one not so subtle example. Which makes one get the sense that it’s the creation of idiots that have never set foot in the Big Apple, let alone encountered a native New Yorker. But having met my fair share of clueless advertising and media types, I can say with certainty there are folks who live here that are just as clueless, so the fact that the above probably actually produced here is what’s especially infuriating (no doubt by those who have never stepped foot into the outer boroughs once in their lives… okay, maybe Williamsburg, but that’s about it).
Though given how ugly looking the actual product being sold is, I can totally understand an ad in which you can barely see it. BTW, this also just popped up, for some PSP game called Gladiator Begins…
Yeah, I don’t even know either. Anyhow, both those two examples still pale in comparison to the train-wreck that was Sony’s ill-advised and even worse execution-wise “All I want for Christmas is a PSP” imitative. The center of it all was this vid from some dude who supposedly created it as a message to his parents or whatever…
There was also an accompanying website that was equally cringe-worthy, as two 30 years olds posing as teenagers tried some campaign to rally support for their “cause”. Needless to say, the response was not quite what Sony wanted, with LOTS of bad press (everyone from Joystiq to CNET had a field day) and loss of goodwill from their customers. Though given how Sony has never really made the right choices (gee, what previous post to do I link back towards? can’t make up my mind), is it any real surprise that such a stupid stunt was attempted?
They’re Nude. They’re Gaming [Kotaku] & Wanking, pooping, killing puppies, being Welsh [Destructoid]
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