PSP: "White Is Coming"?

Cafe Society
1

I did a quick search on this and didn’t fnd anything; my apologies if this has been discussed.

My husband brought this billboard to my attention today. It has the words “Playstation Portable. White Is Coming” written beside it. It refers to, presumably, the PSP coming out in white plastic instead of just the standard black.

I admit to being ignorant/naive in many areas of life, being a small-town bumpkin of a girl, and not normally very easy to offend, so maybe I am way off base here. But can someone explain to me how this billboard isn’t offensive? I get the black/white thing but… seriously. Was this the best way to convey that? Or am I just overreacting?

Is this really the best Sony could come up with? :confused:

2

I almost started a thread about this the other day. It’s AMAZING; I figure that it has to be one of those “Japan only” ad campaigns or something.

Here’s a pic of the full billboard.

3

Yikes. How in the blue hell did that get approved?

4

According to that thread the ad is from the Netherlands.

5

I think we need to relax a little, if you scroll down on VCO3’s link you can see the other ads in the campain, in short:

Cat fight!

The black girl (in the last image one can see that) gets to be on top :smiley:

6

Have you seen their PSP commercials with the cartoon squirrels? Those are just as or more racist.

7

Yeah… um… those other billboards don’t help the situation…

The bottom one looks like a still from “Birth of a Nation”

8

Well, for starters, don’t be an American. This isn’t an ad that’s being run in the US. Not every nation in the world has the same history of white/black racial tensions that we do. Most people in the Netherlands, I would wager, would not look at that billboard and see the two characters in it as representative of their race, but only representative of their portable game systems.

I think Ctrl-Alt-Del had a pretty good take on the issue. Also, a pretty good parody of the billboard.

9

Thanks for the link, Miller. I admit my first reaction was to be offended (which is odd enough, since most advertising that tries to offend usually just makes me :rolleyes: and it doesn’t work) and it just rubbed me the wrong way. However, as you point out, this isn’t running in America; I was not aware of that.

I have to admit that I’m still not all that fond of it, however I realise now that I am not the intended audience for this ad, either, and my reaction is inconsequential.

Thanks for your opinions and thoughts on this, everyone, I would still like to hear more. Thank you, Dopers, for keeping my knee from jerking too fast.

10

How so? As I remember, the squirrels compare a PSP to nuts or acrons or something. It didn’t seem racist to me at all.

11

Its that the squirrels are obviously black that some people find offensive. There’s another one with two clearly latino animal creatures.

12

Regardless, the ad execs knew that Americans would get wind of it. There’s no bad publicity and the like. For every person that is totally offended and will refuse to buy Sony products forever there will be ten who will be intrigued and check out the new white PSP. Somewhere in there, Sony will issue a heartfelt apology. Profit!

I thought the ad was hilarious but then again I think most things are hilarious.

13

Hmmm…it does seem racist to me. But I’m not going to take it seriously.

I don’t think the cartoon squirrels are racist, but this thread wouldn’t be complete without a link to the parody comic.

14

Maybe I’ve been living in Japan too long, but it doesn’t shout out racism to me. It’s just non-racist, is the issue for you all.

15

Oh, yeah, and a link to Tokyo Breakfast. :smiley:

16

Wow. Tokyo Breakfast… wow. Was that really a sitcom pilot?

17

No. It’s actually entirely American-made.