PS3 Launch And Brand Polyphony
I was, persistently and abstractly, reflecting on the Brand Polyphony Idea and I came up with some thoughts on the PS3 launch campaign. Strangely enough for a Playstation campaign the most interesting part of it, it’s not the creative part, but the planning part. Firstly, I would like to comment on the creative part of the campaign and say that the creative execution is multilayered working on many levels and having many faces. In Europe, TBWA created a post- tarantinean teaser spot with a wild palms aesthetic, using on demand TV, TV and cinema to direct audience to the main gate of the campaign, “this is living.tv”. This is the site where the story of 8 grotesque characters will be unfolded. The spot is almost unbranded to trigger the use of word of mouth and social networks from the outset.
In Canada the first PS3 ad is ‘The wait’, an ad featuring a weirdly conspicuous boy leaving his home in the middle of the night and ascending to the roof of his house knowing that the time of the wait has finished. At the same time we can see all the boys around doing the same thing. In America a new ad was launched showing a creepy baby, shifting emotional states while envisioning images in the console, seating in a white empty room.
Either in Europe or in the US what I understand is that Sony tries to say many things to many people, building a polyphonic brand which embraces nuance and complexity.
Sony in this context of Polyphonic, multidimensional, multi-layered campaign chose to create a high engagement campaign, “this is living tv” which aired first on SKY on demand and 4OD with a not so mass-advertising beginning and had the umbrella role for the campaign. With this campaign PS3 draws the audience into deeper connections and involvement, having a more mystic and cinematic feel and aesthetic. The overall campaign uses cunningly the fragmented nature of the media environment and it is the first campaign clearly orientated towards the brand polyphony idea. This idea goes beyond the media neutral planning as it has an intrinsic difference. This idea goes even beyond the transmedia planning idea because this campaign not only uses different channels to create a central system of brand communities but embraces abstractness and nuance, operating in a more realistic, closer to human nature level. Playstation is a brand familiar with its dark side which blurs the limits of who owns the brand. An interesting question would be whether all brands have the opportunity to do this. Ofcourse not, but Playstation is one of those brands that can capture the darkest position in the mind and trigger the galloping imagination of its target audience.
The difference that exists between media neutral planning and ‘polyphonic’ planning is that the core idea in PS3’s coms strategy is not the same. ’Polyphonic’ planning is based on the idea that a brand uses many platforms to promote different ideas and aspects of the product and the brand. For example the PS3 promoted rational, functional attributes of the console to the high importance decision maker in the family(powerful cell processor) on European TV, with a series of information-based spots, and other channels, such as TV and internet, to talk about the powerful processor at an emotional level and the Brand at a different one. This was done on the US TV with a series of some weird spots promoting the mesmerizing, interactive, artificial intelligence nature of the processor and additionally by creating a world of footballers, smugglers and tv presenters at a more mystic, engaging and interactive level using the power of the internet. Both aspects of the campaign used different channels to say many things to many people and not one thing to one target group nor one thing to many people. It used many channels to create an interlinked media system to activate digital consumer networks to trigger word of mouth and drag the audience even deeper into the Playstation brand, digital landscapes and ofcourse a high price which needed all that media value to be justified.
As I see it, strategically PS3 has to overcome the obstacle of loosing the first mover advantage in this game cycle. Hence the end-line ‘PLAY BEYOND’, which tries to keep PS3 beyond the current market and the players Wii and Xbox.
To me, going deeper and thinking laterally, the right positioning for the PS3, would be to capitalize on the idea of the cell processor it contains. Use the core idea of “the Womb”, “the source”, “the brain”, “the it”, “the mother”. A console with almost unlimited powers, both evil and good, with an inability to know what it can control and what not. A console that lives with you and interacts as an artificial intelligent entity that can give you glimpses of tomorrow and can communicate with you in a subliminal psychological way. This positioning path is clear in the ‘baby ad’ in which at the end, the baby yells the word ‘ma ma’.
But will Sony make it in time, to position it’s PS3 as an all-in –one digital living room console. And will it be able with this value proposition to justify its price in the heads of the targeted audience. This can be done in two ways. Either by promoting the power of its processor and the utility the console will have for the contemporary digital family home, (a new level of gaming experience), or by capitalizing on the strong emotional connections the brand has with its audience and telling even more engaging brand stories.
With its new campaign PS3 chooses to make both, creating one of the first polyphonic campaigns and opens up a new era of brand complexity and engagement.
Brandtelling 