How PlayStation Used Shocking Ads to Make Their Brand Unforgettable

Does anybody else remember those freaky ads by PlayStation in the early 2000’s?

Or was that literally a fever dream?

It was almost like the marketers for Sony had taken a hero dose of acid and unplugged from the matrix, only to return to make these grungy, cryptic advertisements.

After watching them just now, I can confirm, they are a lot stranger than you remember. And I’m guessing that was by design. Because here I am, still writing about them 28 years later.

In 1996, PlayStation produced a flyer to distribute at Glastonbury Festival, promoting their first ever gaming console. The tiny advert featured the PlayStation logo and the copy, 'More Powerful than God.'

Obviously, at the time, the ad stirred some controversy. But, little did the world know, this would be the first of many subversive adverts that PlayStation would eventually come to be known for.

In the early days of PlayStation, the company developed games mostly for more mature audiences. Games like Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee, Grand Theft Auto III, and The Metal Gear Series helped usher in a series of design stances that justified utilizing late 90’s club culture, Corporate Grunge, and GEN X Soft-Club aesthetics as a guiding ethos, and the muse for the PS2 print ads.

Think: Trainspotting, The Matrix, and Requiem for a Dream.

The majority of the PS2 ads looked like they came fresh off the set of one of these films. One commercial featured a raining, car at night sequence, almost identical to when Neo finds himself in the back seat of Trinity’s car in The Matrix.

Different Place. Different Rules.

This phrase is the thematic commonality amongst almost all the PlayStation ads of the late 90’s and early 2000s.

The simple idea was the head-on collision of mundane happenings of daily life, and obscure, surreal, and unsettling abstractions.

That’s due, in part, to the corporate culture of the time, which was becoming strict, and more robust. Offices and cubicles began to be the norm. Less labour-intensive jobs were in demand (think, Fight Club and the miserable mess the narrator was.)

With computers and the internet reaching into the cultural zeitgeist, corporate politics was born. And along with it came the fear of one trapped in their desk-bound profession. Then there was also the loss of personal motivation and the dread of your supervisors’ passive-aggressive emails. And voilà, Sony hit the nail on the head with a campaign that resonated for years.

These newly experienced stationary lives led to collective feelings of disillusionment.

Sony utilised these collective fears to paint illusions of grandeur amongst workers and players alike.

Edginess and shock value were tactics that worked well at the time of these PlayStation ads. Remember, this was before our brains were completely desensitised and turned to sludge from the plethora of disturbing things we’ve seen over the last decade.

The infamous 2006 Baby Doll ad for the PS3 said practically nothing about the console. It didn’t make anybody necessarily want to rush out and buy one.

But holy sh*t, even as a pre-teen, every time I looked at a toy doll, I thought of a PlayStation.

How’s that for brand recall.

-Sophie, Writer