Sony took the lessons they learned from the buzz generated around their Sony Bravia commercials and applied them to their new range of cameras. They flew bloggers around the world – including our Stephy Pool – to the shoot of a commercial that saw the crew launch a rather lot of foam onto the streets of Miami and their PR team at Immediate Future worked hard to give other bloggers exclusive content.
But somewhere it’s all gone flat. And it’s probably because the ad itself has copied too much from the bunny and bouncing ball ads. Nitmesh wonders if it’s underwhelming and Frederick Samuel says that it’s all getting little boring. For us, it feels like an insurance company wanting to sell to middle America. Watch the ad below and imagine a voice-over half way through with something like “Wouldn’t it be nice, if we could all just get along.”
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Spot on. The joy of Sony’s Balls and Cadbury’s Gorilla is as much rooted in their freshness as in the content and these event spots now feel like canned laughter. I’m curious to see what happens in the space of ‘discovery by bloggers’ as more & more get treated like press. Also wondering when the 2008 incarnation of viral buzz will flatline and where it will go from there.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:10 am
I think it creates expectations that only spiral out of control. Especially if the premise is the same. You can never recreate the experience of “first”, and hype certainly works against you in this case. One-off beaten to death now….
I dont think viral (terrible word) will ever die, because its human nature to communicate and share what interests us. Its just becoming easier as technology catches up.
April 14th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Foam ad pales in comparison to the bouncing balls ad on a number of levels, not least of which it’s hard to match Jose Gonzalez’s “Heartbeats” as the background music.
April 14th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Another perfect example of the fact that you can’t ‘viral’ something average. Has no one been listening?
April 15th, 2008 at 11:02 am
Biggest problem? It’s not different anymore… Balls was different, Paint was cool (blowing stuff up is just plain cool), Bunnies was weird (started to lose it for me), and this is “just another Sony ad”. The style is there, but he substance isn’t anymore.
It just doesn’t make me go “wooooooooow!”. It needs to make you feel like a 5 year old at Christmas, and it simply doesn’t do that.
Shame really.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:18 am
On it’s own merits it’s a decent ad. In comparison to the other’s it doesn’t take the cake. These commercials are more akin to movie sequels like Rocky 1 through six. Nothing is ever gonna beat the 1st one, except maybe the 3 one. I think you do it until you can’t do it anymore and then you move on. Hey we’re still talking about it aren’t we.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
This feels slightly apocalyptic. When the little boy gets consumed by the foam… scary. Like other Fallon adverts such as that weird toilet roll ad with the creepy little boy. Spooky stuff.
May 26th, 2008 at 7:28 am