Sony: The arrogance has gone

The decision to change the cryptic, artistic PS3 ads of the past to the more straightforward design of the present – lead by the new ‘It Only Does Everything’ message – has seemingly delivered the goods for Sony.

Speaking at the MI6 marketing conference in the US, SCEA’s head of marketing Peter Dille has admitted that the first generation of PS3 ads received a poor reception from consumers.

We struggled with our messaging early on to clearly communicate the value proposition of the PS3,” Dille stated, as reported by IGN. Now I’d like to think that the best, crispiest messaging in the world really wouldn’t have done a whole lot to sell a $600 game machine in a very horrendous economy.

We get questions about the white room and the baby ad quite a bit [see that here]. That whole campaign was to get people to say ‘What the? I need to understand more about what this is’. That whole campaign was really about power and the power the PS3 has.

But what we found was that this whole positioning was a bit intimidating to people. Our research also showed that Sony could be perceived as arrogant.”

This approach has been scrapped post PS3 price drop in favour of a more straightforward approach – as well as the introduction of comedy corporate figure Kevin Butler.

With our campaign now, we kind of knocked off all those obstacles,” he added. The arrogance I think has gone away. We kind of gotten back to our mojo with the sense of humour that people came to know and love with early PlayStation advertising.

I think it’s just a more likable connection to the consumer. The campaign is working to drive hardware sales. You’re going to continue to see Kevin Butler highlighting new content that is hitting the platform. That will include PlayStation Move later this year and also 3D.”

Dille added that PS3 sales soared 184 per cent following last year’s price drop, with purchase intent” climbing from 19 per cent to 36 per cent.