Sony slammed for graffiti’ing America

Regional newspapers and campaigners for clearner cities across the US are up in arms today at a new PlayStation advertising campaign, which uses illegal paid-for graffiti to advertise the PlayStation Portable.

Sides of abandoned buildings across the country have been the sites of the black-on-white graffiti, which shows wide-eyed cartoon characters riding the PlayStation like a skateboard, licking it like a lollipop or cranking it like a Jack-in-the-Box.

As is common with subtle PlayStation advertising, there's no mention of the Sony or PlayStation brands – nor even any hint that the wordless display is an ad. But its fairly clear that the illegal graffiti / stealth marketing campaign (depending on where you stand on the issue) which has been reported in Philadelphia, San Francisco, New York and other large U.S. cities was a paid-for marketing exercise by Sony. Unless there is a very rich, very fast graf artist doing the rounds of all these cities in a very short space of time, painting 'homages' to Sony across the land for the good of his art. Which SPOnG doubts.

"They're breaking the law," said Mary Tracy, who runs the Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight in Philadelphia, a watchdog group that fights illegal or ill-advised billboards. Mrs Tracy went on the claim that Sony has directly ignored the zoning process that regulates outdoor commercial advertising in the city.

Another SCRUB (get it!) member, Philly resident Pedro Ramos sent a cease-and-desist letter to Sony Computer Entertainment's U.S. division in San Mateo, California. Even though Mr Ramos accepts that he is a very minor threat to Sony, he could seek modest fines allowed by city code or sue them to recover any profit the ads produced. If this were to occur then Sony would have some serious egg on their collar.

The Sony division have not, at the time of going to press, responded to Mr Ramos’ letter. However, Sony spokeswoman Molly Smith told an online news source at Wired magazine earlier this month that Sony was hiring artists in a number of cities - Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago were the others - to spray paint the pre-drawn designs.

"With PSP being a portable product, our target is what we consider to be urban nomads," Smith told Wired News.

SPOnG is not sure where we stand on this issue. Sure its vandalism to graffiti over private property, and vandalism should generally be discouraged. However, we also consider graffiti, if done well, to be a valid artform and sometimes it can work to improve the look and feel of an area – especially if that area was previously a run-down, disused warehouse or shop covered in music industry flyers.

Which brings us onto our second point - the music industry seem to have been getting away with illegally flyering the same zones for years, so why does the games industry seem to get so much flak for doing something which could actually be considered a little more creative and fun?

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