SPOnG: One thing you also touched in the first part of our interview, was the launch of the first PlayStation, when you were up against SEGA and Nintendo.
Chris Deering: Yeah, we were talking about the inherent benefit of the logistics improvement and the lowering of inventory risk with PlayStation – by reducing the lead time moving over from cartridge to disc. That had been true on PC for some time of course, with floppy discs, and it had also been true with some gaming systems such as Hudsonsoft’s PC Engine, and with Philips CDi and Commodore’s Amiga, but PlayStation was the first true mass market, globally available console that gave the ability to make extra copies of something that was ‘hot’ within five days as opposed to five to eight weeks. That plus the 3D graphics, plus the CD sound and being able to hear characters actually talking as opposed to a series of blips.
Of course (there was also) the parental tolerance for the Sony name – don’t forget that Nintendo and SEGA had been arcade companies and arcades had their own stigma problems for parents, you know. They were usually somewhere near the train station and full of unsavoury characters and so on. So, when parents realised Sony had made a gaming system, (the parents) thought “Well okay, I guess it’s acceptable now.”
So, all of that worked to launch the new era of gaming. Of course there have been giant leaps forward since then, not least the growth and increasingly reliability of online connectivity and more connectable homes. With globalisation, the increasingly efficiency of logistics in general, the ‘awareness building’ tools – the Internet in particular – the growth of retail in places such as eastern Europe and the Middle East increasingly means that gaming systems are accessible to ever higher numbers of the world’s population.
SPOnG: One of the things that you are often credited with is the edgy consumer marketing around that time with PlayStation.
Chris Deering: Yeah, we had a lot of great young people, with Geoff Glendenning, Alan Wellsman and those guys.
SPOnG: They suddenly started promoting gaming in nightclubs, at music festivals and so on.
Chris Deering: Yeah, it was guerrilla tactics, heavily borrowed from the music industry. Plus, we were lucky to have an edgy and innovative advertising agency who appreciated a client who was willing to tolerate the unexpected. And then, as the client, we became tougher on the agency than they were used to – because one of the things we realised that people liked about PlayStation was that they also appreciated ads that surprised them. So, the agency would come up with new ideas for ads, and we would say, “That’s really cool and looks great, but it’s not surprising enough.”
The fan base enjoyed the fact that PlayStation respected their acumen for ads. Kids are all ad experts, often in many cases more so than the executives at the ad agencies. Kids talk about them all day at school and they are very good at scoping out what an ad is trying to tell you. So, when you surprise them, as PlayStation did, then they go “Oh, okay, these guys kind of get it!”
We did a lot of sponsorship with snowboarding events, skate parks and those kinds of things, where we tried to put a human face to the company. Historically, companies always hid behind a few national TV ads, some print and in-store advertising and maybe a big party now and then, but we tried to make it look like the company was made up by real people, that it had a personality. I think that was also true in the US, though maybe not quite as edgy as we were on the advertising.
The Amiga CD32 - the competition?
Of course (there was also) the parental tolerance for the Sony name – don’t forget that Nintendo and SEGA had been arcade companies and arcades had their own stigma problems for parents, you know. They were usually somewhere near the train station and full of unsavoury characters and so on. So, when parents realised Sony had made a gaming system, (the parents) thought “Well okay, I guess it’s acceptable now.”
So, all of that worked to launch the new era of gaming. Of course there have been giant leaps forward since then, not least the growth and increasingly reliability of online connectivity and more connectable homes. With globalisation, the increasingly efficiency of logistics in general, the ‘awareness building’ tools – the Internet in particular – the growth of retail in places such as eastern Europe and the Middle East increasingly means that gaming systems are accessible to ever higher numbers of the world’s population.
SPOnG: One of the things that you are often credited with is the edgy consumer marketing around that time with PlayStation.
Chris Deering: Yeah, we had a lot of great young people, with Geoff Glendenning, Alan Wellsman and those guys.
SPOnG: They suddenly started promoting gaming in nightclubs, at music festivals and so on.
Chris Deering: Yeah, it was guerrilla tactics, heavily borrowed from the music industry. Plus, we were lucky to have an edgy and innovative advertising agency who appreciated a client who was willing to tolerate the unexpected. And then, as the client, we became tougher on the agency than they were used to – because one of the things we realised that people liked about PlayStation was that they also appreciated ads that surprised them. So, the agency would come up with new ideas for ads, and we would say, “That’s really cool and looks great, but it’s not surprising enough.”
The fan base enjoyed the fact that PlayStation respected their acumen for ads. Kids are all ad experts, often in many cases more so than the executives at the ad agencies. Kids talk about them all day at school and they are very good at scoping out what an ad is trying to tell you. So, when you surprise them, as PlayStation did, then they go “Oh, okay, these guys kind of get it!”
We did a lot of sponsorship with snowboarding events, skate parks and those kinds of things, where we tried to put a human face to the company. Historically, companies always hid behind a few national TV ads, some print and in-store advertising and maybe a big party now and then, but we tried to make it look like the company was made up by real people, that it had a personality. I think that was also true in the US, though maybe not quite as edgy as we were on the advertising.