PS3 Marketing Recognised Its Arrogance And Has Matured

A member of SCEA’s marketing department, Peter Dille, has commented that they have put their marketing arrogance to rest and moved towards a more effective means of marketing their current hardware. Speaking at a recent marketing conference (known as MI6) in San Francisco Dille commented:

"We get questions about the white room and the baby ad quite a bit. 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."

"We struggled with our messaging early on to clearly communicate the value proposition of the PlayStation 3. 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."

"With our campaign now, we kind of knocked off all those obstacles. 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 likeable connection to the consumer."

If anyone went to the cinema at the time the PS3 was launched you’ll remember those overly artsy adverts that totally missed the point of promoting the PS3 to the consumers. Thankfully they’ve realized this now and looking at recent sales figures is a good sign that effective marketing works better than trying to perplex your customers (most of the time).