SONY PLAYSTATION ADS FEATURE DISABLED

PHILADELPHIA (WPI) - Just before Christmas the Sony corporation unleashed a “guerilla” ad campaign in several big US cities. Allegedly hiring “local artists,” Sony directed them to spray paint the sides of vacant buildings with the likenesses of deformed, mentally impaired children playing with the new Sony PlayStation Portable.

The reactions have been anything but positive.

“This is not funny,” said Mark Mawurds, director of the Philadelphia Association of Retarded Citizens. “Look at those characterizations The children clearly have both physical and mental disabilities. They can’t even perceive the product, one child is licking it like a lollipop. If they think this is funny they are mighty wrong!”

Mr. Mawurds was urging the city to take legal action.

On Wednesday, Philadelphia Managing Director Pedro Ramos sent Sony Computer Entertainment's U.S. division in San Mateo, Calif. a cease-and-desist letter. He said that the city could claim modest fines allowed by zoning code or sue to recover any profit the ads produced.

"My fines aren't going to scare Sony," said Ramos. "What will worry them is what the parents and their users will think.”

The “stealth” marketing campaign has popped up in San Francisco, New York and other large U.S. cities.

“Stealth” ads have been around for years, even if Sony is just discovering them,” said advertising executive Hugh G. Liere of Metro Kool Advertising in New York. “It’s about ten years old and no longer considered hip by anybody except Asian companies I guess. I’ve never seen anybody use retarded kids before. That’s kind of cool.”

Sony did not respond to City’s letter or to a telephone message left by World Press International. Earlier this month however, Sony spokeswoman Molly Smith told an Internet news site that Sony was hiring artists in seven cities — Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago were the others — to spray paint the disabled children designs in already graffiti blighted neighborhoods.

"With PSP being a portable product, our target is what we consider to be urban nomads," Smith told Wired News. “These are very hip kids. They ridicule the slow, the ugly, the fat, the un-hip on a daily, if not hourly, basis. We are speaking directly to our consumer.

Sony’s own sales statistics suggest however that the biggest PSP consumer group are affluent suburban, mostly white, boys aged 9 to 17.

“They full a s–t!” said an angry Nefarious “Infeck’d” Johnson who lives near one of the buildings sporting the ads. “Nobody ‘round here buy that s–t. You walk ‘round wid dat, you get ripped, Jack. An I mean f–king pronto!”

Elefanta Bouttae, another neighbor was even more upset. “I got a brother who got Downs, that s–t ain’t funny. Mockin’ my brother just piss me off!”

In San Francisco, the ads were quickly defaced once word spread that Sony was behind them. "Get out of my city!!!" and "Fony" were added to one.

Not everyone agrees. North Philadelphia resident Sue Stupait, 39, thought the Sony ads were an improvement over the handbills and scrawls it replaced.

"I don't think that's graffiti," Stupait said. "That's art. I like the big eyes on the little children. I don’t know why they’re using the toy wrong, but I like it anyway. It’s cute!"

Both supporters and detractors agree that the campaign is designed to break through the clutter of advertising that permeates daily life. It is the content that disturbs most people.

“What douchebags,” said Zack Offe, bartender at a bar that faces one of the ads which has since been covered over by local graffiti artists. “These people are so far out of touch- mocking retarded kids. If they were cool at all they would have ads showing advertising people killing themselves- you know, blowing their heads off, hanging themselves, doing Hari-Kari, like that.”