PS3's Crying Baby

The PS3 was something of a tough sell at launch.  AT $599 the system was more expensive than the Xbox 360 and Wii and the system's catalog of exclusive titles was (at the time) quite thin.  Perhaps because of this, the marketing team working on the launch went the abstract route with a series of ads under the unifying slogan "Play B3yond."

The "white room" series of launch advertisements included one with a Rubik's Cube exploding suggesting the power of the Cell Processor while another showed eggs smashing into a wall and producing birds as a demonstration of the motion sensing Sixaxis controller.  While a bit obtuse, we didn't think these ads were so bad; a third ad about nothing in particular still makes us scratch our heads when we watch it. 

The infamous "crying baby doll" ad starts off with the doll opening its eyes suddenly, then shrieking with delight over the sight of a PS3.  The doll's laughter then morphs into that of a man's voice and the camera zooms in on the baby's face to show moving images flashing in its eyes while tears stream down its cheeks.  The tears then reverse course into the dolls eyes, while the PS3 floats above the ground and the doll utters "Ma-ma."

The ad does not provoke a reaction of "I should buy a PS3!" so much as it does "WTF was that?"  Sony's gotten a bit less obtuse in their PS3 advertising as time has gone on and that's probably just as well – you want your product to be associated with good feelings, not nightmares.