It’s the season for marketing backlash!

We just passed the holiday devoted to the celebration of commercialism in this country, conveniently placed on a day when a carpenter many consider to be the Christ was born over 2,000 years ago. And, during the run up to this big ol’ commercialism holiday, there are plenty of ads. Too many to really attract everyone’s attention.

And so the ad wizards at big companies come up with these pseudo-underground campaigns that try to be all hip and edgy and, of course, fail. Sony recently launched a campaign for the PSP, the portable video game console, that uses graffiti art, like the image at left (which I took with my camera phone at Good Dog, I think).

Once the pseudo-underground campaign launches, there’s the oh-so-predictable backlash. It seems silly to me. It’s like when someone in the media makes fun of bloggers and every third person with a blog has to weigh in about how the media doesn’t respect this more pure form of “citizen journalism” and blah blah blah. (It’s no surprise that bloggers have been bashing this.) Who really cares if Sony is using an art form usually done by people just for fun to promote their product? If you really hate it, just ignore it. Or, you know, deface it. That’s kinda funny, at least.

Either way, the backlash has extended past the usual “corporation infringing on our counter-culture” argument. The Society Created To Reduce Urban Blight called the ads “very arrogant and very disrespectful.” And the city’s managing director accused Sony of encouraging graffiti. All well and good, I guess. But the real graffiti artists are only going to find Sony’s ads stupid at best. And anyone inspired to tag somewhere else by an ad for a PSP is, well — there’s not really much to be done with someone that receptive to messages.

So don’t worry. These stupid ads will disappear in a few weeks and we can all move back to complaining about more important things — namely, the Eagles.

Sony ads draw public ire [Inky]