IS SONY RUNNING ANTI-WAR ADS? That’s what EuroGamer reports. They’ve got a link to the (rather lame) ad, which you can see directly here.
UPDATE: A reader emails:
Preface here, I’m in the industry.
Honestly, I don’t know but I find it hard to believe that’s a real Sony ad. First, it’s shoddily produced. Second no fat logo with tag line. And the biggie, it’s political. Big companies always stay away from real controversy. (Companies often like trite controversy.)
Possible that it’s put out by a distributor. Let us know if you hear from Sony.
I will.
UPDATE: Here’s someone else who thinks it’s a fake, though also based only on supposition.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Aaron Watson writes:
Another consideration: if the ad is faked, it could be someone at or connected to EuroGamer with an agenda, trying to further popularize the antiwar movement by getting a media source to report a falsehood like that.
Hmm. Well, being of the essence of political correctness myself, I guess I shouldn’t mind being used that way. . . .
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Michael Gebert writes:
As someone in the ad biz I can tell you that the boom in PC moviemaking has resulted in lots of fake ads using real product names. Some are done by creatives or production companies that want to show off what they could do on a real assignment, some are just parodies or amateurs screwing around. Lots of things about this spot, such as the deeply unfashionable font used for “No war, please” and the bad kerning (space between letters), suggest that it belongs to the “amateur-screwing-around” category.
Hmm. I took its general lameness as evidence of authenticity — most Euro-commercials seem that way to me.