Behind the Buzz - digital and interactive advertising and marketing

Sony Foam City Ad

by Rachel on April 13th, 2008

Update - it’s now live and embeddable at Sony.co.uk/images. Well, there’s embeddable code, but can’t get it to work here - they’re working on it!

It’s here finally. And if you’re interested in the music, it’s specially composed for the ad by Warren Ellis, of Nick Cave and Bad Seeds. He also did the music for the film The Assassination of Jesse James.

I got a sneak preview of the Sony Foam City Ad from Fallon, which gets released tomorrow. But I can’t show it you yet - I’ve had to promise not to release it until it goes live on the Sony site later. More on that later, but first let’s talk about the ad. You’ve seen the images, it’s all foam and bubbles and people playing in towers of fluff.

It opens on a pile of foam, constrained behind a material wall, which lets go and a tidal wave of white stuff engulfs you.

People play in the foam as it sweeps down a street, falls off a spiral car park ramp, they hide in a shop as the street gets overwhelmed. The foam gets picked up by the wind, blown into the sky. A child flinches as a mass hits him on the head, you see tops of heads in the sea of bubbles.

People run as another foam producer starts up, pores off the top of buildings. People play like and jump. Everyone is taking photos, stills and video. Those are the product shots, people using Sony Image equipment in the midst of the bubbles.

Finally, a last shot in the setting Miami sun, streets full of foam, the sky full of bubbles. Images Like No Other.

I liked the ad; there’s a sweetness and a joy that comes through - these people are really enjoying the opportunity to play in the world’s largest bubble bath. You can a lot of the images taken on the day over at Flickr, taken with the Sony cameras they are promoting. You can see that a lot more happened than made it into the 60 seconds of this film, that the foam got everywhere!

On this shoot, Sony have been working hard on outreach and getting people involved - look at the large number of people in the foam. They’ve still not got it right though, with some mistakes been made; offers of trips being withdrawn, I got offered an exclusive interview which never arrived. Putting an embargo on releasing the ad (which I wonder if it will hold?). Far better than they’ve done in the past but still only 75% I think. I’m looking forward to what they try next, because I think it can only get better.

Update - I got a post-post email about who has had early copies of the ad, which was 5 bloggers who could not make the shoot and an acknowledgement that they know embargoes rarely work. In this case, I think it will, as it’s with bloggers with whom they have a relationship. I’ll say it again, I think Sony have been making great strides in this area and they’ll get better.

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