Sony In the News Again

A Sony PSP ad promoting the new Ceramic White model of the system in the Netherlands is causing an international stir. Gaming Web sites and message boards have lit up with debate over the ad this week after a picture went up on digitalbattle.com, and now California Assemblyman Leland Yee and the San Jose/Silicon Valley chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) have made their feelings on the issue known.

The series of ads show a white woman in all white promoting the system in various ways. But it's one ad in particular that has several calling the campaign racist. In the controversial piece, the white woman is wearing a scowl on her face and holding a black woman in all black by the jaw, and reads "PlayStation Portable White is coming."

In a statement titled "Sony stoops to new low with racially charged ad," Yee said he was "deeply disappointed" in the publisher's decision to run the ad, which features a white woman holding a black woman by the jaw in a threatening manner. Sony has said the ad, one in a series that features the white woman promoting the system in a variety of ways, was designed to show the contrast between the colors of the new and old PSPs, and has "no other message or purpose."

"Whether in the US or abroad, using differences in skin color to articulate the fact that your video game console now comes in white can be interpreted as insensitive at best and racist at worst," Yee said.

Today, those who criticized the ad and condemned Sony for running it, commended the publisher. According to a statement from Yee, Sony has pulled the advertising campaign and apologized to anyone offended by it. "I am pleased to see Sony taking responsibility for their racially charged ad and appropriately pulling it from the marketplace," Yee said. "Sony did the right thing by recognizing their insensitive mistake and apologizing for offending many of their customers."

- A Sony representative confirmed that the ads had been pulled, and offered the following statement:

Whilst the images used in the campaign were intended solely to highlight the contrast between the different colors available for the PSP, we recognize that the subject matter of one specific image may have caused concern in some countries not directly affected by the advertising. As a result, we have now withdrawn the campaign.

We further recognize that people have a wide variety of perceptions about such imagery and we wish to apologize to those who perceived the advert differently to that intended. In future, we will apply greater sensitivity in our selection of campaign imagery, and will take due account of the increasingly global reach of such local adverts, and their potential impact in other countries.

According to the Sony representative, the company had only received a single complaint about the ads from within the Netherlands.

Personally, I rather liked the campaign and thought it was a smart well put together campaign. Unfortunatly there are still folks who get super sensitive when it comes to issues of Black and White.