It's been really sad seeing the decline of Sony the past year. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, from racist ads, hundreds of thousands of recalls, a horrible PS3 launch, offensive slogans, spraypainting PSP ads and putting spyware on their CDs, they take it up another notch. A site supposedly dedicated to getting a kid a PSP for Christmas has turned out to be an elaborate hoax put together by Sony and one of their advertising partners. Once the fraud was discovered, the site was taken down in a matter of hours and replaced with a short statement from the company behind it:
"Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn't a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP."
Sony's remarks were only that it was a site intended for humor, as if using satire could help them move more units. While the PSP is just a small bit of Sony's empire, advertising is something that encompasses everything. You'd think a company so large would be able to hire ad agencies that aren't so... distasteful. Who, exactly, is leading Sony, and where are they being led to?