Busted, nailed, snagged: Sony admits to viral blog

Posted Dec 13, 2006 at 5:42PM by QJ Staff Listed in: News, Off Topic Tags: Sony, YouTube, Zipatoni

If the denizens of the internet booing at them wasn't enough, the Federal Trade Commission telling viral marketers to fess up probably grabbed their attention. Checking the Zipatoni PSP viral blog, we find a confession and apology (of sorts) from Sony about their doings.

The apology on the "alliwantforxmasisapsp" blog states simply,

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 Computer Entertainment America

It's a small triumph for consumers who don't want to end up duped and coerced to buy something. It's also a large triumph for the internet sleuths who uncovered this and let the nets know about it. Best of all, we now get to keep a YouTube video of some guy rapping and dancing for the highlight reels at the end of the year. We wonder if this is going to be a second Three Speech blog for them now, though.

Let's just hope Sony's a whole lot more forthcoming about these kinds of things in the future. We don't want to have to go through this again next December, do we?

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Comments

# haaha — Guest 2006-12-13 12:45

BUSTED!

# keedier — Guest 2006-12-13 12:45

*****ing sony!! just get all the psp user happy and enable homebrew! shesssh!

# proof? — Guest 2006-12-13 13:36

proof?

# Exposed! Sony's deceptive marketing tactics backfire... — Guest 2006-12-13 13:45

This and more tonight on PSPnews Hour.

Seriously though this is retarded attempt at shilling your own device.

In other words, you just suck Sony. This is totally dishonorable to your name, and you were already on thin ice with those completely crappy advertisements. Fire your marketing department if you're smart.

# Who cares... — GaveUpTomorrow 2006-12-13 13:53

I don't see the big deal. If someone actually saw that and then went out and bought a PSP, I'd be very surprised. It really wasn't an ad really, it was a poor attempt to do nothing really. Who cares if they made it or not though...its not hurting anybody to know or not know that Sony made it.

# Yummmmm... — Guest 2006-12-13 14:15

I like carrot cake.

# moral of the story — Guest 2006-12-13 14:27

Companies pay people to do horribly stupid things to sell products. =(

On the upside.

People get paid to do horribly stupid things to sell products. =D

# Even better — Guest 2006-12-13 14:29

The upside to your upside: they make videos. :)

# A$$ — Guest 2006-12-13 14:31

This was Sony strategy to get people to buy the PSP for christmas.

Anyway it failed big time.

# And no one cares — Guest 2006-12-13 14:36

Even after this no one seems to care about that blog.That show us how much Sony failed this time.They only didnt get to make the blog believeable but they also failed at making publicity to the PSP.

Just do what nintendo do,invade all the channels like mtv and cartoon network with ads about loco roco and killzone but good ones,that works for nintendo they get to make a crappy game like Brain age to be a best seller.

# videos? — CSFFlame 2006-12-13 14:47

You say that like it's a good thing +/

# vandalized :'( — Guest 2006-12-13 14:54

:'( Y SONY!?! :'( WHY!?! :'(

# ALL I WANT FOR XMAS IS A... — RaiderX 2006-12-13 14:58

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiii!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

# umm — Guest 2006-12-13 15:16

refresh my memory what happened

# . — Guest 2006-12-13 15:23

You are a *****ing retard. This is old news. There is TONS of proof.

# sony... — Guest 2006-12-13 18:33

I knew it!

now if we can only get them to fess up about spamming wii.qj.net

# the girl whose second form the left has got it — Guest 2006-12-13 19:48

http://myspace-793.vo.llnwd.net/01326/39/76/1326006793_l.jpg

# Hi! — Guest 2006-12-13 23:09

The video has been removed from YouTube. Oh nos! I was needing a good laugh this morning.

# exactly — Guest 2006-12-14 00:39

People are acting like this is the first time someone got paid to endorse a product that they may or may not actually use themselves. This is no different than most of the commercials you see on TV except for being more lame and craptastic. So what if they didn't come out with a big disclaimer saying "THIS AD PAID FOR BY SCEA." It should have been pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain...

# yes Sony sucks — Guest 2006-12-14 02:34

It´s not like any other company has ever done this, much less Microsoft

# Here is a backup of the original page — Guest 2006-12-14 10:16

Enjoy.

http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/sonylieblog/default.aspx.htm

This was made before they deleted all the comments, and removed the video.

# re — Guest 2006-12-14 20:14

http://boards.ign.com/psp_lobby/b7205/132956778/p1/?32

"sony is begging people to buy the psp"

# your mom is viral — Guest 2006-12-19 07:40

Companies are in the business of selling their damned products. Most of the people who are on these forums *****ing about some crappy attempt at advertising 1) already own a f*cking psp so the ad doesn't even pertain to you and B) anyone with an ounce of sense can tell right away its merely a crappy advertisement so I don't see what the point of saying "AAAH BUSTED SONY YOU SUCK!" grow the fuc# up and get over it. Yeah really *****ty advertisements, but seriously who the hell cares, do you guys actually commit to buying something because of an ad? And do you really think people are that commited to hating and ad they'd be like "Ugh maybe I DON'T want my psp." The psp isn't failing cause of crappy stupid abortions of commercials, it's sucking cause the majority of the games are *****tier than 3do games, and sony is trying to sell a fu%king video game system, a theater, an ipod, a computer, and a time machine all wrapped up in one little machine that fits in your hand. Ah bollocks. Just quit *****ing or ***** some more that's what the internet is for anyways. ^_^

# Gold! — Ray2Jerry 2006-12-19 19:49

I just have to say that this is absolutely hilarious! You see what happens when you cross greedy advertisers with the net generation? You get an army of people too resourceful to simply swallow what's forced down their throats.

The whole thing wreaked from the start and I'm actually surprised $ony decided to fess up. I think it was more a fear of what the crackdown on viral marketing could mean for an already battered company and less than feelings of guilt for insulting our intelligence and consumer saavy.

I found the whole thing to be very insulting to those more intelligent than to believe those chumps were for real. I was even embarassed to take my PSP out in public after seeing it.

And to the last post, it wasn't so much the pathetic marketing tactic they used that people are upset about but the fact they thought we'd actually all buy into such obvious lameness.

rAy

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