Sony, in conjunction with Fallon London agency, have been creating quirky and creative ads as part of their “like.no.other” campaign for the past few years. From 250,000 bouncy balls overrunning a major city to a giant Play-Doh whale-tail transforming rabbit, Sony has proven to be successful in properly promoting its punctuation-laden slogan.
2005 - Danish director, Nicolai Fuglsig, released 250,000 multi-colored “superballs” from cranes and sent them bouncing through the streets of San Francisco set to “Heartbeats” as performed by José González. The impressive commercial, using no computer-generated graphics, was used to first introduce the Sony BRAVIA LCD TV line.
Behind-the-Scenes footage:
2006 - In the style of an orchestrated firework show, 70,000 liters of paint were used to liven up ‘Queen’s Court’ in Glasgow’s Toryglen estate with the help of bottle bombs, 455 mortars, 1700 detonators, and all while set to Rossini’s ‘Thieving Magpie’. The clean-up efforts took 60 people over the course of five days to get rid of the non-toxic water-based paint.
Behind-the-Scenes footage:
2007 -The third TV commercial for BRAVIA, filmed in downtown NYC, utilized unheard-of claymation efforts that spanned over 3 weeks by a team of 40 animators to create 100,000 stills from 2.5 tons of Play-Doh. The 60-second eye-catching commercial was a daunting task since it had to be choreographed in the middle of New Yorkers carrying on with their daily lives.
Behind-the-Scenes footage:
2008 - Not quite living up to its predecessors, the newest ad promoting Sony’s digital imaging products sends frothy foam spewing through Miami. A crew of 150 used the World’s biggest foam machine, capable of filling an Olympic-sized swimming pool in 24 seconds, to churn out 500,000 gallons of foam per minute. The ad, which first aired online on April 14, was set to a musical score that was custom-composed by Warren Ellis, of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Over 200 Miami residents were asked to foam free-for-all while capturing their moment on Sony Cyber-Shot cameras which will then be uploaded to a database.
I can’t say that this ad does anything for me, though. Besides, there’s something about the mixture of a crap load of foam and electronics that just doesn’t sit quite right with me. Actually, it’s just the fact that I didn’t get to be Captain Foam (see 0:49 seconds).
Behing-the-Scenes footage:
April 17th, 2008 at 12:42 am
Just ridiculous amounts of creativity went into these things. If only I knew as a kid what I now know about play-doh and its many uses, I probably wouldn’t have eaten as much of it as I did.
April 17th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I like that video! I’m just thinking bout the major super ball cleanup lol and also how many balls were still in folks cars or yards lol.
April 17th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Perzephone, I saw your original comment about the videos not showing up. Are they up? I just want to make sure.
April 21st, 2008 at 7:39 am
They are :\ my browser wasn’t working here at work for like a few minutes causing it to look like broken links. They work ^_^ and I watched them all and I love the bouncy ball and the paint fireworks