FEATURES: Look, listen, learn: the secret to successful ads for Sony Playstation

Tapping into the lifestyles of consumer is the crux of Playstation's advertising and branding tactics in both local and overseas markets - and Sony Computer Entertainment is taking on a humanised approach in its advertising campaigns. Since the launch of Sony's Playstation in 1995, Hakuhodo Inc executive creative director Yoshihiko Kurosu has been responsible for building up the Playstation brand from scratch to what is now among the world's best-known video game makers. Nearly all of Playstation's advertising campaigns were created by Mr Kurosu, and the video game marketer releases about 60 TVCs annually. His creative strategy is simple: tie Playstation into the daily lives of consumers, rather than focus on the game itself. "It's not just about the game's world, but the feeling and involvement of the users playing the games," said Mr Kurosu. Playstation's game characters were imposed into real life situations as a way to underline the fun aspects of the game; as Mr Kurosu said the commercials aim to spotlight the enjoyment factor of the games. For instance, one tactical campaign for a dice computer game featured a real office environment in which people imagined tables rolling like dice as a way to cheer up the atmosphere. Listening, observing and absorbing everyday events and interaction between people was key to the campaign and to ensure that consumers could relate to the ads, which nonetheless adopt a uniform approach in terms of logo placement at the start and end of all commercials. This was designed to raise brand awareness among the audience, who could thus immediately associate the commercials with the Playstation brand. In addition to thematic campaigns, tactical spots promote sales and public service announcements encourage Playstation users to retain a sense of perspective - for example, to not spend all their pocket money on Playstation games, and to do their homework first. Targeting game players of all ages, Playstation's advertising campaigns aim to communicate Sony's quality brand value and the games' close ties with human life. The launch of Playstation 2 in March evoked high level of publicity in Japan, becoming the talk of the town and pushing sales to all-time highs. This in itself created a challenge for Mr Kurosu: how do you create a new campaign for a product which has already generated a huge amount of publicity simply by its very existence? Overwhelming noise levels and public enthusiasm about the new product thus required a new advertising concept to break through the publicity clutter - so instead of fighting the noise, Mr Kurosu simply went the other way and created a low-profile campaign which capitalised on the growing anticipation of the launch of Playstation 2. Twenty TVCs rolled out over an eight-day period, profiling everyone from young consumers to shop owners waiting for the release of the game. The "unplugged" execution had the desired effect - there was no background music, no aggressive or excessive editing - and closely reflected the mood of the market by featuring conversations which echoed real-life situations.

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