Sony has no balls

So, the new Sony ad came out this week and I’m just going to come out and say it…”Meh.” It’s not that great. I enjoyed the teaser previews more than the actual spot, which is a major problem. Now a lot of people are going to jump on me and say things like, “But all the planning and orchestration and blah, blah, blah.” That’s great. I respect that. And don’t get me wrong, it’s cool and all. In fact, if I weren’t comparing it to the original commercial I would probably be raving about it. But they chose to do a “sequel”, no one made them. This new spot is missing the random, unpredictable beauty that was in the original balls commercial. This one, in my humble opinion, just comes across as mechanical and, dare I say it, boring. Then again I could be wrong…I usually am. The YouTube version follows, click here to see the much better quality version on the Sony site.

Tasteless advertising

This is Nate. He is my roommate. One of three, actually. Many of you know him, many do not.

Nate and I both interned at the same advertising agency this summer. Nate was at the New York office and I was in Chicago. Being at the same company meant we should have been exposed to similar climates and similar experiences. And for the most part we were. We both got wake up calls.

Every day we both had to wade through a sea of crap. I’m not saying that no good people or good work are at either of our offices, quite to the contrary. However, the size, clients, structure and history of our agency tended to result in a lot of garbage. A lot of it. And once in a while some non-garbage.

I think we both had some sort of idea that there was going to be some crap-factory action going on, but actually being a part of it and experiencing it had different effects on both of us. Nate now believes that there is merit in mediocre ads. Or at least it seems so. He and I continually find ourselves simultaneously saying “This is good” and “This is shit,” he the former and I the latter.

So it makes me ask, who’s right? Am I being too pretentious? Should I try to see the value in a simple ad that makes its point, albeit in a not-so-creative way? I don’t know. But I do think if I don’t hold all work to a high level, then I’ll start accepting mediocrity for myself. But that opens a whole ‘nother bag of questions, namely: who said my work is any better?