Sony Corp. said on Tuesday it has pulled a Dutch billboard advertising campaign
for the new white version of its PlayStation Portable video game player
and apologized to anyone offended by ad, which critics dubbed racist.
A billboard ad in the campaign -- which Sony said was launched in
the first week of June and created locally and exclusively for the
Dutch market -- portrayed a white woman aggressively grabbing the face
of a black woman and read "PlayStation Portable White is Coming."
Sony said in a statement that the Netherlands campaign intended
to highlight the color contrast between the existing black PSP and the
new ceramic white PSP.
"We recognize that the subject matter of one specific image may
have caused concern in some countries not directly affected by the
advertising. As a result, we have now withdrawn the campaign," said the
company, which also apologized to those offended by the ad.
"I am pleased to see Sony taking responsibility for their
racially charged ad and appropriately pulling it from the marketplace,"
said California Assemblyman Leland Yee who, along with the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a youth
civil rights education project called Sojourn to the Past, had
condemned Sony's use of the ad.
Yee is a critic of violent video games and has spearheaded
legislation aimed at keeping excessively violent and sexually explicit
games out of the hands of minors.
Late last year, Sony sparked controversy in the United States
with spray-painted PSP ads that looked like urban graffiti. The stealth
campaign featured dazed-looking kids doing a variety of things with
their PSPs, from riding them like skateboards to licking them like
lollipops.
July 11, 2006
Source:
Reuters