After Sony lowered the price for its PlayStation Portable Media Player early this year, TBWAChiatDay, Los Angeles developed the “Get Your Own” campaign, which focused on a guy who doesn’t have a PSP and gets overly excited whenever he sees one. “It speaks about the mind set, when you have it and people see it, they get addicted to it and stare at the screen,” said Nick Davidge, a creative director at the agency.
The campaign’s first iteration took place on an airplane and the second, which launches next week, is set in a shopping mall, where three spots were shot, including one on an escalator that plays online. After the gameboy riding down the escalator sees a guy with a PSP riding up, he tries to walk up and badgers the guy about how great the PSP is. When the guy tells him he can’t use it, the gameboy ascends down the escalator and the “Dude, get your own” tag line plays.
The escalator spot works well online, because three different versions of it were created for three online placements. A 15-second spot runs as a pre-roll; a :30 runs as a banner that’s initiated by a user; and a :42 runs on the PSP website and YouTube and as banners on sites that allow long-form spots. “It works in different time slots and the gag changes where you can cut it,” Davidge said.
Director Sam Cadman, from Tool of North America/Santa Monica, Calif., said the location and the casting were two keys for the spot. It was shot in the Del Amo Shopping Center in Torrance, Calif., where Quentin Tarantino shot Jackie Brown. “So we were on hallowed ground,” he said.
The spot stars B.J. Bales, who appeared in the first campaign as the gameboy. “He’s a funny, spontaneous actor who brought the part to life,” Cadman related. “He was able to play the part even though he got beaten up, running against the flow of the escalator after throwing himself at the elevator doors for the TV spot.”
He runs into a fat guy on his way up the escalator. “We wanted him to barrel past other members of the public and we thought it would be funny if there was a really big guy,” Cadman said. “He’s taken out of the frame when he crashes into the guy with the enormous chest. But it felt natural and easy, because B.J.’s a star and he got it quickly.”
After B.J. gets rejected, he’s near the top of the escalator and begins riding down. “We wanted to make the situation visually funny, so it was best that he was going up at the end so when he gets left behind, he’s going down into the gloomy depths,” Cadman said.
The spot was shot in 35mm by a cameraman carrying a heavy camera with a rig attachment. “It required agility as he was facing backwards and had to step off without falling over,” Cadman said. “He’s standing in front of the PlayStation player who’s going up the escalator with his back to the direction he’s going in, and then he has to step back off the escalator.” It sounds almost as funny as the gameboy scene, but it’s not part of the spot.
Davidge said the spot will play on www.us.playstation.com, MySpace, GrindTV, Heavy, MTV and game sites, including IGN, Gamespot and Cravegames.
Growth Brings Growing Pains–and Bots–To Bluesky
Bluesky has seen its user base soar since the U.S. presidential election, boosted by people seeking refuge from Elon Musk's X, which they view as increasingly leaning too far to the right given its owner's support of President-elect Donald Trump, or wanting an alternative to Meta's Threads and its algorithms.
The platform grew out of the company then known as Twitter, championed by its former CEO Jack Dorsey. Its decentralized approach to social networking was eventually intended to replace Twitter's core mechanic. That's unlikely now that the two companies have parted ways. But Bluesky's growth trajectory — with a user base that has more than doubled since October — could make it a serious competitor to other social platforms.
But with growth comes growing pains. It's not just human users who've been flocking to Bluesky but also bots, including those designed to create partisan division or direct users to junk websites.
The skyrocketing user base — now surpassing 25 million — is the biggest test yet for a relatively young platform that has branded itself as a social media alternative free of the problems plaguing its competitors. According to research firm Similarweb, Bluesky added 7.6 million monthly active app users on iOS and Android in November, an increase of 295.4% since October. It also saw 56.2 million desktop and mobile web visits, in the same period, up 189% from October.
Besides the U.S. elections, Bluesky also got a boost when X was briefly banned in Brazil.
"They got this spike in attention, they've crossed the threshold where it is now worth it for people to flood the platform with spam," said Laura Edelson, an assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University and a member of Issue One's... Read More