#ad breakdown

Scale and proportion in ads

Contemporary ads have begun to take on a new form. No longer are ads bound into representing the product they are trying to sell. Modern ads have begun to stray away from the representational. Ads do not try to sell you the product by showing you how shiny or good it is. Instead they show you how cool it makes you feel or makes you look. Ads sell experience, they do this by distorting reality, trying to show the audience the possibilities of the product no matter how out of reach they are. This  is the case with this Sony PS2 ad. This ad is trying to sell a product that is only mentioned in text on the small upper right corner of the image. The ad is not selling the product it is selling the experience of the product . 

Sony’s ad for the “experience of the PS2” creates these representations by messing around with the proportions of the scene. An entire Goldberg-esque factory mimicking the senses has been put inside a persons head. The ad to the eccentric nature of it all the factory is mad of tiny human parts such as a tongue being a conveyor belt or a heart being squeezed to create a furnace. This choice of proportion and creative rearrangement of the human body intrigues the viewer. It is exciting the viewer will then look for more answers in the ad only to find the PS2 logo. It is an effective marketing strategy as it will now cause the viewer to search for more answers, spreading the word that the PS2 is interesting. This effectiveness is only achieved because of the lack of informative text and the amount of neutral space the figure is give.

If the ad incorporated more informative text or even an exciting punchline about the PS2 the ad would be greatly diminished. The audience would be given to much information to be intrigued or would be turned off at a punchline and would know that the ad is trying to sell things to them. This ad needs its passive mysterious quality. It entertains the audience and interests them, it is not shoving its self down the  audiences throat. this problem would also arise if the image was more cluttered. The passive background allow full focus on the scene. It creates great emphasis as it is the only thing other than the PS2 logo to entertain the eye. This focus create a deeper intrigue of the image thus increasing curiosity between the logo and the image. 

The creativity in this ad proves that just by being intriguing and connecting that to your product makes for a successful ad.