Mangled bodies, pierced and tattooed newborns, panty sniffers and twisted mutations — this is how advertising agency TBWA sold the PlayStation 2 in France.
Warning — NSFW images coming up.
PlayStation marketing has always been pretty strange — David Lynch created a PlayStation 2 ad, after all — but the Paris branch of TBWA took strange to an entirely twisted new level. I'd almost put these out of my mind, but then Redditor seeyoshirun had to go and dig them back up again. Now everyone has to suffer.
Some of our non-French readers will recognize some of these images. Several of the tamer pieces made it out of the country, slipping into magazines and such. This one, for instance. It's creepy, but not to the point of being disturbing.
Then things got a little bit sexual. At first it was mildly humorous.
Then it got pretty creepy.
And then this happened.
That is not right. That is not right at all. That's the sort of thing that leads to dismembered debauchery.
Which, naturally, leads to situations like this:
Or maybe this:
It's best just to keep yourself from getting overly excited.
Keep your clothes on.
Practice safe sex.
It's the only way to save face.
And earn the respect of your peers.
Or just do whatever. It's no skin off my back.
The advertising strategy here was to either burn the PlayStation 2 into consumers' minds until it haunted their nightmares, or to sells millions of consoles just to make it all stop.
It never, ever stops.