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EDITORIAL: Fire This One

Posted on: Tuesday, 3 January 2006, 12:00 CST

By The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Jan. 3--Apparently, the marketers at Sony Corp. aren't big fans of The Apprentice reality series.

They could have spared themselves a snafu if they'd watched a Feb. 24 episode that featured one of their products. Contestants vying to become mega-mogul Donald Trump's apprentice were tasked with designing murals painted on buildings in Harlem to advertise Sony's Gran Turismo 4 PlayStation 2 video game.

The team led by New Jersey native Tara Dowdell lost, and she was fired by The Donald, after a focus group of Harlem residents complained that their hip-hop-inspired mural stereotyped inner-city life.

Just 10 months later, Philadelphia residents were the ones complaining about a Sony outdoor ad campaign in North Philly. Instead of colorful murals, the company was mimicking graffiti by plastering caricatures of wide-eyed street kids using PlayStation Portables on buildings in the neighborhood.

The Sony name was nowhere on the faux graffiti ads stenciled onto buildings. But any child who watches TV commercials knew what he was looking at, and who sells the expensive toy. Which means the walls with images of the Sony product were billboards, plain and simple, and should have been treated as such.

The city was right to order the ads removed, since Sony never got billboard permits from the Licensing and Inspection Department. The Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight (SCRUB) rightly called it "arrogant" and "disrepectful" to circumvent the city's billboard law in poorer neighborhoods.

SCRUB, along with other groups and individuals, has been working hard to reduce the plague of often sexually suggestive outdoor signs advertising cigarettes and liquor near schools, libraries and other places where children can see them.

It's a challenge to keep up with illegally placed billboards and have them removed. Sony shouldn't be given a pass. With Philadelphia's billboard blight, that message would be almost as bad as encouraging children to smoke and drink.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

NYSE:SNE,

Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

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