How the PSP Marketing Went Off the Rails

The Strange, Cringey, and Controversial World of PSP Ads

The pitch meeting started like any other. A Sony executive leaned back in his chair while a creative director from the agency queued up the reel. “This one’s got real viral potential,” he said, clicking play. The screen lit up with two crudely drawn squirrels sitting on a branch. One held up an acorn and shouted, “It’s like a nut you can play with outside!” The room chuckled. No one asked why the squirrel was doing a “Black voice” filtered through a marketing team's idea of what’s relatable.

Then came the dustballs. Grungy, animated clumps of lint lounged under a couch and spoke in thick, cartoonish voices meant to evoke Latino stereotypes.

No one stopped to question what audiences might actually take from the campaign. No one paused long enough to consider how cartoon characters mimicking exaggerated racial tropes might play in the wild. Sony greenlit the ads.

To be fair, this kind of ad was not totally out of place in the early 2000s. MTV was setting the tone, and edgy, loud, chaotic humor was everywhere, from snack commercials to late-night animation. It is understandable how a team could get swept up trying to ride that wave.

But this was not just an isolated misfire.

Anyone can run a bad campaign. What made the PSP’s marketing stand out was how consistently off the mark it was across formats, countries, and years.

One of the PSP’s accidental legacies is just how bad its marketing was. It was so bad that you probably do not even know the half of it.