Sony Computer Entertainment America · 2002 · PlayStation 2
"Live in Your World. Play in Ours."
Sony stopped advertising a games console and started advertising a second reality — surreal, allegorical spots in which gameplay bleeds into ordinary life.
Built by TBWA\Chiat\Day LA and launched in autumn 2002, "Live in Your World. Play in Ours." was Sony Computer Entertainment America's first brand campaign dedicated to the PlayStation 2 since the console's 2000 debut, and it was deliberately not a games campaign. The multi-million-dollar effort ran across cinema, television, radio and the internet, comprising a 60-second cinema trailer and four 30-second television spots, and almost none of it showed anyone enjoying a video game in a living room. Instead the spots worked as allegories: visceral, surreal little films in which the logic of games leaks into everyday life and the boundary between reality and PlayStation dissolves. Each was structured around a fundamental human aspiration rather than a product feature, with elements of gameplay woven into mundane settings, and the tagline arrived at the end as the only explanation offered. The strategy was an explicit bid for the mass market — Sony was no longer competing for the attention of people who already knew they wanted a console, but selling the PlayStation brand as a cultural proposition to people who did not. It is widely regarded as one of the strongest advertising campaigns the industry has produced, and its confidence in not showing the product is the reason.