Our Life as A Design Student

For this assignment, we are ask to pick an advertisement that we are most dissatisfied with given reasons and how it is related to the culture and society. We are required to do a research on a specific advertistment that we had selected. Thus, we had picked an advertistment about the new Play Station Portable White. In this rationale, it contain a brief description of the advertistment that we had chosen and it's purpose. In addition, we will be stating its relation to the culture and society it was made for and how different and effective is our idea in relation to culture and consumerism.

This controversial ad from Sony promoting the new white PSP was done by an advertising agency called TBWA where the agency are specialize in "disruptive" marketing. A quote taken from the company's website.

"Disruption is the art of asking better questions, challenging conventional wisdom and overturning assumptions and prejudices that get in the way of imagining new possibilities and visionary ideas." TBWA 2012 (online)

The purpose of this advertistment is to promote the new Play Station Portable White. In this advertistment, a black and a white girl were used to represent the white and black Play Station Portable. Besides, this advertistment was used to show the emphasis of the new Play Station Portable colour which is white.

The definition of “Racial Discrimination” is discriminatory or abusive behavior towards members of another race. This is related to the culture and society because people this days are conservative towards racial discrimination as it's a sensitive subject to be used as promotional purposes. Racial discrimination is a very sensitive issue in the western culture.

This advertistment need a change because the racial discrimination issue is clearly shown in this advertistment and it might cause an uproar between the two races shown in the advertistment. It's irrelevant to promote a gaming product using interracial models posing in a rough manner as it gives people the thought of violence between the two different

race.

Our idea is effective and different in a way that we improvise the billboard advertistment into an a press advertisement with a whole new art direction where it is related to the target audience. Our target audience are gamers between the age of 13 to 17 years who are interested in up-to-date gaming consoles. Adolescents around that age these days are oblivious towards racial discrimination. Thus, is a bad example for the younger generations. Our direct packaging served the purpose of promoting the new product which is the Play Station Portable white in a more appropriate way.

We were given an assignment for our Culture and Consumerism class and it is a group project. Our group members are Melissa Teh, Michelle Yu, Veronica Tey and Chee Kar Man. For this project, we were asked to find choose and advertisitment that we are most dissatified with. So, after a few discussion among our group members, we decided to choose the advertistment on the new Play Station Portable White. The reason we choose this advertistment is because the racial discrimination issue is clearly shown in this advertisitment. Through the process of this assignment, we had gain lots of useful knowledge on how to produce a good advertistment. Besides, we had learnt about the importance of teamwork through this assignment. We also learnt how to manage our time better after doing this group project and we learnt about group cooperation which helps us to get to know each other better.

References

2012, definition, Racial Discrimination, (Online), Available at: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/racial+discrimination, 4^th December 2010, 11.00 am