Decapitated Goat - Sick Sony Press Stunt
I’m a little late on reporting this, buy I just found out that Sony recently ran a promotional stunt/event in celebration of the recent release of ‘God Of War II’ for PS2. I think it’s great that moer money is being ploughed into the games industry, sure, but when companies use decapited animals and their guts for shameless marketing purposes? Unacceptable. Sony originally printed the photos of the event in their latest ‘PlayStation Official Magazine’, but after being contacted by the Daily-Mail, quickly stopped printing of the issue and pulled the coverage.
The way I see it, this isn’t a mistake that can be made by such a large company. What where they thinking? Party guests were reported to have ‘been invited’ to pull out the goats guts, for goodness sake! What kind of ethics do Sony employ now-a-days? Isn’t there some kind of basic training? The whole promotional team needs a fish-slap and a shakeup, if you ask me. Clearly the very same marketing team thinks racism is also acceptable. I’ve done alot of ranting lately. ‘Sony. The law. Sony. Censorship. Sony.’ - But this time, I feel they’ve gone too far.
The double-page magazine spread was titled “Sony’s Greek Orgy”. I’ve managed to include a ‘pixellated shot’ of the article along with this post, in order to avoid the ’sight of the goat’s decapitated head hanging by a thread of tissue from its corpse, with blood dripping to the floor’. Sounds nice… 
In the magazine however, readers were shown the horror uncensored, blood, guts, ‘n’ all. The article which was intended to be a follow up to a previously published Sony Press release, shows different shots of the event (all as horrific as the next), accompanied by headlines such as ‘Topless Girls!, ‘Flesh Eating?’ and further, disturbing details embedded within the text. The magazine asked readers how far they’d go to get their hands on a PlayStation 3.
“How about eating still warm intestines uncoiled from the carcass of a freshly slaughtered goat? At the party to celebrate God Of War II’s European release, members of the Press were invited to do just that . . .”
I’ve been left shocked. Is it Sony who’ve gone too far? They have the cheek to ask their readers how far they’ll go for the console, so we’ll fire the question right back at ‘em. How far will Sony go, to sell their products?
April 30th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
wow. decapitated goat…
April 30th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
oh and thanks for censoring! (if it was you)
April 30th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
The Daily Mail did it for me.
See the embedded link for more information…
May 1st, 2007 at 5:08 am
Oh my … David!! We’re having an “animal week”
Plastic ducks, donkeys, camels, and now goats! Let’s not forget the monkey in me
Quite a nice zoo
Beautiful article, as usual. (Geez I’m a poet, it actually rhymes ..)
May 1st, 2007 at 4:49 pm
And Devin is right! What a coincidence!
May 1st, 2007 at 12:56 pm
It’s obvious either somebody’s brain was on vacation, or there’s a business director over at Sony with a sick sense of humour. Good grief, this is Sony we’re talking about!
It seems to me this is a symptom of Sony’s gradual slide out of the top technology corporations in the world. They’re getting desperate, and thus we see this: a gross example of a major marketing risk.
May 2nd, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Oh ew. =X
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:55 am
Ewe indeed.
Roland tells me that’s a sheep as opposed to a goat, however… What the heck.
May 4th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Damn I wanted to say that he he
May 15th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
I’ve seen something like this before, but it was at a butcher’s…
And look at that girl covered in blood!
July 30th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
[…] A picture says one-thousands words, and unfortunately for Intel, in this case, nothing could be truer. On par with the other major advertising disgraces this year so far, Intel seems hell-bent on outdoing Sony’s public slaughtering of a goat, by creating an advert with a single gekky dork, wearing khaki pants, surrounded by 6 (bowing?) black athletes. Call me stupid, but that just might be racist. Companies are given the right to freely advertise in the knowledge they’ll play nice and not dirty. Intel - you broke the rules. Say sorry, apologize to the community, and send me a DiNovo Edge make sure this never happens again. […]
September 11th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
[…] When Sony BMG and Universal put their heads together - you’re never sure what to expect. A new, decisive decision to stamp out music piracy once and for all? (Again?) Maybe even an out of order goat decapitation. Whatever the case, you can be sure something’s going down, and it aint’ gonna be pretty. I didn’t wanna be the one to break the news, but it seems the idea of stuffing bonus content onto a CD is apparently ‘new news’ to the marketing folks at Sony. Whilst iTunes continues to eat away at music (and now ringtone) market share, the record labels are running around frantically, trying to come up with new ways to revive their beloved CD. […]