Walk on the west side

Sony Walkman gangs up on rivals

What?: Sony have created a new gangland world as part of its drive for the new video-enabled NW-A800 Walkman. Feeleverysound.com sees ‘eyes’ and ‘ears’ go head to head in battle in a West Side Story concept for sound and vision. Sony envisages this latest phase in their ‘feel’ promotion as their frontline attack on Apple, referring recently to the new product as “a Nano with futuristic video”. The video campaign will initially be rolled out in cinemas across the Asia Pacific region and is expected to move to other markets, such as Europe in the near future.

So what?: You get a distinct feeling of deja vu when watching the video for this campaign. Being kind you could say that is because Sony are mining – and quite late off the mark here – the Baz Luhrmann style of Shakespeare or parodying West Side Story. However a quick visit to YouTube to watch the Levis Midsummer Night’s Dream video campaign from 2005 shows it may just be a direct rip off from there – right down to the same stand off at a street corner.

A battle between sight and sound is a good concept, but hardly ground breaking. Plus the website doesn’t live up to the production expectation of the video with some very amateur looking illustrations and a clunky and unwieldy feel. Hardly befitting the product.

Overall there is an underlying cheapness of approach here that doesn’t sit well with putting Walkman back in line with the iPod.

www.feeleverysound.com

www.youtube.com