oh, sony, sony, sony.

[spatch]

They've changed the billboards and wall hangings in South Station this week so that instead of being inundated with ads for Apple's latest shiny frantabulous fintoozical electromechmusical inventicle, we're now inundated with ads for Sony's latest shiny frinktastic springtronic bookreadatron, which brags about how many books it can fit in its tiny, soulless, inorganic plastic body with no pages to turn.

There's several things silly and wrong with this ad campaign, not the least of which is the fact that the ads show this mystacular bookreadatron sitting next to a stack of now-obviously-obsolete paper versions of the classics: there's Melville, there's Dickens, there's Crichton (one of these things is not like the other!) and on the bookreadatron? The first page to the second chapter of The DaVinci Code.

I'm not trying to snark on Mr. Brown's work, as I have already done that to great effect two years ago, but the bottom of the page, which you can see quite prominently on the ads positioned higher up and the one on the stairstep display, features the thoughts of everybody's self-flagellating albino in big italicized text. These thoughts run along the lines of something like "Truly the Lord has given me shelter and a purpose in life."

Sure, it's an appropriate quote given the context of the book, but I wonder if Sony realizes the heapin' helping of billboardy preachin' they've just given South Station. I mean, if you were to just glance at that part without taking in the whole, you may think that someone's tryin' to proselytize ya there.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Sony knows full well the message it sends with one of the ad's taglines:

"Sexier than a librarian."

Oh, Sony, Sony, Sony. How wrong you are on so many counts, and you have no idea how many (deservedly!) indignant blog posts you've just provoked or shall soon provoke.










And I sure hope mine's one of the first! Whoopee!

Comments

[bostonista.livejournal.com]

Too bad that eBook is such a piece of crap. It looks and handles like something you'd get in a cereal box.

[spatch]

Perhaps we should suggest to Sony that they change the tagline to "Sexier than a cereal box prize."

[ron_newman]

Can you work that into a commercial at the next PMRP show?

[ron_newman]

and it looks like you are the first. "Sexier than a librarian" doesn't yet turn up much at Google, besides a few flickr photos of the ad in question.

[mangosteen]

Sony shows up with said contraption at the Maker Faire in San Mateo.

Poor bastards.

I hope they were able to account for all their limbs on the way out, including the ones that had likely been turned into a fine pink mist by the SARCASMO-BEAMS OF A THOUSAND MILITANT GEEKS.

It was almost enough to make me feel sorry for them.

Almost.

[tikva.livejournal.com]

Y'know, when blind people use electronic books, no one tells us we're sexier than librarians. And not just because nothing's sexier than librarians.

[dimloep-suum.livejournal.com]

"'Sexier than a librarian.'"

Does not compute.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

+1

[prog.livejournal.com]

The thing is I really don't know whether the tone is meant to be "This so sexy it is even sexier than a librarian!" or "eeenh, using this is sexier than having to deal with a librarian anyway."

[ron_newman]

And that ambiguity is likely deliberate.

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

I read it as the first without a second thought until I read derspatchel's commentary after it. :(

[spatch]

Well, that tagline is one out of several strewn about the station, and all the taglines have that dry, oh-so-hip advertising feel to them. If Sony had intended the first meaning Prog mentioned, the tagline should have started with "Even..." Otherwise, given the other tags, it automatically sounds snide.

[madfilkentist]

I work for a library (though I'm not a librarian), so I assumed the first. :)

[kathryneruho.livejournal.com]

That being said, I'm not sure how to address this, so I'm sort of meta-addressing it, if you get my meaning.

[ketzie.livejournal.com]

They're all over Logan too.

[quodlibetic.livejournal.com]

[arches an eyebrow]

[gwynethfar.livejournal.com]

ARGH! Of course The DaVinci Code is the greatest piece of literature, ever! Why bother reading Melville or Dickens when you can read an ill-conceived piece of crap that is half poorly disguised plagiarism, half second grade book report? Plus, ZOMG, everyone is reading it!

I effing hate everything about those e-Readers. Books are better, I don't care why they're inconvenient to carry around or give you papercuts or crap like that. They're just better.

Second, librarians ARE sexy. They know everything about the Dewey decimal system, and they always appear to be powder kegs of repressed sexual energy, even if they're like, seventy-three and have an osteo hump.

Sony has just angered me to the point of lunatic ranting.

[spatch]

Books are organic. Books are good. Books smell good when they're newly printed, and they smell good when they're old. Books have pages to turn. You can annotate your books, write in the margins, underline passages you like, sign your name on the inside front cover, or write a special message for a special recipient. You can love a book, dog-ear it, round its hardcover edges.

Can't do that with an e-reader at all.

(and one of the reasons why I was proud of my DaVinci Code parody was that the book itself was just so easy to get spot-on. and I enjoyed writing "Thanks for reading! Your flight's almost over.")

[ron_newman]

When I worked at BBN, we had a librarian named Marian, and when I worked at Lotus, we had a librarian named Mary Ann. I wonder what it was like to go through life with those names.