Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

Challenge
Loved by teenage lad gamers and loathed by their mums, the PlayStation to many represents the epitome of an anti-social teenage pastime. Sony's past advertising campaign urging us all to join the 'third place' only accentuated the dark place that console gaming was. Sony's ambitions were to break this 'hardcore gaming' image and move gaming into a more mainstream environment - the brief to Harvard was to challenge the way PR had been done to date and bring a cohesive European strategy to the communications effort. Moving gaming out of the technology pages and into the lifestyle ones.

What we did
As new kids on the block to an existing, well functioning PR network, Harvard's needed to initiate campaigns that sit above the existing work being undertaken across Europe and look at the gaps that needed to be filled to ensure the 'making gaming mainstream' objective was realised. Our approach has been to build tailored European campaign kits that each local territory can take in its entirety and implement. These campaign kits range from feature sell in ideas; research led campaigns as well as more corporate orientated initiatives focused on building relationships with the key analysts that focus on home entertainment rather than simply gaming.

Outcomes
Whilst implementation of the campaigns is done by the local territories, the feedback to date on how the campaign kits are being used has been extremely positive. Burgeoning territories such as Ireland and Greece have been using the campaigns to great effect and demanding more content from the centre to aid their local PR campaigns.

Whilst early days yet in overall life of the campaign, we are starting to see a shift in where gaming is being covered in the media - it's moving out of the technology pages and in to the lifestyle ones!

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