Sony Bravia, Bunnies & Balls: A+

What is HDTV good for? Watching amazing, colorful film in high definition. So Sony created a series of spectacularly visually captivating ads to illustrate this point. Paired with perfect music, done in old-fashion, pain-staking stop motion, the clay rabbit commercial is about as flawless as an ad can get. It shows you what's possibly when imagination meets technology, and if you have a Sony Bravia television, it shows it to you more vividly and clearly than anything else.

Equally as brilliant was the "balls" spot, for which they shut down a street in San Francisco and dumped/shot hundreds of thousands of bouncy balls down the road, filmed in ultra-slow motion.



Viewing these commercials on YouTube is a perfect illustration of the concept. At a low resolution, it's okay. High res, it's awesome. You can see a cleaner version of the commercial, as well as documentaries on the making of, on the Sony Europe website.

Sony Bravia, Peyton: D

It's not on youtube, since it sucks. And you might not even know which one I'm talking about, since it's just one commercial awash in a sea of Peyton Manning commercials. To sum it up, Peyton walks to all of the places where Sony HD technology is used, from the game to your house and the dialogue is basically "they film the game in HD, they edit the game in HD...etc...why wouldn't you watch the game in HD?"


It makes you ask yourself, can Peyton Manning set the record for most commercials in one year? In reality, you'd think advertisers would notice that the market is oversaturated with Manning spots. The only thing you remember after watching one of those now is that you've just seen about your millionth Peyton Manning ad. At first he was charming and kind of funny, now he's getting to be greedy and annoying.

So now, if you're going to use Peyton, you need to really come with something strong; something that sets your Peyton ad apart from the other Peyton ads. Like having him dressed as a school girl, eating a lolli, riding in a hot air balloon. This ad doesn't do that. I'm sure on paper it was good and the logic is there. All these people use Sony, you should watch their programs on Sony Bravia HDTV. The problem is, the ad is boring. In fact, the only reason I even noticed it was because I thought, "another Peyton Manning ad? Please shoot me. No, not me, him."

The only memorable part of this commercial is when Peyton walks into the living room, where those guys are watching television; when he first appears, he seems to be about ten feet tall, like they built the set too small so he would appear giant. Then when he reaches the couch, he's a normal size again. Did someone not scout that set? Was that brief bit of footage borrowed from another commercial in which Petyon Manning was cast as a giant? I bet that commercial would have been good.

For the record, I own a Sony Bravia television and they've done some awesome ads (ratings to come).