Creative Showcase: Sony Style

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Client: Sony
Creative Agency: Syrup

Syrup was asked to come up with an idea for the Sony Style store windows on Madison Avenue; already a great honor, but of course that wasn¹t enough for Syrup. We responded with an integrated branding campaign that would unite all Sony stores across the country for the holiday season and win us the bronze award for Integrated Branding from The One Show in the process.

Careful what you wish for; Syrup gave Sony a plan for a system of ideas and designs to marry products, stores and web with one fluid stroke.

When finally given the green light, there would be only three months to design over thirty printed pieces, a website and a baker's dozen characters, but Syrup pulled it off in time for the holidays. One of the key elements created for the project was the website's Wishmaker. Inspired by refrigerator magnet poetry, the Wishmaker allowed visitors to create holiday wishes to send out to the world. Their initials and home city would appear under their messages on a flat-screen TV in the window of whichever of the 17 Sony stores around the country they chose.

Soon, little characters were sitting in every Sony store in America. The SonyStyle Holiday Wishes were broadcasted in the windows on the plasma TVs that we had grown so fondly attached to. Pedestrians smiled at the wish-poetry that popped up on the TVs. Happy holiday thoughts were everywhere; and soon a bronze pencil landed in the Syrup office, courtesy of The One Show.
-- Jakob Daschek, creative director, Syrup

Creative Showcase is meant to be a teaching tool and an inspiration for our readers. We comment only on creative that we really love. Our panelists discuss what makes it great, but if they feel there were missed opportunities that would have made it better, we invite them to mention those. And finally, we seek out a wide range of opinions that reflect the marketplace for the panel, in order to provide constructive, useable feedback for agencies, clients and others involved in these creative pieces.

The Flash geniuses at Syrup were at it again last holiday season. I'd like to hang out with that team for a week and learn a thing or two. With their Sony Style Holiday Wishes website, Syrup created an interactive showcase with a deep well of information on products while at the same time making the discovery of that information fun. Tough task.

The opening is pretty psychedelic, and I have to wonder what's in the coffee up at Syrup, but soon you're treated to one of those signature Syrup scenes, where people are happy and the world is at peace and everyone is carrying a Sony product. As the characters walk across the screen, mouse over them and they stop and wave at you; click on them and their profiles appear in a fluid transition. Everyone's covered here: grandmas, extreme sports enthusiasts, fathers, mothers, students and skateboarders. The profiles are well written and the "go back" button takes you back to the peaceful cityscape, layers appearing one at a time. In conjunction with the information on Sony products, Syrup created a "wishmaker" page, inspired by refrigerator magnet poetry. Drag-and-drop words allowed users to create a message that would appear on a giant flatscreen in the Sony store of their choosing. It was a wise decision to make the wishes drag-and-drop, with words already determined, minimizing the possibility for abusive or obscene messages. However, there surely must've been a screening or editing process in place, as I was able to find the words "make" and "love," along with a bunch of other words that, combined with those two, would've made holiday shoppers shield their children's eyes.

A great site, I only wish I'd seen it during the holidays, as I would've loved to have tried my hand at creating a wish that didn't get accepted.
-- Dave Wilkie, creative director, Kinetic Results  

Syrup’s Sony micro-site for the holidays seemed like a happy Peter Max meets South Park kind of world. A brilliant, polymorphous sky hangs above a night darkened city and its strangely wan inhabitants. The free form wish generator that let me compose sweet haikus was great fun and just felt right, but regardless of how I tried, I couldn’t stop thinking of this colorful world’s lethargic and gray-faced inhabitants. Given the upbeat beginning, I thought the "world" appearing on my screen would be a festive place, but instead I found slow animated people trudging through snow at night. There is an almost zombie-like quality to their relentless walking back and forth. When you mouse over these sullen walkers, some stop and wave in a cheerful enough manner (Dwayne and Lisa); others just stop and stare as if you’d just hit them up for some spare change (Laura and Joe Joe). The type design, the graphics, the functionality are all great; it’s just the Night Of The Living Dead citizens that gave me the creeps. Maybe it’s just me, but I think the little one in the blue parka, Matteo, stopped and gave me the finger. Look buddy, all I did was mouse over you. Next time I wander through this city at night I’ll keep to myself.
-- Brian Crooks, executive creative director, avenue a | razorfish