As you may already be aware, the news broke yesterday that the world famous director, musician, and artist David Lynch had passed away, aged 78.
Lynch is a figure perhaps best known for his work on the 1990 mystery TV series Twin Peaks which he co-created with Mark Frost, as well as films like Eraserhead, Dune, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and countless others. But, in addition to all of that, he also had a tremendous influence on the gaming world, not only inspiring the creators behind countless titles, including The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Deadly Premonition, Alan Wake, and Silent Hill 2 but also memorably directing one of PlayStation's most stylish yet baffling commercials: Welcome to The Third Place.
The advertisement campaign was a collaboration between Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and the ad agency TBWA, who had previously developed the Double Life campaign for the original PlayStation and revolved around the concept of the Third Place — an idea that positioned the PS2 as being a portal to a dangerous and unknown place, but one where you would ultimately be able to define its parameters. This tied into SCEE's reluctance to set a template for what the user experience of the PlayStation 2 would be in its advertising.
The marketing manager for SCEE, Darren Carter, told Official UK Playstation Magazine back in 2001, "[The Third place] exists. The theory is that you’re at work and you’re at home but a place exists where you define what you want to do in it. It's been written about bars and cafes but PlayStation 2 subverts the whole concept of what a Third Place should be. I'll paraphrase the concept but, ‘It's not simple place, it's not easy space, it's not mental space, it’s not physical space - it's whatever you want to define as being your Third Place. You define what you want to be in it and have around you,' The whole point - and the response we want to get from the ad - is that it’s an excited fear, a new unknown but, during it, you think you’re going to like it.”
In order to bring this vision to life, TBWA's creative director Trevor Beattie wrote a script for the ad campaign, before submitting a list of directors including the American History X director Tony Kaye. Eventually, though, Beattie suggested the idea of hiring Lynch to be the person to kickstart the campaign, allegedly claiming "If Tony Kaye lives in The Third Place, then David Lynch is his landlord."
In a 'Making of' documentary about the advert, which is available on YouTube, the European marketing director for Sony at the time David Patton said about the decision to hire Lynch, "He's been living in the Third Place for quite a few years. So if there was one person who was going to understand what we needed to communicate, one person who was going to really get to grips with the commercial and one person who was really going to produce something that no one had ever seen before, it was going to be David Lynch."
Lynch, meanwhile, reportedly said about his own involvement in OPM, "The money's good, and the added bonus is that I get to use and learn about the latest technology..."
The finished result was shot in Los Angeles and reportedly cost around $750,000 to make. It debuted in November 2000 to coincide with the console's European launch and ended up airing in over 20 territories as part of a $20 million dollar marketing campaign.
If you've never seen it before, it is available to watch now on Sony's official YouTube channel (in 480p) and sees the actor and David Lynch documentarian Jason S. wandering around a set of corridors encountering various strange individuals, before his head temporarily detaches from his body. Upon its return, it then ends up vomiting up an arm, leading a bunch of smoke to dissipate revealing a doppelganger, a duck man, and a mummified body sitting on a couch.
What do all of these components mean? Well, it beats me! But compared to other adverts at the time, it was certainly attention-grabbing and managed to capture both the surrealism and the humour found in Lynch's other work and the edgy, mature aesthetic of the upcoming console.
Do you remember seeing the Welcome to Third Place ad back when the campaign launched? What did you make of it? Let us know in the comments!