Update - it’s now live and embeddable at Sony.co.uk/images. Well, there’s embeddable code, but can’t get it to work here - they’re working on it!

It’s here finally. And if you’re interested in the music, it’s specially composed for the ad by Warren Ellis, of Nick Cave and Bad Seeds. He also did the music for the film The Assassination of Jesse James.

I got a sneak preview of the Sony Foam City Ad from Fallon, which gets released tomorrow. But I can’t show it you yet - I’ve had to promise not to release it until it goes live on the Sony site later. More on that later, but first let’s talk about the ad. You’ve seen the images, it’s all foam and bubbles and people playing in towers of fluff.

It opens on a pile of foam, constrained behind a material wall, which lets go and a tidal wave of white stuff engulfs you.

People play in the foam as it sweeps down a street, falls off a spiral car park ramp, they hide in a shop as the street gets overwhelmed. The foam gets picked up by the wind, blown into the sky. A child flinches as a mass hits him on the head, you see tops of heads in the sea of bubbles.

People run as another foam producer starts up, pores off the top of buildings. People play like and jump. Everyone is taking photos, stills and video. Those are the product shots, people using Sony Image equipment in the midst of the bubbles.

Finally, a last shot in the setting Miami sun, streets full of foam, the sky full of bubbles. Images Like No Other.

I liked the ad; there’s a sweetness and a joy that comes through - these people are really enjoying the opportunity to play in the world’s largest bubble bath. You can a lot of the images taken on the day over at Flickr, taken with the Sony cameras they are promoting. You can see that a lot more happened than made it into the 60 seconds of this film, that the foam got everywhere!

On this shoot, Sony have been working hard on outreach and getting people involved - look at the large number of people in the foam. They’ve still not got it right though, with some mistakes been made; offers of trips being withdrawn, I got offered an exclusive interview which never arrived. Putting an embargo on releasing the ad (which I wonder if it will hold?). Far better than they’ve done in the past but still only 75% I think. I’m looking forward to what they try next, because I think it can only get better.

Update - I got a post-post email about who has had early copies of the ad, which was 5 bloggers who could not make the shoot and an acknowledgement that they know embargoes rarely work. In this case, I think it will, as it’s with bloggers with whom they have a relationship. I’ll say it again, I think Sony have been making great strides in this area and they’ll get better.

I received some great pictures from the Sony PR agency today from the shoot by Fallon in Miami earlier this month for their Digital Imaging group. They really makes me regret not being able to go - the shoot looked a lot of fun. Haven’t we all wanted to just fill a street with foam?

Here’s a couple of people playing in the foam, having a ball by the look of it. You can see that many of them have cameras in the middle of the foam, the ad is planning on having footage from these cameras.

And finally, the foam has taken over a spiral car ramp, with the brilliant colours on the building that you only tend to see in hot climes.

I should have been in Miami today. A few weeks ago, I got approached by (one of?) the Sony PR agency, from whom I’d got stuff before, about a trip to Miami to watch Fallon shooting of the new Sony ad Foam City, for the Digital Imaging range and also get a chance to play with some new cameras they are introducing from the Alpha, Cybershot and Handycam ranges.

But things did not run entirely smoothly. First up, I was at SXSW until Tuesday, so they were going to have to fly me from Austin to Miami and then onto London which required discussion. Then they cut the numbers, then at the last minute they changed the dates to those of SXSW. The last change meant I could not go at all, missing my favourite conference, where i was speaking was not an option. I have mixed reactions about all of this, so here they are:

• Being asked to go in the first place was a wonderful boost. I’ve written about some of the Sony stuff a lot in the past, but not all of it complimentary. It would have been great to get the real behind the scenes story of putting the ad together. Sony reaching out to bloggers, something they have been doing more and more over the last year,(see Ewan talking about a game campaign) is indicative of a change of attitude from previous attempts to do it all themselves.
• The change of numbers and delays in response were annoying - ask Andy. If you are going to ask someone to go on a trip to blog about you, then be sure you can do what you are asking. Budget changes after the invites have gone out are bad form. My contact at the PR agency did a grand job of keeping me up to date, but having been on the other side of the story, it must have been really frustrating to have to change things.
• The final change of dates was due to changes beyond the brand or agency control, apparently filling streets with foam means the police get to change dates
• I’m reading reports now and it looks like they had a successful event during the shooting. Photography Bay has a great report, detailing the fact they had over 200 locals with cameras taking shots during the foaming as well, and there are others here, here and here.

They also twittered the event:

Am looking down a street completely full of foam. Nuts! 02:36 PM March 09, 2008 from txt
We’re making 2.5 million litres of foam a minute 02:39 PM March 09, 2008 from txt
Italian journalist on his knees hunting for his glasses in a metre of foam shouldn’t be funny (but really is) 04:20 PM March 09, 2008 from txt
the ad is going to look truly breathtaking. Yes, I do work for sony, granted. But seeing fifteen journalists and bloggers playing in it 06:52 PM March 09, 2008 from web
with the biggest smiles, was just so cool! i want to go back! 06:52 PM March 09,
the clean up operation takes a bit of time! All the foam is totally biodegradable and non toxic, so people can play as much as they want 05:29 PM March 10, 2008

Although they did fail in one of the key benefits of Twitter which would have been to follow people and find out what they wanted to know during the shoot, which would have increased engagement.

Now I’m expecting some pictures to come through at some point, behind the scenes at the shoot. Meanwhile, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that I get asked again sometime.