<p>The behemoth Sony Corp. scouted out an unusual place to advertise its PlayStation Portable game system before the holidays: the side of an abandoned building in a gritty North Philadelphia neighborhood.</p><p>The black-on-white graffiti shows slacker cartoon characters riding the PlayStation like a skateboard, licking it like a lollipop or cranking it like a Jack-in-the-Box.</p><p>But there's no mention of the Sony or PlayStation brands _ nor any hint the wordless display is an ad.</p><p>The stealth marketing campaign has quietly popped up in San Francisco, New York and other large U.S. cities.</p><p>"It's all about hip-hop, urban and all that. They're just trying to get into the teenagers' minds," said Eddie Torres, 29, who works at a nearby furniture shop. "I think it's sharp."</p><p>Anti-blight advocates think otherwise.</p><p>"They're breaking the law," said Mary Tracy, who heads the Society Created to Reduce Urban Blight, or SCRUB, a watchdog group that fights illegal or ill-advised billboards in Philadelphia.</p><p>Whether you like the ads or not, she said, Sony ignored the zoning process that regulates outdoor commercial advertising in the city.</p><p>Philadelphia Managing Director Pedro Ramos on Wednesday faxed a cease-and-desist letter to Sony Computer Entertainment's U.S. division in San Mateo, Calif. He could seek modest fines allowed by city code _ or sue to recover any profit the ads produced. The Sony Corp. reported net profit of $246 million for the quarter ending Sept. 30, when it shipped 2.75 million PlayStation Portables.</p><p>"My fines aren't going to scare Sony. What will worry them is what the parents and their users will think," Ramos said.</p><p>"This really flies in the face of everything we've been trying to do with our anti-blight initiative," he added.</p><p>The Sony division did not immediately respond to the letter or to a telephone message left Wednesday by The Associated Press. However, Sony spokeswoman Molly Smith told Wired News earlier this month that Sony was hiring artists in seven cities _ Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago were the others _ to spray paint the pre-drawn designs.</p><p>"With PSP being a portable product, our target is what we consider to be urban nomads," Smith said.</p><p>In San Francisco, the ads were defaced soon after they appeared, as word spread that Sony was behind them. "Get out of my city!!!" someone wrote on one, according to a published news photograph.</p><p>"I thought it was sneaky. Not cool," said Zan Sterling, who works at the motorcycle bar Zeitgeist, near one of the ads, which has since been painted over. "I hope that they paid for the cleanup and removal. We don't have any extra money in San Francisco."</p><p>Critics and supporters alike agree the campaign is designed to crack through the clutter of marketing that pervades daily life, and to reach young males.</p><p>"It's a cheeky wink toward a savvy audience who are already familiar with the product," marketing trend blogger Piers Fawkes told Wired. "It's reflective of (a) modern approach to advertising."</p><p>But Jake Dobkin, a New Yorker who writes for the Gothamist Web site, faulted not only Sony's unsigned graffiti concept _ a type of guerrilla marketing that's been around for more than a decade _ but the fact they relied on a stencil rather than hand-painted artwork.</p><p>"They hired artists to just copy this same figure over and over, which isn't too creative," the 29-year-old Dobkin said Wednesday.</p><p>That matters little to North Philadelphia resident Leslie Griggs, 39, who said the Sony ad is an improvement over the handbills and scrawls it replaced.</p><p>"I don't think that's graffiti," Griggs said Wednesday, as she paused amid broken glass and cracked sidewalks beside the PlayStation ad. "That's art."</p><p>___</p><p>On the Net:</p><p>HASH(0x1cdef3c)</p><p>HASH(0x1cdefe4)</p>
