Mountain is a 2003 television and cinema advertisement launched by Sony Corporation to promote the PlayStation 2 video game console.
The commercial depicts a Brazilian crowd congregating to form a mountain of human bodies, all competing to reach the top of the pile.
Due in large part to the buzz generated by Mountain, sales for the 2003 Christmas period exceeded expectations, and the PlayStation 2's share of the console market increased from 74 to 77 percent.
Shirley Temple's "De Gospel Train" (from the film Dimples) begins to play, and the view switches to show a crowd running through the streets, towards a heaving pile of people which forms a ramp up the side of a building.
[2] In 2003, the advertising agency behind the PlayStation 2 campaign, TBWA Worldwide, began looking into ways to expand sales of the console into other markets, in particular, families with young children.
Many of the television spots were animated to appeal to younger children, including Dancing Robot, Laughing Mouths, Winners and Losers, and Wobble.
The brief to the creative team was that the ad had to show people competing to be the best, to showcase the worldwide community of friendly competition surrounding the PlayStation 2.
[7] Over 1500 extras were recruited by a local production service company, Zohar International, for the six-day shoot,[3] though no more than 500 were on set on any particular day.
The final shot was taken by a helicopter-mounted camera, of the 50 trained extras running and climbing up a 20 ft cone fitted to the top of the Rio Sul Center.
[20] Jury president Piyush Pandey commented: "it was the simplicity of the idea and the magnitude of execution that helped Mountain stand out.
[19] Campaign magazine remarked: "Shirley Temple's sweet, innocent vocals contrast splendidly with the frenzy of activity onscreen.
Greg Popp of AMV BBDO said of the piece: "I have admiration for its impeccable execution and that it was a brave ad, but it makes no connection with the gaming industry; I thought it was crafted to win awards",[22] while Bob Garfield of Advertising Age remarked: "Mountain is more of an ad for the director than for the client, and thus a definitive example of production values utterly displacing advertising's raison d'etre: selling goods and services to people in exchange for money.
"[23] In addition to critical success, Mountain succeeded in achieving TBWA's goal of widening the consumer base from 18-39 males to the larger family demographic.
campaign, sales of the PlayStation 2 exceeded the targets set by Sony, and the console's share of the US$13b video game market increased from 74 to 77% over the period in which Mountain was aired.