History of Sega marketing campaigns in United Kingdom

Do me a favour

Virgin Mastertronic began a new advertising campaign at the start of 1990, using "bored" televisions which desired to be hooked up to Sega Master Systems ("do me a favour, plug me into a Sega"). For much of Western Europe, this was the first time a joined up Sega marketing campaign could be seen across television and print advertising.

On TV, the concept was simple - when a Master System advertisement showed up, it would first appear as if the channel had dropped back to a test card (which were still in widespread use at the time), before the realisation kicked in that it was a Master System being advertised. Curiously the design was based on a (cropped) version of the SMPTE colour bars which are more synonymous with the NTSC TV standard, rather than the PAL and SECAM sets used across Europe (the UK, for example, was more accustomed to Test Card F (BBC1, BBC2) or ETP-1 (Channel 4 (and ITV before all of its regions became a 24-hour channels in 1988))).

On the 15th of October, 1990, Virgin Mastertronic launched five new 20-second advertisements in the UK, France, Germany and Spain, featuring a "more mature" computer generated talking television referred internally (among other names) as "Sega Man" and "Colour Bar Face". The advertisements were created by London-based advertising agency Still Price Lintas, TV production company Altered Image and animation company Rushes.

Rushes used the Canadian animation package, Alias II (priced at roughly £40,000) running on £25,000 Silicon Graphics workstations. The animations were then put through a real time video editing "Harry" system developed by Quantel, with an estimated running cost of £500 per hour. The voiceover was "treated electronically" by putting it through a Synclavier.

Print advertisements

Print advert in S: The Sega Magazine (UK) #3: "February 1990" (1990-01-04)

Print advert in S: The Sega Magazine (UK) #6: "May 1990" (1990-04-05)
also published in:

• S: The Sega Magazine (UK) #7: "June 1990" (1990-05-03)
• S: The Sega Magazine (UK) #8: "July 1990" (1990-06-07)

Print advert in Sega Power (UK) #13: "December 1990" (1990-11-01)

Print advert in Computer & Video Games (UK) #111: "February 1991" (1991-01-16)

Print advert in Computer & Video Games (UK) #113: "April 1991" (1991-03-16)
also published in:

• Computer & Video Games (UK) #114: "May 1991" (1991-04-14)

Sega TV

Main article: Sega TV.