Sony sells its waterproof mp3 player inside a bottle of water

Is this what they call "immersive marketing"?

If it weren't they would be risking severe lawsuits for selling it from vending machines alongside Coke etc.

Actually, it's a really interesting question.

The walkman needs to be safe for use in contact with the skin.

The water needs to be drinkable. Packaging directives look at things like phthalates in the bottle... but don't consider contents within the bottle which aren't part of the beverage or beverage serving mechanism.

So... they can, legally, pretty much do whatever the hell they want, as the Mp3 player does not need to be consumable, the water and bottle will be quantified as safe by themselves, and the thing as a whole (bottle + water) is just treated as packaging, so doesn't need to be consumable.

All in all it's the kind of thing that isn't quite covered by product safety standards, as it's so irregular.

"Though the device itself was launched a while ago, Sony turned to Auckland-based ad agency DraftFCB to help market the product in New Zealand. And so they came up with the Bottled Walkman, which is sold from vending machines in public places such as gyms. Check out the demo video for yourself."

That's what's most interesting to me. Have we heard from anybody who's actually bought the player from a vending machine? This seems to me to be one of those cases where you don't actually need to do it to get the marketing value from it- all you need is to make a video of the idea. It's a more sophisticated form of "This Ad Was Banned!!"

I could be totally wrong, of course.

EDIT: To clarify, I'm saying I don't think Sony's actually selling their walkmans in bottles of water, they just made a video of the idea of it. Can anbody disconfirm this?

Oh for fuck's sake, it's not even a product, it's an ad for an ad agency. What a waste of time.

But apparently HN commenters are not immune to being fooled...