Colour, in 250,000 individual pieces
On 6 November 2005, Sony's Balls advertisement made its broadcast premiere on British television ahead of a Premier League fixture.1, 2 The film, two and a half minutes long, showed 250,000 multicoloured rubber balls cascading down the steep streets of San Francisco, set to José González's "Heartbeats", a quiet acoustic cover of a Knife song.3, 4 It carried the new product line tagline, "Colour, like no other".1 The campaign launched Sony's Bravia LCD television range across Europe.1, 3
The work was created by Fallon London, with art director Juan Cabral leading the concept.1, 4 Cabral had been searching for a way to dramatise the Bravia panel's expanded colour gamut without ever showing the product. His pitch was a literal rendering of the abstract idea of colour, propelled through real physical space. Director Nicolai Fuglsig of MJZ shot the spot over two days using six cameras, including a high-speed Photosonic.2, 3 There were no visual effects.1, 3 Every ball in the final cut was dropped from the scoops of mechanical diggers or fired from cannons.3
The logistics of an in-camera idea
The production was located primarily on Filbert Street, one of the steepest streets in San Francisco.1, 4 Fallon and the production company secured permits to close several blocks for the shoot.2 The 250,000 balls were bought up from suppliers across the United States.1, 2 Custom rigs at the top of the hill held bins of balls suspended over the slope. On Fuglsig's call, the rigs released, and the balls cascaded down the gradient under gravity, bouncing off cars, kerbs, and the cobbled tarmac.
The mess was substantial. Subsequent reporting documented 32 prop cars and six houses damaged by the falling balls.3 A 45 person clean-up crew worked for several days after wrap to recover the props.3 Campaign, the UK trade title, reported that more than 1,000 balls remained at large in the city.3 The shoot itself became part of the campaign's earned media. Residents posted home video of the shoot to YouTube and Google Video, so the film was famous before it ever aired.1
A song that became a brand asset
The soundtrack carried as much weight as the visuals. José González's "Heartbeats", recorded for his 2003 album Veneer, was a fingerstyle acoustic cover of an electronic original by Swedish duo The Knife.5 The song's quiet contemplative tone provided the counterpoint that the spot needed. Without that particular score, the film risked reading as a children's commercial. With it, the work landed as a piece of cinema.
The song's chart trajectory shifted markedly in the months after the broadcast. "Heartbeats" re-entered the UK Top 10.5 González's profile grew internationally on the back of the spot's reach. The episode became one of the early examples in the modern era of advertising acting as a primary discovery mechanism for music, predating the Spotify era of branded playlists by half a decade.
A market under pressure
The strategic context for Balls is easy to underestimate in retrospect. By late 2005, Sony's television business was under sustained pressure from Samsung, which had moved aggressively into flat panel LCD manufacturing and was beginning to take share in markets where Sony's Trinitron heritage no longer translated to the new display technology.6 Bravia was Sony's repositioning answer: a new sub-brand for LCD televisions, designed to reset the conversation away from the legacy CRT business.6
Fallon's brief was to launch Bravia in a way that established a tonal and creative distance from competing flat panel advertising, which was largely dominated by spec-led product shots and side-by-side comparisons.1 Balls did the opposite. It refused to show the product, refused to compare specifications, and refused to argue. It made one claim, "Colour, like no other", and demonstrated the claim with a piece of theatre that was visually unforgettable and culturally portable.
Awards, imitators, and a platform
Balls won extensively at D&AD, Cannes Lions, and Campaign awards in 2006.7, 8 It was widely cited as the year's defining piece of broadcast advertising. More importantly for Sony, it established "Colour, like no other" as a multi-year platform rather than a single spot. Fallon and Cabral followed Balls with Paint (2006), a Jonathan Glazer film shot in Glasgow, and Play-Doh (2007), a stop-motion piece set in New York City.1, 7, 9 Each successor used the same principle: a literal, in-camera, oversized demonstration of colour at urban scale.
Twenty years on, the campaign occupies a particular place in the canon. It is studied less for what it sold than for what it permitted. After Balls, brand teams across the consumer technology category had a new frame of reference. The category leader could be quiet. The product could stay off camera. The selling argument could be a song and a hillside in San Francisco. The work raised the ceiling on what advertising could be expected to do, and the ceiling has not really come down since.
Source: 32cn32 Youtube
Written with AI assistance, edited by a human. Find out more about our Use of AI.
1. D&AD, "Case Study: Sony Balls", 4 March 2014, for the UK launch on 6 November 2005, when Sony bought an entire commercial break on Sky Sports 1 before Manchester United versus Chelsea for the two-and-a-half-minute version and ran a 60 second version at half time; for the line "Colour Like No Other", drawn from Sony's "Like No Other" strategy; for Sony Europe as the client and a brief that moved from processing power to an emotional proposition in a European market where consumers saw "a lack of perceived differentiation" and rivals traded on features and "pixel resolutions"; for Juan Cabral developing Balls at Fallon with executive creative director Richard Flintham, and Nicolai Fuglsig at MJZ as director; for every frame being shot on camera, "No computer graphics were used at all"; for the balls flying down Filbert Street, filmed with a slow motion Photosonics camera, on what the page calls a two-day shoot; for the production company buying up most of the bouncy balls in the US, "a total of around 250,000", after a Chinese factory proved too slow; for residents posting Handycam footage of the shoot to YouTube and Google Video, so that the film was famous before it aired; and for Paint as the next Bravia film, which Cabral oversaw with Flintham. https://www.dandad.org/insights/awards/sony-balls-case-study-insights
2. PetaPixel, "That Time a Film Crew Let 250,000 Bouncy Balls Free Through San Francisco", 12 March 2025, for the premiere on British television before a Premier League match on 6 November 2005; for the four-day shoot on closed streets, with six cameras and slow motion Photo-Sonics cameras, and for the approval of the city and residents secured through location scout Patrick Ranahan; and for the search for the 250,000 balls, in Fuglsig's words "calling every funfair, dealer, and Tivoli in America". The page's four days differ from the two days given by D&AD and Campaign, which the body follows. Off whitelist and used for corroboration only. https://petapixel.com/2025/03/12/that-time-a-film-crew-let-250000-bouncy-balls-free-through-san-francisco/
3. Campaign, "Close-Up: Live Issue - Fuglsig lets the balls fly for Sony Bravia TV ad", undated on the page, for Fallon's two-and-a-half-minute film for the launch of Sony's new Bravia LCD TV, with 250,000 bouncy balls sent down some of the steepest hills in San Francisco; for Nicolai Fuglsig as director, Juan Cabral as Fallon's creative and Nell Jordon as producer at MJZ; for the 23 crew on six cameras, the balls dropped from the scoops of mechanical diggers and shot into the air by cannons, and a shoot the page puts at two days; for there being "no CG tricks whatsoever - it is all in camera"; and for the 32 prop cars and six houses damaged, the 45 people it took to collect the balls and the more than 1,000 that "remain at large in the city". The page gives no duration for the clean-up and does not say how long the lost balls stayed in the city. https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/close-up-live-issue-fuglsig-lets-balls-fly-sony-braviatv-ad/526360
4. Lürzer's Archive, "Sony Bravia, 2005: Balls", archive entry dated 6 November 2005, for the credits Fallon, London as agency, Juan Cabral as art director and copywriter, Nicolai Fuglsig as director and MJZ as production company; for José González's "Heartbeats" as the soundtrack; and for the 250,000 bouncy balls cascading down Filbert Street in San Francisco. https://www.luerzersarchive.com/sony-bravia-2005-balls/
5. Wikipedia, "Heartbeats (The Knife song)", consulted on 2 October 2026, for "Heartbeats" as a song by the "Swedish electronic music duo the Knife"; for José González's cover on his debut album Veneer (2003), which "features only an acoustic classical guitar"; and for his version peaking at number nine on the UK Singles Chart after its use in the Bravia advertisement of November 2005. The page records no earlier UK chart entry for the song. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbeats_(The_Knife_song)
6. Wikipedia, "Bravia (brand)", consulted on 2 October 2026, reached through the listed address "Bravia", which is now a disambiguation page: for Bravia replacing the "LCD WEGA" brand in summer 2005 because "The WEGA name was still associated with bulky tube TVs (dating back to the FD Trinitron)", and for the launch as "part of an effort to revive Sony's TV making business which had been struggling in the growing market of flat-panels in the face of Sharp Aquos and a growing Samsung". The page does not describe Samsung's LCD manufacturing. Sony's own Bravia page, listed for this verse as the Bravia history, page not reachable on 2 October 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bravia_(brand), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bravia and https://www.sony.com/electronics/bravia
7. Wikipedia, "Nicolai Fuglsig" and "Paint (advertisement)", both consulted on 2 October 2026, for Fuglsig winning the Gold Lion at the Cannes Lions festival in June 2006, and the Grand Prix at the Midsummer Awards in London in July 2006, for the Bravia commercial with 250,000 balls on "the largest hill in San Francisco (Filbert and Leavenworth)"; for Paint as the successor to Balls, created by Fallon, directed by Jonathan Glazer, filmed at Queen's Court in the Toryglen district of Glasgow and premiered on 17 October 2006; and for "2007's Play-Doh advert" as the follow-up. Neither page mentions a Campaign award. Both stand in for the listed Wikipedia article "Bravia (advertisement)", page not reachable on 2 October 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolai_Fuglsig, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint_(advertisement) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bravia_(advertisement)
8. D&AD, "Balls", D&AD Awards 2006 archive entry, for Balls receiving two Yellow Pencils in the 2006 awards for film, with Graphite and Wood Pencils also listed, and for Sony Europe as the client. https://www.dandad.org/awards/professional/2006/tv-cinema-advertising/14848/balls/
9. Campaign, "New Bravia ad to feature 200 Play-Doh rabbits", undated on the page, for Play-Doh as "Fallon's third 'colour like no other' spot for Sony Bravia", billed as "the most ambitious piece of stop-motion animation ever undertaken", shot over three weeks on the streets of New York by Frank Budgen of Gorgeous and written and art directed by Juan Cabral. https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/new-bravia-ad-feature-200-play-doh-rabbits/730347
