The Kevin Butler character was an instant hit on TV, but we had the most fun using him everywhere else. In fact, about half the gaming community thought he was a real Vice President at Playstation, so we ran with that. 

@TheKevinButler became the most-followed brand character on Twitter. We used his page to keep a daily dialogue with gamers and post about anything from KB's musings on coffee stirrers, to global marketing announcements. 
He reached over 130,000 followers including all the gaming press, so we used his Twitter page as a medium to launch online campaigns, videos, debut TV spots and co-op advertising, etc. We carefully controlled the voice of each tweet. 

We used Kevin Butler as a PR tool when we heard that a TV network in New Zealand made an exact rip-off of one of our ads. Rather than send in SONY lawyers for a legal smack-down, we had KB write a press release thanking them for such a well-done tribute. The whole thing turned into a back-and-forth international brand peace treaty on Twitter.

Kevin loves his food. When he was asked to talk about his favorite sandwich in a magazine interview, we invented one! Then we posted the recipe on Twitter. Soon kids everywhere were challenging themselves to eat the Kevin Butler sandwich. It was even featured on NPR.

The E3 Expo is the world's largest gaming convention where the three big console makers hold their international press conferences. These things can be long, businessy marketing and product keynotes. We wrote an appearance for Kevin Butler that was 50% Patton speech, 50% product introduction and 100% awesome. His speech was the highlight of SONY's press conference and made all the "Best of E3" lists that year.

Who'd have thought that a middle-aged guy in a necktie who was designed to explain features to families would be such a huge hit with the hardcore gamers? We did. We kept the writing sharp and constantly found new ways to use him. After three years he made a dubious exit from the marketing. But he still lives on in gamers' hearts. And their "Butlerized" Photo Gallery on Facebook. He also he has quite an extensive Wikipedia page.