Lunar Adventures: exploring a little bit of everything

Blog post [Displaying post and comments]

On the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo’s upcoming marketing campaign

Everyone has weighed in about the new name for the Revolution — the Nintendo Wii. Even conspiracy theorists. I’m as big a bandwagon jumper as everyone else, so I figured I would jump in.

The first thing that struck me, along with probably everyone else, was “Wii? Why? Revolution was fine.” The clearest answers came from Nintendo’s official Wii site.

The Wii has turned into an exercise in language. Gaming and language — a world of fun for the dork in me (which is most of me). Most of the internet world is having fun with punning on Wii, private parts, and bodily functions (my contribution: “Why did Michael Jackson invite those kids to his house? To play with their new Wii.”), but Nintendo’s campaign looks like it will be centered around language, as well.

Watching Nintendo’s Flash movie unveiling the name made me think about the name from a marketing and linguistic perspective – and while the name may be weird, it does provide a foundation for what we can expect from the upcoming marketing campaign. 

• “Wii will break down that wall that separates video game players from everyone else. “Wii will put more people in touch with their games… and each other. [...] “Wii sounds like ‘we,’ which emphasizes this console is for everyone.” Ignoring the fact that Nintendo should have run that second line by someone that thinks like a 14-year-old, they’re throwing out the “togetherness” propaganda pretty hard.  Wii, we, we, we, we, we.  Combined with the new controllers, Nintendo’s focus during their campaigning looks like it won’t be about wowing gamers with technical specs but rather selling their system as the place to go for good old fashioned group fun.  The modern-day board game, so to speak.
• “Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion.  No need to abbreviate.  Just Wii.” They have a point there.  Not that great of a point, but a point.  It’s pretty hard to creation an auditory association with a word that already exists, particularly one as ubiquitous as “we.”  The opposite is true, however, on the visual of the word.  Nintendo has created a simple, Apple-esque black and white logo for Wii, which they hope will become as popular for gaming as iPod for portable music.  The big difference being that there’s no association with the word “iPod” outside of Apple music.  There’s a definite association with the word “we.”
• “Wii has a distinctive ‘ii’ spelling that symbolizes both the unique controllers and the image of people gathering to play.” On the one hand, I dig the creativity of a little word art combined with language play.  On the other hand, any time you have to point out what something means visually, it’s probably not doing that great a job of conveying the message by itself.  Who saw “Wii” and thought to themselves, “Whoa!  It’s a double-you and then two people standing next to each other, but those people might also be Nintendo controllers!”  I’d bet not many.  At does reinforce the whole “togetherness” conceptual theme, though.
• “And Wii, as a name and a console, brings something revolutionary to the world of video games that sets it apart from the crowd. “So that’s Wii.  Now Nintendo needs you. “Because it’s not relaly about you or me. “It’s about Wii. “And together, Wii will change everything.” Way to bring it home, Nintendo!  Anyone have any patriotic, brassy music handy?  Nintendo pounds in one last time the whole multiplayer gaming thing one last time, while stressing their radical thinking will make them unique.  They’re conceding the technical win to Sony — but they want to win the fun side, the unique side.  They’re going to push that — not the technical capabilities of the system.  A great idea, assuming you can bring the system in at a nice price point.  Given the concerns about the Sony PS3 coming in at several hundred dollars, Nintendo can win themselves a big fanbase by providing a quality system with strong games (where the X-box 360 is struggling).

In the end, the name Wii provides Nintendo a starting point to launch a campaign from.  They’ll need to educate people about the name and spend some time and money if they’re serious about equating “Wii” with multiplayer gaming.  But the name won’t affect sales in a negative manner, for certain.  Does a system’s name enter into the equation you buy it?  Not at all.  People bought the Nintendo Entertainment System years ago — even though the word “Nintendo” had no meaning to Americans.  Over time, it because synonymous with gaming — as Nintendo hopes Wii will.  The Super Nintendo?  Boring name.  Nintendo 64?  Boring name.  Nintendo Gamecube?  It described the system’s shape, for pete’s sake.

None of those things affected sales.  People said “let’s play Nintendo” in 1986, and they said it in 2005.  Either that, or they said, “let’s play X-box” or “let’s play Halo” or “let’s play Zelda” or ”let’s play Gamecube.”  When the Wii comes out, people will still say “let’s play Nintendo” or “let’s play Wii” (I admit that one does sound weird) or “let’s play Zelda.”

The ability to get the marketing campaign off to a strong start is going to be important for Nintendo.  They’ll have to win the next round of console wars on rhetoric, games, and innovation — not technical specs.  And they’ll be doing it by playing off the name of their latest console.

Wed May 3rd, 2006 12:21 am

Filed under Gaming