Oh noes! Nintendo’s bubble has surely burst this time! Marketing guru George Harrison is officially leaving the company in December!
Oh wait, he’s just a human being like the rest of us and doesn’t want to pick up and relocate with the company when it moves to San Francisco and New York City. Nintendo is fine, and crazy ineffective Mountain Dew marketing campaigns are not necessary to boost its street cred during this, its darkest hour. Whew!
Harrison, to Reuters:
“I have confirmed to all employees that I will be leaving at the end of December and not making the move to California.”
Harrison did not disclose what his future plans are. He joined Nintendo of America in 1992, following the introduction of the hugely popular SNES, which made its debut in North America in August of 1991. Harrison has played a key role in business development related to every major Nintendo platform since that time.
It’s bittersweet for Harrison, I’m sure. He’s been there forever, but when he leaves he’ll still have about a bazillion shares of Nintendo that were probably given to him at an option price of ten cents. Tough life.
What is with the "bubble burst" comments in every post? This site is the only one I frequent who ever says that. Is anyone out there seriously trying to suggest that Harrison leaving is the beginning of the end for Wii sales? The the entertainment value in this sarcasm has long worn off.
And what's with the "crazy ineffective Mountain Dew marketing campaigns" comment? Considering the amount of hype and preorders of Halo 3, I'm not sure you can exactly call it "ineffective". It's no more ineffective than Wii Meals at Wendy's.
Halo Soda tastes like hell.
Not entirely accurate. The Dew campaign is like investing millions of dollars into selling hammers and nails to carpenters while expecting sales from non-carpenters to increase. Meanwhile, all sorts of people eat at Wendy's.
Well that's what you get for drinking something called "Fuel."
The Mountain Dew campaign seems pretty weak to me also.
I'm going to play Halo 3, but I'm not going to drink a nasty tasting, sugar filled drink while doing so. All those Moutain Dew combonations liek Code Red or whatever are awful.
Hell no, Code Red and Livewire are the sh*t and-a-half,this gamefuel crap tastes like sh*t and-a-half.
Yes all sorts of people eat at Wendy's but most of them order what they always have ordered and ignore the cheap toys you can get with the kids meals as they've ignored every other kids' meals. The kids that did pay attention were likely going to want a Wii anyway. So again, I see no difference to either company with either campaign, and bottom line you have no proof that either one was any more effective than the other.
Jack, you're saying that NPD sales for August prove that the Wendy's Wii promotion (which ran in May) was more successful than the Game Fuel Mountain Dew promotion for Halo 3, a game which hasn't even launched yet, but has already sold a million copies?
Come on. That doesn't even make any sense. You're throwing around that link like the fact that Wii sales are good can prove that everything Nintendo does is better than anything Microsoft can do.
drewmg, halo 2 also sold millions in the first week. using mountain dew does not broaden the audience since i will bet most of its sales are to teens/20s who already probably play games..
assuming wendys did not broaden the demographic is like saying kids and parents are born playing games or at least knowing about them. to say that people will ignore kids meals because they buy there usual doesnt make sense.
what if their usual is to buy there kids a kids meal. they dont know about gaming systems. they may not even pay attention to the toy much, but they might see the name wii, there kid, maybe being 5-7, might notice the name. it sits in their mind. advertising from all sides, they keep noticing the name til one day they get curious and ask about it.
your more likely to get new people going after areas that are not likely gamer products then you are going after soda or gaming channel commercials, lets say.
You're trying to establish a one-to-one ratio between people who drink soda and people who play video games, and I think that's pretty silly. LOTS of people drink soda; not just video game players.
Likewise, lots of people eat at Wendy's; not just soccer moms who don't know anything about video games.
And MY point was that throwing out the August NPD numbers don't speak at all to the success of these promotions.
but the wendys promotion is for kids meals, and well, thats youngsters that have a good chance of not knowing of wii yet. nor parents who would know about it if their kids are only old enough to still be eating kids meals. the ratio there is alot higher then to people that drink mountain dew but dont already know about the xbox.
nobody said anything about 1-1, thats you making things up because you just have to win. its about mindshare, not just people playing games. but who drinks the most soda, not outdoorsman. not older people, and again, i will bet that. its teens/young adults who already know about it.
also, yes, showing august, and might i say july npd does show the promotions are working, because we know for a fact that its not just gamers buying the systems, but parents who otherwise had no interest in gaming. jut from my experience, waiting in line we had 3 parents, 1 of which had no interest in it at all, but knew his kid wanted it. the other 2 were more open to playing with their kid.
we assume they heard about it through ads or word of mouth, but it cant all be word of mouth considering the very fast pace of sales. we can assume that nintendo is bombarding people with the ads from all sides, all kinds of channels, cruise lines, foods, events, etc… and its showing.
it isnt just about the one wendys promotion, its the whole deal adding up.
welcome to marketing.
welcome to marketing
And you accuse me of taking jabs "to win?" Come on now, that's just childish.
I think you're wrong when you assume that the target market of "Kids meals" are people who are ill informed about video games. Sure, maybe the parents aren't familiar with the new Nintendo system, but how long before Christmas do you think it takes before little Joey asks Santa for the next "Pokemon System"? I think there is not nearly as big of a difference between non-gaming kids-meals consumers and non-gaming mountain dew drinkers as you would like to believe.
And showing the recent NPD numbers can certainly be interpreted as Nintendo's overall marketing to be doing things right, but that does not PROVE that Nintendo's Wendy's scheme is better than Sony's Mountain Dew scheme.
Anyways, REGARDLESS of which marketing scheme you can prove to be successful, the point of MY post is that this is yet another example where the editors of this site chose to attack the competition for no reason whatsoever. Why bring up the Game Fuel promotion at all? It has absolutely no bearing on George Harrison's retirement.
Oh good God.
Another good article on this site ruined by that sarcastic reminder, to everyone reading , about the " Bouble" that will surly be "Bursting" any time now…
How original.
Y A W N .
It IS true, those annalists were pretty silly to say that, back all those months ago. But we get it. Have for some time now, actually.
Now get over it.
*pop*
i am with you jack, stay strong
and even penny arcade brought it up. everybody but you thinks its pointless because it targets the audience who is alrady most likely to know about it.
you can ignore reality all you want, but you are alone here so far as i have seen on the web, except probably the xbox forums.
Ah, I don't think anyone here actually said that the Dew commercials were particularly useful… The argument seems to be revolving around the Wendy's Marketing thing being just as silly. And sorry, but it kinda is. It may still make sense to do it, depending on how much it's costing Nintendo, but it's still silly.
Nintendo isn't perfect. They're certainly much more forward thinking than the competition, but they're not bloody perfect. They do stupid stuff too, and they do stuff that ultimately has a low net impact. That honestly doesn't take away from their strengths, or their victories, it's just the way things are. EVERYONE in the industry makes some number of blunders.
If you're going to rank on the other companies though, do it for the right reasons. The Halo 3 marketing campaign via Mountain Dew commercials isn't a good avenue for examining the problems with Microsoft. They don't really widen the market at all, no, but you know what? Halo 3 *itself* isn't going to widen the market either. You're going to go after your core users for a game like that, because it doesn't make sense trying to market it to anyone else. You don't try to sell Halo to grandmas and soccer moms. They're not going to be interested to begin with. The problem isn't the marketing campaign, the problem is the software lineup focusing almost exclusively on games like Halo 3.
Oh, just to add… the kids meal toys were silly… the Win a Wii contest with the Frosty Floats on the other hand was a much much better idea.
The point of the "Halo Fuel" thing wasn't to get soda drinkers to buy Halo, nor even primarily to get Halo players to drink (more) soda. It was to get little pictures of Master Chief in front of you everywhere you went, just in case you forgot for a microsecond that Halo 3 is coming out. The same is true for those movie-fast food tie-ins where every bag that gets sent through the drive-thru is plastered with cartoon characters.
It worked, but as Penny Arcade pointed out yesterday, it's insultingly dumb.
On the other hand, what I've seen of Nintendo's promotions at Wendy's over the years (they date back to at least 2003) has almost seemed like an afterthought, with a display somewhere in the store and signs in the windows. No bag branding, no special soda cups, no fry containers covered with Miis or Mario. But I'm diabetic, so I guess I missed the Frosty thing. Anyway, I'm sure the idea is the same, but the execution is rather different.