04/18/2007 06:13:48 PM 
Obviously Wii is a great product and was destined to be a success from the get go, but was interesting to hear the thinking that went behind it.
The presentation focused on how word of mouth and viral played a key role in re-inventing the Nintendo brand and bringing it back, when many experts had pronounced it dead.
Nintendo had to fight back; Sony and Microsoft had overtaken it and its brand was fast becoming irrelevant. The company learned from its mistakes in 1992, when its arrogance allowed Sega to enter the market. The challenge was to regain relevance, but at the same be true to the brand’s core values.
The opportunity lay in a Blue Ocean (Nintendo worked with one of the book’s authors) away from the complex world that gaming had fast become. Everyone was being excluded from it except male teens and young men and the gaming category hadn’t grown for three years.
The goal was to make gaming relevant for the masses. They expanded their focus to include everyone, ensuring they didn’t alienate the core gamer.
Nintendo saw a huge opportunity to use viral and word of mouth.
Nintendo's strategy was to explore all kinds of opportunities, but to remain flexible. Jones mentioned how easy it is to get caught up in the latest Web 2 fad and loose focus, and mentioned Twitter as an example.
Here’s what they did:
My Space: Huge media property for their core 18-34 target. They created a program with My Space to encourage users to send in videos about “play” for a contest. Users were encouraged to vote, rank and win prizes. They also gave away free MP3s from bands on a Nintendo sponsored tour.
Pre-E3: Showed national journalists (Newsweek, etc) the controller in closed sessions, to get some buzz going.
E3: There was considerable buzz about the Wii at the major gaming show. On the first day, Nintendo noticed kids sprinting down the exhibition hall to get in line to try out the Wii. Guys at the Kotaku blog captured the stampede on film.
The buzz from E3 spilled out into the mainstream media.
Offline Buzz: Wanted to get beyond the green room. Talked to producers of the Colbert Report and got it on the show. Talked to writers of South Park and got two episodes featuring the Wii. This was done out of the creators love of the product, no money changed hands. It was all about offering them something exclusive, giving them creative freedom and providing them with answers when they had questions.
The South Park episodes aired two weeks before launch.
Gaming Media: Most console manufacturers FedEx out their product to the writers at game magazines. Nintendo turned the simple act of delivery into an event; where the journalists had to pick up the consoles from police cars, security vans and ice cream trucks parked outside their offices. Of course, many writers filmed “the event” and posted it onto the web.
Brand Ambassadors: Created parties hosted by “mavens”- a couple of groups; “Maven Women” who have lots of friends and influence, they were invited to host Wii parties for their friends and multi-generational families, who got to invite up to 35 family members providing they were younger and older than them. Allowed all participants to blog, tell stories etc about the parties and their experience.
Other stories: Wii and weight loss, Mayo Clinic, Norwegian Cruise Lines buy Wii’s for their fleet.
The Results
2,000 Wii stories on Digg
30,000 consumer videos on You Tube
150,000 blog posts tagged with Wii on Technorati
37,000 blog mentions according to Blogpulse
1.9 million units sold in 4 months.
Overall, the goal was to transform Nintendo from a dead brand to an innovator, the goal was completed when the WSJ named Nintendo one of the most disruptive innovators of 2006.
It’s easy to imagine that with such a great product, stuff just happens, but as Golin Harris and Nintendo showed, there’s a huge amount of strategy, thinking and layers of implementation that go into making success happen.
Share / Bookmark:
It appears you don't have Flash installed.