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I am interested in the idea of brands delivering something in their products that I am terming- malleability.

Meaning, do they allow themselves to be easily adapted and changed for new uses?

This is basically hacking.

The Wii is one of the more interesting ones of the moment because of its cultural presence and the interesting infa red and motion sensing technology that it has.

Here Johnny Lee shows a stunned audience at this year's TED conference, a couple of very cool hacks.



I think his comment about spreading the hacks through YouTube is especially relevant.

Brands could create whole ecosystems with communities of users who play, develop and share ideas in this way.

Perhaps, it's no longer about a closed box, but something that's open and can be constantly played with and its limits tested and explored.


Posted by Ed Cotton Gaming is about to undergo a major revolution; the success of Nintendo’s Wii has woken publishers, developers and the console manufacturers to the potential reality of a genuine mass market.

Everyone loves to play, but for too long gaming has defined itself and marketed to the stereotypical teenage male gamer and missed out on the rest of the population.

John Riccitiello, the CEO of EA acknowledged this problem in a recent interview.

"We're boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play.”

Here are a couple of interesting new gaming initiatives, including one one from EA.

1. Newsgames

Persuasive Games recently signed a deal with the New York Times to provide newsgames for the publishing giant. The first game, Food Import Folly explores the issue of FDA food inspections.

Gaming for Times readers, who would have thought?

2. User-Generated Fashion games

H&M and EA teamed up for The Sims to allow users to integrate H&M fashions into their game play. Instead of turning to Second Life, H&M turned to an established brand franchise to create an interactive experience.

With a branded Sims Pack, users also have the opportunity to see new designs, check out virtual stores and create their own designs, with H&M showcasing the best concepts in virtual fashion shows.  

H&M’s effort is a nice integration of user-generated content, brand experience and gaming.

Expect to see more innovation from the gaming world as it tries to broaden its audience base and as advertisers chase after opportunities to engage with consumers in new and more playful ways.



Posted by Ed Cotton Sometimes, working in marketing, it's easy to forget the hard work that goes into making stuff.

So here's a look at how some things get made.

The Wii



McClaren cars



Hairdryers



Sony-Ericsson phones



Martin Guitars



Airbus A380






Posted by Ed Cotton Peter Moore, VP of Xbox, in a recent Bloomberg interview, higlighted the need to expand his brand's franchise.

``If we don't make that move, make it early and expand our demographic, we will wind up in the same place as with Xbox 1, a solid business with 25 million people,'' said Peter Moore, a vice president who oversees the Xbox. ``What I need is a solid business with 90 million people.''

The Wii has changed the gaming landscape and it's competitors are finally starting to pay attention.

It will be interesting to see if Nintendo can maintain its momentum, if Xbox can realistically re-position itself as a family machine, without alienating it's core audience and if Sony can get back into the race.

The game is far from over in this category.

Posted by Ed Cotton At the WOMMA Basic Training conference in New Orleans, we got the chance to hear the story behind the launch of Nintendo’s Wii from Stephen Jones of Golin Harris and Perrin Kaplan, VP Marketing at Nintendo.

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.


Back in December, we made a number of predictions for 2007. Number 8 on the list was the prediction that 24 Hour Fitness will team up with Wii. Although this has happened yet, we now have more hope, because today news broke of a personal trainer in Scotland who is using the Wii for workouts.

Influx believes it's just a matter of time before 24 Hour Fitness hears this news from Scotland and sets up Wii classes.

We will keep you posted.

Via Engadget