Topic: Next Gen Advertising Campaign

[Mylilpurplebox]

 What is Nintendo going to have to do in the next generation in terms of advertising to compete with Micro$oft and Sony? What will they have to point out about the competition? What strenghts should they be pushing. What is  it they must do to get rid of there "kiddy" image (if they need to get rid of it)? Good advertising is crucial.

[Rich]

yeah i totally believe that if Nintendo advertises its next console correctly it would be very good for them. what i believe they should do though is focus on all the features the other systems won't have(like a built in gameboy player should they decide to include one) and then following this is a preview of the AAA titles that they will have at lauch. This is what i think would attract some buyers. Make it like one of those car commersials that show the car just sitting there and then the car on the road.

[HereticPB]

Nintendo advertising for next gen needs to be fresh, entertaining, and "cool" looking. That is the only reason why Xbox is doing better and why Sony got ahead. Nintendo needs to stop the little kid commercials. Guys dressed up as Mario prancing around isn't gonna cut it. They need some really thought out and deliberate commercials pertaining to their product and games. For the love of God advertise your games before, during, and after the game comes out. You have to keep advertising for already released games.

HtPB

[ThePerm]

most peopel didnt get the mario sunshine commercial.

[Grey Ninja]

I vote that all PGC readers should just get naked, paint the logo of the system on our tummies, and run around in the street naked for a while.  After we all get arrested, Nintendo will have a HUGE amount of publicity.

[oompah]

hey not a bad idea! .......you first! :-)

[Ian Sane]

"What is Nintendo going to have to do in the next generation in terms of advertising to compete with Micro$oft and Sony?"

What are they going to do or what should they do?

What are they going to do?  Probably the same stuff they always do and then they'll scratch their heads when everything sells lower than expected.

What should they do?  First of all bring back the genius's who made the N64 commercials and fire the morons who insist that every ad have stupid costumes.  I would have the ads focus almost entirely on game footage.  Having 2 seconds of footage made sense back when every game looked like sh!t but it makes no sense now.  The trailers that companies show at E3 are often entirely game footage and they're usually great and get us interested in the game.  Just showing those trailers as ads would be good advertising.

Movie ads show nothing but footage and they're pretty effective so why should game ads be any different?

[Berny]

Well, I don't know about COMPLETELY getting rid of the costumed characters. While I agree that Super Mario Sunshine ads should have been banned in countries with leadership, there was one good ad w/costumed characters: the original SSB. I believe it was Yoshi, Mario, DK, and Pikachu (not sure about that last one...) duking it out while "So Happy Together" or whatever it's called played in the background. It also makes a mockery of their alleged "kiddy" image. Great ad. They should go for funny in most cases. Although, it wouldn't work with Too Human or Metroid 2 or 3.

BARNEY VS. BIG BIRD eXTREME (Rated M, for Violence, Blood and Gore, and putting Barney in a video game)

[Cell]

The SSB commercial was probably one of the few times Nintendo got their advertising right.  Mario and Zelda commercials were laughable, but the SSB commercial was a perfect fit for the game.  I probably would've handled it differently, but the gist was there.  SSB sets up a situation where the Nintendo stable of predominantly colorful and kiddy characters are cast in a humorous light, almost a parody.  It's really just an echo of what everyone wants to do with these light-hearted icons anyway, pit them against one another in mortal combat. The commercial perfectly exploited that tongue-in-cheek aspect to the game. I think that they could still afford to take themselves a little less seriously with the license, just in terms of presentation, and commercials like the one in question are just the type of thing to help do that.  Now I'm not suggesting they simply extrapolate this self-depricative or parody-like ad style to a bunch of their other games, it's just this one commercial was a particularly good fit to SSB.  I can't think of another game on gamecube that had a more fitting ad, basically.  The rest, as far as I can remember, has been an embarrassment. But I do agree that more game footage is the way to go, you can't screw that up unless your game has nothing to show for itself.