Above: The tone of future Nintendo commercials.
Nintendo of America has announced the new VP: Scott Moffitt. What does this all mean?
Bottom Line: The future of Nintendo marketing, at least in America, will be highly reminiscent of the marketing we saw with the Xbox 360. This is confirmation that Nintendo is aiming at the cliched ‘hardcore’ audience, i.e. knuckleheads who wear black band shirts and stink up Gamestops.
Moffitt was deeply involved with the ‘Do the Dew’ Mountain Dew commercials. I expect future Nintendo marketing to resemble what we saw Microsoft put out in 2005 and 2006.
Will it work? No. The reason why is this audience doesn’t matter. The Mountain Dew ‘energetic youth’ are not the movers and shapers of the video game console. Microsoft painfully realized this with the Xbox 360. This is why they totally switched marketing when they went their Kinect direction.
Nintendo first began this marketing direction back during the ’16-bit war’ to make their console all ‘hip’ and ‘uber’ with teenagers and the knuckleheads who stink up Gamestops (back then, they were stinking up the Toy Stores). NES also had this ‘energetic’ marketing campaign, but the market responded to it in a populist way. People did not buy the NES because it was ‘hip’ and ‘energetic’. Much of the 16-bit Console War was Sega and Nintendo trying to declare their console was ‘hipper’ and ‘cooler’ than the other console. Sony, watching quietly in the back, trumped both of them with their PS1 marketing.
The future Nintendo will sound much like Sega and much like pre-Kinect Microsoft. This approach is a turn-off to the mass market and will further drive away the Wii audience Nintendo desperately needs.
Long Version:
When looking up Scott Moffitt, I got sidetracked into the history of soda (which is far more interesting than Scott Moffitt). So I am going to get Moffitt out of the way so I can talk about soda since that is far more interesting.
The ‘Do the Dew’ campaign for Mountain Dew has made Moffitt ‘famous’ (if marketers could be ‘famous’). Since so many young people are familiar with this campaign (because they drank too much Mountain Dew in high school), there are many ‘papers’ floating around on the subject in marketing classes.
Because I’m finding talking about Moffitt so boring that my fingers do not want to type, I will just cut and paste something from this article.
In 1999, Mountain Dew became the third largest carbonated soft drink at retail, overtaking Diet Coke. However, part of this success in gaining share had to do with the sustained weakness of Pepsi and Coke. In 1999, the problems that the colas were facing seemed to be spreading to Mountain Dew, Sprite, and Dr. Pepper. All of the leading CSDs began to show real weakness as alternative non-carbonated drinks began to attract a great deal of trial, especially amongst teens.
While Mountain Dew sales began to lag, all of the “brand health” indicators remained strong. And the advertising continued to significantly outperform competition. In planning for 2000, Moffitt and his senior management were particularly concerned with two dilemmas:
– How to keep the “Do the Dew” campaign working hard to build the brand given that extreme sports were becoming overexposed
– How to respond to the growing threat of non-CSDs, especially Gatorade and the new highlycaffeinated and sugary energy drinks like Red Bull
A detailed strategy statement was developed by Moffitt’s team at Pepsi-Cola North America, in conjunction with the account team at BBDO New York led by Cathy Israelevitz. This strategy was boiled down to a single sentence to focus the development of new creative: Symbolize that drinking Mountain Dew is an exhilarating experience.
This should give the reader a good idea of where Nintendo of America is going to go. I do not live in marketing circles. I do not know when all the marketers get together for their little parties, do they whisper to one another, “Oh my! Nintendo hiring Scott Moffitt! Boy, oh boy, Microsoft and Sony are in big trouble now!”? I do not know if he is famous or not, if he is well regarded or not.
But I do feel sorry for Scott Moffitt. He has no idea what he is getting into. The video game market is not what people think it is. The video game market destroys far more marketing careers than it creates. The reason why it is one of the hardest and most unpredictable markets in the world is because no one treats it as ‘The New World’. They treat the video game market as if it was some sort of ugly stepsister to the computer market, or they treat it as if it was some sort of relative to a typical youth product. Video games are the Revolution. It is the mother bird that laid the egg which the home computer revolution was hatched. And far from the idiots marketers are used to with television or movies or other ‘youth activities’, gamers are extremely savvy and cannot be easily manipulated. If you want recent proof of this, look how so many marketers underestimated the Wii audience. They thought the ‘casuals’ (they were called) would easily be corralled, like cattle, into buying crappy third party games. Microsoft and Sony launched extraordinarily expensive marketing campaigns for their Kinect and Move products which the Wii audience did not buy. And with the 3DS, even Nintendo has been shown to underestimate this mass market.
I have learned over observation of many, many moons that the video game market shreds ‘smart people’ from other industries. The best example would be Atari. Nolan Bushnell’s prior business experience before Atari was managing a carnival. So as Atari became, at the time, the fastest growing company on Earth, it was decided that ‘proper’ business people be put in to run it. Bushnell would only clash with these so called ‘smart’ business people. Eventually, Bushnell left and shorted Atari’s stock. And then came the Great Crash.
Most of the good marketers for gaming appear to have come from a related industry like toys. The marketers for the NES came from toys (NOA hired many from that Teddy Ruxpin (sp?) talking bear toy). Remember Tom Kalinske? He came from Mattel and was responsible for helping to grow Barbie and He-Man. But the video game business ended up destroying Kalinske.
My favorite was the founder of Nintendo of America, Arakawa. He came to America with… very little. He very much worked his way up. This had to make him down to Earth. When he tried to sell the NES, everyone told him he was crazy. People thought he was stupid and that because he was from Japan, he could be shoved around (hello MGM). What I liked about Arakawa was that he threw out market data. Market data showed that the NES could not sell. Later, it showed that no one would buy Nintendo Power. “All kids have to do is touch it,” Arakawa is to have said. Later, the NES did its huge success and Nintendo Power was the most read magazine for youth in America. Thank goodness Arakawa threw out the market data!
I’m not impressed with Moffitt’s record. I do not have a high regard for people who work in the food business. It is not that hard to sell food or sugared water. Let me frame it this way: which is harder to do? To get the masses to spend $5 on a sugary drink (which the product vanishes as is consumed) or $5 to download something from Wiiware (which sticks around forever)? As absurd as it sounds, it is FAR easier to sell a $5 sugary drink even though it disappears when consumed (while a game does not). People are used to spending a ton of money on food and do so frivolously. People buy food all the time that they know they should not.
People in the food business are in ‘easy mode’. “Competitive Market’? Bah! Food is one of the few products everyone is forced to consume due to the dictates of Nature.
(“What about Peter Main, Malstrom? He worked in food.” But he was hired more because he was Arakawa’s next door neighbor. Arakawa did not do anything ‘correct’ in the old fashioned business sense. This is why he was awesome. Perhaps I should hire my next door neighbor to be my marketing director!)
Steve Jobs hired a VP from Pepsi-Co and look how badly that ended. Now, I’m saying this is what will happen with Moffitt, but I am saying that Video Game Business is ‘Hard Mode’ while Food Business is ‘Easy Mode’. The Home Computer Business, which is the offspring from the Video Game Business, is also ‘Hard Mode’ which is why that former VP Pepsi-Co, after kicking out Steve Jobs (because he was not a proper ‘smart business guy’), managed to run Apple into the ground.
Scott Moffitt was likely hired because of his experience with marketing to young people. Reggie also has similar experience and, since Reggie is probably tired of replacing his Vice Presidents, went with someone who reminded him of himself. Nintendo also wants to prioritize this audience with Cafe.
Another particular reason Nintendo went with Moffitt was that Pepsico focused marketing to revolve more around a creative (focus on creative talent instead of huge budget). This is in line with the Nintendo way of thinking.
Enough of that! Let us talk about soda!
Over many decades, Coca-Cola had become “America’s drink” (and later the preferred drink in many countries around the world) through advertising that conveyed that Coke served as a social elixir. Coke promoted the idea that the drink brought people together in friendship around ideas that people in the nation cared about. From 1995 onward, Coke had struggled as it experimented with a variety of new branding ideas. Pepsi rose to the rank of Coke’s loyal opposition in the 1960s with the successful “The Pepsi Generation” ad campaign, in which the brand harnessed the ideas and passions of the 1960s counterculture. More recently, Pepsi used celebrities—particularly musicians such as Michael Jackson, Madonna, Faith Hill, Ricky Martin, and Mary J. Blige—to convey the idea that Pepsi was an expression of youth attitudes. Nonetheless, the Pepsi brand also had struggled to maintain sales in the 1990s.
I find this very interesting. I really like the article describing how Coca-Cola marketed itself as a ‘social elixir’. So much is being said in those two words.
7-UP was successful in the 1970s branding against the colas as the “uncola” in ads that used a charismatic Jamaican actor to describe the purity and naturalness of 7-UP in a tropical setting. Similarly, the sweet cherry-cola concoction Dr Pepper challenged the audience to “be a Pepper” with well-received dance numbers that encouraged consumers to do their own thing rather than follow the masses in drinking cola. From the late 1980s onward, 7-UP faded as the brand was used as a cash cow with ever-shrinking media investments. Meanwhile, Mountain Dew rose from its regional status to become a major “flavor” brand.
It is interesting how Mountain Dew’s roots were so… rural… and regional.
Just because I am quoting this doesn’t mean I agree with it. But this is how marketers see these products. It is like the marketers live in a plastic world where there are no Human beings, and everyone is actually cattle to be correctly ‘corralled’ in a direction.
But this line caught my interest:
The three major flavor brands dominated different geographic areas: Dr Pepper dominated Texas and the rest of the deep South, Mountain Dew dominated rural areas, particularly in the Midwest and Southeast, and Sprite dominated urban-ethnic areas.
I can’t say anything about Sprite. I often see it used for parties such for a punch or something.
I am currently drinking Dr. Pepper (Malstrom pauses writing the blog post to slurp down more Dr. Pepper. *slurp* *slurp* *slurp* Damn, that is good stuff). And since I live in Texas, apparently it is correct that I am supposed to be drinking Dr. Pepper. But that actually isn’t the reason why Dr. Pepper is popular around here.
I drink diet soda as if it were water. I enjoy the slight caffeine effect it has since I do not like messing with the hot drinks that is coffee. I think many people drink soda like this. I do not really care what the soda is so long as it is not acidic, has caffeine, doesn’t have much in sugar (since sugar drinks are awful for the health), and isn’t annoying. I find drinking something like 7-Up to be annoying because… It is as if it just makes me thirsty for water. I cannot explain it. I find the taste of Pepsi to be very odd for whatever reason.
Normally, I do not care what the soda is so long as it does the job I want it to do and is not weird. The reason why my ice box is full of Dr. Pepper is because at the grocery store, Dr. Pepper is the cheapest soda there. I wouldn’t mind getting Coke, but it is the most expensive of all the soda!
As inflation hits the American economy, I have been extremely annoyed as the price of everyday-foods have gone up. However, Dr. Pepper is 25% less than all other soda. The reason why is because Dr. Pepper is made in Waco, Texas. The drink does not have to travel far to get to me. (In the same way, Blue Bell ice cream, made in Brenham, TX, doesn’t take long to travel to me either. [And they actually do eat all they can and sell the rest.]) My point is that the article is making Dr. Pepper to be some sort of ‘flavor’ soda where, in reality, it is being drunk, gravitating around where it is manufactured, because it is a cheap quality imitation Coke without being crappy (like those ‘bargain sodas’ you see that cost like 60 cents a bottle).
I know exactly why Mountain Dew became popular. Young men were using Mountain Dew to perform the job of coffee. Mountain Dew has a high amount of caffeine. It also has low carbonation which allows it to be drunk quickly. So a young man, studying for a class, would drink Mountain Dew or drink it in the morning. I do not think young men drank Mountain Dew thinking they would become mountaineering athletes with outdoor adventures. It was integrated into their lives as a sort of ‘cold coffee’. It’s yellow-green color made it even cooler.
But it is interesting seeing the origins of these sodas. Decades ago, when I was really out in the boonies in Central Texas (we’re talking about farm area where as if civilization had not fully formed), I was stunned to see a soda in the local grocery store that I had never seen before. It was called ‘Big Red’. “What is this?” I wondered. It tasted like bubblegum. It was red. And it stained everything! My god, the stains it would make! Combining kids and Big Red was a recipe for disaster.
Here is what Wikipedia says:
Big Red is a soft drink that was created by Grover C. Thomsen and R.H. Roark in Waco, Texas (1937)[1] and originally known as Sun Tang Red Cream Soda. It is generally considered to be one of many American varieties of cream soda, and is the original “red cream soda”. The name was changed to “Sun Tang Big Red Cream Soda” in 1959,[2] and to “Big Red” in 1969[2] by Harold Jansing, then president of the San Antonio bottling plant, after hearing a golf caddy refer to the soda by that name.[3] Until the late 1970s, it was marketed exclusively in Central and South Texas and around Louisville, Kentucky
So no wonder I could find it in Central Texas but not East Texas. Of course, now, it is everywhere. But I could never figure out how these backwards boonies farm towns would have this interesting soda I saw absolutely nowhere else! Well… now I know!