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Well after much digging and analysing I would like to finally reveal my finished article on my Nintendo adult advertisement project. The project began in July for Media Studies coursework where I had to develop an advertisement campaign for a company of my choice. After choosing Nintendo I then had to decide what I was advertising. And so I decided to try and improve the company’s adult demographic without damaging the support of the younger generations. Now before I began making a few posters I had to research current campaigns and see how successful they have been, which means I had to see what Nintendo do advertise adult wise. Secondly I would have to contact various companies including Nintendo on the matter as well as conduct surveys and discuss in focus groups. Well now I am at the stage of producing my 2D posters and so all my research has been completed and as I promised many months ago I will present my findings. Most of it would seem obvious to you but it may make you realize why Nintendo are having such a hard time attracting the teenage to adult market and may develop a further insight into Nintendo.
Now one of the earlier things I started with was a survey, which asked many basic questions in order to gain the necessary information. Now hardcore gamers (which is what most of us are) have a far deeper understanding of it all, very few hardcore gamers honestly see Nintendo as a children’s company and that is why these types of people aren’t the problem. Nevertheless I was still slightly shocked at what I found. The results I got said 75% of the people I asked (I asked around 70) said Nintendo are a company for everyone, meanwhile a large 23% said Nintendo were a children’s company, which means not as many hardcore gamers see Nintendo as a company for everyone as I originally hoped. Nevertheless the rest was as I predicted Mario is the game they associate with Nintendo, red is the colour. But then I came to a question of which the response left me shocked. I asked around 70 hardcore gamers if they knew Resident Evil was exclusive to Gamecube or not. Now this was a question aimed at the casual gamers but 32% of hardcore gamers didn’t know and 80% of those didn’t believe it! So when I asked the casual gamer that question I was expecting an even larger (I asked 75 casual gamers) percentage of people who didn’t know about the announcement. And so I wasn’t surprised to see 86% of casual gamers completely oblivious that Capcom’s survival horror game had jumped ship. Another interesting discovery occurred when I asked casual gamers what game they thought of when it comes to Nintendo. Although like the hardcore gamer Mario scored the highest Pokemon was only slightly behind with 46%. The most important discovery from it all was when I asked the casual gamer whether they saw Nintendo as a Children’s company, an adult company or a company for everyone. No less than 80% said Nintendo were a kiddies company, the reason for this was sure to reveal itself when I look at Nintendo’s adult adverts.
Now finding 2D adult adverts for the Gamecube or for Gamecube games was surprisingly easy as Cube-Europe supplied nearly all of them! Now each advert I received I critically analysed from head to toe, but I won’t bore you with that instead I’ll tell you what I discovered about them. Now 3 of them are from Nintendo themselves, 1 is from Capcom and another was from Heineken. Now the one from Capcom is for Resident Evil and Resident Evil 0 and is a Japanese advert (I’ll tell you about the European campaign later on). It featured Chris and Jill in a relaxed pose with blood splatters to the left and the creepy mansion main hall in the background. It really featured everything adult in a very subtle way, Sexual innuendo with the way the characters were dressed, Violence with the blood splatter and even fear with the way the writing was done and the main hall back drop. The other half of the advert featured Billy and Rebecca from Resident Evil 0 in a similar pose to Chris and Jill’s. I was actually rather impressed with Capcom’s advert if this appeared more frequently then Nintendo’s adult demographic would increase considerably. Another one, which would do the same, is the underused one from Heineken, representing another clever advertisement ploy by Nintendo. Basically Nintendo joined with the Heineken beer company to produce a campaign that involved competitions and tried to promote drinking and playing games with your mates. The advert featured two bottles of Heineken brand beer strapped to the prongs of the Gamecube controller. The advert looked extremely effective as it combines an adult pastime with the Gamecube. It would have a good effect on Nintendo’s adult market but sadly the advert is underused and only appeared in a couple of publications.
Now for the 3 Nintendo adverts, 2 are modern Gamecube adverts for Super Mario Sunshine and Eternal Darkness the third is an old N64 advert for Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Now the Super Mario Sunshine advert has been famed recently for the use of Mario in an adult situation. He is shown spraying water on an attractive Bikini clad Japanese woman and the anchorage (words accompanying text) reads “Summer. Mario. It feels so good”. You cannot imagine how annoyed I was, after spending ages trying to figure out what the Japanese text said the following issue of NGC have the words printed in English. The anchorage despite being poor does sit nicely with the entire idea of Mario stuck in a sexually innuendo filled scene (despite portraying the Nintendo mascot as a dirty old plumber). Sadly this advert only appeared in a Japanese publication of Playboy yet the advert goes to prove that Nintendo are willing to make even their childish appealing games seem adult and well done to them. The other 2 Nintendo adverts are American based and the first is for Nintendo’s adult game Eternal Darkness. Now similar to the Pikmin Flower idea (where Nintendo named a new flower the Pikmin Flower) this advert helps promote their “amateur movie” campaign. This is where Nintendo asked amateur moviemakers to portray insanity in a short film anyway they want. Ten were selected to be put on a website with one was awarded a prize as the overall winner. The campaign would have cost very little but attracted a lot of media interest. Now the advert in question featured a white straight jacket amongst dark coloured normal every day clothing with the anchorage, written in poor handwriting, saying: “Insanity, you learn to live with it”. This is a very clever advert and looked very mature without using sex or violence. This advert appeared in several American issues of Playboy. The third and final advert was for Conker’s Bad Fur Day and was a drawn advert showing Conker’s head buried in a naked Females breasts. The anchorage read, “Conker is a squirrel. Squirrels hunt for acorns. Can you help Conker find some acorns?” The advert showed the game very well, cartoon advert with mature content, similar to the games graphics in comparison to its content. The Conker advert appeared in an American edition of Playboy and Conker’s Bad Fur Day competitions ran on the Playboy TV channel.
Now when looking at the adverts from Nintendo did any of you notice a pattern? Yep they all appeared in one or more editions of Playboy. Now the reason I believe Nintendo did this is because they didn’t want to let children see these adverts so they don’t damage the support from the younger generation. So why not put these adverts in some of the other in mature magazines (that aren’t pornographic e.g. Heat magazine) and newspapers that children don’t read anyway. Or simply advertise on TV after the watershed, like Capcom does with the Resident Evil adverts. Why they don’t do this was one of the questions I asked Nintendo after sending them an e-mail and I was surprised at the incredibly helpful response I got from Shelly Friend (Head of PR at Nintendo UK some of you may know of her). Now Shelly might be a little fed up with the amount of e-mails I sent her but she always replied and seemed delighted to help me with my project. Although she couldn’t tell me how successful previous adult advertisement campaigns had been she did say a few things that were interesting. She stated that the reason for Nintendo’s love of advertising in adult magazines was in an attempt to “avoid being spotted by parents”, she said, “Nintendo of America and Japan believe that due to children being present parents will not purchase adult magazines like Playboy, in theory at least.” So that clears that mystery up but I then sent her another e-mail asking “if any future campaigns are likely to break this tend?” And this time she sent me another very interesting response regarding Europe’s Resident Evil campaign. She told me of a joint campaign between Nintendo and Capcom called “Adult’s Get Scared Too!” (It has been running for a few weeks now).
Now 2D poster campaigns, specialists websites and TV ads have been running for about a week for the release of Resident Evil last Friday the 13th. Now the campaign is supposed to “advertise a violent Gamecube game in the mainstream without effecting the younger demographic” or so Shelly says and in theory I would agree with her. The adverts, if you’ve managed to see any, feature a father and his son and his dad has got scared playing Resident Evil. In one poster advert you see the Dad looking into the garden and the TV advert features the Dad suffering nightmares and wishing to sleep with the boy. Now the idea is that the Dad has been playing Resident Evil on his son’s Gamecube is supposed to portray the “family image in an effective way” or so Shelly says. Now I would agree that it does give the impression that the Gamecube is for “all the family” but I still think this could put the teenage audience off the game and how does it tell parents that the Gamecube is still safe for younger players? So I remain sceptical and similar to the Mario Playboy advert I’ve decided to listen to my focus groups. Many said to me that the games that “look childish” are in fact “adult in disguise” as Cube magazine once said. And so I’ve decided to create my very own “GROW UP” campaign that is currently being worked on now. Shelly explained to me that depending on the success of the Resident Evil campaign “Eternal Darkness may follow a similar idea”. And if it does then you’d all know that my scepticism about the campaign was misplaced and judging on the fact that in many shops Resident Evil is outselling Tekken 4 it looks like Shelly may have been right.
So what did you learn from this post that you never knew before? Well you probably gained a much deeper insight to the way Nintendo are running things. You learned that Nintendo are keen to increase it’s adult demographic but are extremely aware of the damage that it may do. Shelly Friend commented on the Conker advertising campaign saying, “The relatively poor sales of Conker’s Bad Fur Day on the N64 told us a lot about the amount of adult support we have. The advertisement campaign in fact did more harm than good as it angered many parents that will never see Nintendo as a family friendly company again.” So naturally Nintendo are being cautious when attempting to increase their adult support, but at least we know one thing… they are trying.
Dringo.
Special thanks to: Cube-Europe, People at UKChatforums, CUBE magazine, various casual gamers living in the Cambridgeshire area, The Advertisement Standards Authority, Planet Gamecube, Nintendo and Shelly Friend for helping me in my project.
And one big finger to: Microsoft, Rare, Capcom and Sony for not replying to my e-mails!
Now one of the earlier things I started with was a survey, which asked many basic questions in order to gain the necessary information. Now hardcore gamers (which is what most of us are) have a far deeper understanding of it all, very few hardcore gamers honestly see Nintendo as a children’s company and that is why these types of people aren’t the problem. Nevertheless I was still slightly shocked at what I found. The results I got said 75% of the people I asked (I asked around 70) said Nintendo are a company for everyone, meanwhile a large 23% said Nintendo were a children’s company, which means not as many hardcore gamers see Nintendo as a company for everyone as I originally hoped. Nevertheless the rest was as I predicted Mario is the game they associate with Nintendo, red is the colour. But then I came to a question of which the response left me shocked. I asked around 70 hardcore gamers if they knew Resident Evil was exclusive to Gamecube or not. Now this was a question aimed at the casual gamers but 32% of hardcore gamers didn’t know and 80% of those didn’t believe it! So when I asked the casual gamer that question I was expecting an even larger (I asked 75 casual gamers) percentage of people who didn’t know about the announcement. And so I wasn’t surprised to see 86% of casual gamers completely oblivious that Capcom’s survival horror game had jumped ship. Another interesting discovery occurred when I asked casual gamers what game they thought of when it comes to Nintendo. Although like the hardcore gamer Mario scored the highest Pokemon was only slightly behind with 46%. The most important discovery from it all was when I asked the casual gamer whether they saw Nintendo as a Children’s company, an adult company or a company for everyone. No less than 80% said Nintendo were a kiddies company, the reason for this was sure to reveal itself when I look at Nintendo’s adult adverts.
Now finding 2D adult adverts for the Gamecube or for Gamecube games was surprisingly easy as Cube-Europe supplied nearly all of them! Now each advert I received I critically analysed from head to toe, but I won’t bore you with that instead I’ll tell you what I discovered about them. Now 3 of them are from Nintendo themselves, 1 is from Capcom and another was from Heineken. Now the one from Capcom is for Resident Evil and Resident Evil 0 and is a Japanese advert (I’ll tell you about the European campaign later on). It featured Chris and Jill in a relaxed pose with blood splatters to the left and the creepy mansion main hall in the background. It really featured everything adult in a very subtle way, Sexual innuendo with the way the characters were dressed, Violence with the blood splatter and even fear with the way the writing was done and the main hall back drop. The other half of the advert featured Billy and Rebecca from Resident Evil 0 in a similar pose to Chris and Jill’s. I was actually rather impressed with Capcom’s advert if this appeared more frequently then Nintendo’s adult demographic would increase considerably. Another one, which would do the same, is the underused one from Heineken, representing another clever advertisement ploy by Nintendo. Basically Nintendo joined with the Heineken beer company to produce a campaign that involved competitions and tried to promote drinking and playing games with your mates. The advert featured two bottles of Heineken brand beer strapped to the prongs of the Gamecube controller. The advert looked extremely effective as it combines an adult pastime with the Gamecube. It would have a good effect on Nintendo’s adult market but sadly the advert is underused and only appeared in a couple of publications.
Now for the 3 Nintendo adverts, 2 are modern Gamecube adverts for Super Mario Sunshine and Eternal Darkness the third is an old N64 advert for Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Now the Super Mario Sunshine advert has been famed recently for the use of Mario in an adult situation. He is shown spraying water on an attractive Bikini clad Japanese woman and the anchorage (words accompanying text) reads “Summer. Mario. It feels so good”. You cannot imagine how annoyed I was, after spending ages trying to figure out what the Japanese text said the following issue of NGC have the words printed in English. The anchorage despite being poor does sit nicely with the entire idea of Mario stuck in a sexually innuendo filled scene (despite portraying the Nintendo mascot as a dirty old plumber). Sadly this advert only appeared in a Japanese publication of Playboy yet the advert goes to prove that Nintendo are willing to make even their childish appealing games seem adult and well done to them. The other 2 Nintendo adverts are American based and the first is for Nintendo’s adult game Eternal Darkness. Now similar to the Pikmin Flower idea (where Nintendo named a new flower the Pikmin Flower) this advert helps promote their “amateur movie” campaign. This is where Nintendo asked amateur moviemakers to portray insanity in a short film anyway they want. Ten were selected to be put on a website with one was awarded a prize as the overall winner. The campaign would have cost very little but attracted a lot of media interest. Now the advert in question featured a white straight jacket amongst dark coloured normal every day clothing with the anchorage, written in poor handwriting, saying: “Insanity, you learn to live with it”. This is a very clever advert and looked very mature without using sex or violence. This advert appeared in several American issues of Playboy. The third and final advert was for Conker’s Bad Fur Day and was a drawn advert showing Conker’s head buried in a naked Females breasts. The anchorage read, “Conker is a squirrel. Squirrels hunt for acorns. Can you help Conker find some acorns?” The advert showed the game very well, cartoon advert with mature content, similar to the games graphics in comparison to its content. The Conker advert appeared in an American edition of Playboy and Conker’s Bad Fur Day competitions ran on the Playboy TV channel.
Now when looking at the adverts from Nintendo did any of you notice a pattern? Yep they all appeared in one or more editions of Playboy. Now the reason I believe Nintendo did this is because they didn’t want to let children see these adverts so they don’t damage the support from the younger generation. So why not put these adverts in some of the other in mature magazines (that aren’t pornographic e.g. Heat magazine) and newspapers that children don’t read anyway. Or simply advertise on TV after the watershed, like Capcom does with the Resident Evil adverts. Why they don’t do this was one of the questions I asked Nintendo after sending them an e-mail and I was surprised at the incredibly helpful response I got from Shelly Friend (Head of PR at Nintendo UK some of you may know of her). Now Shelly might be a little fed up with the amount of e-mails I sent her but she always replied and seemed delighted to help me with my project. Although she couldn’t tell me how successful previous adult advertisement campaigns had been she did say a few things that were interesting. She stated that the reason for Nintendo’s love of advertising in adult magazines was in an attempt to “avoid being spotted by parents”, she said, “Nintendo of America and Japan believe that due to children being present parents will not purchase adult magazines like Playboy, in theory at least.” So that clears that mystery up but I then sent her another e-mail asking “if any future campaigns are likely to break this tend?” And this time she sent me another very interesting response regarding Europe’s Resident Evil campaign. She told me of a joint campaign between Nintendo and Capcom called “Adult’s Get Scared Too!” (It has been running for a few weeks now).
Now 2D poster campaigns, specialists websites and TV ads have been running for about a week for the release of Resident Evil last Friday the 13th. Now the campaign is supposed to “advertise a violent Gamecube game in the mainstream without effecting the younger demographic” or so Shelly says and in theory I would agree with her. The adverts, if you’ve managed to see any, feature a father and his son and his dad has got scared playing Resident Evil. In one poster advert you see the Dad looking into the garden and the TV advert features the Dad suffering nightmares and wishing to sleep with the boy. Now the idea is that the Dad has been playing Resident Evil on his son’s Gamecube is supposed to portray the “family image in an effective way” or so Shelly says. Now I would agree that it does give the impression that the Gamecube is for “all the family” but I still think this could put the teenage audience off the game and how does it tell parents that the Gamecube is still safe for younger players? So I remain sceptical and similar to the Mario Playboy advert I’ve decided to listen to my focus groups. Many said to me that the games that “look childish” are in fact “adult in disguise” as Cube magazine once said. And so I’ve decided to create my very own “GROW UP” campaign that is currently being worked on now. Shelly explained to me that depending on the success of the Resident Evil campaign “Eternal Darkness may follow a similar idea”. And if it does then you’d all know that my scepticism about the campaign was misplaced and judging on the fact that in many shops Resident Evil is outselling Tekken 4 it looks like Shelly may have been right.
So what did you learn from this post that you never knew before? Well you probably gained a much deeper insight to the way Nintendo are running things. You learned that Nintendo are keen to increase it’s adult demographic but are extremely aware of the damage that it may do. Shelly Friend commented on the Conker advertising campaign saying, “The relatively poor sales of Conker’s Bad Fur Day on the N64 told us a lot about the amount of adult support we have. The advertisement campaign in fact did more harm than good as it angered many parents that will never see Nintendo as a family friendly company again.” So naturally Nintendo are being cautious when attempting to increase their adult support, but at least we know one thing… they are trying.
Dringo.
Special thanks to: Cube-Europe, People at UKChatforums, CUBE magazine, various casual gamers living in the Cambridgeshire area, The Advertisement Standards Authority, Planet Gamecube, Nintendo and Shelly Friend for helping me in my project.
And one big finger to: Microsoft, Rare, Capcom and Sony for not replying to my e-mails!
Page:
Ugh.
Resident Evil - remake for GCN
Resident Evil 2, 3 and Code Veronica - ports to GCN
Resident Evil Zero - exlusive to GCN
Resi '4' - online, for GCN, PS2 and XBOX
Resident Evil - remake for GCN
Resident Evil 2, 3 and Code Veronica - ports to GCN
Resident Evil Zero - exlusive to GCN
Resi '4' - online, for GCN, PS2 and XBOX
Resident Evil Series and the Resident Evil spin off games are very different things Bonus.
The fact is no one really cares too much about the Survivor games, the fact is if more people know the "main Resident Evil series" (which is how i phrased the question for casual gamers) is exclusive (at the moment at least but for the next 3 years you won't see a proper RE game on other formats) and since when was it 5 games? RE1,2,3,o,Code Veronica and 4. Can you count?
The fact is no one really cares too much about the Survivor games, the fact is if more people know the "main Resident Evil series" (which is how i phrased the question for casual gamers) is exclusive (at the moment at least but for the next 3 years you won't see a proper RE game on other formats) and since when was it 5 games? RE1,2,3,o,Code Veronica and 4. Can you count?
To be fair, your report is flawed on the basis that Resident Evil is NOT and exclusive franchise to Nintendo.
Capcom and Nintendo do have a deal which will see 5 exclusive games released on the Gamecube and not on other platforms, although some of those games are already released and are merely remakes.
But the main opposition against that viewpoint is the fact that Capcom have said that their will be more Resi games on other formats, including a supposed online version and apparently more in the Survivor series.
Put it simply, you asked questions which were invalid to begin with, and therefore you cannot use the answers in a context of relating to the games industry. Ask a hardcore gamer if the Resi series is exclusive to the Gamecube, they laugh at you, because it isn't, sorry.
Capcom and Nintendo do have a deal which will see 5 exclusive games released on the Gamecube and not on other platforms, although some of those games are already released and are merely remakes.
But the main opposition against that viewpoint is the fact that Capcom have said that their will be more Resi games on other formats, including a supposed online version and apparently more in the Survivor series.
Put it simply, you asked questions which were invalid to begin with, and therefore you cannot use the answers in a context of relating to the games industry. Ask a hardcore gamer if the Resi series is exclusive to the Gamecube, they laugh at you, because it isn't, sorry.
Well after much digging and analysing I would like to finally reveal my finished article on my Nintendo adult advertisement project. The project began in July for Media Studies coursework where I had to develop an advertisement campaign for a company of my choice. After choosing Nintendo I then had to decide what I was advertising. And so I decided to try and improve the company’s adult demographic without damaging the support of the younger generations. Now before I began making a few posters I had to research current campaigns and see how successful they have been, which means I had to see what Nintendo do advertise adult wise. Secondly I would have to contact various companies including Nintendo on the matter as well as conduct surveys and discuss in focus groups. Well now I am at the stage of producing my 2D posters and so all my research has been completed and as I promised many months ago I will present my findings. Most of it would seem obvious to you but it may make you realize why Nintendo are having such a hard time attracting the teenage to adult market and may develop a further insight into Nintendo.
Now one of the earlier things I started with was a survey, which asked many basic questions in order to gain the necessary information. Now hardcore gamers (which is what most of us are) have a far deeper understanding of it all, very few hardcore gamers honestly see Nintendo as a children’s company and that is why these types of people aren’t the problem. Nevertheless I was still slightly shocked at what I found. The results I got said 75% of the people I asked (I asked around 70) said Nintendo are a company for everyone, meanwhile a large 23% said Nintendo were a children’s company, which means not as many hardcore gamers see Nintendo as a company for everyone as I originally hoped. Nevertheless the rest was as I predicted Mario is the game they associate with Nintendo, red is the colour. But then I came to a question of which the response left me shocked. I asked around 70 hardcore gamers if they knew Resident Evil was exclusive to Gamecube or not. Now this was a question aimed at the casual gamers but 32% of hardcore gamers didn’t know and 80% of those didn’t believe it! So when I asked the casual gamer that question I was expecting an even larger (I asked 75 casual gamers) percentage of people who didn’t know about the announcement. And so I wasn’t surprised to see 86% of casual gamers completely oblivious that Capcom’s survival horror game had jumped ship. Another interesting discovery occurred when I asked casual gamers what game they thought of when it comes to Nintendo. Although like the hardcore gamer Mario scored the highest Pokemon was only slightly behind with 46%. The most important discovery from it all was when I asked the casual gamer whether they saw Nintendo as a Children’s company, an adult company or a company for everyone. No less than 80% said Nintendo were a kiddies company, the reason for this was sure to reveal itself when I look at Nintendo’s adult adverts.
Now finding 2D adult adverts for the Gamecube or for Gamecube games was surprisingly easy as Cube-Europe supplied nearly all of them! Now each advert I received I critically analysed from head to toe, but I won’t bore you with that instead I’ll tell you what I discovered about them. Now 3 of them are from Nintendo themselves, 1 is from Capcom and another was from Heineken. Now the one from Capcom is for Resident Evil and Resident Evil 0 and is a Japanese advert (I’ll tell you about the European campaign later on). It featured Chris and Jill in a relaxed pose with blood splatters to the left and the creepy mansion main hall in the background. It really featured everything adult in a very subtle way, Sexual innuendo with the way the characters were dressed, Violence with the blood splatter and even fear with the way the writing was done and the main hall back drop. The other half of the advert featured Billy and Rebecca from Resident Evil 0 in a similar pose to Chris and Jill’s. I was actually rather impressed with Capcom’s advert if this appeared more frequently then Nintendo’s adult demographic would increase considerably. Another one, which would do the same, is the underused one from Heineken, representing another clever advertisement ploy by Nintendo. Basically Nintendo joined with the Heineken beer company to produce a campaign that involved competitions and tried to promote drinking and playing games with your mates. The advert featured two bottles of Heineken brand beer strapped to the prongs of the Gamecube controller. The advert looked extremely effective as it combines an adult pastime with the Gamecube. It would have a good effect on Nintendo’s adult market but sadly the advert is underused and only appeared in a couple of publications.
Now for the 3 Nintendo adverts, 2 are modern Gamecube adverts for Super Mario Sunshine and Eternal Darkness the third is an old N64 advert for Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Now the Super Mario Sunshine advert has been famed recently for the use of Mario in an adult situation. He is shown spraying water on an attractive Bikini clad Japanese woman and the anchorage (words accompanying text) reads “Summer. Mario. It feels so good”. You cannot imagine how annoyed I was, after spending ages trying to figure out what the Japanese text said the following issue of NGC have the words printed in English. The anchorage despite being poor does sit nicely with the entire idea of Mario stuck in a sexually innuendo filled scene (despite portraying the Nintendo mascot as a dirty old plumber). Sadly this advert only appeared in a Japanese publication of Playboy yet the advert goes to prove that Nintendo are willing to make even their childish appealing games seem adult and well done to them. The other 2 Nintendo adverts are American based and the first is for Nintendo’s adult game Eternal Darkness. Now similar to the Pikmin Flower idea (where Nintendo named a new flower the Pikmin Flower) this advert helps promote their “amateur movie” campaign. This is where Nintendo asked amateur moviemakers to portray insanity in a short film anyway they want. Ten were selected to be put on a website with one was awarded a prize as the overall winner. The campaign would have cost very little but attracted a lot of media interest. Now the advert in question featured a white straight jacket amongst dark coloured normal every day clothing with the anchorage, written in poor handwriting, saying: “Insanity, you learn to live with it”. This is a very clever advert and looked very mature without using sex or violence. This advert appeared in several American issues of Playboy. The third and final advert was for Conker’s Bad Fur Day and was a drawn advert showing Conker’s head buried in a naked Females breasts. The anchorage read, “Conker is a squirrel. Squirrels hunt for acorns. Can you help Conker find some acorns?” The advert showed the game very well, cartoon advert with mature content, similar to the games graphics in comparison to its content. The Conker advert appeared in an American edition of Playboy and Conker’s Bad Fur Day competitions ran on the Playboy TV channel.
Now when looking at the adverts from Nintendo did any of you notice a pattern? Yep they all appeared in one or more editions of Playboy. Now the reason I believe Nintendo did this is because they didn’t want to let children see these adverts so they don’t damage the support from the younger generation. So why not put these adverts in some of the other in mature magazines (that aren’t pornographic e.g. Heat magazine) and newspapers that children don’t read anyway. Or simply advertise on TV after the watershed, like Capcom does with the Resident Evil adverts. Why they don’t do this was one of the questions I asked Nintendo after sending them an e-mail and I was surprised at the incredibly helpful response I got from Shelly Friend (Head of PR at Nintendo UK some of you may know of her). Now Shelly might be a little fed up with the amount of e-mails I sent her but she always replied and seemed delighted to help me with my project. Although she couldn’t tell me how successful previous adult advertisement campaigns had been she did say a few things that were interesting. She stated that the reason for Nintendo’s love of advertising in adult magazines was in an attempt to “avoid being spotted by parents”, she said, “Nintendo of America and Japan believe that due to children being present parents will not purchase adult magazines like Playboy, in theory at least.” So that clears that mystery up but I then sent her another e-mail asking “if any future campaigns are likely to break this tend?” And this time she sent me another very interesting response regarding Europe’s Resident Evil campaign. She told me of a joint campaign between Nintendo and Capcom called “Adult’s Get Scared Too!” (It has been running for a few weeks now).
Now 2D poster campaigns, specialists websites and TV ads have been running for about a week for the release of Resident Evil last Friday the 13th. Now the campaign is supposed to “advertise a violent Gamecube game in the mainstream without effecting the younger demographic” or so Shelly says and in theory I would agree with her. The adverts, if you’ve managed to see any, feature a father and his son and his dad has got scared playing Resident Evil. In one poster advert you see the Dad looking into the garden and the TV advert features the Dad suffering nightmares and wishing to sleep with the boy. Now the idea is that the Dad has been playing Resident Evil on his son’s Gamecube is supposed to portray the “family image in an effective way” or so Shelly says. Now I would agree that it does give the impression that the Gamecube is for “all the family” but I still think this could put the teenage audience off the game and how does it tell parents that the Gamecube is still safe for younger players? So I remain sceptical and similar to the Mario Playboy advert I’ve decided to listen to my focus groups. Many said to me that the games that “look childish” are in fact “adult in disguise” as Cube magazine once said. And so I’ve decided to create my very own “GROW UP” campaign that is currently being worked on now. Shelly explained to me that depending on the success of the Resident Evil campaign “Eternal Darkness may follow a similar idea”. And if it does then you’d all know that my scepticism about the campaign was misplaced and judging on the fact that in many shops Resident Evil is outselling Tekken 4 it looks like Shelly may have been right.
So what did you learn from this post that you never knew before? Well you probably gained a much deeper insight to the way Nintendo are running things. You learned that Nintendo are keen to increase it’s adult demographic but are extremely aware of the damage that it may do. Shelly Friend commented on the Conker advertising campaign saying, “The relatively poor sales of Conker’s Bad Fur Day on the N64 told us a lot about the amount of adult support we have. The advertisement campaign in fact did more harm than good as it angered many parents that will never see Nintendo as a family friendly company again.” So naturally Nintendo are being cautious when attempting to increase their adult support, but at least we know one thing… they are trying.
Dringo.
Special thanks to: Cube-Europe, People at UKChatforums, CUBE magazine, various casual gamers living in the Cambridgeshire area, The Advertisement Standards Authority, Planet Gamecube, Nintendo and Shelly Friend for helping me in my project.
And one big finger to: Microsoft, Rare, Capcom and Sony for not replying to my e-mails!
Now one of the earlier things I started with was a survey, which asked many basic questions in order to gain the necessary information. Now hardcore gamers (which is what most of us are) have a far deeper understanding of it all, very few hardcore gamers honestly see Nintendo as a children’s company and that is why these types of people aren’t the problem. Nevertheless I was still slightly shocked at what I found. The results I got said 75% of the people I asked (I asked around 70) said Nintendo are a company for everyone, meanwhile a large 23% said Nintendo were a children’s company, which means not as many hardcore gamers see Nintendo as a company for everyone as I originally hoped. Nevertheless the rest was as I predicted Mario is the game they associate with Nintendo, red is the colour. But then I came to a question of which the response left me shocked. I asked around 70 hardcore gamers if they knew Resident Evil was exclusive to Gamecube or not. Now this was a question aimed at the casual gamers but 32% of hardcore gamers didn’t know and 80% of those didn’t believe it! So when I asked the casual gamer that question I was expecting an even larger (I asked 75 casual gamers) percentage of people who didn’t know about the announcement. And so I wasn’t surprised to see 86% of casual gamers completely oblivious that Capcom’s survival horror game had jumped ship. Another interesting discovery occurred when I asked casual gamers what game they thought of when it comes to Nintendo. Although like the hardcore gamer Mario scored the highest Pokemon was only slightly behind with 46%. The most important discovery from it all was when I asked the casual gamer whether they saw Nintendo as a Children’s company, an adult company or a company for everyone. No less than 80% said Nintendo were a kiddies company, the reason for this was sure to reveal itself when I look at Nintendo’s adult adverts.
Now finding 2D adult adverts for the Gamecube or for Gamecube games was surprisingly easy as Cube-Europe supplied nearly all of them! Now each advert I received I critically analysed from head to toe, but I won’t bore you with that instead I’ll tell you what I discovered about them. Now 3 of them are from Nintendo themselves, 1 is from Capcom and another was from Heineken. Now the one from Capcom is for Resident Evil and Resident Evil 0 and is a Japanese advert (I’ll tell you about the European campaign later on). It featured Chris and Jill in a relaxed pose with blood splatters to the left and the creepy mansion main hall in the background. It really featured everything adult in a very subtle way, Sexual innuendo with the way the characters were dressed, Violence with the blood splatter and even fear with the way the writing was done and the main hall back drop. The other half of the advert featured Billy and Rebecca from Resident Evil 0 in a similar pose to Chris and Jill’s. I was actually rather impressed with Capcom’s advert if this appeared more frequently then Nintendo’s adult demographic would increase considerably. Another one, which would do the same, is the underused one from Heineken, representing another clever advertisement ploy by Nintendo. Basically Nintendo joined with the Heineken beer company to produce a campaign that involved competitions and tried to promote drinking and playing games with your mates. The advert featured two bottles of Heineken brand beer strapped to the prongs of the Gamecube controller. The advert looked extremely effective as it combines an adult pastime with the Gamecube. It would have a good effect on Nintendo’s adult market but sadly the advert is underused and only appeared in a couple of publications.
Now for the 3 Nintendo adverts, 2 are modern Gamecube adverts for Super Mario Sunshine and Eternal Darkness the third is an old N64 advert for Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Now the Super Mario Sunshine advert has been famed recently for the use of Mario in an adult situation. He is shown spraying water on an attractive Bikini clad Japanese woman and the anchorage (words accompanying text) reads “Summer. Mario. It feels so good”. You cannot imagine how annoyed I was, after spending ages trying to figure out what the Japanese text said the following issue of NGC have the words printed in English. The anchorage despite being poor does sit nicely with the entire idea of Mario stuck in a sexually innuendo filled scene (despite portraying the Nintendo mascot as a dirty old plumber). Sadly this advert only appeared in a Japanese publication of Playboy yet the advert goes to prove that Nintendo are willing to make even their childish appealing games seem adult and well done to them. The other 2 Nintendo adverts are American based and the first is for Nintendo’s adult game Eternal Darkness. Now similar to the Pikmin Flower idea (where Nintendo named a new flower the Pikmin Flower) this advert helps promote their “amateur movie” campaign. This is where Nintendo asked amateur moviemakers to portray insanity in a short film anyway they want. Ten were selected to be put on a website with one was awarded a prize as the overall winner. The campaign would have cost very little but attracted a lot of media interest. Now the advert in question featured a white straight jacket amongst dark coloured normal every day clothing with the anchorage, written in poor handwriting, saying: “Insanity, you learn to live with it”. This is a very clever advert and looked very mature without using sex or violence. This advert appeared in several American issues of Playboy. The third and final advert was for Conker’s Bad Fur Day and was a drawn advert showing Conker’s head buried in a naked Females breasts. The anchorage read, “Conker is a squirrel. Squirrels hunt for acorns. Can you help Conker find some acorns?” The advert showed the game very well, cartoon advert with mature content, similar to the games graphics in comparison to its content. The Conker advert appeared in an American edition of Playboy and Conker’s Bad Fur Day competitions ran on the Playboy TV channel.
Now when looking at the adverts from Nintendo did any of you notice a pattern? Yep they all appeared in one or more editions of Playboy. Now the reason I believe Nintendo did this is because they didn’t want to let children see these adverts so they don’t damage the support from the younger generation. So why not put these adverts in some of the other in mature magazines (that aren’t pornographic e.g. Heat magazine) and newspapers that children don’t read anyway. Or simply advertise on TV after the watershed, like Capcom does with the Resident Evil adverts. Why they don’t do this was one of the questions I asked Nintendo after sending them an e-mail and I was surprised at the incredibly helpful response I got from Shelly Friend (Head of PR at Nintendo UK some of you may know of her). Now Shelly might be a little fed up with the amount of e-mails I sent her but she always replied and seemed delighted to help me with my project. Although she couldn’t tell me how successful previous adult advertisement campaigns had been she did say a few things that were interesting. She stated that the reason for Nintendo’s love of advertising in adult magazines was in an attempt to “avoid being spotted by parents”, she said, “Nintendo of America and Japan believe that due to children being present parents will not purchase adult magazines like Playboy, in theory at least.” So that clears that mystery up but I then sent her another e-mail asking “if any future campaigns are likely to break this tend?” And this time she sent me another very interesting response regarding Europe’s Resident Evil campaign. She told me of a joint campaign between Nintendo and Capcom called “Adult’s Get Scared Too!” (It has been running for a few weeks now).
Now 2D poster campaigns, specialists websites and TV ads have been running for about a week for the release of Resident Evil last Friday the 13th. Now the campaign is supposed to “advertise a violent Gamecube game in the mainstream without effecting the younger demographic” or so Shelly says and in theory I would agree with her. The adverts, if you’ve managed to see any, feature a father and his son and his dad has got scared playing Resident Evil. In one poster advert you see the Dad looking into the garden and the TV advert features the Dad suffering nightmares and wishing to sleep with the boy. Now the idea is that the Dad has been playing Resident Evil on his son’s Gamecube is supposed to portray the “family image in an effective way” or so Shelly says. Now I would agree that it does give the impression that the Gamecube is for “all the family” but I still think this could put the teenage audience off the game and how does it tell parents that the Gamecube is still safe for younger players? So I remain sceptical and similar to the Mario Playboy advert I’ve decided to listen to my focus groups. Many said to me that the games that “look childish” are in fact “adult in disguise” as Cube magazine once said. And so I’ve decided to create my very own “GROW UP” campaign that is currently being worked on now. Shelly explained to me that depending on the success of the Resident Evil campaign “Eternal Darkness may follow a similar idea”. And if it does then you’d all know that my scepticism about the campaign was misplaced and judging on the fact that in many shops Resident Evil is outselling Tekken 4 it looks like Shelly may have been right.
So what did you learn from this post that you never knew before? Well you probably gained a much deeper insight to the way Nintendo are running things. You learned that Nintendo are keen to increase it’s adult demographic but are extremely aware of the damage that it may do. Shelly Friend commented on the Conker advertising campaign saying, “The relatively poor sales of Conker’s Bad Fur Day on the N64 told us a lot about the amount of adult support we have. The advertisement campaign in fact did more harm than good as it angered many parents that will never see Nintendo as a family friendly company again.” So naturally Nintendo are being cautious when attempting to increase their adult support, but at least we know one thing… they are trying.
Dringo.
Special thanks to: Cube-Europe, People at UKChatforums, CUBE magazine, various casual gamers living in the Cambridgeshire area, The Advertisement Standards Authority, Planet Gamecube, Nintendo and Shelly Friend for helping me in my project.
And one big finger to: Microsoft, Rare, Capcom and Sony for not replying to my e-mails!
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