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Nintendo UK talks marketing tactics, plans for Wii U
A portion of a GamesIndustry interview with Nintendo's UK Marketing and PR director Shelly Pearce...
GI: In terms of the Wii U's marketing, I would imagine that you can't talk specific numbers, but how does the budget and portfolio compare to the marketing for the launch of the Wii?
Shelly Pearce: The campaign for the the Wii U is a very similar size to the one we had for the Wii, it's a very similar spend. In terms of the focus... for this launch we have been on TV but we've very much focused a lot of our activity on sampling, trying to get the Wii U into the hands of as many people as possible because it's so important to play it and try it for themselves.
Also, I think the big difference with the Wii launch is that a lot of our marketing has been online. Obviously we've been very much out there talking to core Nintendo fans and we know that online is where a lot of them are gathering most of their information. So it's become a much more important tool for talking to them. So we've had a lot of traditional online advertising etc, but we've also been filming the sampling activity and people's responses and reactions once they've played Wii U - we've been uploading those to YouTube.
We hope to launch tonight a YouTube channel that's very specifically focused on the Wii U and people's reactions, building up a bank of those. We hope people will be encouraged to be a part of that, adding their own reactions and comments to it. So that will be a large part of our marketing activity post-launch. Obviously we'll also be moving into more traditional mediums for advertising like TV and print.
Full interview here
GI: In terms of the Wii U's marketing, I would imagine that you can't talk specific numbers, but how does the budget and portfolio compare to the marketing for the launch of the Wii?
Shelly Pearce: The campaign for the the Wii U is a very similar size to the one we had for the Wii, it's a very similar spend. In terms of the focus... for this launch we have been on TV but we've very much focused a lot of our activity on sampling, trying to get the Wii U into the hands of as many people as possible because it's so important to play it and try it for themselves.
Also, I think the big difference with the Wii launch is that a lot of our marketing has been online. Obviously we've been very much out there talking to core Nintendo fans and we know that online is where a lot of them are gathering most of their information. So it's become a much more important tool for talking to them. So we've had a lot of traditional online advertising etc, but we've also been filming the sampling activity and people's responses and reactions once they've played Wii U - we've been uploading those to YouTube.
We hope to launch tonight a YouTube channel that's very specifically focused on the Wii U and people's reactions, building up a bank of those. We hope people will be encouraged to be a part of that, adding their own reactions and comments to it. So that will be a large part of our marketing activity post-launch. Obviously we'll also be moving into more traditional mediums for advertising like TV and print.