Nintendo Hires Walking Gamers

Plug1 writes "CNN.com has an interesting article about nintendo hiring people to offer free samples of their games. Stephen Pellitier "will wear a 15-inch flat-screen TV on his chest and a pack of batteries on his back. With a game console and joysticks dangling from his waist, he will spend his weekends inviting passers-by to play games."" imagine the possible pickup lines involving joysticks, buttons, and playing with them! The potential for being beaten on the streets is just amazing!

Comments

National Exposure

[pudge_lightyear]

After the great dot.com bust and 9/11, advertising has gotten pretty tricky. I imagine that budgets are tight, media options are somewhat slimmer, etc.
The neatest thing about this campaign is that sure...this may not work, but it made national news because it's a new idea.
So...they spend a couple of hundred bucks to pay a few guys to walk around crowded areas on weekends. Pay a couple thousand on hardware...probably about 500 for each. And reap the (probably small benefits) associated with this campaign. But...the national exposure this should generate because of the fact that it's new and wierd would probably have costed hundreds to thousands of times what they spent on the few kids and units.

Re:National Exposure

[cancrman]

> I imagine that budgets are tight, media options are somewhat slimmer...

If anything there are more choices for advertising media than ever. Been to a bar lately? Advertisments over urinals (I have seen GTA3 ads on these), postcards by the doors, coasters, swizzlesticks, matchbooks. It's all fair game these days. My company used cars wrapped in ads to get their message out. There is a company were you can lease models to hand out product samples.

TV, radio, internet (banners, spam, popups), print (magazines, newspapers) outdoor, sponsorships, 'guerilla media' (Bars, wild postings, samplings, elevator LCDs, floor graphics), LCDs in checkout lines. Christ, even the divders in the supermarket checkout lines have ads on them.

Advertising is becoming so commonplace and persistant that companies need something to differentiate themselves. Hence this new campaign by nintendo.

It's fucking brilliant.

I'm a media planner and I wish I had the opportunity to come up with this idea.