Nintendo UK wheels out the celebs ...

by Chris Greenhough { Oct 20th 2008 at 5:21PM }

... with mixed results. But let's start with the good ones: Patrick Stewart will be back this Christmas to sell the DS and Brain Training to Brits (as he was last year), and he'll be doing it alongside Julie Walters. Hurray! The rest of Nintendo's celebrity line-up will be quite obscure to Americans, but when they produce lifestyle photography as brilliant as this, who the hell cares? They include:

Girls Aloud. British girl pop group, and actually a pretty big name in Blighty. Most famous member is one Cheryl Cole, who seems lovely and sincere on X Factor, though isn't quite as pleasant if you meet her in a nightclub toilet.
Fern Britton, once-cuddly, now gastric-band-wearing TV presenter, will be advertising Cooking Guide.
Ronan Keating, one-fifth of Irish boyband Boyzone. Incidentally, in the process of writing this post, we discovered Boyzone were reforming. Ugh. Anyway, Ronan will be promoting Big Brain Academy.
Jamie and Louise Redknapp, slightly thick but good-looking soccer pundit and his former pop star wife. Will join forces with their extended family to push Mario Kart Wii, Wii Sports, and Super Smash Bros.: Brawl. That's a lot of responsibility on the Redknapps' shoulders! We hope they're up to it.

And going by Nintendo's current record in the UK, they'll probably do really well. Best of luck to all of them.

Tags: advertising, big-brain-academy, boyzone, britain, celebrity, fern-britton, girls-aloud, julie-walters, mario-kart-wii, marketing, patrick-stewart, picard, smash-bros-brawl, uk, wii-sports

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Roddie @ Oct 20th 2008 5:33PM

Girls Aloud are probably the greatest music group ever, so this is a good move from Nintendo.

Sonic_13 @ Oct 20th 2008 6:21PM

Patrick Stewart is without a doubt the best Shakesperian actor to ever play a captain on a futuristic spaceship and a handicap gentlemen with mindblowing powers. There are simply none better, so this is a good move from Nintendo.

Brinstar @ Oct 20th 2008 9:39PM

Girls Aloud and Ronan Keating will bring in a lot of young women and potentially teenage girls. Nice to see Nintendo continuing to market to a broader audience.

Hamster @ Oct 21st 2008 9:21AM

Do you work for Nintendo's PR department by any chance?

Anyway, Nintendo now pretty much exclusively markets to a "broader" audience. In this case the sort of people who like soulless, child-exploiting, manufactured, mimed, conveyor-belt music.

Brinstar @ Oct 21st 2008 12:37PM

Notice where I wrote "continuing" -- as in, I support Nintendo's continued efforts to broaden the gaming market.

There's nothing wrong with the people who like that type of music. They're gamers, too, and their money is just as good as so-called "hardcore" gamers' money. Nintendo realised that only marketing to just the so-called "hardcore" market is not the route to maximum profitability. It makes good business sense. The only people who are offended by Nintendo reaching out to the mass market are the so-called "hardcore" gamers who feel like their special boys' club is becoming less special because more people are gaming now.

Hamster @ Oct 21st 2008 1:18PM

I have absolutely no problem with having more people gaming, in fact in the past I was one of the biggest supporters of that approach. However selling-out to do so is not something I support. Hardcore gamers are annoyed because it seems very much like it has been at the expense of quality, ie. tacky, gimmicky, often practically broken controls and shallow, soulless games (Carnival Games, Big Beach Sports, Sports Party, Sports Island, etc. The games that easily-fooled casual gamers buy and nothing else). The gaming audience will expand naturally over time as generations pass and generations (like ours) who love games will replace the older generations who don't love games. There's no need to force the issue for a quick easy buck, especially if it's at the expense of quality. Nintendo are only doing all this for the simple reason that the GameCube flopped. Had it been a success (which it deserved to be) they wouldn't give a damn about all this casual/expanded audience and they would still be making games with gameplay as the priority instead of compromising quality in pandering to demographics.

I also believe that with the current credit crunch situation Nintendo will realise that only marketing to just the casual market is not "the route to maximum profitability" because casual/non-gamers are going to be buying a hell of a lot less games and consoles in the near future, whereas gamers will carry on buying lots of games and consoles because this is our hobby/passion, it's what we spend our money on.

Brinstar @ Oct 21st 2008 1:21PM

I think you don't have a good grasp of the market, nor Nintendo's strategy.

http://malstrom.50webs.com/birdman.html

Hamster @ Oct 21st 2008 8:48AM

Another Brain Training ad campaign?! Oh dear god no! It's never been off our damn screens for like 3 years now! Enough already!!!!

Oh well at least the Redknapps (who I like a lot) get to promote some good core games (and Wii Sports...) Nice to know that Nintendo still likes to be known as a games company from time to time as well as a bland 'lifestyle' bore.