Nintendo May Pull Wii Ads To Avoid Hype

Due to the lack of product on store shelves and overwhelming demand, Nintendo is considering plans to pull marketing campaigns for the Wii during the holiday season. "The company recently dismissed suggestions that it intentionally engineered shortages to build up hype for the Wii. It claims to be producing 1.8 million of the consoles each month at full capacity. 'The issue of supply management has to be questioned, not least because 2008 is going to be the crunch year for the Wii. It's then that we'll discover whether it's a fad or something with legs,' Screen Digest analyst Piers Harding-Rolls told The Times."

I don't blame them

[eharvill]

Why waste advertising money on something that is flying off the shelves? Once once sales start slowing down they can redouble their advertising efforts and get the "hype" machine moving again.

Makes sense

[Snowgen]

I don't know if it's so much about avoiding hype as it's good business sense. The primary purpose of advertising is to generate demand for your product. If the demand exceeds the supply, then why pay for more demand?

I often wonder what would happen if Coca Cola would say "We're not going to advertise for one month". Would people really stop drinking Coke? How much money would they save?

Then why not redirect some of those funds...

[Millennium]

Since Nintendo is pulling its hardware ads, why not put some proper marketing on its games? Seriously; the only Nintendo game I've even seen a magazine ad for in over a year was Fire Emblem, and I only saw that one in comic books. If Nintendo wants to reach casual gamers, then it needs to start promoting its ads in places casual gamers go, and hardcore-gaming venues just don't fit that description. Word of mouth alone won't make a million seller.

Re:Makes sense

[tdelaney]

As far as I'm aware, Coca Cola only advertises 6 months in any year in any market, for precisely this reason. Of course, I have no source to back this up - it's something I read or heard somewhere, and could be complete bullshit.

Advertising...

[insertwackynamehere]

Does anyone else feel that this press release is an advertisement in disguise, in and of itself? "Our product is so popular that we're actually going to cut back advertising because we probably don't have enough and if you aren't one of the people contributing to the problem, then you are clearly the minority and are not 'with it.' Please desire a Wii for Christmas, now that we have informed you of how popular they are in an advertisement masquerading as a press release that claims we are cutting back advertisements for the product."

Re:I don't blame them

[Fex303]

Why waste advertising money on something that is flying off the shelves? Once once sales start slowing down they can redouble their advertising efforts and get the "hype" machine moving again.

Disclaimer: I work in advertising. (You can save yourselves the Bill Hicks quote, I know it.) I would suggest that the main reason to keep advertising when your product is doing well is to make sure that the 'hype machine' keeps moving. Hype/word-of-mouth/top-of-mind awareness/coolness is very difficult to get and even harder to keep. By the time you realize that people don't think you're awesome (which happens before sales slow), it's too late - you've been overtaken and someone else has taken the momentum in the eyes of the public. Now, I would argue that Nintendo could afford to shift their spending somewhat, or possibly change the message that they're getting across, since they seem have managed to get the message that they are fun for everyone into the public perception extremely well. But cutting spending too much when a product is going well is a common mistake that leads to strong brands falling into irrelevance quite swiftly.

Re:Flipping Wii's

[AvitarX]

Do you really think a significant part of the 1,000,000 units/month (30,000/day) are being resold through the secondary market?

A quick glance has 90,000 on ebay in the last 3 weeks (we'll call it 125,000/month) 900 are listed on amazon, and I don't know where else to check.

These 20% or so that are in the reseller market are getting placed, just later than if they were sold in stores, so shouldn't be keeping supply so much more constricted than naturally.

There is a chance that people are sitting on thousands of Wii, but I somehow doubt it. The scalpers have it easy because they can.

1) buy up the good seats, there are not that many
2) buy a small percentage and let other people buy up the bulk at retail.

The second is what lets the Wii resellers succeed, they are not creating the demand, they are riding that wave.

Re:Then why not redirect some of those funds...

[orclevegam]

Yes, it was one of the strong selling points of the Wii. A good deal of the casual gamer market was sold on the Wii after someone showed them Wii sports. Something a lot of people have missed is that a good chunk of the people that have gone out and bought a Wii weren't going "Oooooh Wii!" they were going "Oooooh Wii Sports!". Even if no other game but Wii Sports had been released for the Wii, it still would have sold a few units even though most people would consider the price too steep for a single game.