Wii WOM

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an interview with Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo EVP of Sales & Marketing. The interview focused on the marketing strategies behind the U.S. introduction of Wii Fit, a gaming system designed to get people in game shape.

Cammie Dunaway explains there will be TV, Radio, and OOH advertising to support the launch but ... Nintendo is focusing much of its marketing attention on “public relations” efforts to get regular people to do the marketing for Wii Fit.

Cammie is a firm believer in the power of Word-of-Mouth (WOM) as a credible and effective marketing strategy. In the interview she doesn’t say anything earth-shattering new about WOM. Nevertheless, her sound-bites might give you some ammo in championing (or defending) Word-of-Mouth within your company.

WSJ: Videogame advertising has long been dominated by glitzy TV ads, yet the largest part of this advertising and marketing campaign will be the public-relations effort. Why?

Ms. Dunaway: "What we see is consumers are increasingly turning to friends, family and news articles as credible sources of information about products, more so than in the past."

WSJ: Why?

Ms. Dunaway: "It is because consumers are getting much smarter, because they have better access to information and they are able to share information online. They are bombarded with advertising messages -- so they have more tools to avoid that advertising today."

Comments

[Geno]

John, I recently did a flickr search on Wii. I came up with 140,453 matches.

More important I came across mattclark79's photo stream of flickr images. One with the following caption:

My little brother Stephen, who was born with cerebal palsy and is unable to walk or talk, is able to play video game baseball against his little sister with the Wii.

The first of many comments is this one:
Great :) God bless nintendo!

[NW Guy]

I just wish we could avoid the "people are smarter" comments; they are very condescending. The truth is the follow-up that people have more access to information and therefore are better informed. Consumers have always been smart!

[Tom O'Brien]

Hi John:

I blogged this one as soon as I saw it. We did an interesting look at brand participation around the Wii - fascinating stuff.

My post here.

http://tinyurl.com/3qt338

TO'B

[Football Credit Card]

I just bought the wii fit. Im hoping their going to release more softwares for it.