Baseball PR Event Furthers Nintendo Pitch For The Family

Thomcult:Nintendo’s thinking is very simple: If you want to attract non-gaming audiences then you have to do it with non-game centric promotion. Baseball is more than just a sport, it’s a national institution and plays a huge role in the lives of many families. By having such an overt presence at events such as baseball games, when families are together enjoying themselves, Nintendo has a chance of pitching the Wii at the family as a single unit. Parents and children don’t consume the same media, and furthermore have different expectations of it, so catching them all with a single unified advertising message is difficult. However, when the family is voluntarily visiting a baseball game, unified by their enjoyment and love of the sport then that is the perfect opportunity to capture them all with the same, positive message.

A recent trend in mass-market games promotion has been the abdication of any associations with the medium. Mario’s presence at the Mariners/Yankees game is not about selling the Wii as an interactive entertainment product, but about promoting Nintendo as a family brand.