Chief Strategy Officer
at
Carmichael Lynch
Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area, United States
| Title | Arrows |
| Agency | Leo Burnett |
| Campaign | GameBoy Advance Launch - Nintendo |
| Advertiser | Nintendo |
| Brand | Game Boy Advance |
| Posted | September 2003 |
| Product | GBA |
| Business Sector | Video Games/Consoles |
| Philosophy | CREATIVE STRATEGY GBA’s 32bit processor, similar to those found on full games consoles, provides “immersive” play but on a mobile platform. The campaign conveyed “immersive console quality gaming experience anywhere”, and did it in a humorous style, suitable to an 18-year-old mindset, with the two campaign taglines “Gaming 24:7” and “Console quality gaming, anywhere”. OTHER COMMUNICATIONS PROGRAMMES Consumer PR centred on pre-launch hype aimed at the aspirational late teen and young adult audience. Editorial placements and reviews in fashionable titles and ‘lads’ magazines focussed on showing the ‘console quality anywhere’ In addition, video news releases in Europe of the Japanese launch (earlier in the year) showed queues and quotes from trendy adult gamers in urban Japan. This prevented European news images of mass queues of very young children shown on Japanese TV (where the age targeting was considerably younger). MEDIA Television Consumer Magazine Point-of-Sale Public Relations Interactive/On-Line Radio Out-of-Home TOTAL MARKETING EXPENDITURE Over €20 million MEDIA STRATEGY As Media buying was in the hands of individual markets and their agencies, a centralised Media strategy and template was developed to compliment and reinforce the targeting and creative strategies. A three stage development template was laid out from the June launch through to the end of year, matching the aspirational launch positioning and mainstream younger consumer sales by Christmas: 1. Build – Pre and at launch period reposition brand perception against 18 year old males (broadcast + travel outdoor / lifestyle print) 2. Broaden – Post launch retaining aspirational appeal but widening coverage (media shared by teens and tweens but with teen+ style and content giving aspirational draw) 3. Mainsteam – Maximised coverage to generate Christmas present purchase for the younger ‘core’ business target of tweens. SUMMARY Breaking the ‘kiddie’ image that GameBoy had acquired, GameBoy Advance was launched in 2001, targeting an older market. Not only was the product the fastest selling games console in history - adding one quarter of a billion Euros to the European games market and selling one every five seconds during the first 10 weeks - it also carved a user profile with an average age of 18 in the first six months, well above the set target. |
| Problem | CAMPAIGN OBJECTIVES 1. Building a first year installed-base as a strong platform for ongoing software sales. 2. Make GameBoy Advance less ‘kiddie’ and have more social cachet among the core tween & teenage market. 3. Create a broader market into late teens for the brand to avoid over cannibalisation of the existing GameBoy product and as a conduit for long-term profit-earning software sales. TARGET AUDIENCE The business and volume opportunity for mass sales was tween boys (9-12). However to reach this audience and avoid the ‘kiddie’ image of the GameBoy brand, 18 to 20 year olds with a ‘gaming attitude to life’ were targeted, thus creating an aspiring image for tweens and widening the potential universe for sales. While 18 year olds were targeted at the launch, the campaign was broadened to directly target tweens for Christmas. |
| Media Type | |
| Account Planner | Lachlan Badenoch |
| Advertising Manager | Matti Kuorehjarvi |
| Market Analyst | Gurdeep Puri |
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