The Wii U may have been the first of the next generation of consoles, but most people aren’t even aware it’s a new console – and this fact hasn’t escaped Nintendo. Speaking to MCV, Nintendo UK marketing director Shelly Pearce talks about the measures they’re taking to educate people about the console.
Firstly, there will be ads for games such as Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong to run “continuously from half-term to Christmas” along with national advertorials and a promotional tour aimed at reaching 115,500 shoppers. It will also be booking space in Tesco with five-page leaflets to be distributed to 300,000 Tesco customers who purchased a Wii. This, in addition to free money-off vouchers for games.
“We haven’t had the sales we wanted on Wii U hardware. We haven’t had the software for most of this year. But we have some quite ambitious numbers, particularly with some of our biggest franchises coming. Our monthly tracking shows that Wii remains the No.1 console for brand awareness. This offers us a massive opportunity to convert Wii owners to Wii U. Interest is starting to grow but we know we have a lot of work to do.
“There was a big misconception at launch about what Wii U is. And one of the big messages is that this is a new console and a new controller. There are many people out there that don’t know what this is.”
But considering that the PS4 and Xbox One are very well known and will be providing some very strong competition to the Wii U this Holiday season, will all this be enough? We’ll find out come November.N