NINTENDO HAS SOMETHING TO SELL YOU

A look at the company's marketing strategy over the years

- ZACHARY SMALL

After spending the past two decades cultivating a market for casual gamers, Nintendo is relying on star-power in its latest advertising campaign.

"Let me show you a little something something that I learned in the 1900s," actor Paul Rudd says in one commercial, failing to impress a girl named Lisa who thinks it is strange he is dressed as his 22-year-old self, complete with an indie-rock hairstyle and wearing beads.

Lisa is not the only person who thinks her "Uncle Paul" is being weird in the marketing for Nintendo's newest console, the Switch 2, after a months-long promotional cycle focused on its graphical power and livestreaming capabilities. The ad is intentionally cringeworthy — a throwback to early 1990s commercials for the Super Nintendo in which Rudd made his acting debut within a thick fog of smoke machines and strobe lights.

"You boomers are cute, but you are going to lose," Lisa announces as she zooms past Rudd and other racers within Mario Kart World, the franchise's first brand-new game in about a decade.

Behind the lines of cheesy dialogue is a greater story about how Nintendo, which declined to comment about its marketing, wants potential customers to see its products.

The company has guarded its brand identity for the past 136 years, rarely making public comments outside shareholder meetings and prepared remarks, so the substance of its ad campaign when it releases a new console offers some of the clearest views of the company's business strategy.

How Nintendo's marketing has evolved since it entered the home video game business in the 1970s shows how what had been a playing-card company became a global entertainment brand that combines the nostalgic appeal of Disney with the design simplicity of Apple.

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