Nintendo, Barbie: the age of the multifaceted entertainment machine

Nintendo and Mattel have expanded products beyond their original market categories, deploying brand extensions with a keen eye for long-term, multigenerational appeal. 

Why Nintendo and Barbie matter

The release of the Barbie movie was one of the biggest marketing events of the year, even if the supposed aim of Mattel, the toy brand’s owner, was to make a cultural splash. The Super Mario Bros. Movie, a similar release for Nintendo, had set records earlier this year and would only be beaten by Barbie. Both instances are not simply effective movie tie-ins, but a concerted effort to capitalise on a cultural moment built from long-term fandom. 

Nucleus thinking

Both stories stem from the core business – either games or toys – but move beyond into a wider entertainment brand. 

“We’re actually evolving into being an entertainment company with gaming as a nucleus of the overall business model,” Doug Bowser, president of Nintendo of America, told the Washington Post. 

Mattel is similar, with the aim of becoming a major film producer off the back of its intellectual property. The success of Barbie, set to gross almost $2bn worldwide with an estimated $100m going to Mattel, indicates that the brand is onto a winner. 

A different path

While Mattel made the most of the film’s media opportunity, the strategy was about making a good movie first and capturing the impact later. The movie, for instance, makes many jokes at the expense of Mattel’s management. 

In a different arena, Nintendo also ploughs its own furrow in an often performance-driven gaming world. The broader strategy is to bring its enviable intellectual property to multiple new formats: its incredibly popular Nintendo Switch, a combined handheld and at-home console, is the third best-selling console of all time (the Nintendo DS is the second best-selling console ever, a whisker behind Sony’s PlayStation 2).

The really smart thing about the Switch is that it doesn’t compete on technical prowess (Sony and Microsoft’s next gen consoles blow it out of the water by comparison), but on the strength of its first-party titles, many of which pertain to much-loved characters like Mario. 

Multigenerational appeal

“A big part of this is how you continue to not only bring new players in, but how you keep existing players engaged by having content in a steady drumbeat that makes the difference,” Nintendo president Bowser told the Post. 

Multigenerational appeal is critical: “It’s for the family, quite honestly, that’s looking to get one more Switch, if the kids are fighting over the existing Switch,” he added. The kid-friendly nature of Nintendo’s titles also make it an obvious choice for families looking to buy their first consoles. 

Sourced from the New York Times, Washington Post, WARC

[Image: Nintendo]