Nintendo ramps up IP flywheel plans with Zelda movie

Advertising comes in many shapes and when your business is built on strong intellectual property, this starts to look like a flywheel in which success in one area feeds another; Nintendo, with the promise of a new movie based on Zelda, is seeking another major business-powering success.

Earlier this month, Nintendo sparked hopes among fans and investors when it announced that the video gaming giant was working on a live-action movie based on its 37-year-old best-selling title The Legend of Zelda. 

Why IP extensions matter

In the year of Marvel’s Barbie success as well as Nintendo's Mario Bros. movie, there is growing appetite among companies with significant intellectual property catalogues to deploy their arsenals. Nintendo, which began in 1889 as the maker of handmade traditional playing cards, has one of the richest and most distinctive collections of intellectual property in the world and the potential to recreate another masterclass in brand extensions.

The aim is for a kind of flywheel based on its popular IP, in which its beloved characters and storylines from games become popular movies that, in turn, help it to sell more of the games and consoles that power Nintendo’s profits. 

A question of effectiveness

If there’s a hiccup it appears to be in the link between how well the Mario Bros. movie performed financially and the overall profits. Movies are expensive to make and release, and it appears that investors were slightly dismayed at Nintendo getting the raw end of a distribution deal with Universal Pictures, according to the Financial Times. 

The Zelda games, meanwhile, are much stronger performers in terms of raw video game sales even without a movie to support them. 

In choosing to work jointly with Sony on the Zelda movie, Nintendo holds an important lesson for a lot of other brands: going it alone is risky and can backfire. Sometimes it’s better to partner with expert organisations in areas to which you are new and set up to field the rewards in other areas. 

The Pokemon effect

The announcement follows in the footsteps of this year’s successful Super Mario Bros. Movie (only Marvel’s Barbie was more successful in theatres), but also of an earlier success with the Pokemon series, which is estimated to be one of the most lucrative media franchises ever at over $100 billion since 1996. 

• It continues to command big deals. In India, JioCinema recently sought to supercharge its competition in the country’s competitive streaming market with a deal to stream the Pokemon TV series. The IP is a deal-making brand extension machine around the world: just this month French fashion brand A.P.C and US jewellery firm Tiffany & Co. released separate Pokemon-themed collections. 
• Success elsewhere has also proved potent in the profit-driving gaming market, with recent Pokemon games for the Nintendo Switch console among the top all-time sellers (just behind the original Pokemon Red and Blue).
  
• However, Nintendo is not Pokemon’s sole owner, in the way that most other major IP factories like Disney make sure to be. But Zelda, like Mario, is a home-grown Nintendo production.

Which raises the question of why the company hasn’t doubled down on the strategy. Some figures within the company, especially on the US side of the business, have become more vocal about the aim. “We’re actually evolving into being an entertainment company with gaming as a nucleus of the overall business model,” said Doug Bowser, president of Nintendo of America back in September. 

Sourced from Nintendo, FT, WARC, Reuters, HypeBeast, The Hill

[Image: Nintendo]