Share this article: Digg.comFacebookGoogle BookmarksN4GGamerblipsdel.icio.usRedditSlashdot.orgStumbleUpon There seems to be an increase in celebs advertising games these days. Clearly an indication of how large the advertising budgets for gaming has reached. But to date I don't remember any being used for the Playstation 3 or 360, or for any of their games.
Do Nintento have a smarter marketing department or better grasp of their market, and really, does anyone buy a game because a celeb is shown on TV playing it?
Personally it doesn't matter how much I fancy the female celeb, or respect and like the sports star, only the game influences me. Has anyone ever bought a game they had no interest in until a pop star they find attractive was pretending to care about a game? No never. But seeing Patrick Stewart playing brain training was fun.
Its more about making you remember an ad and therefore the product rather than actually thinking fans of the celebrity will buy it.
Nintendo's ad men are clever buggers and are at least by and large using relevant celebs with each ad.
Although MS and sony have never run ad campains using celebs they have still used them to promote products. When Lips came out there was an event where the sugar babes were playing it and an E3 a couple years back when they had slash come out to promote guitar hero 3.
Putting celebs in ads is nothing new, hell games used to be based on them in the 8/ 16bit era some games were sponsored and often just extended product placement. Some of them were even pretty damn good. Coolspot, zool and Push over were each sponsered by 7up, chubbachubs and quavers. The entire plot of push over surrounded an ant recovering a bag of crisps.
Its kind of clever on ninty's part to have joe calzage advertise it considering the original had Mike tyson as the end boss. I know why they're used. But I was wondering if anyone had bought a game because of the celeb. My theory is absolutely no one. Perhaps having a celeb directly related to a game, ie every sports game effectively, makes sense. But even so having a celeb pretend he plays or loves the game surely doesn't fool anyone!? |