From another: “Those commercials look like they were written by adults.”
And from a third: “The guys who made it weren’t even good enough to get to the difficult parts.”
The kids were right. The guys who’d made the commercials weren’t very good at the games, but they’d hoped to compensate for that knowledge gap by spending time with people who were good at them. To truly understand what it meant to be a gamer, the agency sent Jon Steel, their director of account planning, and a small team of his best planners around the country to spend time with this demographic. As the head researcher on this project, Irina Heirakuji arranged for a two-week tour through the country during which she and the other planners would visit with boys between eight and twelve, invite over members of their friendship circle, and observe how they played videogames. In addition to these in-home observations, the planners also studied the children’s bedrooms, closets, and any other area that might offer an insight into their overstimulated minds.
What the account planners discovered was that these kids, just like those in the test group, had their own language, customs, and rituals; in a sense, they had their own secret society that adults could observe but never quite understand. Whereas secret societies in the past have met in lodges, taverns, and dimly lit alleys, this new generation’s meeting spot was the virtual world of videogames. And also unlike the covert gatherings of yesteryear, where furtive glances and secret handshakes were needed to gain entry, the only password into this world was up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-start. Playing videogames wasn’t even so much about being good at them as it was about understanding them in a fundamental way that adults never could. For the first time ever, the kid who could never beat his father on the basketball court or beat his mother in an argument now had a place where he could reign supreme.
Goodby, Berlin & Silverstein recognized the value of this new dynamic, and for the pitch they created a series of commercials highlighting the concept of the kid as king. One of the ads featured images of adults-only luxuries, like sports cars and scantily clad women, playing over an unseen and unemotional narrator’s description of the power of adults. “They can drive cars,” he says. “They can go to R-rated movies, and they can also decide when to go to bed.” As he speaks, a barrage of semi-related buzzwords—“speed,” “babes,” “midnight”—blink on and off the screen. “But,” the narrator forcefully says as the screen cuts to game footage from Sonic The Hedgehog, “it will be a chilly day in hell before an adult gets this far on Sonic 2.”
In another ad, a kid named Mitch is seen playing Sonic 2 at home, desperately trying to reach the seventh level. As he nears this goal, his boring father tells him to stop playing and hit the books. Undeterred, Mitch continues playing. Eventually his father delivers to Mitch what he believes to be the most shattering of insults: “If you keep playing videogames, you’ll never grow up to be like me.” Following these harrowing words, the audience is told that Mitch’s new goal in life is to reach the eighth level.
Both ads ended with a tagline that had been cooked up by Dave O’Hare, the chief creative on the account, with a major assist from Jon Steel. After spending those weeks with gamers around the country, Steel informed the creatives that this videogame world is all about speed. It’s all about being able to get through a level in order to move on to the next one. The longer you spend on a level, the slower you are as a player, the less competent you are as an individual. These kids don’t just want to win; they want to win quickly. He also told O’Hare that although the majority of kids owned and played Nintendo, those who had tried both systems believed that Sega’s was superior. One kid even said that after playing Sega there was “no going back.” With comments like these, Steel paraphrased that going from Nintendo to Sega was like getting called up to the big leagues. O’Hare considered this, and after a minute of blending it all together, he suggested that the gamer version of this analogy would be getting to that next power, that next zone, that next level. Seconds later, he came up with the phrase that somehow incredibly summed it all up: “Welcome to the Next Level.”
Between the tagline, the account planning, and the scattershot we-get-you feel of the campaign, Goodby thought that he and his guys had nailed it. They had infiltrated the secret society and learned how to speak directly to this demographic. Or so they thought, until the focus groups’ constant allegations of suckitude.
“The more I think about the commercial,” another kid said, “the more it sucks.”
“Plus Sega shouldn’t be insulting our parents!”
How could they have been so wrong? Goodby wondered. When had they gotten so out of touch with America’s youth? And why had he wasted money on those bottles of champagne for an account his agency had no chance of winning?
“I wish this was a commercial for Nintendo!”
“Oh, yeah, did you see the new one for Mario All-Stars?”
Goodby and his colleagues watched the onslaught continue, still searching for some kind of silver lining. But eventually it became clear that there was none, and, more important, there was no time to look for one. The presentation was in a week and they didn’t have shit. Game over.
It’s all about cool; that’s the holy grail. You’re born, you die, and in between you spend a bunch of years searching for it—looking cool, sounding cool, buying cool, and, no matter what, not being uncool. That right there, that’s the secret formula. It’s addictive, it’s enlightening, and it’s goddamn recession-proof. In a world full of too many people shouting too many things, it’s the only adjective that really matters: “cool.”
Tim Price knew cool, or at least as much as any mortal could claim to know it. Price was an award-winning copywriter whose passion for wild, restless, high-velocity advertising could be traced to his love for off-road racing. He joined Foote, Cone & Belding as a creative director in 1978 and quickly caught fire with his team’s edgy work on the Levi’s Youthwear account. In the process of transforming the esteemed jeans company from a cute brand into a cool one, he found his voice (a sort of counterculture romanticism), he met his wife (the VP director of event marketing at Levi Strauss and Co.), and his firm won part of Nintendo’s business (they got the Game Boy, Leo Burnett got the NES). Price was psyched by the chance to help define this relatively new and fast-moving industry of videogames, to do for Nintendo what FCB had done for Levi’s and appeal to an older, hipper audience.
Unfortunately, this was not at all what Nintendo wanted. They weren’t interested in branding, expanding their demographic, or producing memorable, high-concept ads. All they wanted was cartoony, easy-to-digest commercials that showed a lot of game footage. If that was what they wanted, that was their prerogative, of course, but it raised the question of why they’d hired Foote, Cone & Belding to do this. Price tried to talk Nintendo into taking bigger risks, and whenever he did, he’d receive positive reactions from the NOA marketing team. Peter Main liked clever ideas, Don Coyner loved sophistication, and Bill White wanted to take over the world. But shortly after getting excited about big ideas, reality would sink in; either they’d decide that Nintendo was going to stick with what had been working thus far, or they’d bring the plans back to Minoru Arakawa and get a thanks-but-no-thanks. Fun, happy, and title-driven advertising was Nintendo’s bread and butter, and they didn’t need FCB’s jelly. Within the next year they moved all their business to Leo Burnett, which was not entirely surprising, though it stung Price nevertheless. But now, two years later, he had the chance to right that wrong by helping Foote, Cone & Belding win Sega’s business.
In terms of marketing philosophies, Sega of America was Nintendo of America’s polar opposite. They craved bold ideas, sky-high concepts, and aggressive, in-your-face branding. Sega represented FCB’s chance to let it all hang out, which led to the creation of a wacky, high-octane campaign centered around the tagline “Make your brain sweat.” Surrender to madness, give in to the insanity, and let Sega take your brain into overdrive—this was
the hyperactive sensation that the campaign wished to impart. To help hammer home the point, Price wanted to bring an actual brain to the presentation. Obtaining a real one turned out to be harder than he’d anticipated, but he did manage to track down a medical supply company that sold brain-shaped molds, and he figured that just might work.
On the day of the pitch, Sega’s key marketing members arrived at FCB’s offices not knowing quite what to expect. Neither did Price, whose wife had yet to arrive with the key to the presentation. The night before, she had used the mold to make a life-sized green Jell-O brain, complete with veins of red licorice. It was gorgeous, it was disgusting, and, for the moment, it had been stopped in the hallway by someone at FCB who didn’t recognize Price’s wife and didn’t quite understand why she was carrying something that looked like it would be evidence of a murder committed in Candyland. Eventually she managed to sweet-talk her way past the evil Lord Licorice and get the noggin to her husband. After a thousand thank-yous and a kiss on the cheek, Price then explained to Sega how Foote, Cone & Belding would make consumers sweat their brains for Sega.
Back at Sega of America’s headquarters, Tom Kalinske, Ed Volkwein, Al Nilsen, Diane Adair, Doug Glen, Tom Abramson, and Ellen Beth Van Buskirk met in the conference room to discuss the agency review process.
“Thoughts on Foote Cone?” Kalinske asked, opening up the floor.
“Not as many as I would have hoped,” Nilsen said. “A bit unmemorable.”
“But the brain, Al,” Van Buskirk gravely reminded him. “The brain!”
“All right,” Abramson said, “I’ll just come right out and say what we’re all thinking: the human brain has to be the ugliest organ in the body, right?” Chirps of laughter fluttered around him. Tom Abramson was the newest member of Sega’s inner circle, and he fit in perfectly. His intellectual absurdity pleasantly turned every conversation into banter, but it was his ability to will promotions into existence that earned him a seat at the table. With a background in event marketing for the Ice Capades, the Harlem Globetrotters, and Walt Disney World, he had a certain savvy for nontraditional marketing, which at Sega propelled him to do things like hire student reps at colleges and send out Sega Shuttles to easily transport the newest games anywhere, anytime. Plus the guy was just plain fun. “Now, I know there are plenty of repellent organs out there, certainly more for the menfolk than the ladies, but when you factor in the weight and those creepy little folds . . . well, it’s gotta be the brain.”
“Maybe not the best presentation,” Kalinske said, “but you have to admit that it’s a cool line: ‘Make your brain sweat.’ ”
“Eh,” Volkwein said with a quick shake of the head. “Good, not great.”
Adair nodded. “Net-net, I thought it was cool, but did anyone else think that maybe it was too cool?”
“Too far out there?” Kalinske asked. “I can definitely see that.”
“Yeah,” Van Buskirk said. “Cool we want, but that was frostbitten.”
“Now I can’t help but wonder about other species,” Abramson blurted. “Dogs? Cats? Are there brains as objectionable? And what about koala bears?”
“I agree,” Glen added, his typical subdued enthusiasm even more noticeable in contrast to Abramsom’s gleeful musings. “I should clarify: I agree with Ellen Beth’s comment regarding the frostbite, although I’m admittedly intrigued by the tangential brain curiosity.”
“Bottom line,” Kalinske proclaimed, “we can do better. And I have a feeling that Wieden+Kennedy will find a way to strike the right balance.”
“Agreed,” Glen said. “I think we can do better.”
“Absolutely,” Kalinske said. “I have a feeling that Wieden+Kennedy will find a way to strike the right balance.”
“I’d be shocked if they didn’t knock it out of the park,” Nilsen said. “Shocked.”
“They do fine work,” Volkwein said. “No denying that.”
“Wieden will deliver,” Glen said, “but let’s not forget about Goodby just yet.”
“Nobody has forgotten about Goodby,” Nilsen said. “And if we ever did, I’m sure you’d be there to remind us.”
“What specifically should I infer from that comment?” Glen asked.
“Come on, Doug,” Kalinske said. “They sent us champagne during our dinner with Wieden and Kennedy. How do you think they knew where we were eating?”
Glen blushed a little and then smiled. “Because they have great market research!” Laughter broke out around the table.
Suddenly Kalinske pointed at the window. “Did anybody else see that?”
“What did you see?” Adair asked.
“Something small, moving quickly,” Kalinske said. “Looked almost like a golf ball.” Everyone froze and stared out the window, but nothing else appeared. “I guess not,” Kalinske said. “Hm. Strange.” And then the discussion about Sega’s marketing plans resumed.
Jimbo Matison had just puked his guts out, and he was certain that another round of gastric fireworks would be coming very soon. Until then, there was nothing he could do but curl up on the couch and hope that the distraction of crappy daytime television might be enough to briefly postpone the inevitable. The twenty-six-year-old had the flu, and sick days had stopped being fun about ten years ago.
Not long after failing to find something watchable, he received a phone call from a producer at Colossal Pictures, the commercial production company where he’d been doing grunt work for years. “I know you’re sick or whatever,” she said, “but do you think you can come in for just an hour or two?”
“I’m sick,” he said. “Like, legit sick.”
“It’s a voice-over thing,” she said. “I think you’d be good.”
“Oh,” Matison said, suddenly feeling a little better. He’d been trying to break into the voice-over business for years. “What’s it for?”
“We’re doing a bid for this thing called Sega.”
“What’s that?”
“Just come in.”
“What’s in it for me.”
“I’ll buy you lunch.”
He thought over the offer. “And?”
“And what?”
“And you’ll help me get my SAG card.”
“Yeah, whatever,” she said. “Just come in, okay?”
Matison waited for the next wave of vomiting, and as soon as it passed he jumped on his bike and rode over to the production house. When he got there, it was just his producer, a sound guy, and some dude from an ad agency. The dude seemed pretty cool—he wasn’t wearing a suit, at least—and he asked Matison to scream the word “Sega” as loud as he possibly could.
“Okay,” Matison said skeptically. “What’s this for?”
“Come on, Jimbo,” the producer said. “This isn’t rocket science. Do you want that free lunch or not?”
For the next hour, Matison repeatedly screamed the word “Sega” at the top of his lungs. The producer, the sound guy, and the dude from the ad agency were loving it, having him shout it from different parts of the room; faster, slower, faster, slower, over and over, screaming “Sega” as many ways as the four-letter word could be shouted.
When he was finished and the agency dude had thanked him for a job well done, he asked how they planned to use his scream.
“We don’t know yet.”
“Gotcha,” Matison said with a nod. “Because I was thinking: do you remember those old Quasar commercials, how they used to say ‘Quasar’ at the very end? It really stuck in your head, didn’t it?”
“Hmmm,” the agency dude said. “That’s not a bad idea.”
“Cool,” Matison said, and got on his bike, hoping not to puke on the way home.
Inside a former Gothic-style church that had been converted into a chic nightclub, Wieden+Kennedy employees decked out the holy space in futuristic fonts, pale neon colors, and the unusual feeling of a science experiment gone right (think rock-and-roll Frankenstein). It was like A Clockwork Orange, but for teenagers. It was as if some
one had ripped the pages out of Brave New World and glued them into The Catcher in the Rye. It was 1984 meets The Breakfast Club, new-speak meets teen-speak meets Sonic The Hedgehog. And it was called “vidspeak,” the concept of new, hip, future-is-now language that Wieden+Kennedy had invented as the backbone of their campaign. The agency provided a sampler from the vidspeak lexicon, which included the following words, terms, and phrases:
Gearlets: The vidspeak word for gamers. Also known as gamelets, gameys, whoossies, vidiots, speaklets, bossaroos, and cluelets.
Hedgy wedgy: Anything pertaining to Sonic The Hedgehog, or to any fan of said Sonic The Hedgehog. Also that cute little way Sonic has of stamping his foot when he can’t believe you’re so slow and stupid. (See Slow geezer trying to play the game)
Whammy jammy: The way you feel when playing a good game.
Gobble-degoop: Running wild. Running fast. Running all over the place without time to say “Hasta la vista, baby.” (See Sonic The Hedgehog)
Mobile mover with wings: What gamers will call the Game Gear. Also referred to as the a-to-go-cup, a minda-rama, a home away from home, and a great thing to wrap your knozzles around.
Master blaster: What you do when you start playing the Sega Menacer Master Module. Or, how to be a real sure-shot full-tilt accu-sight kind of guy.
I was Brahms: I was drunk with power. I was mad with passion. I was blitzed with energy. I was actually able to reach the next damn level.
It was a little stranger than Kalinske had expected, a little more to swallow than “Just do it,” but there was a beauty to the chaos, and if anyone could make it pop into pop culture, it was Wieden+Kennedy. And, like Nike’s iconic slogan, the agency had created a tagline that was easy to connect with. “You are here,” Dan Wieden said. “You are here,” he repeated, and then elaborated on many ramifications of this seemingly simple phrase. “It’s a tagline that means: You are in. You are hip. You are cool. You are not there, which is where everybody else who is not here is. You are with us. You are smart, cunning, and extremely creative. You are inside the game, inside this new world, inside another reality. You are so good you don’t need a glossary to explain any of this stuff to you.”
Console Wars Page 35
