In light of the passing of Pokémon chief writer Takeshi Shudo, I've decided to dedicate this post to him and take on an adult analysis of a brand for children.
Those who grew up in my generation know Nintendo's Pocket Monsters (AKA Pokémon) got its hooks into us very young. I was ten at the premiere of the first season, which means Pokémon has been a part of my life for over half the years I've been alive. I have very close friends I've known for less time. Since the premiere of that first show at 3:30pm on Kid's WB when hero Ash Ketchum (also ten) ventured out of Pallet Town I was right there with him, Game Boy in hand, and still am today. Over the course of my life I've been the owner of no less than three Pokémon Game Boy games, two Nintendo 64 games, hundreds of cards, multiple action figures, one Halloween costume, one movie, and one book. I spent the first couple years of my fascination drawing new Pokémon and trying to send them in to Nintendo, and you know what I did just two weeks ago after years of not having anything to do with the franchise? Submitted this graphic design series I've been working on for three months to show what they'd look like in real life in the hopes Nintendo would pick it up for promotional material.
The question, then, is what on earth did they do with their brand to keep an active customer for twelve years and counting? I know I'm not alone either, not by far. How amazing would it be to keep all your business's customers for that long while constantly gaining new ones and know they'd be hooked for just as long?
The single most important thing Nintendo has done with the Pokémon brand is continue to promote product awareness. It hasn't died out because they're not only consistently coming out with new products, but new Pokémon as well. They're altering their brand every few years to reintroduce it to new potential customers while reminding old ones that they still exist and are still working on the product. They don't do it through spam email, twitter spam, facebook, or even physical junk mail either. They avoid all the avenues that are commonly known as annoyances. They simply release a new product or idea and let the word spread. This is why they've outlasted competition like Digimon and Monster Rancher, both of which just stopped trying.
Pokémon also got to us very young, while our minds were still soaking up any and all information they could and embedded itself there. Now days Pokémon isn't just a cool concept to me, it's a major nostalgia inducer. I have great memories of connecting my Game Boy with other friends to battle, participating at a tournament in the Mall of America, trading cards, etc. While "going after" children isn't something appropriate for all products, there's still a brand lesson that can be learned here. It helps immensely if your brand, your products, consist of things that are really useful or memorable to the customer. This seems like a no brainer and a fairly worthless piece of advice until you really think about what a lot of products are; useless. Throwaway. The customer interacts with it and never thinks about it again. We need to stop trying to sell products that customers mindlessly consume. When your brand can be linked to something memorable it will be significantly more successful.
Pokémon has deservedly earned millions of very devoted fans because of successful branding. There are countless fan artworks, fan community sites, and even fan games dedicated to it. And you can bet that even today if Nintendo were to release a live action Pokémon movie or a MMORPG I'd be the first one in line for either, twelve years later. If that's not the sign of a strong, healthy brand I don't know what is.
No comments:
Post a Comment