http://www.consolegaming.eu/newspost.php?id=334
October 8th 2007 – You may well have seen the adverts over the weekend, but aside from their nationwide advertising campaign Nintendo have been very quiet about their latest publicity stunt for the Big Brain games. Nintendo are searching for the smartest family in Britain, and want the whole family to get together to try prove that on the Nintendo Wii title, Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree.
The competition can be entered by groups of 3 to 5 people to turn up to one of the ten events touring nationwide. I was soon to check out if my mates wanted to show up and kick everyone’s arse, but unfortunately every member must be blood related or the legal guardian of another team member, so you might actually have to introduce your parents to computer games if you want to enter the competition, and have the chance of winning anything from a holiday, to your university fees.
The Tour consists of 10 regional dates, in which the best competing families then go onto the national finals in London on November the 4th. The Full tour can be seen below:
Glasgow (Braehead Centre) - October 13
Gateshead (Metro Centre) - October 14
Sheffield (Meadowhall) - October 20
Manchester (Trafford Centre) - October 21
Birmingham (Bullring) - October 22
London (Brent Cross) - October 23
Milton Keynes (Midsummer Place) - October 24
Southampton (West Quay) - October 25
Bristol (The Mall Galleries) - October 27
Kent (Bluewater) - October 28
All the Rules and Regulations can be found at the official website, here, as well as details about the game, prizes and everything else you need. If you’re going down to one of the events be sure to tell us about it on our forums. I’m off to find some loophole in the rules so I can cruise the competition with my friends, wish me luck!
Think this is quite interesting. Can anyone else think of a advertising campaign in video games which was so radical and different? This seems above what we usually get, which is simply a few adverts at launch if the game is pretty big.
Nintendo are certainly shaking up the way video games are marketed, the adverts in general take a completely different approach, and they had those crazy 'real time adverts' in cinemas, and now finally a nationwide competition.
Obviously it's only in the UK, but I wonder if they'll ever be ambitious enough to try and do something like this in a market the size of America.
