It is no secret that Nintendo has always been seen as a company that caters to children. In fact, some people have even used it as an inslut, saying that Nintendo products are for kids. While this isn't necessarily the case, it is well-known that Nintendo is a more family friendly company than its competition, and that is something that makes it stand out; for all the right reasons, too.
In fact, Nintendo almost completely redesigned their iconic logo for one that was a little bit more edgy, and that also looked more appealing to more mature players, but it was Nintendo's former Chief Operating Officer, Reggie Fils-Aimé, that prevented this from happening.
During a recent interview with
Present Value Podcast, Reggie himself revealed that Nintendo of America wanted to change the company's logo to one that looked more like a graffiti, but decided to boost its appeal by delivering content top quality content instead of trying to give the brand a fresh new look.
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From a branding standpoint, we had to be clear in what Nintendo as a brand stood for, as well as what the individual franchises stood for. When I joined Nintendo, there was a sense of almost shame that Nintendo appealed to young consumers, and the marketing team at Nintendo of America started doing things with the logo – that classic Nintendo logo in an oval – they would put it into graffiti style, or they'd do different things to try and age up the logo, and I put a stop to that because that is not our brand," explained Fils-Aimé.
Reggie then expands on this idea, and mentions that it wasn't the logo that needed to change — focusing on making new games and consoles that better reflected what the company, as a brand, actually stood for.
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And what we needed to do was yes, appeal to a broad swatch of consumers, but we needed to do it based on what the brand stood for, and not doing it in some false way. Systemically, we went through and cleaned up the presentation of the brand, but we also created messaging coupled with content that really broadened the reach, broadened the appeal, and set the stage for all of the great products we would launch like Wii, like Wii Fit, and eventually the Nintendo Switch."
Nintendo has just recently managed to shake off that "Nintendo is for kids" stigma with the Nintendo Switch, which is a console that has made very clear that it is catering to young adults while not forgetting about kids and older people; so far, it's worked like a charm.