In a new interview, Reggie Fils-Aime has revealed that he stopped Nintendo from rebranding to a graffiti logo to appeal to older audiences.

God bless Reggie Fils-Aime. Fun information has been revealed by the man himself in an interview in which the former Nintendo of America president explains that he stopped the company from rebranding to a graffiti-themed logo.

Speaking in an interview with Present Value Podcast titled “Reflecting on Leadership, Pizza, Video Games, and “My Body is Ready”, Reggie Fils-Aime at one point describes the company efforts to appealing to an older demographic. “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,” he describes, “I put a stop to that because that is not our brand. 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.”

He explains how sending the right message achieved the goal rather than rebranding to a graffiti logo. “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.”

I don’t know about you, but I think Nintendo rebranding to a graffiti-themed logo would have…perhaps killed the company? I’m glad to hear that Reggie saved the company from self-destruction. I’d be interested in seeing the drafts of the potential logos though.

Reggie retired from Nintendo last year and was replaced by Doug Bowser. Since his retirement, he’s been regularly involved in various areas of the gaming industry and has even delved into teaching. He’s also been awarded the Legend Award as well as a Life Time Achievement Award.



Posted: Jan 29, 2020 6:02 pm
Last Updated: Jan 29, 2020 6:08 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://www.dualshockers.com/reggie-stopped-nintendo-from-rebranding-graffiti-logo/