Yes, two columns for the price of one! The price, of course, being nothing.
This week's installment of The DS Life / Promotional Consideration looks at an advertisement for Mystery Case Files: Millionheir that ran in several "mainstream" publications like celebrity gossip magazines In Touch Weekly and Us Weekly. The print piece features Ugly Betty'sAmerica Ferrera and sub-Saharan Africa's leopard. Surprisingly, the latter doesn't maul the former, despite the ESRB's "violent references" warning.
The above video was a proposed advertisement from comedy group Mega64 for Ubisoft's Jam Sessions an undisclosed DS guitar game. Instead of actually being used, the ESRB put the smack down on the troupe's ad for ... well, we'll just let you watch and find out for yourself. We don't want to spoil it for you.
If you liked that, then be sure to head past the break for the "safe for the ESRB" version.
Supposedly, the image on your right are silhouettes of new pocket monsters set to premiere in Nintendo's upcoming cash generator Pokemon Platinum. For those of you with very good sight, that would be them to the right of this text right here.
Japanese site blue skY is reporting that this image is an advertisement from a Toys R Us in Japan. We'd like to comment further, but up until today, we didn't know there were Toys R Us chains in Japan. For those of you who're Pokemaniacs, care to comment on these?
It seems as if it wasn't that long ago when rumors of Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen coming stateside first appeared, querying our next command. But here we are, less than two months away from the 3D remake's September 16 release, and Square Enix already has its marketing engine for the game running. The publisher has certainly done its part to push summer along by keeping the past couple of months busy withqualityreleases.
This week's edition of Promotional Consideration pulls out a page from the latest issue of Nintendo Power to bring you Square Enix's new DQIV ad. Join us past the post break!
This week's installment of Promotional Consideration comes with an excellent bonus -- a Circuit City deal for the Final Fantasy IV remake, which ships to stores next week. The electronics retailer is offering a $10 gift card with any purchase of the 3D RPG, on- and offline. Factor in free-shipping for orders totaling over $24, and this makes up for "the Square Enix tax," that extra $10 the publisher often adds to its DS games.
Now that we've done our part to sell the game to you, let's look at how Square Enix has been pushing Final Fantasy IV.
Remember the crazy ad in Nintendo Power(pictured above) that "hinted" at a DS redesign? (You should; we only posted about it two days ago, silly rabbits.) It turns out that the poor Photoshop job is nothing to speculate about, as NIS America only "placed screenshots on a DS backing to emphasize the platform, and edited them for effect." Now, we never took Marketing 101, but that seems like somewhat misleading advertising to us.
NIS America's marketing guru Nao Zook apologized for any confusion that the picture may have caused, stating that there is no widescreen DS in the works (to her or the company's knowledge). So, you can rest assured (or at least hold your breath until E3) that you won't have to pony up the cash for yet another DS.
Did you forget that Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift ships in North America this week? We wouldn't be surprised if you did, as, aside from two magazine advertisements, Square Enix hasn't done much to promote the SRPG sequel.
In fact, unless we've missed something, the only two handheld game commercials Square Enix has aired in the U.S. since the GBA were for the Final Fantasy III remake and Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker -- Mario Hoops 3-on-3 doesn't count. That's a shame considering how creative the original Final Fantasy Tactics Advance commercial was!
Bring your mages, ninjas, and gunners past the break for the GBA clip and the two FFTA2 magazine pieces we mentioned above!
Nintendo of Japan's DS site has a new commercial up for Band Brothers DX. With the title due for release in Japan on the 26th of this month, Nintendo is putting on its marketing hat and showing a new ad to Japanese gamers.
Nintendo has enlisted the aid of Japanese celeb Thelma Aoyama to help them promote the title. If you're clueless as to who she is, then you probably don't live in Japan and should check out this Wikipedia page.
Sadly, like most Japanese advertisements, this one is way too short and doesn't show enough gameplay.
This week's creative but confusing installment comes from Leo Burnett Milan, the same advertising firm behind "Communion Day," the first Promotional Consideration ad (and one of the smartest) we ever featured. The print piece presents a police lineup of criminals and ne'er-do-wells, suspects for an unspecified crime -- really, it's less of a "whodunit" than it is a "what does it mean?" Step past the post break and peer through this one-way mirror to solve the mystery yourself!
With the Final Fantasy IV remake out today, Square Enix wants to make sure to get all the crazies out lined up in Akihabara -- and maybe a few 'expanded audience' members as well. To that end, they've debuted a series of short commercials that show off the game's stunning cutscenes. They accidentally left some real gameplay in the commercials too, which you can see towards the end. Final Fantasy VII sold gobs, and itsadvertising was totally CG-focused, so why change?
But wait, there's more! In addition to the two commercials embedded in this post (one of which is after the break) there are three other commercials on the Final Fantasy IV website. It's so weird to see the Final Fantasy IV characters rendered like this. Especially Cecil, who we used to think of as manly.
Looks like Nicole Kidman's European campaign for More Brain Training is still going strong -- at least, in the city of Dordrecht in South Holland. Even through the reflection of the train station on the glass, her concentration is clear ... but hey, she's got to get that brain age down somehow.
Head over to Flickr to see Arjan in't Veld's full-sized picture, and feel free to let us know when you start seeing Patrick Stewart pop up everywhere on behalf of the DS. There can never be enough Patrick Stewart!
Every week, we take a look at interesting, rare, or international Nintendo ads, but today, we want to talk about the more mundane, every day variety -- specifically, the ones you see. Where do you see them? We ask because, in our experience, Wii advertising is much more widespread, but it could be just where we happen to be looking. Where do you see DS commercials or print ads? Do you think they're effective?
Posted Nov 1st 2007 12:20PM by Eric Caoili Filed under: News
Nintendo was wise to sign Nicole Kidman up last summer for its DS advertisements across the Atlantic, pushing Brain Age to the casual market with the international movie star's image. According to Nintendo UK's marketing director, Dawn Paine, the company will further broaden its target audience by recruiting Patrick Stewart, an intergalactic movie star, for its upcoming campaign.
Several other British celebrities have also been called on for Nintendo's holiday season Touch Generations commercials -- Julie Walters (Molly Weasley in the Harry Potter films), Phillip Schofield, Fern Britton, Zoe Ball, and Johnny Ball -- but none of them can claim to match the starship captain's list of accolades. As Jean-Luc Picard, he facilitated first contact encounters with over a dozen alien races and saved humanity several times over during his Star Trek: The Next Generation tenure. Hopefully, Nintendo UK will be able to successfully leverage his skills as a diplomat to sell you its training games.
Promotional Consideration is a weekly feature about the Nintendo DS advertisements you usually flip past, change the channel on, or just tune out.
"G.I. Joe is the codename for America's daring, highly trained, special mission force. Its purpose: To defend human freedom against COBRA, a ruthless, terrorist organization determined to rule the world."
We couldn't help but giggle when we saw this article on "facial yoga" that described it as the hot new craze. It's certainly not new to us DS hipsters; after all, we've already got a game dedicated to stretching and firming our faces, and since the practice is apparently the latest it-exercise (despite being around for years, much like regular yoga), it seems likely that Otona no DS Kao Training may sweep in on the heels of Let's Yoga and hit the United States.
Of course, then the real question becomes: will Nintendo (and others, like Konami, the company behind Let's Yoga) start to change the way they advertise the DS in the United States? We can't help but wonder if it seems unlikely; after all, we still have no official "face" for Brain Age beyond our favorite disembodied head, and it's rare that we see advertisements for our favorite piece of hardware on the scale that we see those for the Wii.
Nintendo was wise to sign 
