14 DAY TRIAL // Here's the deal: inside one of the Picturehouse cinemas in the UK, two actors will be playing Wii Tennis LIVE, for audiences who will see their in-game actions projected onto cinema screens. But hear this: NextGeneration reports that this campaign's goal is to show just how fun and "easy" it is to play games on Wii. And does it take two actors to show that?
If we were to just take the information, read it and move on, it would be no fun. So I'm going to emphasize one aspect: the fact that the Wii is "easy to play" and that the perfect candidates to show that are two actors. Does this sound a little insulting to the actors or what? We get that it takes two persons to play Wii Tennis at the fullest. We also get that people need to be shown that it's easy by using two well known faces. But actors?
"The live, interactive ad superbly illustrates that Nintendo Wii Sports is for all ages and demonstrates just how exciting and easy it is to play," said Dean McKain, MD of CommentUK who produced the ads in conjunction with Carlton Screen Advertising,
"We expect to reach thousands of cinema goers over the next two weeks, and as we know that recall rates for this type of live communication are huge (as much as 89% after 4 weeks), we feel sure that the word of mouth viral effect of the activity will have a positive impact for the brand," he added.
If you want to show people that it's easy to play the Wii (like the Wii needed more publicity to make its presence felt on the gaming market), just use a couple of mentally challenged individuals. No really, why don't they do that? It'll be like the Special Olympics!
I'm not saying that the upper mentioned site made an error here. I'm sure they just took the news and presented it in the best manner possible, without changing any aspects. But it's the news itself that says actors will be used to show just how easy it is to play the Wii. The reality is that you can use anyone to show another person how easy it is to play Wii Tennis, or other Wii Sports games.
In many articles of mine I stated that once a game goes multiplatform and gets ported to the Wii, its control scheme gets simplified to adjust to the Wii Remote's motion sensitivity ability and the few buttons that the controller features.
Anyway, NextGeneration also says that this is the first ever live interactive cinema advertisements launching across UK's Picturehouse cinemas, coinciding with the release of Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Be sure to check it out, you never know what new moves you could learn.