Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation by Blake J. Harris

Author:Blake J. Harris [Harris, Blake J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Industries, Technology & Engineering, Video & Electronic, Entertainment, Social Aspects, Games, Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780062276711
Google: kCSSAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2014-05-13T21:19:19+00:00

30.

JUST DO IT

Smiles widened, glasses clinked together, and inside a chic French restaurant in San Francisco, toasts were made to celebrate revolutionizing the way videogames were advertised. Tom Kalinske then shot a quick, happy glance at Shinobu Toyoda and Ed Volkwein before taking a long sip of an oaky Bordeaux and savoring the significance of this dinner with Dan Wieden and David Kennedy. If someone had told him two years earlier that Wieden+Kennedy would be interested in becoming Sega’s agency of record, Kalinske would have either laughed, rolled his eyes, or assumed that Dan and David’s siblings had started their own ad shop. After all, these were the guys responsible for building the Nike brand into what it is today, coming up with the famous “Just do it” tagline and iconic sneaker campaigns like “Bo knows” (with Bo Jackson), “Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood” (with David Robinson), and “Spike and Mike” (with Spike Lee and Michael Jordan). It just seemed wonderfully inconceivable that the Oregon-based agency responsible for transforming Nike into the it sneaker company now wanted to do the same for Sega in the videogame space. But here they all were.

“So, what happened next?” Wieden asked. “Come on, Tom, don’t leave us in the dark. Did the retailers rise to the challenge or not?”

“You tell me,” Kalinske said, resuming his recap of Boca. “After the presentations, our first meeting was with Toys.”

“Toys ‘R’ Us,” Volkwein clarified.

“Right, Toys ‘R’ Us,” Kalinske continued. “One of the biggest guys in the marketplace. The tastemakers, if you will.”

“Also very close relationship with Nintendo,” Toyoda piped up.

“Yup, Toys and Nintendo are peas in a pod,” Kalinske said. “And we’ve got the big pea himself, Charles Lazarus.”

“And let me guess,” Wieden said. “He didn’t accomplish all that by acting like a gunslinging risk taker.”

“Bingo,” Kalinske said. “Which is why we schedule the Toys meeting first. If they’re in, then we’ll know right away that this is going to happen. If not, then at least we’ve got three days in paradise to shake it off.”

“Go big or go home,” Kennedy said. “Gotta love it.”

“So the meeting starts, and it’s myself, Paul, Al, Diane, this guy,” Kalinske said, nudging Toyoda, “and Richard Burns, our VP of sales. First thing Mr. Lazarus wants to know is if others are on board. Now, we’ve all been down there a few days, so they don’t know that we haven’t met with anyone else yet. I’m about to tell them this, hoping that the compliment of making them our first might carry some weight, but Burns cuts me off and says that everyone is already on board and we’ve been on with Japan all night to see if they can accommodate this demand. Lazarus looks around the table, each of us trotting out our best poker faces, and he says, ‘Looks like we don’t have any choice. Count us in and make sure we get the biggest order.’ ”

“That is positively outstanding,” Wieden declared.

“I can’t even describe the size of the weight that fell off my shoulders,” Kalinske said.

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