Let me tell you a story…
… about one of my favorite companies to learn marketing from – one of the greatest gaming companies in history, Nintendo.
Back in the 1980s:
Nintendo was dead broke.
Actually, more than broke.
Because they were over 8 billion yen in debt (which translates to around US$250 million today). And it was only getting worse, coz the video game industries is one of the most cut-throat places out there for a company to be in.
Competition was fierce.
And new technology in Japan was advancing every day like a bullet train, so much so that…
… if you didn’t catch the ‘next ride’…
… you were gonna get left behind by your competitors!
And they struggled to grab market share this way.
For years.
Until one day:
A guy who was once just a simple maintenance worker but was eventually promoted to being a video game designer because the president was impressed by his creativity, Yokoi Gunpei, came up with a new philosophy.
And he called that philosophy…
… ‘lateral thinking with withered technology’…
… which is just a fancy way of saying:
“While all our competitors are going ‘gaga’ over all the new, expensive, and unproven/unreliable tech that’s coming out every week, why don’t we just find creative new ways to use tech that’s old, cheap and almost obsolete, but proven and reliable, and… think of different new things we can use it for?”
Long story short:
While he was on a train going home from work one day…
He saw someone really bored.
The guy was fiddling around with his calculator.
And Gunpei thought, “Hey, calculators screens are cheap, proven, and they’ve been around forever. Why not create games with that?”
And after getting the president’s approval, the Game and Watch was born…
… which eventually evolved into…
… the original bestselling Gameboy!
While other competitors were busy fiddling around, bustin’ their butts off with all the latest hardware, the best graphics, and the most powerful new tech, Nintendo went sideways.
Black and white screen.
Cheap and easy to produce.
BUT…
Had the MASSIVE advantage over competitors of having 30+ hours of battery life, compared to ‘better, more advanced’ competitor consoles from Sega, Atari, and NEC that only lasted 3 hours!
Because it’s not about how ‘shiny’ your ‘tech’ is.
It’s about giving people what they really need, and want.
If you lived through those times, you probably know how it all went.
The Game & Watch and Gameboy dominated the gaming industry for years, and paid off that 8 billion yen in debt, while adding another 4 billion yen in profit to Nintendo’s coffers.
A feat that Nintendo repeated again and again…
… with the Nintendo Wii…
… Pokemon Go…
… the Nintendo Switch…
… and more.
Finding ‘new ways to use old, proven, timeless technology’.
All while everyone else is fighting over scraps, competing over who has the latest and best tech, with the ‘ocean’ getting bloodier and bloodier as time goes by.
And so it goes for how I see the market these days…
Everyone is either:
Going ‘googoo gaga’ over the latest AI updates.
Or ‘drowning themselves’ and ‘beating themselves up’ for not being able to ‘catch up’.
And even if you could, theoretically, ‘catch up’?
You’d be fighting over scraps in a ‘bloody red ocean’ anyway.
It’s a lesson that, legendary martial artist, Bruce Lee had to learn the hard way, surviving on minimum wage, just like every other martial artist out there at the time. Until he discovered a ‘secret new way’ to use old martial arts that no one else was doing…
… one that multiplied his income by…
… almost 100X…
… the moment he started doing it.
And this ‘move’ is something you can start using too.
For whatever offer you’re creating.
Or promoting.
For almost any business or niche you’re in.
It’s one of the easiest and fastest ways I know of to do the same amount of work, but get maximum money for minimum time… and I think the best part is… if you do it correctly, you can make maximum money with minimum AI too.
I talk about this in my Billion Dollar Bonus Formula.
Which you can get by smashing your ‘kung fu gaming fingers’ right over here (but only before it’s taken down):
https://themysteriousmarketer.com/billion-dollar-bonus-formula/
Have fun!
Allen Walker
The Mysterious “Pro Gamer” Marketer
P.S. It’s all about psychology.
Or as the genius copywriter, Gary Halbert, once said, “Psychology is infinitely more powerful than technology”.
Because:
If I were one of those companies creating 3-hour handheld gaming consoles…
… what my marketing chops would have me do is…
… I’d market that limited 3-hour battery life in a way that made it a benefit instead of a disadvantage.
How?
By creating ‘speed run’ games that are designed to ‘challenge’ you to get as much achievements as possible in just 3 hours.
And you could compete with your friends…
… to see who got the best results in the least time!
And if your battery failed?
You’d have to wait to re-challenge it, unfortunately.
But that’d be part of the challenge.
The problem with that approach though?
Every other company with 3-hour consoles could just copy you and do the same thing too.
So…
… in the end…
… standing out by finding ‘new ways to do old stuff’…
Yeah, it’s probably the easiest way not to get yourself ‘dragged’ into a minimum-wage ‘fight fest’ where everyone else doing the same thing – just fightin’ over ‘scraps’.
P.P.S. I never write my stuff with AI in case you were wondering…