Nintendo Logo

Nintendo might be one of the largest and most successful video game companies, but in certain parts of the world, it has often struggled with its brand image.

During an appearance on the Present Value podcast recently, the former Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé touched on a time when he started out at the company's American headquarters, and the marketing team was trying to "age up" the racetrack shape logo, in hope, it would have more appeal to an older demographic.

Reggie said he put an immediate stop to this and told the team to embrace "what the brand stood for" by standing by its iconic logo in order to achieve success. Here's the full transcript, courtesy of Nintendo Everything:

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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. I’ll give you an example. 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, and 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. 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.

As noted by Reggie, embracing the logo allowed Nintendo to broaden its appeal and reach, while at the same time paving the way for products like the Wii and eventually the Switch. It also allowed the Japanese company to gain more mainstream appeal than ever before.

Are you relieved to hear we didn't get a graffiti style Nintendo logo or is a change well overdue? Share your thoughts below.

[source nintendoeverything.com]