For Men Examining Female Reactions to Nintendos Marketing for …

Short Description
campaign for the promotion of the Game Boy Advance SP drew … advert for the device used an image of the Game Boy with the. tagline “For Men”. …

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Content
“For Men”: Examining Female Reactions to Nintendo’s
Marketing for GameBoy Advance SP
Gareth Schott
GameLab,
Department of Screen & Media,
University of Waikato,
Hamilton, NZ
0064-7-838-4543
g.schott@waikato.ac.nz
ABSTRACT
In order to emphasize the maturation of their hand-held console
and increase its appeal to an adult market, Nintendo’s advertising
campaign for the promotion of the Game Boy Advance SP drew
explicitly upon ‘lad’ culture and a tongue-in-cheek appropriation
of cologne advertising. The lead and most prominent promotional
advert for the device used an image of the Game Boy with the
tagline “For Men”. This paper outlines why Nintendo’s decision
to present the Game Boy as a male accessory prompted
exploration into its impact on the female market. To date, much of
the emerging research field examining female participation in
game cultures has tended to focus its attention on exploring the
experiences of different female groups with a variety of software
titles and its associated communities. In contrast, this paper
addresses participants’ perceptions of the gaming industry and its
relevance to them as a (potential) consumer by taking a hardware
device as its focus. This was achieved by…