Console Wars

by Blake J. Harris

  As everyone gushed over Toyoda’s eighty-one-inch sailfish, it felt like the perfect end to the evening, and the beginning of a wonderful new relationship. Except that during the conversational ride off into the sunset, a waitress came by to drop off several expensive bottles of champagne wrapped with a bow.

  “What’s this?” Kalinske said, delighted by the liquid generosity. “What a nice gesture,” he said, turning to his guests. “But you know we can’t let you pay for this.”

  Wieden and Kennedy turned to each other with a puzzled look, but before they could say anything Kalinske picked up a note attached to the bottles. “Well,” Kalinske said after an echoing laugh, “it appears that we have an unexpected benefactor.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Volkwein asked. “And who’s that?”

  Kalinske answered by passing around the note, which read:

  Enjoy the champagne. We eat here all the time.

  Sincerely,

  Goodby, Berlin & Silverstein

  After everyone finished laughing, Toyoda asked the question on everybody’s mind. “Do you think we should drink it?”

  Wieden and Kennedy both shrugged and left the decision up to their host.

  Kalinske reread the note and slowly shook his head. It really was a nice gesture, deserving of bonus points for cleverness. But unfortunately, a bold move and offices nearby weren’t going to be enough to get Sega’s account. Maybe there was a way to throw them some business for the handheld, but the upcoming ad campaign was Sega’s big shot, and they couldn’t afford the risk of a less experienced agency.

  “I’m tempted to say no,” Kalinske said. “But I can’t help but think that this move demonstrates a little bit of Sega spirit. So, what the hell?”

  Once again smiles widened, glasses clinked together, and a toast was made inside a chic French restaurant in San Francisco. This time, however, it was hard to take a sip and imagine anything other than Jeff Goodby smirking somewhere in the night and thinking to himself, “Just do it.”

  Shortly after dining with Wieden and Kennedy, Kalinske and company headed to Chicago for the summer CES. With the agency pitches fast approaching and more and more retailers signing on for Sonic 2sday each day, Sega went into the show with more momentum than ever before. And having already accomplished in Boca much of what would typically need to be done at CES, Sega was in the unique position of playing defense more than offense. But just because they would be playing defense didn’t mean that they’d act passive; as any football fan knows, there are tons of strategies, schemes, formations, and blitz packages. With so many permutations, the key to winning on defense is all about identifying the offense’s play as soon as possible and then calling the right audible to shut it down. That was exactly what Kalinske’s team set out to do, but after nearly two days in the Windy City, all anyone heard was that Nintendo had a big announcement planned. So Kalinske gathered the troops together in his suite at the Sheraton for an emergency meeting.

  “They’re getting smarter,” Kalinske said, shaking his head. All of Sega’s top executives were crammed into the suite, as was David Rosen and Dai Sakarai, one of Nakayama’s top lieutants (someone who, in the pseudo-war between SOA and SOJ, Kalinske and the others trusted; plus he knew the lay of the land from his very brief term as interim president of SOA). “I hate them for it, but I definitely respect it.”

  “Nobody’s giving me anything,” Rioux said. “I just keep hearing ‘big move’ over and over. What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “Could it be a new Mario game?” Kalinske asked.

  “That is not their style,” Toyoda replied. “They like to wait a few years in between the Mario titles.”

  “Realistically, what could it be?” Nilsen asked, half closing his eyes, as if by doing so the answer would be psychically revealed to him. “We should be able to figure this out,” he said with frustration, upset at himself for not being able to do so.

  “My money is on a theme park,” Van Buskirk said. “The Amazingly Incredible Mushroom Kingdom. Complete with real-life Koopa Troopas!”

  “I’d welcome that,” Kalinske said. “Another thing to keep them distracted.”

  “What about a color handheld?” Adair suggested. “They can’t just ignore how well Game Gear is doing, can they?”

  “I don’t know,” Burns said. “They’ve gotten quite good at burying their heads in the sand, haven’t they? One might even call it a forte.”

  “It must be a partnership,” Glen suggested. “It’s hard to imagine a world in which they don’t consider our alliance with Sony to be a slap in the face. I would venture to guess that they slap back in some fashion.”

  “I doubt it,” Rioux said. “They’d never let anyone in their sandbox.”

  “What about a new PR agency?” Sega’s PR agent, Brenda Lynch, suggested. “The Mariners backlash had to have woken them up.”

  “You may very well be right,” Volkwein said, “but with all due respect, I don’t think a new PR agency qualifies as big news.”

  “If it truly is big news,” Dai Sakarai mused, “then perhaps they have decided to give up on 16 bits and move on to a 32-bit system.”

  “I like that theory,” David Rosen put in. “Do to us what we did to them.”

  Back and forth everyone went, yipping, yapping, and playfully snapping at each other. Kalinske loved the energy and enthusiasm of the team he had built. He loved that they believed in the cause and weren’t afraid to act. And it was with this last part in mind that he suggested they take things into another gear. “Exactly,” he said. “It could be anything. So we’re going to have to figure this out ourselves. Does anyone object to going undercover?”

  Nobody in the room objected. In fact, they thought it was about time. Their favorite part about working at Sega was the whatever-it-takes mentality and the shenanigans that often came about as a result of that. There were six industry parties scheduled for that evening, so Kalinske broke everyone up into teams and sent them around Chicago to see what they could dig up.

  Adair and Van Buskirk were paired together and sent to the Electronic Arts party, where their efforts to solve the mystery initially amounted to nothing. It wasn’t that they weren’t the top-notch spies they fancied themselves to be; rather, it truly seemed as though nobody really knew what Nintendo had planned. That changed a little, however, as the night rolled on and drinks continued to be served. Finally, in tandem, Diane and Van Buskirk cornered an EA producer with close ties to Nintendo.

  “Come on, I know you know,” Van Buskirk said.

  “Yeah, honestly, just tell us already,” Adair added. “It’s almost midnight, anyway. How could it possibly make a difference at this point?”

  “Okay,” the producer said. “What difference does it make?” He then informed them that the next day Nintendo would be dramatically dropping the price of their hardware. Without even thanking him for the intel, off they ran into the night.

  They reported the news back to Kalinske, who couldn’t hide his disappointment. Nintendo was dropping the price of their deluxe SNES package (bundled with Super Mario World) to $129.95, the same as Sega. In addition, they’d also be selling an SNES without any game for $99.95. The latter piece was particularly crushing. Up until this point, Sega’s consistent advantage had been a lower price than Nintendo, but by tomorrow afternoon the Big N would be stealing headlines and beginning to undo all the work that Sega had done.

  Shortly after midnight, everyone returned to Kalinske’s suite to digest the news and brainstorm possible responses. Some were sleepy-eyed and some were clearly drunk, but they all shared a manic insomniac energy and excitement. They not only worked for Sega but had become Sega, and took a strange, wonderful pride in doing whatever it took to help defeat Nintendo.

  “Thank you all for being here at this hour,” Kalinske said, showing genuine gratitude. “As some of you may have already heard, Nintendo is trying to outprice us. Before we even talk about a response, I want everyone to take a moment to t
hink about how much of a thorn in their side we must really be. They refuse to acknowledge us, they treat us like second-class citizens, but it’s because of us and only us that in the span of only eight months they have dropped their price nearly 50 percent. They may still control the market, but I’d say that counts as proof that they are no longer invincible.”

  Though it was late and the news about Nintendo was disappointing, the truth behind Kalinske’s words filled everyone with a second wind. Look at how much they had done in such a short time; there had to be something, then, that they could do in the few hours before the announcement.

  “I’m going to open the floor,” Kalinske said, “because I want whatever we do to be done together. What is everyone thinking?”

  “What about leaking a story?” Lynch suggested. “Something about how bad finances prompted the move. Company in trouble. The end is near. Et cetera, et cetera.”

  “Do we have something like that?” Kalinske asked.

  “No,” Lynch said. “But we can get creative and make them waste time responding to our storyline, instead of writing their own.”

  “Hang on a second,” Burns cautioned. “Maybe this isn’t as bad as it looks. They’ll have a small price advantage, sure, but we’ve got Sonic 2sday.”

  “I love Sonic 2sday more than anyone,” Nilsen said, “but, believe me, Nintendo’s move is as bad as it looks.”

  “There’s only one thing we should do, and we all know it,” Adair said. “We need to fire back and match them. Paul, what about that idea you mentioned to me before, of selling just the Genesis without any games? Could we sell that for $99.95?”

  “You’re talking about the Core System,” Rioux replied, considering her suggestion. “Yeah, that price is doable, but we both know Japan won’t go for it. And even if they did, we simply don’t have enough time to deliver a measured response.”

  “Hey,” Van Buskirk said, “haven’t any of you ever pulled an all-nighter?”

  “You’re exactly right,” Kalinske said, feeling a sudden invincibility flow through his veins. She was right, and so was Adair. Beneath the mirage of possibilities, Sega really had only one option. And in no way was this option ideal, because it meant somehow cramming weeks of work into a single pressure-packed night, but if Sega wished to really become the company that deserved to decapitate Nintendo, that would revolutionize videogames, that was worthy of working with an agency like Wieden+Kennedy, then they really had no choice but to suck it up, find the fun, and just do it. “Let’s do it,” Kalinske said. “Come on, we need this. We’re on the brink of something here, and we really need this. So it’s simple: let’s make this happen.”

  And just like that, everyone was flooded with energy and ready to work through the night. But in order to get to work, they needed something bigger than a hotel room, preferably something with some form of technology to help them pull this off. The hotel had a business center, but it was closed at this hour—or it was closed until Adair found a way to break in and temporarily turn the place into Sega’s workshop. They figured out the logistics, developed the strategy, and designed the necessary materials for the presentation that morning that would cut Nintendo off at the knees.

  Beside the time crunch, the hardest part of pulling this off was that they had to make it appear completely preplanned. More deadly than being upstaged by Nintendo was the allegation of being reactionary. Everything that they prepared this evening had to look, sound, and feel like it had been planned out for months. Although that wasn’t factually true, emotionally it sort of was; the crux of Sega’s philosophy hinged on instant adaptability, the art of embracing opportunities in the blink of an eye. So although they only had hours to create something from scratch instead of months, if anyone could do it, it was these guys. And they did, finely crafting all of the following materials before the preshow sales meeting in the morning:

  • Two hundred press kits

  • Updated fall/winter price lists

  • Comprehensive sell sheets for the new $99 Core System

  • Price stickers and display photos to adorn Sega’s booth

  • Updated pocket cheat sheets for Sega’s internal sales force

  • Talking points for the press, retailers, third parties, etc.

  The impossible task of putting together an entire campaign in one night was the easy part compared to changing Nakayama’s mind. Luckily, for that task Kalinske got help from Rosen and Sakarai. All through the night they strategized about which buttons to push and how hard to push them. At last they took the request to Nakayama, bracing themselves for that pivotal now-or-nothing moment.

  “You’re being impulsive,” Nakayama said. He felt strongly that this would be something they would regret in the morning.

  “Not at all. We’ve actually been considering this for quite some time and had all the materials ready just in case,” Kalinske said, speaking quickly so as not to get caught in a lie. It was true that Sega of America had been seriously considering a cheaper, game-free system, though not one at $99.95. But Nakayama didn’t need to know that. “Please trust me,” Kalinske pleaded. “Remember, you hired me to make decisions like this.”

  There was a long pause.

  “It’s the logical move,” Kalinske continued. “If not now, then we’ll do this in six months. But what’s six months of some additional profits compared to all the sales we’ll make by doing this now and taking Nintendo down in the process?”

  And then a longer pause.

  Kalinske looked at Rioux and Toyoda, his brothers in arms, then glanced over their shoulders at Nilsen, Adair, Van Buskirk, and the rest of his devoted employees. This had to work out; they just had to be given permission to try to pull off this miracle.

  Finally Nakayama broke the silence. “Okay, Tom. If you think this is best.”

  As soon as the line went dead, the team erupted with joy. In just a few hours they would return to being serious, focused, business-suit-wearing executives. In just a few hours they would match blows with Nintendo and look for new and unexpected ways to tilt the scales. But that was all a few hours away. Right now they got to stay up late and enjoy just being kids stuck in adult bodies.

  31.

  TOO HOT, TOO COLD,

  AND JUST RIGHT

  “That sucks,” some random teenager said, and he said it with such visceral disdain that it was as if he’d been forever traumatized by the level of suckitude he’d been forced to witness. “It just, you know, sucks,” he said again, this time earning dismissive nods of agreement from the other kids in the room. There were about a dozen of them in total, all hired by Goodby, Berlin & Silverstein to review the commercials that the agency had prepared for their upcoming Sega pitch.

  “He’s right,” another said. “Like, we already know our parents don’t know how to play videogames. Tell us something new!” More dismissive nods, and this time some high fives of agreement from around the room. Although none of these kids had ever met before, and likely never would again, they were fully united in their distaste for the commercials they had just seen.

  Jeff Goodby, the agency’s leader and cofounder, watched all this from behind a two-way mirror. Goodby was a Harvard-educated ad man with the renegade mentality of a pirate philosopher, the lumbering physique of a friendly yeti, and the rare gift of being able to sport a ponytail and make it work. Once upon a time, he’d considered advertising to be the lowest form of writing, nothing but a nuisance to those in its perpetual line of fire. But after leaving his post as a city hall reporter for a newspaper in Massachusetts and moving to San Francisco with his wife, he needed a job quickly and wound up working for the ad agency J. Walter Thompson. There, his mind was blown by the art of advertising, and in the process he learned that he had a penchant for blowing minds himself with his creative work. After a stint at Ogilvy and Mather, he left there in 1983 to start his own agency with Rich Silverstein, his creative partner, and Andy Berlin, a brash entrepreneur.

  Throughout the 1980s,
GB&S grew into one of the industry’s top boutique shops, able to compete with the big firms by coming up with bigger ideas, like the Electronic Arts “We See Farther” campaign (1984), which personified the young ad agency almost as much as it did the young computer company. They also distinguished themselves from the competition by developing a distinct style (a cinema verité high-concept, low-production-values technique), promising clients a more hands-on experience (one of the founders would personally head up every account), and placing a forward-thinking emphasis on account planning (the initial consumer research and messaging that inform the creative process). After a decade of impressive growth, during which the agency had evolved into a firm of nearly fifty people, it seemed like only a matter of time before Goodby, Berlin & Silverstein reached the next echelon of success. That inevitability was derailed, however, when tensions among the partners caused Andy Berlin to leave and start a new agency (Berlin Cameron) in early 1992. To Goodby and Silverstein, this changed nothing, but to the outside world there was a skeptical feeling that this signified the beginning of the end. As a member of an industry where perception is said to equal reality, Goodby knew he needed to find a way to show that the Berlin-less agency was stronger than ever. And the way he planned to do that was by winning Sega’s business, but the shitty feedback that he was receiving from the focus group didn’t bode well for the agency’s chances.

  “All right, then,” Silverstein said to his partner and the other creatives on their side of the glass. “Welcome to our worst-case scenario.”

  Goodby nodded, keeping his eyes on the teenagers. “I’m tempted to celebrate the fact that their response is so overwhelmingly unanimous,” he said, “until, you know, I take into account the fact that they’re basically telling us to quit our jobs and go jump out the nearest window.”

  With no silver lining in sight, Goodby, Silverstein, and the others returned their attention to the focus group.

  “That footage you showed wasn’t even from Sonic 2!” said one of the teens. “It was from the original Sonic, and it was from level two, which isn’t hard at all.”