WiiPress: Enabling a New Landscape for Viral Marketing

Cell phones and mobile are the newest landscape for viral marketing… or are they?

As has been seen over the last year, the most sought after devices have been video game systems. And of those systems, the one that everyone is taking about (and experimenting with) is the Nintendo Wii. They still continue to be sold out across the US, and lines still continue to form each Sunday as retailers hoard their shipments for the Sunday rush.



The Wii is unique in many ways – which drive its popularity. One of the many innovations included in the system is the Wii-customized Opera browser. What makes it so great and unique? Well… with one hand, and from the comfort of one’s couch, the Internet is within reach.

The Opera browser is still in beta mode (meaning they are still working on it, but the final product is not finalized). However, it is fully available to anyone who owns a Wii and would like to give it a try.

There are limitations with the browser, and many are being ironed out through this open-beta process. However, there is one limiting factor that no software update on the Opera browser would be able to surmount – the relatively low resolution of the system.

The resolution refers to the amount of detail that the unit is able to display. The Wii is able to display a maximum of 480 lines of resolution, whereas even the most basic of computers today are able to resolve an equivalent of 768, and most 1024 or more.

Therefore, when the same page is displayed on the Wii, less detail is provided. The portions of Web pages that suffer the most are text, as they can become hard to read when text scales to be displayed by the Wii. This means that text-heavy pages (such as blogs) are not well suited for the medium, and are likely to be ignored by casual Wii-surfers.

What can this mean for your viral campaign? It could mean that the reach of your campaign may be artificially restricted, as you are unable to reach this key video game-playing demographic.

Enter the WordPress Wii Edition Plug-in (a.k.a. WiiPress). The plug-in is integrated into a blog, and it detects whether or not your blog visitor is using a normal computer or viewing the site with a Wii. If found to be doing the latter, it will automatically render an optimized version of the Web site that will enlarge the text and perform other functions to make it easier to read for the Wii-browsing audience. A demonstration of the before and after affects can be viewed here.

This technology allows viral marketers to not miss out on a key demographic. Maybe the benefits don’t have to stop there. The possibility of being able to detect if a user is browsing with a Wii, and then taking action if finding that it is the case could also allow more targeted marketing.

For instance, what if a video game production company wants to promote a game virally? Information could then be presented about the key benefits of owning this game for the Wii over other systems. The writer may otherwise not want to promote these features if the site also expects visitors from PS3 and or Xbox360 owners. Cross-promotions could also exist, urging audiences to “see it on the Wii” for an enhanced experience. The doors really are open wide with this unique spin on an established medium.