To Nintendo of America

My name is Caleb,
I’m a 22 year old gamer, and Nintendo “Fan” who recently graduated from college with a major in Marketing . I’ve been a huge supporter of Nintendo over the years, and have owned every Nintendo console system, including the Wii U.  To put it bluntly, I care a lot about Nintendo as a company, and want them to succeed. But recent decisions by Nintendo have made me begin to doubt Nintendo’s vision as a business . The most recent decision that follows this path of thinking, involves barring EVO from streaming Super Smash Brothers Melee at their Championship Tournament.
Marketing by definition, according to the American Marketing Association is defined as  “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

The decision to NOT allow EVO to stream Melee goes against every facet of that definition, and reflects horribly on your marketing team, and your company in general. Let me break it down for you, piece by piece.
“Creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value”

What value does Nintendo gain from barring EVO from streaming Melee? None, in fact it creates negative value. Social Media is a strong portion of marketing, and you’ve systematically awaken the sleeping giant by making this decision public. I’m looking at my Twitter Feed right now, and I’m not seeing any good :”value” coming from your decision. Evo’s stream will be watched by thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people. There are hundreds of companies that would PAY MONEY to have their game featured at an event like this. To make matters worse Nintendo is launching a new Super Smash Brothers game in the next year or so. EVO is a perfect venue for Nintendo to showcase off a game related to the series, and help build interest for their future release which means better sales for your company. What does your company do instead? Alienate a huge group of your fanbase that has put a lot of time and energy into enjoying the game YOU created. Value is being killed, not created.

Those same fans, helped raise close to $450,000 for Cancer Research to get the game they love and care bout in EVO. All of those donations, all that hard work to raise those donations, has been literally thrown out the window because YOU Nintendo as a company made a horrible decision to keep their efforts from being shown on stream.

“Customers, clients, partners, and society at large”

You’ve hurt your customers, the people that actually buy the games you create, you’ve hurt clients and partners, EVO, which put a ton of work to put an event together for the game, and you’ve hurt society, tarnishing all the work that these people put into raising money for a non-profit, by diminishing that by making the event essentially disappear by not allowing it to be streamed. You wonder why Wii U sales have been slipping, well heres your answer, you’ve completely lost your customer, and you have no idea what your customer wants.
I’ve never been so disappointed to be a supporter of Nintendo. I truly hope that you realize the error of your ways, and fix the mess you’ve made. My interest in continuing to support you is waning, and the more terrible PR decisions you make regarding these issues, the less and less of “value” I’ll find in your company

Sinceerly,

A Nintendo Fanboy