The following is an excerpt from a paper I am turning in on persuasion analysis. It’s also my way of excusing my recent purchase of a Wii game console….

Last spring break, I went back to visit my best friends Amanda and Josh in Washington, DC. I hate to say it these two are probably some of the biggest geeks I know.

Josh spends hours a week on an online role player game called World of Warcraft while Amanda’s room looks like the fantasy and sci-fi department at the Times Square Borders.  The one big overlap in their apartment however is a Nintendo Wii game called Rayman Raving Rabbids.

In case you’re not familiar with it, Rabbids are crazy amorphic rabbit-like characters whose sole purpose is to create chaos. In the game, you must outsmart, outwit and capture the creatures one by one; usually with some slapstick gag like shooting the screaming ones in the face with cartoon plungers. Truly enlightened entertainment, I assure you.

Though I am not a big fan of video games, this one caught my attention, if only because of the fact it’s hilarious to watch someone play it. It was also the first time I actually considered buying a Wii.

Over the next few months, I kept coming back to the idea of buying a Wii every time I saw an ad on television for the game, saw a spoof of the Rabbids on YouTube or read a review of one of their new games.
In fact, I found myself browsing more than a couple of times over to http://www.rabbids.com to play with some of their online games or to watch more of the videos. The problem was made even worse when my roommate started to get interested in the Wii Fit.

A personal trainer who loves to drag me to her classes, we were both looking for ways to entertain ourselves during downtime in the evenings and the Wii Fit had apparently been on her radar about just as long as I had been interested in the Rabbids. We had quite a few discussions about buying a Wii together, splitting the costs then having one of us buy the other one out when we moved.

Finally one day while surfing on eBay, I found a Wii Fit bundle for just under the retail price. In a moment of pure impulsive grandeur, which I am sure defeated the purpose of spending the last MOD listening to Mike Shor’s lectures on the futility of participating in single-price auctions; my roommate and I became the proud owners of a new Wii.

Several minutes later, I clicked the checkout button on Amazon to ensure Ryman’s Raving Rabbids 2 arrived at our apartment the same time of our new game console.

Deconstructing The Persuasion

With my bank account now $400 lighter, I have to say that the points of persuasion that have led me to this point are fairly unique.

First of all, my friends were definitely influencers during this period as evangelists of both the game and the Wii system itself.  However, not a single time during the period I was evaluating the game, did I ever see a straightforward sale by Nintendo saying “this is why you should buy the Wii” In fact, based on the aura that was built up around the Wii, the purchase were more about pushing me through roadblocks to the purchase it rather than pulling me towards the idea that I needed the Wii.

The challenges now that I have purchased the game and the console are 1) will it be easy enough to learn 2) expandable enough to keep my attention beyond Rabbids and 3) will my social network here in Nashville reinforce or detract from the decision.