Disrupting the Game
From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo
By Reggie Fils-Aimé
Category: Management & Leadership | Reading Duration: 19 min | Rating: 4.3/5 (209 ratings)
About the Book
Disrupting the Game (2022) tells the inspiring story of Reggie Fils-Aimé’s unlikely rise to the top of the video game industry – charting his journey from growing up as a kid in the Bronx to becoming president and COO of Nintendo of America. Along the way, it shares the lessons he learned about leadership and charting a career path.
Who Should Read This?
- Leaders and professionals feeling stuck in the wrong roles
- Business students and recent graduates
- Anyone wanting inspiration to level up their career
What’s in it for me? Learn leadership, career, and life lessons from Reggie Fils-Aimé’s unlikely rise to the top of Nintendo.
If you don’t follow the video game industry, the name Reggie Fils-Aimé might be unfamiliar to you. But within the industry, he was a celebrity executive during his time at Nintendo – in the North American division of the iconic Japanese video game company. As an executive at Nintendo, Reggie helped to turn around the company’s flagging fortunes and launch some of the most popular products in its history, like the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii. But it was a long road to success, with unlikely beginnings, twists and turns, and more than a few setbacks along the way.
In this Blink, you’ll discover some of the main turning points in Reggie’s journey to the top of Nintendo. You’ll learn some of the lessons he took away from his experiences – lessons around leadership, career-building, and blazing your own path forward.
In this Blink, you’ll learn - how Reggie rose to success despite his early lack of opportunities;
- how seizing an unexpected opportunity changed his career trajectory; and
- how he had to hit a bunch of dead ends before he reached the top of his career.
Chapter 1: Unlikely Beginnings.
Some executives are born with silver spoons in their mouths. Reggie Fils-Aimé wasn’t one of them. His parents were Haitian immigrants, and he spent the first eight years of his life in the early 1960s growing up in a rough neighborhood in the Bronx. His family lived in a one-bedroom, fifth-floor walk-up apartment in a roach-infested tenement building.
It was the kind of building where, one time, a man was stabbed on the top of the roof and smeared a trail of blood down the stairs as he stumbled to the street. Another time, Reggie and his brother got robbed by some teenagers on their way to buy candy at a nearby bodega. His family was eager to get out – so his father worked two jobs, six days a week. By the late 1960s, when Reggie was eight, the family had saved up enough money to move out of the Bronx into a small house in Brentwood – a much safer town on Long Island. For Reggie, it was an early lesson in working hard and making the most of available opportunities to get ahead in life. Moving to Brentwood was a huge step up for the family, but they were still a lower-middle-class household.
And now, they were also the only black family in the surrounding neighborhood. At the time, the town was mostly white. Some of his classmates picked on Reggie because of his race. But Reggie was used to standing up for himself. Meanwhile, he applied himself to his studies and did well at school – well enough to eventually get accepted to Cornell University, an Ivy League institution in Ithaca, New York. With a combination of hard work, academic merit, and taking advantage of the opportunities as they came up, Reggie was able to attend the university’s undergraduate business programs.
He financed his education with academic scholarships, including an air force ROTC scholarship, student loans, and part-time jobs. And, by the end of his studies, he discovered he enjoyed the analytical side of finance. This led him to pursue a career in the banking industry. He did an internship at a bank and had a whole plan worked out: graduate from Cornell, get a couple of years of work experience, earn an MBA, and then aim for the industry’s stratosphere. But then something unexpected happened in his final year of university – something that would radically change Reggie’s career trajectory.
Chapter 2: Unexpected Opportunity.
Back when Reggie was at Cornell, a lot of Fortune 500 company executives had one thing in common: they’d all spent time working as brand managers for the consumer goods company Proctor & Gamble, also known as P&G. The company’s brand managing role functioned as a hands-on training program for future executives, granting them increasing levels of responsibility and teaching them how to handle every major aspect of running a successful company – from advertising to product development. P&G did a lot of recruitment at Cornell, focusing mainly on the school’s MBA program. And it interviewed a few undergraduate students as well, but only if they got a personal recommendation from a professor.
Reggie ended up being one of those students: the interview went well, and he got a job offer that would allow him to become a brand manager at 25 and an executive at 30. It was an attractive offer – but Reggie was set on becoming a banker, so it would also be a major change in his career plan. However, the more he thought about it, the more he liked the possibilities it represented. He liked the idea of not having to spend time in an entry-level bank position, he liked the idea of not having to go back to school to get his MBA. The job with P&G would fast-track his career while providing a hands-on learning experience that would complement the education he’d received at Cornell. Reggie decided to go for it – and it would prove to be one of the most pivotal decisions in his life.
He was turning away from a clearly mapped-out route to a banking career and veering off down another path that would eventually lead him to his role at Nintendo. In retrospect, the decision taught him a valuable lesson: plans are good to have – but don’t get too stuck on them. Stay open to other possibilities, and allow yourself to shift direction if a compelling opportunity comes along. Reggie ended up spending eight years at P&G.
Chapter 3: Learning the Hard Way.
He managed multiple brands, including Crisco (a shortening product) and Sun Drop (a soft drink that competes with products like Mountain Dew). Along the way, Reggie learned valuable lessons – from how to write an effective business memo to the importance of gaining support for your initiatives from key decision-makers. He also learned what kind of work he liked doing: driving high rates of growth in fast-paced sectors. Unfortunately, some of these lessons he learned the hard way.
With growth rates of over 15 percent, P&G’s soft drink brands matched the description of what Reggie was looking for, but many of P&G’s other brands, like Crisco, did not. For them, growth rates of only 3 to 4 percent were considered desirable. Reggie enjoyed his time working for the soft drink brands until P&G eventually sold to another company, and he was moved over to slow-growth Crisco. But his desire to move quickly didn’t disappear. And so Reggie immediately got to work on developing an innovative advertising campaign for Crisco. It showed promising results during a trial run, and he was eager to push it forward as rapidly as possible.
He felt certain it would generate a big sales boost. There was just one snag: Crisco’s advertising budget was small. Reggie ended up spending more money than he was authorized to spend on it – essentially forward-spending the fourth-quarter budget on the third quarter. As a result, Crisco missed its third-quarter profit target. The whole situation could have been avoided if he’d communicated with higher-level managers and convinced them to give Crisco a bigger advertising budget. He had a great idea for the advertising campaign, but he hadn’t invited other people into his thinking or gained enough support to execute it properly.
And that, he learned, is what you need to do if you want to be an effective agent of change. Reggie owned up to his mistake and vowed he’d never repeat it – but it ended up derailing his career at P&G. And feeling dead in the water, he decided to leave the company. While he was working with P&G’s soft drink brands, Reggie often found himself in close competition with PepsiCo.
Chapter 4: Reversing Course.
And, as fate would have it, his next position was with one of PepsiCo’s restaurant brands: Pizza Hut. Working as a divisional marketing director for the company, Reggie pushed for growth and innovation on several fronts – not just marketing, but also product development. Sometimes, that meant making risky decisions that proved to be mistakes – and one of those mistakes proved to be another learning experience for Reggie. It happened while he was working for Pizza Hut in the early 1990s – a period when the company was losing customers to one of its competitors: Little Caesars.
The pizza at Little Caesars was inferior in quality, but they had something that Pizza Hut didn’t have: a two-for-one deal that gave people a lot of food for little money. That made it a tempting bargain at a time when the US was going through a recession. To help Pizza Hut even the playing field, Reggie decided to spearhead the launch of a product called Bigfoot Pizza – a huge, rectangular slab of pizza that sold for the same price as Little Caesars’ two-for-one deal. Many Pizza Hut franchise owners were reluctant to adopt the initiative, but Reggie pushed forward and won them over. The product went on to win an innovation award and generate almost a billion dollars in revenue – but it was a slightly hollow victory. With the pizza’s lower price came lower quality.
Because of the cheapness of the ingredients and the way it was produced, the pizza often came out burnt or soggy. Little Caesars’ product had similar problems, so that seemed okay since the point was just to compete with them on price. But after doing some market research, Reggie realized that customers’ negative perception of Bigfoot Pizza was rubbing off on their overall perception of Pizza Hut, damaging the brand. So he decided to reverse course – suddenly going from being Big Foot Pizza’s biggest advocate to being its biggest critic. Eventually, Reggie spoke with Pizza Hut’s senior leadership and persuaded them to phase out the product altogether. Reggie took away a couple of key lessons from this experience.
First, always keep the long-term picture in mind. Sure, Big Foot Pizza was making money and helping it compete with Little Caesars, but it was also damaging the brand at a time when other competitors with higher-quality pizzas like Papa John’s were emerging on the horizon. Second, he learned to make the right decision for your brand, even if it means reversing course, even if it hurts. Big Foot Pizza had been Reggie’s baby, so it was hard to let go of, but it was the right thing to do for the company.
Chapter 5: The Right Fit.
After working a few years for Pizza Hut, Reggie moved through a series of increasingly senior-level marketing roles at a variety of companies: two years at Panda Management Company, two years at Guinness Import Company, two years at Derby Cycle Corporation, and two years at MTV Network’s VH1 channel. And, why was he hopping from one company to the next? Well, the short answer is that he was looking for the right fit – a company, a role, and a leadership team that would allow him to pursue bold ideas and drive innovation and growth at the fast pace he favored. But Reggie kept running up against walls.
Either the role was too constricted for him, or he got held back by owners, investors, or higher-level executives who had conservative business instincts or moderate growth goals. While he tried to push for change as hard as he could, he learned that at some point, if a role just isn’t a good fit, you’ve got to move forward and keep looking. And so, in 2003, Reggie found himself looking for a new role yet again. While on the hunt, he received a call – a call that would lead to a decision that would change his life forever. It was from a recruiter calling on behalf of Nintendo. They were searching for a new executive vice president of sales and marketing.
This was an exciting prospect. The video game industry was exactly the sort of fast-paced sector Reggie enjoyed. Nintendo alone typically released over 50 new products per year. Reggie had also been a video game fan as a kid, and, as an adult, he owned multiple Nintendo systems with a large library of games. But working for Nintendo was an intimidating prospect as well. The company was in trouble.
Its current system, the GameCube, wasn’t selling that well, and it was losing market share to its competitors, Sony’s PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox. Compared to other industries he’d worked in, it wasn’t that big of a market to begin with – and this was another reason not to take the job. That being said, Reggie also sensed that there was huge potential for growth in the video game industry, he was convinced that Nintendo could turn its fortunes around. The company had a legacy of trailblazing innovation, and its global president, Satoru Iwata, seemed committed to carrying that legacy into the future.
And so finally, Reggie sensed he’d found the fit he was looking for. He accepted the job. About a year later, Reggie was getting ready to make Nintendo’s main presentation at the 2004 E3 video game conference – the industry’s biggest event, closely followed by industry insiders, retailers, publications, and fans.
Chapter 6: The Rise of the Regginator.
Since his hire, Reggie had been busily building relationships within Nintendo, but to the larger industry, he was still relatively unknown. This would be his introduction to the gaming world – and by the end of the evening, he’d be on his way to fame. As Reggie began his presentation, he introduced himself and his mission at Nintendo with a line that would become legendary: “My name is Reggie. I'm about kicking ass, I'm about taking names, and we're about making games.
” The presentation was a hit, Reggie’s aggressive messaging was so well-received, in fact, that fans gave him a new nickname: The Regginator. During the presentation, Reggie introduced the world to Nintendo’s new portable video game system, the Nintendo DS. He also teased an upcoming home-based system: the Nintendo Wii. These two systems were linchpins of the company’s plan to turn its fortunes around. The DS had touchscreen capabilities, and the Wii had motion-based controls, both of which were industry firsts. These innovations, in turn, would open up possibilities for new gaming experiences.
People would be able to control them in intuitive ways, rather than having to remember a bunch of different buttons to press. And, this, in turn, would make games more accessible to the general public, which would allow Nintendo to massively expand its consumer base beyond traditional gamers. But to be successful at implementing this strategy, Nintendo needed more than just the right tech. It also needed to find the right pricing for the systems, make sure it had the right lineup of games, and strike the right balance with its messaging. If the prices were too high, nongamers would be unlikely to buy the systems. If there weren’t enough exciting general audience-oriented games to play on them, they wouldn’t be interested in buying them in the first place.
But, equally, if Nintendo put too much emphasis on these types of games, it would risk alienating its traditional fan base and the retailers who catered to them. All three of these issues became points of contention for Reggie. He battled with other leaders at Nintendo to bring down the prices of the systems. He championed the release of general audience-oriented games for the Nintendo DS, like Nintendogs (a pet simulation) and Brain Age (a collection of brain-training puzzle games). Then at the 2006 E3 conference, Reggie pushed back when the company’s global president, Satoru Iwata, wanted to give the company’s spotlight mainly to Wii Sports, another general audience-oriented game. Reggie argued that the spotlight should also be shared by another game, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which was aimed at Nintendo’s traditional audience.
The two men couldn’t see eye to eye on the issue, but Reggie felt convinced he was right and he insisted on showcasing the new Zelda game, even though that meant disagreeing with his boss. That was a risky move for him – but the risk paid off for Nintendo; the game’s presentation at the conference generated a huge buzz and it was another learning for Reggie: listen to other perspectives, change your mind if you’re wrong – but be ready to stand your ground and take a risk if you’re sure you’re right. Shortly after the conference, Iwata requested an unexpected meeting with Reggie. He was afraid he was about to get fired for going against his boss.
He even prepared a presentation to defend his decision. But right before Reggie was about to give Iwata a copy of the presentation, Iwata handed Reggie a two-page document. Its subject line had one word: promotion. Reggie was getting promoted to president and COO of Nintendo of America.
Final summary
You’ve just listened to our Blink to Disrupting the Game, by Reggie Fils-Aimé. What are the main things we can take away from Reggie’s journey to the top of Nintendo? Well, the path that took him there was hardly a straight line. He changed directions right at the beginning – switching from a plan to pursue a career in banking to take a promising job as a brand manager at Proctor & Gamble.
From there, he switched jobs, companies, and industries many times, searching for that role that would allow him to do what he really wanted. Along the way, he made some serious mistakes. But he learned from those mistakes, and he kept on moving forward, pushing for what he wanted, looking for new opportunities, and staying open to new possibilities – things that all of us can do in our own lives and careers. Thanks for listening – let us know what you thought of this content by giving this Blink a rating, and leaving any other feedback that you’d like to leave. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy other titles in our library and look forward to your attentive ears in the next Blink.
About the Author
Reggie Fils-Aimé is the former president and COO of Nintendo of America. Before his ascent to the top of the video game giant, he had a multi-decade career in sales and marketing, working with companies like Proctor & Gamble, Pizza Hut, and VH1.