• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 1, 2007

Earlier this month while vacationing in Hawaii, Cammie Dunaway played Brain Academy on a Nintendo DS Lite, competing against seven other vacationing friends ages five to 57. The news that she would step down as Yahoo CMO and take the lead marketing and sales position at Nintendo of America hadn't been announced publicly, but the experience on the Big Island confirmed her decision to go.

Nintendo's commitment to prove that video games have a broad appeal inspired Dunaway, 45, to roll up her sleeves and take on the video game market. "I've seen the excitement on my nine-year-old son's (Davis) face when he's playing a Pokemon game on his DS and spots someone else at the airport playing, too. They become instant friends," she tells Marketing Daily. "Then I see my mom (Pat), who's in her 70s, having fun playing Wii bowling. Myself, I've started to play brain-training games."

Thirteen years in the marketing department of the well-established consumer brand Frito-Lay, overseeing strategies for Doritos and Lay's, and spearheading efforts at technology company Yahoo has primed Dunaway to run marketing at Nintendo, a company that combines both.

The focus at Frito-Lay taught Dunaway the importance of one-to-many marketing. The experience at Yahoo emphasized the power of one-to-few and one-to-one. Both combined showed her the means to identify valuable consumer segments and engage them in ways that grow the brand by deepening the relationship between consumer and product.

An example of that strategy took Dunaway reminiscing about the most successful campaign for Yahoo Answers, an Internet site where consumers can go to ask questions and find answers among their peers. Although the Web site launched in late 2005, the marketing campaign didn't kick off until 2006, when the site moved from the test phase into general availability.

More than 105 million people worldwide use Yahoo Answers, and about 21 million of them are in the United States.

The need to build a promotion around people who spent time answering questions, sharing wisdom and giving advice online led Yahoo to target a consumer segments dubbed "brainiacs." (If it sounds familiar, Nintendo also targets this market.)

The marketing campaign led Yahoo to build a giant purple brain in New York's Time Square, where 20 selected brainiacs lived and answered questions from around the world. They became the center of Yahoo's marketing efforts as consumers increasingly relied on their peers and information from blogs for buying advice before making a purchase. After all, it wasn't Yahoo talking about a product, but rather people talking passionately about a product.

Meanwhile, Dunaway believes her biggest accomplishment at Yahoo was building a top-notch marketing team, including hiring young hotshots who "will become the future CMOs in the industry." These "best in class athletes," for example, didn't need a background in travel to successfully market travel. They needed intellectual curiosity, along with analytical, creative, and leadership skills. Developing these skills in hired employees, she says, produced a winning team.

Transitioning from a search engine, Dunaway clearly understands the Internet's marketing and advertising power to reach consumers, but it's not obvious if she'll transition more of the company's campaign spend from paper, radio and TV to the Net.

Nintendo spent $40 million on print, television and outdoor media between January and June 2007, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus. The research firm says the video game and console maker spent $84 million in 2006 and $87 million in 2005.

No rest for the motivated. Dunaway officially leaves Yahoo on Friday and begins at Nintendo on Monday. It may take some time, but she plans to dive in and understand what's working and what's not, and then add her own style to grow the gaming industry by making play relevant for everyone.