D&D 4E 4E Marketing Campaign?

[Daniel D. Fox]

WotC has been employing the easiest sort of promotion for their product, and one of the most cost effective - viral marketing.

Now, that's not to say that they shouldn't begin targetting a lot of mmog websites with banners and promotional material, but thus far they're doing a bang-up job when it comes to word-of-mouth.

 

[WhatGravitas]

They've said before that they can't afford TV ads, and I don't think that product placement is any less costly.

Well, MtG can afford them. Look here.

Cheers, LT.

 

[ChaosShard]

I have a dozen close friends that are also D&D players. Only two guys from this gang are web geeks and frequent ENWorld and D&D site (myself included).
Only two guys from this gang knew that there was a 4th edtion coming.

If I didn't send out links to ENWorld and the WotC articles none of my friends would know about 4e.

Zero.

I just hope that we start to see something that will get outside of the forums and hit the mainstream of geekdom.

Does that make us fringe geeks?

 

[Shroomy]

If I didn't send out links to ENWorld and the WotC articles none of my friends would know about 4e.

Zero.

I just hope that we start to see something that will get outside of the forums and hit the mainstream of geekdom.

Does that make us fringe geeks?

Nope, it makes a you a cog in WotC's early marketing machine!

 

[SteveC]

I wanted to mention something else that's been bothering me about the current marketing plan. A lot of the questions that we've been asking have been met with "sorry, I can't answer that."

To a certain extent, that makes sense: if you give someone an answer to something that can change, you may very well end up looking very silly, and creating controversy where none is needed.

Still, as we know, the books are at the printer. At this point the rules for skill challenges or multiclassing, or anything else aren't going to change unless there is such a huge mistake that it warrants it. So what's the reason at this point?

If that reason is, "we want to have an orderly publicity campaign and control how the information is dispensed," I can understand that. Let's start that process! The books are just over two months away from being in our hands, so what are we waiting for?

--Steve

 

[ChaosShard]

Nope, it makes a you a cog in WotC's early marketing machine!

I feel so dirty now. I hope The Rouse calls me in the morning.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I wanted to mention something else that's been bothering me about the current marketing plan. A lot of the questions that we've been asking have been met with "sorry, I can't answer that."

I think if we are already asking questions directly to them, there marketing has worked on us already. The major goal of the marketing is to make people aware and interested in 4E. Basically, the marketing is not really geared at people that already post on these boards, but too all the people who don't. Whether it has succeeded there in any capacity, or whether it's a good or a bad idea to start early while the products aren't on the shelves yet, I don't know. I have no clue on marketing.

 

[HeinorNY]

[rant]
I just want to make a plea to WotC:

The game is not in a "state of flux" anymore, the books went to the printers already. So please, show me what I am actually pre-ordering.
NO more speculation, no more designers blogs with "I was playing a _____ wizard and he used that 'power that deals a lot of fire damage' ", I just had enough of that. No more statements like "We don't wanna spoil the surprise". Surprise? I wanna buy a book, not have a surprise. Surprises are good for birthday parties, not for things we have to buy. I want to know what is in the books I already bought. I want to know all the races and classes. I want to how many powers are in the PHB and the name of all of them with samples. I want to know how multiclass works. How leveling works and how often do we get a feat, at-will, encounter and daily powers? How many feats, and a list of them. The same with skills. How do they work now, what can I do with them? What are rituals, how do they work, and sample magic item creation rituals. How many monsters are exactly in the MM, their names and variants. What's in the DMG? I want sample pages of the each book's summary. I want to know what I'm buying. No surprises, just tell me. And I want to know all that and much more directly from Wotc, not from Enworld boards, not from scanned pages from DNDExp, not from speculative fan-made PHBs, not from cool designer's blogs and not from ultra-positive playtesters reviews. All this viral marketing is just making me sick. And I want to know all that before the books are realeased, before I have them with me, and all that information accessible to people that doesn't frequent Enworld or the D&D site, otherwise the markting just failed. I'm a WotC's costumer and that's how a feel and think.

Please, honestly, just show us the real deal.[/rant]

 

[AZRogue]

Yeah, I don't think they're targeting us with their marketing plans, whatever they are; we're already talking about 4E. We already know about the game and are asking questions, discussing what we know.

I want to know what WotC is doing to let the REST of the world know about the game. I know a lot of different gamers and they only know about 4E because I told them (is that part of the plan? evil bastards). When does the real campaign begin and what form is it going to take? There are people out there that need to know about 4E and what it offers.

As for those of us on the message boards, I'd like WotC to really step up and start releasing more info now that we're so close to launch. More blog posts, more sneak peeks, all that stuff.

Oh, and start some promotions, too. Start a contest or something. Hell, start a few. I want to win something.

 

[HeinorNY]

and all that information accessible to people that doesn't frequent Enworld or the D&D site

I've just remembered. You need to go through a registration proccess at D&DInsider in order to have access to any kind of official information about 4E!!

OMG, WotC actually sold books with preview information about their new product!!!!

I was aware I knew nothing about marketing, but in these days, I know even less.