Advertising/Marketing for D&D/d20

[Samothdm]

I had a few threads about the subject of marketing and advertising D&D and d20 on a few other threads in the "general" section, but some people suggested that I put them here instead.

My initial postings on the subject can be found in these three threads:
*GenCon ad at TheOnion.com: http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=264106#post264106
*Dragon Magazine: http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17794
*Green Ronin in PC Gamer: http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?threadid=17363

I work in the marketing and advertising business, and I'm curious to see what others think about the subject. As a d20 publisher, do you plan to do any marketing for your products (aside from press releases and the occassional banner ad here at enworld?). I've seen a few things on the subject from Monte Cook. Really what got me going was Green Ronin's ad in PC Gamer. It seems like such a bold move for a d20 company, and one that WotC should be (but isn't) taking the lead on.

In my "ideal marketing world", WotC would spend the majority, if not all, of their D&D marketing dollars on more "mass" media to get more people to play the game. This would be stuff like more mass publications like videogame and electronic gaming magazines, men's magazines, comic books, etc. They could also do more mass online gaming sites and things like movie theater advertising. Again, this would be for the core game, or the game concept. Think of it as "Branding" advertising for D&D. WotC's supplements would pretty much only be advertised through word-of-mouth and the WotC website. Honestly, how many people reading "Dragon" don't already know that the new FR product is "Silver Marches"? I'd say not many. And yet, year after year, it seems that WotC spends a lot of money to first produce a full-page, four-color ad and then run the ads in publications where the vast majority of readers already know the information (such as Dragon, Dungeon, and InQuest).

So, if WotC moves away from those publications and puts more of a focus on increasing the size of the D&D market, then the other d20 publishers could "pick up the slack" and advertise their product offerings in the more niche gaming magazines. There are so many new d20 products coming out each month that it's very hard to keep track of them. By running ads in these publications, the readers would have a chance to learn a little more about these products.

Again, this is an "ideal world" scenario. But, in concept, what do people think?

 

[Orcus]

Advertising a d20 product in a non-D&D related mag is tough.

We dont get to say D&D in the ad copy. Sure, we can hint at it "most popular fantasy roleplaying game" etc.

All we get to use is the d20 logo, and even among D&D fans, that isnt always the clearest tie in. Heck, most people find d20 products because they are next to WotC products on the game shelf. Not becasue they see the d20 logo and say "ah, that is D&D."

So in a mag without the obvious D&D connection, I see it as too risky in general.

Plus, d20 companies do a fraction of WotC business. So if a d20 company could just get every D&D player to buy their product (or even every subscriber to Dragon or Dungeon to buy their product), that would be a dream come true and that product would be a super smash hit. So there is little need to advertise beyond the D&D mags, and little marginal return for doing so.

That said, I think it is cool they did use PC Gamer. That would be one of the few other locations I would consider advertising.

Clark

 

[Jim Butler]

Marketing is one of those grey areas that every publisher has to face. Some believe that marketing is the road to success, while others look at it as a waste of money.

Advertising is expensive, and its effects are largely impossible to calculate. Sure, you can set up a website and count hits from those people that visit from reading your ad, but even those hits can be suspect. How many of us actually read through the ads in those magazines we get?

Advertising campaigns are likewise pretty expensive. They can be effective, but you've got to be willing to spend the big bucks to spread essentially the same message as far and wide as possible. Ads in many of the mainstream magazines are extremely expensive. When we were looking at Alternity ads, we found that Boy's Life charged $50,000 for one full-page 4-color ad. For the Alternity budget, that was quite expensive (we didn't do it).

I do agree with you that it is up to WotC to bring new gamers into the industry. It's the key to their long-term success, and they're the only ones that are in a position to make a difference. Small d20 companies vying for mass market acceptance of their introductory products isn't a very likely scenario. Wizards is the gateway to D&D; it's up to them to bring in those new gamers and let the d20 companies serve their needs beyond the core staples of the game.

In fact, TSR's decision to not push its introductory games for a few years ultimately led to the doomsday scenario that killed them. Sales of the core books (that signified new players coming into the hobby) dropped off after they quit pushing intro boxes. It takes time for the effects of not having new players to be felt, but the effects are extremely painful when they are felt.

The big challenge for WotC is to find those people who are most likely to play D&D. The Third Edition campaign was largely word of mouth coupled with an extensive media and radio blitz at college campuses. Finding gamers (both potential and current) has always been a challenge, since those people that play D&D represent such a wide spectrum of interests (science, law, teachers, managers, etc.).

 

[Samothdm]

Thanks for your thoughts, Clark.

I tend to agree, actually. I think that most d20 publishers would need a really good reason to look beyond the niche gaming magazines and d&d fan sites to advertise their products. That said, I haven't actually SEEN Green Ronin's ad in "PC Gamer". The places I've looked for a copy were either sold out or don't stock the magazine.

I see the sequence of advertising as something like this:

1. WotC spends money in mass media to enlarge the pool of gamers (either bringing brand new people into the game or converting "lapsed" players to "current" players").
1a. More people buy the core books
1b. More people subscribe/buy "Dragon" and "Dungeon"
2. d20 publishers advertise their products in "Dragon" and "Dungeon" (and in other things like KoDT and InQuest, etc.)
2a. Current readers get to read about new d20 products
2b. Follows "1b" above - more people are exposed to d20 publishers' product offerings as WotC spends money to acquire more players, and hence more subscribers to the niche gaming magazines.

Yeah, it's an ideal world scenario, but I can dream, can't I?

 

[Samothdm]

Looks like I was in the wrong forum section before. Two publishers in less than an hour!

Jim, you're right that a lot of people think that marketing is a waste of money, and yes, it is very hard to calculate the effect that an advertising campaign has. Tying sales to advertising is really impossible, but most people know intuitively that there is a connection. I've worked on several different pieces of business over the years from an advertising standpoint, and the old adage still holds true - whenever a company has reduce or eliminated their advertising budget, they've seen a dip in sales (or in sign-ups, or however they measure success). Do other factors contribute to those lost sales? Sure. But, the correlation of advertising-to-sales still plays a huge part.

The success of 3rd Edition definitely owes a lot to word-of-mouth. But, that only goes so far. There are a ton of lapsed players who are now currently playing 3rd Edition (or, at the very least, bought the Players Handbook) who saw WotC's ad in Maxim magazine and took that ad into their local bookstore and said, "Do you carry this game?". And they they told their friends about it. So, I'd argue that a lot of the word-of-mouth press that 3rd Edition received got started from some people who were exposed to the mass-media advertising that WotC did.

 

[Jim Butler]

The success of 3rd Edition definitely owes a lot to word-of-mouth. But, that only goes so far. There are a ton of lapsed players who are now currently playing 3rd Edition (or, at the very least, bought the Players Handbook) who saw WotC's ad in Maxim magazine and took that ad into their local bookstore and said, "Do you carry this game?". And they they told their friends about it. So, I'd argue that a lot of the word-of-mouth press that 3rd Edition received got started from some people who were exposed to the mass-media advertising that WotC did.

I agree that the Maxim ad generated a lot of very positive buzz for 3E. I can't recall off the top of my head how much we paid for it, but I know it was pricey!

Advertising in mass market magazines has a great effect when you have a brand you're building on. For many of the d20 publishers, though, the only information they're trying to pass on is that a.) "These are our cool products" and b.) "Here's when they're coming out." An ad campaign heralding the release of new d20 products in Maxim wouldn't have the same effect (since few non-gamers know what d20 is).

 

[Samothdm]

Jim, I totally agree with you that a d20 ad in Maxim would not have the same effect as WotC's 3rd Edition ad a couple of years ago. I would never really recommend a d20 publisher running an ad in Maxim except in very specific circumstances (such as if a publisher gets ahold of a very popular WotC license to start publishing products based on that license). But, it would have to be a very popular license. I can't think of one off the top of my head right now.

What I'm saying is that WotC should be doing more mass media stuff and spending less in the niche gaming magazines. But, a lot of those magazines count on the revenue that they get from WotC and many of them would probably go out of business if it weren't for WotC's ads running every month. So, to counter that effect, I'm suggesting that some of the d20 publishers take up that slack and use those niche gaming magazines to support their product lines.

I'm also just curious as to why WotC has, for the most part, stopped advertising D&D. Since many d20 publishers are former WotC employees, I thought they might have some ideas. Was it the overall out-of-pocket cost of the ads (yes, Maxim, Boy's Life, etc. are very expensive when you just consider the cost of the ad space). Or is it that WotC/Hasbro didn't think that the ads "paid out" in terms of the sales that they generated? If that's the case, how did they come to that conclusion? What measures did they use to track their sales?

I realize that the great majority of the spending for 3rd Edition would obviously take place at the launch of the product, but to not support it now in mass media is the equivalent of saying, "No one else is going to buy our games, so we're only going to talk to the current players through gaming magazines and fan sites." Thinking like that will cause this hobby to die a slow death.

So, ultimately, I think WotC needs to be refreshing its player base. One way to do that is to advertise to people who show an interest in the fantasy genre (fantasy and sci-fi publications and movies/tv shows, comic books, anime fans), gamers in general (particularly computer RPG gamers), and people who "fit the demo" of gamers (most are young men 12-24 or maybe even 12-34). Some of this will be expensive, but sometimes you have to spend a little money to make a little money.

The other solution is to pull a Games Workshop plan and simply revise the game every three years or so and do a relatively large marketing campaign to bring in new players and blow off the current players. Revise the Core Three Rulebooks every three years and tell people that they need these books to play. Focus only on new players and forget about the current players (who will probably just keep using the same edition that they're comfortable with). However, I don't see WotC going with this approach (thank goodness).

 

[Churchill]

Adverts

I'm not really anybody (yet), so my opinion may not mean much, but I'm going to give it anyway...

Advertising is a necessary evil, and it's an art more than a science. Everyone knows you need to advetise a product, but no one can tell you how (or where) to do it and guarantee results - at least not quantifiably.

Most gaming advertising is basically preaching to the choir. Most game publishers can't afford to do more than that and, really, most wouldn't benefit from trying to reach out to the "real" world.

WotC is in a special position in that they have the financial resources to back a large advertising campaign. They also have the product (D&D) that has one of the best chances of bringing outsiders into the fold. Smaller companies (ones that produce supplemental D&D/d20 material) don't really have a product that has that kind of potential mass appeal - unless, of course, they've gone out and nailed down a license for a major property.

Still, even with a license, you're most likely talking about a niche market. Yes, it's a niche outside of the niche you're already in, but it isn't something that would justify a huge advertising expenditure. At least it doesn't seem so given that the number of people involved (unless you're talking about Star Wars or Star Trek - or something with a similarly large cult following) are very often smaller than the fan/customer base that D&D already has.

Back to WotC for a moment. One of the things they did that I thought was borderline brilliant was to include a copy of the PHB with a computer game. That directly targeted people who had at least some interest in the material. I think they could (and should) have gone even further with that idea. It seems as though, given the popularity of Magic and Pokemon, that they would have been greatly served by inserting a card in every booster pack that touted D&D.

And anything that draws people into D&D can benefit any company that produces D&D/d20 material.

(On a side note: Disney's take on advertising is to spend as much on the promotion of a product as they do on the product itself.)

 

[Samothdm]

WotC is in a special position in that they have the financial resources to back a large advertising campaign. They also have the product (D&D) that has one of the best chances of bringing outsiders into the fold. Smaller companies (ones that produce supplemental D&D/d20 material) don't really have a product that has that kind of potential mass appeal - unless, of course, they've gone out and nailed down a license for a major property.

I do agree with this. I feel as though my original point was getting lost (about WotC taking "responsibility" for drawing new blood into the gaming genre and the d20 companies "fueling" the niche gaming publications and websites by running ads in them).

Here is the background: When 3rd Edition launched, there was a fairly sizeable campaign for 3E that included a few mass publications, notably "Maxim." I've heard through the grapevine that the "Maxim" ad was really successful (moreso than anticipated). They also did a pretty big campaign involving those little free postcards that you can get in cool restaurants and bars.

Anyway, after that big launch, they fell back to old habits: namely, to run advertising only in their "house" publications (Dragon, Dungeon, Star Wars Insider, and Star Wars Gamer) and in a few other niche publications like InQuest, KotDT, Nodwick, etc.

Doesn't it seem logical that at least 98% (if not 100%) of the readers of Dragon already know when the next FR supplement was coming out, what it's about, and how much it costs? They've probably known for weeks, if not months, before the ad runs in Dragon. So, why not use that money that they're spending on those types of ads, pool them together, and run some more mass media ads to promote the entire game of D&D, not just the occasional products. They can use their website, and short "next month's products" column in Dragon, and websites like this one to get the message out about things like "Silver Marches" or whatever.

And, yes, I realize that ads in "Maxim" are several times more expensive than ads in "Dragon". But, the amount of $$ that they spent on "Dragon", et al ads could be pooled together to buy a decent schedule in some pubs like "PC Gamer" and "Maxim".

Back to WotC for a moment. One of the things they did that I thought was borderline brilliant was to include a copy of the PHB with a computer game. That directly targeted people who had at least some interest in the material. I think they could (and should) have gone even further with that idea.

What game was that? I wasn't aware that they had done that.

It seems as though, given the popularity of Magic and Pokemon, that they would have been greatly served by inserting a card in every booster pack that touted D&D.

I 100% agree. I think that they've missed a lot of cross-promotional opportunities (think of the line of Avalon Hill games that Hasbro now owns).

 

[Krug]

I think they should have advertising in some books, such as the new Dragonlance novels. The postcards sound like a good idea as well. So many missed opportunities...