Kaodi said:
How Should 4e Be Advertised?
The problem is that there's really no ad that can show D&D being played that doesn't look geeky. Just like showing a WoW gamer in their basement doesn't work.
That green dragon concept art rocks. I'd put a flyer with that on it in DVD jewel cases for releases like The Lord of the Ring and (upcoming) Batman: The Dark Knight. What would really rock is if Netflix sold advertising flyer inserts for each DVD they mail out, so you could advertise the older (but genre appropriate) rentals like Conan the Barbarian and such.
Anyone who's into gaming will probably here about it one way or another, so probably no need to push it that hard. At minimum all WotC 3.5 books sold from now until April should have an insert advertising it. They could throw collectible cards into M:tG booster packs to get the word around too.
But that's easy. Hmm, some more ideas to bring in new gamers:
1. A TV spot showing some kids/teens playing a generic board game, and have one of them point to the edge of the board and say "I want to keep going." Either that or Vin Diesel (dressed as a Barbarian) runs into the room, flips the board over, and says "If you want to see what real games are like, follow me."
2a. Get the Daily Show to make a news spot of it, ("Now we're 4x better at being nerds!")
2b. Same night, pay Stephen Colbert to challenge someone to an "Elven Duel."
3. Actually, the above idea about replacing 'A' with '4' isn't a bad one. It's viral. I'm not sure what sites would let you do it though ...
4. Google Adwords should definitely play a part. I would be very interested to know what search terms most strongly correlate with direct sales; I expect few would be unsurprised.
5. Have a MySpace page. Make it awesome. Make pages for the iconics, which invite you to be friends with them based on games you can play and quizzes you can take.
The main question you have to ask is: what need does D&D meet? Sure, I think it's fun, but can we really pin down
why it's fun? The iPod sold well when others didn't at least in partly because rather than advertising it's qualities (1GB storage) it advertised what it could do for the customer (1,000 songs, in your pocket). We all know how that turned out. D&D 4e could be the greatest game since checkers, but it won't attract new (to the hobby) players if its advertisers cannot communicate why it's cool & fun.
And how does WoW advertise anyway? I don't think I've ever seen an advertisement for them.
