How would you market D&D? A Hypothetical exercise

[nothing to see here]

I was thinking this could be a good idea, too. The thing is, though, an infomercial about D&D would really be more about "This is what a role-playing game is." Not that that's bad, but basically it becomes Hasbro/WotC spending the money to educate people and create a market for RPGs. Once someone's been exposed to the RPG concept, they could just as easily be torn away from D&D and end up playing "World of Darkness", "Rifts", or any of the other multitude of RPGs out there.

Of course the commercial would be branding as WotC and D&D and all that, and the idea would be that the key take-away would be "D&D is a cool game! I have to go out and buy D&D and start playing!". But, first you have to get people to understand what D&D is at its core (ie, a role-playing game).

If someone is already familiar with the RPG concept but they're not currently playing D&D, I'm not sure an infomercial is going to switch them over.



You're thinking along the right lines here. If D&D were going to advertise on television, the most obvious place would be on select cable networks whose audiences would have a larger percentage of D&D's core target market.

The problem with this again, though, is that national cable advertising is still very expensive, and no matter how you slice and dice the ratings data of the network, you're also going to end up with a larger portion of the network's audience that doesn't (or wouldn't) play D&D. Those are "wasted" impressions, but you pay for them anyway. The cable networks charge you based on their total audience, not just for the portion that you want to reach.

Also, when you say the "sales of the books that come out in that month" I'm assuming that you're talking about the D&D RPG rulebooks and supplements and not the novels (fiction). If you're talking the RPG stuff, I'm pretty sure that the incremental sales they might get from advertising on cable would not come anywhere close to breaking even for the expense of producing the ad and then running the commercial. That's why WotC has adopted a strategy of just advertising their new material to the people that they already know are playing the game - readers of Dragon and [/i]Dungeon[/i], for example. There are no "wasted impressions" that way.

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Something they could think about it doing promotional tie-ins with mass online stores like Amazon and Barnes and Noble. When D&D 3.0E came out, I remember reading statistics about how the Player's Handbook was on the Amazon Top Items list or whatever. What if everyone who bought the Player's Handbook on Amazon got a coupon for $5 off the next supplement book that WotC published, via a special e-mail to the purchaser sent from Amazon? Then, after they use their $5 coupon to buy the book, they are given an offer to sign up for some kind of D&D online club sponsored by WotC and Amazon. They'll get special e-mails sent to them talking about new products coming up, coupons, maybe PDF previews, invitations to Organized Play events in their area, and stuff like that. Getting people involved like this would help migrate someone from just being a casual purchaser of the Player's Handbook and help pave the way for turning the person into a regular gamer.

Thanks for chiming in Samothdom...it's good to have a professional with first-hand experience in this dilemma, contributing their two cents. I also work in marketing (well, sorta) which is why I posed the question...however my expertise (political marketing) leaves me well behind the curve in findinga solution.

I've heard some great ideas from many of the posters. I like the idea of an infomercial because, as hot-type visual media go...it quite portable. An infomercial is designed to be self contained...so a well produced piece could be used not just as a late-night stop-gap...but as a travelling promotional piece at stores, conventions etc. However much we may ridicule infomercials...they do have proven track record at developing product (if not brand) identities...(laugh if you will) lending an additional crediblity to traditionally marginalized product lines.

I do disagree with the notion that there is a particularly large RPG-D&D gap. I think it was Ryan Dancey who made the original argument...that the growth of the RPG market will always have a disproportionate impact on the industry leader. Since D&D is the overwhelming industry leader in the category...the risk that people might get turned on to RPG's yet turned off to D&D feels, to me, like an unlikely outcome.

Marketing more through wargamer or other such hobby magazines would seem to me to be a short term hit at best. A concerted professional push could probably (though not necessarily) bump sales to a quarter, as a latent early-adopter set opened up to the games crossover appeal. I doubt that market segment is very large though...I stand to be corrected.

I also disagree with the idea of celebrity tie ins. Don't get me wrong...it's great that Vin Diesel plays. However the marketing allure of celebrity is based on lifestyle appeal. Celebrities who tinker with RPG's...do not represent gamer lifestyle. In fact gamer culture tends to run counter to celebrity culture most of the time. Quite frankly...on the list of sellable items about RPG's...'gamer lifestyle' ranks damn near the bottom. Two many comic bookstore-guy stereotypes out there already.

And certainly I disagree with any tinkering on the design of the system. The posters to this thread have, admirably, avoided the storied tragic flaw of geeks...confusing mastery of a subject with mastery of its marketing...the "if only George Lucas did XXX the Star Wars franchise would be bigger than ever right now..." effect... ("if only D&D were classless everybody would play!") the barriers to D&D's growth have aboslutely nothing to do with it's design. No matter how simple..or complex...no matter how teenager friendly...or mature...certain demographics will remain inaccessible at all times to the game...but, more importantly, there are certain demographics who might be accessible, yet don't yet 'get it'

And herein lies the dilemma. The Trial/Regular/Lifestyle gamer continuim cited from WOTC is an interesting model for developing a sustainable (i.e. regular purchaser) player base. However if you extend that model two more steps..you can identify a large "inaccessible" uninterested consumer demographic...yet also, a substantial grey areak group...of people predisposed to D&D's subject matter, if not the RPG medium itself. Market development is (relatively easier) than market growth. To use the jargon of political marketing, it's easier to turn soft-support into hard support...than it is to convert the undecided into soft-support.

That's why I like the idea of targeted mass marketing, within budgetary limits. Do you want to advertise on ESPN or MTV...no...however, a cabe acess horror or action show channel...maybe...depends on costs, of course, but the fragmenting of the cable universe and development of TiVo technology is forcing television advertisers to move from a broadcast advertising model to an electronic one (mirrored on web advertising)...a shakedown that's only just begun

 

[fusangite]

Ha! I have a tendency to over-explain my job because it's one of those weird types of things that no one in their right mind would actually think people do for a living. I've given up trying to explain it to my mom, so just tells her friends that I do "something with computers."

So, sorry if I offended people by being pedantic.

Absolutely not. I hope I didn't inadvertently sound sarcastic. I really meant what I said; I worked in politics for years and I know how annoying it is when people dispute carefully gathered demographic information with some personal annecdote that allows them to draw the conclusions they want. I was actually trying to express admiration for your patience at wandering into this thread at all.

Yeah, I'd say that the majority of Conan fans of at least heard of D&D and know what it is. I think that the numbers would be slightly less for Ladyhawke and Dr. Who which are, relatively speaking, a little more mainstream.

I'm going to be chuckling about that tomorrow night... somebody called Dr. Who "mainstream."

 

[John Morrow]

I work at an ad agency, and we've been debating about whether the Burger King ad to which you're referring is either (a) brilliant, or (b) the biggest waste of film ever. (And, we have no consensus on that, either.)

One thing in its favor, on the "brilliant" side, is that there is no confusion about which company the ad is for. One of the problems that I have with a lot of clever ads is that, sure they are entertaining and memorable but it's often impossible to remember what product they were pitching. In some cases, I've heard of polls that show that people associated one company's ads with another company.

 

[John Morrow]

But if you wanna know the truth, the problem isn't the marketing - it's the game itself. D&D should be positioning itself to become an online game, whereby players around the world can interface with each other via videofeed to play the game. That's the future, not pen-n-paper D&D.

I do think that the fact that children no longer "go outside and play" (either because parents fear their children going outside unsupervised or because their home entertainment center is more fun) or do as much face-to-face socializing with other children (they not only have television with hundreds of channels and 7x24 kids programming but computer game consoles, video games, computers, etc) is detrimental to this hobby and even to the sort of DM-based online games that you are talking about. Role-playing is, at it's heart, a social game and a creative game. And I don't see the explosion of solitary home entertainment helping encourage either of those elements. Computer games simply are not a replacement for pretending that a cardboard box is a starship or that you and your friends sitting inside it are it's crew.

But then, such an idea would undermine the need for rulebooks and D&D minis, now wouldn't it? And WotC can't have that. D&D needs a paradigm shift and it's missing the boat...

D&D has always occupied a position that's economically difficult. It sells a product that you can buy once and then rarely or never need to replace. It sells a product that can work with, but does not need, additional products to use. There is no equivalent to razor blades or laundry detergent that gets consumed with use. There are no moving parts to wear out like there are in a car. There are no technological improvements as there are with computers. Heck, there aren't even regular style changes like there are in the garment industry. That's a really difficult space to work in.

 

[nothing to see here]

D&D has always occupied a position that's economically difficult. It sells a product that you can buy once and then rarely or never need to replace. It sells a product that can work with, but does not need, additional products to use. There is no equivalent to razor blades or laundry detergent that gets consumed with use. There are no moving parts to wear out like there are in a car. There are no technological improvements as there are with computers. Heck, there aren't even regular style changes like there are in the garment industry. That's a really difficult space to work in.

That quote's gold...pure gold.

And there's the dilemma. And gamers should be concerned about this. Because the alternative to these options is to continue working their core demographic, who have been demonstrated to show completist tendencies. D&D's profitability is, fundamentality, based on the furthering addiction of those who play as a lifestyle...as opposed being based on expanding the base of the people who play casually.

 

[ecliptic]

1. Greyhawk Campaign Setting
2. Commercials with sate of the art CG on prime time television.

 

[cmanos]

But if you wanna know the truth, the problem isn't the marketing - it's the game itself. D&D should be positioning itself to become an online game, whereby players around the world can interface with each other via videofeed to play the game. That's the future, not pen-n-paper D&D. And I don't mean an online game like NWN. I mean a game run by a DM, possibly without all the graphics, that enables the traditional D&D game to be played over the internet without all the hassle that it currently entails. Sure there are some hosts right now (usually free), but they don't have the authority or the financial backing to do it right. That's what WotC should be focusing on. It would create a whole new market for the game and it would allow isolated players to actually play the game.

So you are saying something like a play by post...or a chat room where people play. It happens, but it loses the fun of a PnP game. More that 1/2 the fun of a PnP game is getting together with friends and socializing, not hiding behind a computer screen somewhere. The future is what we make it. 10 years ago, people said paper books would be gone by now and people wopuld all be reading electronic books. Hasn't happened. What you suggest doesn't only create a whole new market, it phases out a very large established market.

Take for example if DnD 4.0 (gods forbid it ever come out) was published only in e-Book format. I would think there would be a huge drop in sales. I could be wrong. People like books. People like moving miniatures around on paper. Some people don't. Which is fine. I think moving towards an entirely internet based/computer based game would be a horrible marketing move.

 

[kenobi65]

The problem with this again, though, is that national cable advertising is still very expensive, and no matter how you slice and dice the ratings data of the network, you're also going to end up with a larger portion of the network's audience that doesn't (or wouldn't) play D&D. Those are "wasted" impressions, but you pay for them anyway. The cable networks charge you based on their total audience, not just for the portion that you want to reach.

Also, when you say the "sales of the books that come out in that month" I'm assuming that you're talking about the D&D RPG rulebooks and supplements and not the novels (fiction). If you're talking the RPG stuff, I'm pretty sure that the incremental sales they might get from advertising on cable would not come anywhere close to breaking even for the expense of producing the ad and then running the commercial. That's why WotC has adopted a strategy of just advertising their new material to the people that they already know are playing the game - readers of Dragon and Dungeon, for example. There are no "wasted impressions" that way.

I think that this has to be the single biggest reason why marketing in "mass" channels (even with an infomercial) would likely be a tremendous waste of money for D&D. You'd just be spending too much money to reach the people you want to reach, because there's no good way to *just* reach them with television.

Magic: the Gathering has a significantly larger audience than D&D, and even they have done virtually no TV advertising (I think they've done two TV ads, with very limited runs).

No denying, it could be *cool* to see a D&D TV ad...it's just a massively inefficient medium for a niche product.

PS: Just in the interest of sharing -- I spent 10 years as a market researcher at two "packaged goods" companies (a personal-care products company, then a food company), and have now been an account planner (a lot like market research) at an advertising agency for 5 years.

 

[Samothdm]

Magic: the Gathering has a significantly larger audience than D&D, and even they have done virtually no TV advertising (I think they've done two TV ads, with very limited runs).

They did run some as "recently" as 2000. It was a very limited schedule that ran on Major League Soccer, some limited primetime programming on UPN and Fox, and also on ESPN2 (which at the time carried coverage of MgT tournaments). It was a very tightly targeted campaign, but it was very small in terms of dollars spent and awareness generated.

No denying, it could be *cool* to see a D&D TV ad...it's just a massively inefficient medium for a niche product.

Absolutely agree.

PS: Just in the interest of sharing -- I spent 10 years as a market researcher at two "packaged goods" companies (a personal-care products company, then a food company), and have now been an account planner (a lot like market research) at an advertising agency for 5 years.

Another funky ad-agency job that most people haven't heard of. My wife is an account planner at DDB here in Los Angeles, and one of my friends here at my agency is an account planner and he plays D&D in my campaign (hasn't played recently due to having a baby now) and also he and I play board games at lunch when we get the chance (LOTR: Confrontation, Lost Cities, etc...)

 

[NewJeffCT]

PS: Just in the interest of sharing -- I spent 10 years as a market researcher at two "packaged goods" companies (a personal-care products company, then a food company), and have now been an account planner (a lot like market research) at an advertising agency for 5 years.

My expertise is in financial reporting, so I'm nearly clueless when it comes to marketing. You want somebody to throw together an MD&A or Notes to Financials for your 10K filing, I'm your man... marketing is definitely not for me.

I would be curious as to some of your suggestions on marketing D&D.