KoshPWNZYou
First Post
Ok, stay with me here.
For those of you who haven't being paying attention, Blizzard Entertainment is producing a series of new ads for World of Warcraft, presumably aimed at the 148 people who aren't playing the game yet. In these new ads, fairly well-known celebrities talk about the characters that they play in WoW. The first two produced are the most noteworthy -- Mr. T speaking about his experiences playing a Night Elf Mohawk (of course!), and William Shatner (theatrically) talking about his Tauren Shaman, 'a conduit ... of the ancient forces ... of nature.' If you haven't seen the ads on TV yet, you can view them here
Now these ads have gotten me to thinking. D&D has a strong fanbase of 148 people. We're rabid in our support of the brand and we keep the families of WoTC's employees fed and clothed by purchasing all their products. But since said employees would prefer houses with more than two rooms, they are working on a brand new edition of the game. It seems like they're banking on the 'shock factor' of a diabolism-themed player race and class, more fluid DM-friendly rules, and heavy usage of anime art to increase the brand's appeal and bring in new players. But let's face it ... D&D has to compete with the Colossal Dragon of the gaming industry that is WoW. Since the two games are polar opposites that are incapable of sharing fanbases, I feel that we need to attack the competition more directly.
-We- need TV ads like that when 4e hits the shelves! -We- need to have celebrities telling the public that 'your game' is D&D, not that rigidly structured video game that they're playing now.
What do we have as far as celebrities go? That's the tough part. All we can really boast are Vin Diesel and Wil Wheaton. Don't get me wrong now. Both Vin and Wil are fine actors and tremendous individuals. But they're not Mr. T and Bill Shatner. Earlier this year a Harvard study listing the 50 greatest exemplars of 4WES0ME in America had Mr. T ranked in the top 5; Vin Diesel narrowly missed making the list. Vin is a fine physical specimen, but he does not encourage quite the fear that Mr. T does that new holes will be ripped in my body. And while targetting Trek fans would be a sound approach to advertising a game like D&D, it would be foolish to counter Will Shatner with Wil Wheaton. If Shatner is the big Willy of Star Trek, Wheaton is the little Willy. I can already sense the WoW Willy envy on the part of WoTC ... so that's not going to work.
My thought is that we have to go outside the current fanbase and convince a celebrity to jump on the D&D bandwagon. I don't think we can afford to aim for any really big names (Tom Cruise isn't signing up for this). Blizzard's approach was very sound -- target lower-tier celebrities who are in need of exposure and money because their popularity has long-since waned. Give them a $90 set of books for free and some TV time, and we can make them D&D fanatics overnight. William Shatner would frikkin -pounce- at an opportunity like this! But because we're not thinking faster than the people at Blizzard, that window has already closed. After a long night of drinking and brainstorming, I came up with two candidates:
Hulk Hogan and Jerry Seinfeld.
Ok, now Hogan -would- come with a bit of baggage. He is a notorious egomaniac who has gotten embroiled in legal disputes with everybody that has gone into business with him. Plus there is the small PR concern surrounding the fact that more steroids have gone through his body than the San Francisco Bay area. But after falling as far as 17 on Harvard's 4WES0ME list in the 90's, Hogan got all the way back to 9th place on this year's list thanks in large part to his reality show. Plus, D&D was at the height of its popularity at the same time that Hogan was. If we want to achieve that kind of popularity again, what better link to those good old days could we build? It's simple. We give the Hulkster a set of the 4e core books and about $500, and not only do we get to film an ad spot starring the sports-entertainment megastar, but we can hope that his family is shown playing the game on 'Hogan Knows Best.' That kind of exposure is solid gold! I can just see the ad now:
"Let me tell you somethin' brotherrrrr! There's a new edition of Dungeons and Dragons, and the Hulkster is already its number one fan! I know that all my Hulkamaniacs don't like unpatriotic things like heavy reading and deductive reasoning, but the new Fourth Edition takes all that stuff out of D&D!" cue shots of happy teenagers moving miniatures around a table and failing to role-play "It's the easiest to run Dungeons and Dragons ever, dude! No more long streams of words to read; now all the rules are explained with little pictures ... just like a comic book, brother! Now you can do COOL things like throw fireballs at hordes of orcs and channel rad streams of magic through your sword ... as many times as you want, no holds barred! There's no stoppin' Foureemania, brother! And for all you PANSIES out there that just want to sit in front of your computers all day clickin' on Orcs, I got a question for yooouuu -- WHATCHA GONNA DOOO, VIDEO GAME GEEKS? Watcha gonna do when the Hulkster's 24th level Dragonborn Warlord runs WILD ... ON ... YOU?! /flex"
Tell me that doesn't put up some fair competition with the Mr. T ad! And don't forget Seinfeld, a former -huge- star that we all thought was dead before he suddenly re-emerged in the world of animated cinema (a sure sign of career desperation):
"What is the deeeeal with fourth edition? Have you heard about this? I'm still trying to figure out what 3.5 was supposed to be. And don't get me started on the Companion Set. And have you heard some of these naaaames they're throwing around? Golden Wyvern Adept? Emerald Frost? How did the wizards at Wizards of the Coast come up with these things? 'Uh, yeah, hey, I'm Jerry Seinfeld, Platinum Comedy Master. You may remember me helping you out with my Hyperactive Hyena Laughter Aggro just a month ago. Yeah, that was me. Well, I'm afraid your club manager pulled his Diamond Turtle-Shell Check Bounce maneuver on me. Could you help me out with that?' And whaaat is with the Tiefling, huh? Is it a devil? Is it a demon? I don't even know what the Succubus is anymore. You keep changin' it on me, Wizards! Stop changin' iiiit!"
Ok, maybe he wouldn't work out as well. I'll brainstorm it a bit more. If we can pry Patrick Stewart away from whatever Shakespeare he's doing these days, we -might- be able to land him. I won't count out the Star Trek audience yet. But there's no way we're settling for Scott Bakula.
I have to wonder what Wizards is paying Scott Rouse for if -I- have to think of things like this.
For those of you who haven't being paying attention, Blizzard Entertainment is producing a series of new ads for World of Warcraft, presumably aimed at the 148 people who aren't playing the game yet. In these new ads, fairly well-known celebrities talk about the characters that they play in WoW. The first two produced are the most noteworthy -- Mr. T speaking about his experiences playing a Night Elf Mohawk (of course!), and William Shatner (theatrically) talking about his Tauren Shaman, 'a conduit ... of the ancient forces ... of nature.' If you haven't seen the ads on TV yet, you can view them here
Now these ads have gotten me to thinking. D&D has a strong fanbase of 148 people. We're rabid in our support of the brand and we keep the families of WoTC's employees fed and clothed by purchasing all their products. But since said employees would prefer houses with more than two rooms, they are working on a brand new edition of the game. It seems like they're banking on the 'shock factor' of a diabolism-themed player race and class, more fluid DM-friendly rules, and heavy usage of anime art to increase the brand's appeal and bring in new players. But let's face it ... D&D has to compete with the Colossal Dragon of the gaming industry that is WoW. Since the two games are polar opposites that are incapable of sharing fanbases, I feel that we need to attack the competition more directly.
-We- need TV ads like that when 4e hits the shelves! -We- need to have celebrities telling the public that 'your game' is D&D, not that rigidly structured video game that they're playing now.
What do we have as far as celebrities go? That's the tough part. All we can really boast are Vin Diesel and Wil Wheaton. Don't get me wrong now. Both Vin and Wil are fine actors and tremendous individuals. But they're not Mr. T and Bill Shatner. Earlier this year a Harvard study listing the 50 greatest exemplars of 4WES0ME in America had Mr. T ranked in the top 5; Vin Diesel narrowly missed making the list. Vin is a fine physical specimen, but he does not encourage quite the fear that Mr. T does that new holes will be ripped in my body. And while targetting Trek fans would be a sound approach to advertising a game like D&D, it would be foolish to counter Will Shatner with Wil Wheaton. If Shatner is the big Willy of Star Trek, Wheaton is the little Willy. I can already sense the WoW Willy envy on the part of WoTC ... so that's not going to work.
My thought is that we have to go outside the current fanbase and convince a celebrity to jump on the D&D bandwagon. I don't think we can afford to aim for any really big names (Tom Cruise isn't signing up for this). Blizzard's approach was very sound -- target lower-tier celebrities who are in need of exposure and money because their popularity has long-since waned. Give them a $90 set of books for free and some TV time, and we can make them D&D fanatics overnight. William Shatner would frikkin -pounce- at an opportunity like this! But because we're not thinking faster than the people at Blizzard, that window has already closed. After a long night of drinking and brainstorming, I came up with two candidates:
Hulk Hogan and Jerry Seinfeld.
Ok, now Hogan -would- come with a bit of baggage. He is a notorious egomaniac who has gotten embroiled in legal disputes with everybody that has gone into business with him. Plus there is the small PR concern surrounding the fact that more steroids have gone through his body than the San Francisco Bay area. But after falling as far as 17 on Harvard's 4WES0ME list in the 90's, Hogan got all the way back to 9th place on this year's list thanks in large part to his reality show. Plus, D&D was at the height of its popularity at the same time that Hogan was. If we want to achieve that kind of popularity again, what better link to those good old days could we build? It's simple. We give the Hulkster a set of the 4e core books and about $500, and not only do we get to film an ad spot starring the sports-entertainment megastar, but we can hope that his family is shown playing the game on 'Hogan Knows Best.' That kind of exposure is solid gold! I can just see the ad now:
"Let me tell you somethin' brotherrrrr! There's a new edition of Dungeons and Dragons, and the Hulkster is already its number one fan! I know that all my Hulkamaniacs don't like unpatriotic things like heavy reading and deductive reasoning, but the new Fourth Edition takes all that stuff out of D&D!" cue shots of happy teenagers moving miniatures around a table and failing to role-play "It's the easiest to run Dungeons and Dragons ever, dude! No more long streams of words to read; now all the rules are explained with little pictures ... just like a comic book, brother! Now you can do COOL things like throw fireballs at hordes of orcs and channel rad streams of magic through your sword ... as many times as you want, no holds barred! There's no stoppin' Foureemania, brother! And for all you PANSIES out there that just want to sit in front of your computers all day clickin' on Orcs, I got a question for yooouuu -- WHATCHA GONNA DOOO, VIDEO GAME GEEKS? Watcha gonna do when the Hulkster's 24th level Dragonborn Warlord runs WILD ... ON ... YOU?! /flex"
Tell me that doesn't put up some fair competition with the Mr. T ad! And don't forget Seinfeld, a former -huge- star that we all thought was dead before he suddenly re-emerged in the world of animated cinema (a sure sign of career desperation):
"What is the deeeeal with fourth edition? Have you heard about this? I'm still trying to figure out what 3.5 was supposed to be. And don't get me started on the Companion Set. And have you heard some of these naaaames they're throwing around? Golden Wyvern Adept? Emerald Frost? How did the wizards at Wizards of the Coast come up with these things? 'Uh, yeah, hey, I'm Jerry Seinfeld, Platinum Comedy Master. You may remember me helping you out with my Hyperactive Hyena Laughter Aggro just a month ago. Yeah, that was me. Well, I'm afraid your club manager pulled his Diamond Turtle-Shell Check Bounce maneuver on me. Could you help me out with that?' And whaaat is with the Tiefling, huh? Is it a devil? Is it a demon? I don't even know what the Succubus is anymore. You keep changin' it on me, Wizards! Stop changin' iiiit!"
Ok, maybe he wouldn't work out as well. I'll brainstorm it a bit more. If we can pry Patrick Stewart away from whatever Shakespeare he's doing these days, we -might- be able to land him. I won't count out the Star Trek audience yet. But there's no way we're settling for Scott Bakula.
I have to wonder what Wizards is paying Scott Rouse for if -I- have to think of things like this.
