Love the Game, Hate the Marketing

[TerraDave]

Aaaaarrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhh!

Criticizing the marketing of a 4e, …..is laughable.

As in we are laughing at you…ok, sorry, but ham-fisted did also come to my mind…HOWEVER yes there are lots of positive comments on the parts of the game we have seen, no question, because what we have actually seen has been good…and some snipping does represent the small but vocal minority. At least some does

There are actual marketing professionals behind this (like myself) and we have not even made a dent in the very large budget for advertising, public relations, and promotions yet.

It is the end of January, the big product release is in June, marketing will really kick in in March/April and will run for months.

That’s great to read (and no laughing)

the positive things that I have seen about the marketing for 4E have DIRECTLY come from the work you've done. ….what I have seen for marketing for 4E has been utterly chaotic…. Worlds and Monsters: it has some of the best artwork I've ever seen for D&D. I'd say it's worth picking up just for the art. You'd have a tough time knowing that considering how it was marketed.

During the last few months I have had a real rollercoaster effect with the marketing for 4E: something good would come out, only to be followed by several frustrating and annoying comments and posts. That would usually be followed by some comments by you or Mike Mearls or Rodney Thompson, and everything would calm down. Instead of a buildup, you were seeing something like a sine curve.

I'm in the target market for the new game. I'm going to D&D Experience…

If you're at D&D Experience, I'll stop by and say hi, just please, don't wear the puffy shirt.

I agree with so much of this post, it is disturbing. I hope to meet you there.

Plus: beholder video was better (but both good enough).

 

[Zamkaizer]

This is the internet; if WotC gave away free T-shirts with every Player's Handbook, some people would complain that they don't wear T-shirts.

Only infantile gamists able to peel their fat, fleshy forms away from World of Warcraft for a few minutes to get off looking at breasted wapanese Dragondrow in the Crisis on Infinite Faeruns Campaign Setting book wear those ugly pieces of cloth.

 

[Doug McCrae]

I feel that anything short of overwhelming approval is a failure.

Can you give an example of *anything* which has received overwhelming approval on the internet?

Remember the internet? That place composed of nothing but venomous spite (and some pr0n). That place you go to when you're in the mood for unremitting hatred, badly spelled. Yeah, that internet. Pretty much its whole reason for existence is to spew bile. (Okay, yes, and the pr0n. I hadn't forgotten about that.)

 

[The Ubbergeek]

Only infantile gamists able to peel their fat, fleshy forms away from World of Warcraft for a few minutes to get off looking at breasted wapanese Dragondrow in the Crisis on Infinite Faeruns Campaign Setting book wear those ugly pieces of cloth.

If it's not humor, you really are insulting.

 

[Warbringer]

Criticizing the marketing of a 4e, on a message board dedicated to 4e, with 15 pages of posts (some with over 15,000 views), with 10s of thousands of participants, most of whom are talking favorably about a product that is not even out, is laughable.

Wow, Scott.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If it's not humor, you really are insulting.

When you're too much of a geek to get geek humour, well, it's sad state of affairs.

 

[Blastin]

One of the basic maxims of marketing is this:

"(Almost) any publicity is good publicity."

Or, to put it another way, as long as the publicity isn't universally negative, it's most important simply to break through the "noise" ratio of information. As long as we're talking about it (and not doing nothing but ripping on it), their marketing strategy is working.

People are talking about an unreleased product 5 months before it exists. That's pretty good marketing.

I was gonna make a long post with my thoughts, but.../\ /\ /\...what he said....

 

[Zaruthustran]

I am really looking forward to playing 4E. But my thoughts are in spite of, not due to , WoTC marketing efforts and marketing-related decisions.

Everything about the 4E launch has been ham-fisted.

Fair enough, but I think you should put a caveat in there that your criticism is based on your personal experience. At first I thought this thread was an objective discussion of WotC's marketing plan.

Oh, also, some of your complaints are criticisms of Playtesting (the freelancer permissions), or R&D (overuse of the word "cool"), or Bizdev/Strategy (cancellation of Dungeon & Dragon magazines). None of those complaints are under the control of the marketing department, or directly qualify as "marketing".

In fact, this is the only complaint that directly relates to marketing:

The lousy D&D promotion videos

Again, this is 100% a matter of personal taste. Whether or not you, personally, dislike the videos does not count as evidence that the decision to make and release videos was poor. Based on the number of youtube views and comments, I'd say the videos are a success.

I also think it's worth noting that your complaints are essentially an argument against WotC's open, casual communication paradigm. Right now it seems like brand managers, PR guys, R&D guys, playtesters, and other parts of WotC are free to pretty much say what they want (the "only positive comments" thing being the exception). There's no consistent message. In order to fix all your complaints, WotC as a whole would have to clam up and every single communication from the company would have to first be run by the Marketing dept. for approval.

I don't think you seriously want that. IMHO WotC's overall open, engaged, participatory approach to the community is 100% the right way to go.

 

[Stogoe]

You guys are wearing out the word "cool" even before the main campaign gets started.

...And you're done. Thanks for stopping by and providing the epic fail of the evening, but now it's time for you to go. Complaining about word usage is the place people go to when they don't have real things to complain about.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

I guess most things are a failure then. I've yet to see anything have overwhelming approval on any public board.

This is the internet; if WotC gave away free T-shirts with every Player's Handbook, some people would complain that they don't wear T-shirts.

While I do wear T-Shirts it better be the right size and color. Also I want the image on the front and it better be a picture I like. If not I am complaining.