Marketing: How would you have done it?

[Rechan]

In the run up to 4e, there was a lot of criticism about how the designers were talking about and marketing 4e. From the serious, to "They use cool too much".

So, we all have had the books for at least a week.

Looking at the material in the books, let's put you in the chair of the designers. How would you have marketed it to the internet audience? What would you have put in design & development articles and blog posts?

 

[beeflv30]

Better sneak peaks or even online demos of the game. On the non internet side of marketing they should have hit the Colbert Report.

 

[Rechan]

Better sneak peaks

Could you be a little more specific when you say "Better"?

On the non internet side of marketing they should have hit the Colbert Report

Oh hell yes.

 

[beeflv30]

Could you be a little more specific when you say "Better"?

That just may be a personal opinion since it got to the point that i was not really caring for the preview material I just wanted the books.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Axed DDI from the start, or at least not mention it until I knew it was going to work.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

On the non internet side of marketing they should have hit the Colbert Report.

I'm pretty sure that they tried to do Colbert.

 

[Rechan]

I guess what I'm asking for here is specifics instead of general 'well, just do it better than they did'.

For instance, in the Design and Development article on creating monsters, I would have given several lines from the "Monster Statistics by Role" and "Damage By Level" tables, to illustrate how monsters are created, walking through the steps to make a monster with the small portion of the table.

This way they wouldn't just say "Monsters are easy to make", but you would see the math, especially as you were walked through it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Marketing 4Ed, huh?

I would have tried to get endorsements or commentary from any celeb or personality who claimed to play the game. If WoW can get Mr. T, Hasbro could pony up for Vin Diesel, Steven Colbert, Brian Posehn, Patton Oswalt, and Wil Wheaton, among others.

Instead of the expensive preview books (which I know for a fact some avoided simply on the basis of cost), I'd have gone with a stripped-down mini-adventure with pregens- possibly even available in pdf format. Marvel, DC and even certain indie comic labels do free or cheap previews all the time- Hasbro/WotC could have done the same. (Plus, in conjunction with the demise of the physical formats for Dragon and Dungeon, those booklets seemed to be a bit of a money grab, at least to some- see below.)

Use the internet to its fullest potential: Use a little internet technowizardry to host some clips showing some actual gameplay/playtesting highlights.

How about a contest? People love to have bragging rights about something. Imagine getting an autographed Core 3 for submitting the coolest monster design, included in the MM (...or MM2, perhaps), or a well-thought out village to be used as a setting for an adventure. Sure, its not Eberron in scale, but still!

One thing I learned in the course of earning my MBA is you never, NEVER advertise your negatives, even if they're only perceptual. Your press releases should be 100% about your strengths. You let consumers find them out for themselves. If you're going to slaughter sacred cows, don't tell anyone until the beef is at the butcher shop.

Here's how that would have shaped up in this case.

---> Altered timetable: Instead of making Dragon and Dungeon go pure digital under WotC's control before the release, either work with Paizo to publish them in dual format (it works for a LOT of periodicals) or delay their "digitization" until AFTER 4Ed is released or in conjunction with it. This would have given them an established platform to do piecemeal previews and leaks just like they did with 3Ed and its revision. This also minimizes the backlash against the decision, and gives WotC an additional 6 mos to a year to work out the bugs of their digital revolution. As things were, because of that move, people were already predisposed to be wary and distrustful of WotC's next product.

---> Play your cards close to the vest: don't tell people what you're cutting out- like gnomes and druids- tell them what new shiny things you're including, like the dragonborn or the revised Marshal (now called the Warlord). Again, this minimizes prerelease backlash. The idea behind marketing your product is getting people to say "Yes, yes, yes!" not "Oh, great- look what else they're screwing up." You don't see auto manufacturers telling people the next year's models will be smaller, they say "More fuel efficient!"

---> Product Linkage: 4Ed is already closely tied to DDM- previews & scenarios could have been included with DDM's concurrent release, or as a special limited edition release featuring the 4Ed Iconics.

 

[Kichwas]

Better leaks as in, rather than leak the finished PDF near the end, put up lots of online whispers and rumors over the process, have people posting snippets in forums here and there... and then coming in the next hour and saying that info was not supposed to be posted, etc...

More or less, the marketing path 3E used. That was very well done.

Marketing should have included more free info leaks as well. Put up a PDF module rather than an overpriced in store one, and get enough info out there weeks ahead of time to cause DMs to be posting modules and adventure ideas before release.

Having the GSL ready before launch would be key. But then the OGL/d20 were designed to get people to make third party product, and the GSL appears designed to end that industry, so the lateness may be by intent. The early readiness of the d20/OGL license by contrast resulted in the release of Creature Collection before the 3E Monster Manual came out. That was a brilliant way to get interest up.

It should also have launched at a major convention...

Advertising should have been bought on the banner-add systems that are used by sites like guildlaunch and wowinsider. If the game is meant to have appeal to the MMO crowd, such a tactic would have at least been a means to marketing to them.

A bit of play on utube, facebook, myspace, etc might also have been handy. Even some artist 'leaks' through places like deviantart might have helped - Games like Guild Wars for example have had a number of 'leaks' of concept art and game art on artist forums. Those leaks get back to fans and do a lot to drive up interest.

Even engineered flame wars help. Hiring a few people to start a flame war about alignments, elves, and so on, and using that as a place to drop hints about what is coming...

In other words... in today's world everyone who's going to be a customer or a potential customer is online, and 'web2.0' is out there with its viral communities... use them. Don't just sit there and wait for them to rake you over the coals.


The marketing for 4E was all mass-media top down. And very limited at that. It seems to have consisted of articles on wizard's website, and books sold at Borders telling us the 411 on a very limited list of things. That an older strategy, and it wasn't even done very well. You don't make the customer buy the ad. Especially not if that's more than half of your marketing.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Looking at the material in the books, let's put you in the chair of the designers. How would you have marketed it to the internet audience?

Well, first off, designers are not marketers.

What would you have put in design & development articles and blog posts?

I feel that what they did with 3E was an example of very good marketing. When 3rd edition came out, Dragon was still in print, and they had all kinds of good stuff. Articles like 10 ways you can play 3rd edition today, and the inside looks at their new art really helped.

I think that 3rd edition came at a time when people were asking for better mechanics, more options, and more consistency within the rules. 3rd edition provided that and they were able to market 3E based on that set of premises.

4th edition had a real problem because there was no game mag anymore so they had to get the word out on their website. This means that they were essentially appealing to the gamer elite that follow it obsessively online (like all of us) and then hope that word trickles down to the players and groups everywhere. For what they did in this regard, I think they did OK.

In fact, I keep hearing all of these problems with the way 4E was marketed, yet it seems to be selling pretty well. Like the switch to 3rd edition, the new edition isn't for everybody. Personally I wish the game was sort of a cross between editions that still allowed for all the character options of 3.x but had the ease of preparation of 4th edition. Oh well, you can't win them all, and I'm also getting a bit off on a tangent.

I don't really see the smarminess that many people are accusing WotC of, to be honest. When I watch the videos with Chris Perkins talking about the innovations of the new books, I see an old friend who is talking about something he is obviously very proud of. When I see that Gen Con '07 video, I see the same guy with a variety of over the top hairstyles in a light-hearted look at where the game has been and where it's headed. When I saw Scott Rouse post online, I saw a guy who was doing his best to extend his hand out to a gaming public, half of which was just as likely to bite it off at the wrist if they had the chance.

I'm not saying that everything was perfect, and I'm also not saying that I'm absolutely in love with the entire new game and the GSL. I have my reservations, there are some areas that I wish they wouldn't have changed as much, or wish they would have done differently, but overall I see 4E as a decent game. What's more, after all the marketing of 4E, I had a pretty good idea what was going to be inside. There weren't any big surprises that made me immediately regret my purchase.

So how would I have done it differently? I would have done the following:

* Not been in such a hurry to kill the printed form of Dragon and Dungeon so that I could use the shelf space they occupy in the mainstream book stores as prime 4th edition marketing space.

* Provided a working character generator, free of charge, at launch, which covers more than just 1st level characters.

* Waited to release KotS until after the rules were available, and then make it less deluxe to keep costs down (I won't buy it because I don't feel that any D&D adventure of that size is worth $30).

* Not released those preview books (I really can't think of any other case where a publisher of any media has been able to charge the consumer for something that is really just advertising).

* Given the fans some reasons behind the changes they made to the IP. Why exactly was the half-orc dropped? Why add Dragonborn? Why drop the barbarian, druid, and bard (incidentally I can think of several reasons why those classes should be dropped and not brought back under any circumstances).

* Make a signifficant change to the website so that things felt fresh and new on the day of the launch. With 3E, the website underwent a major overhaul on the day of launch. Make it seem more like a celebration rather than the grim acknowledgment that it was.

* Not dissed 3rd edition design to the extent they did (I mean really, how could Monte Cook have not been fuming when he read what they really though of the rules he designed?), but simply state that the changes would make the game easier to play (or something a little easier to swallow for the people who truly enjoyed 3rd edition).

* Allow some of the top 3rd party publishers to cash in by having their first round of products release with the new edition. I mean seriously, if Tome of Horrors 4E was available today, I'd buy it, and then I'd be thankful that WotC allowed that to happen.

* Make the GSL less restrictive, though not as ridiculously open as the OGL is.