Notes from the Field: Marketing Arm

Despite what anyone thinks marketing is a necessary evil. Worse yet is usually marketing is outside of the busines that actually needs them, so there is bound to be things lost in translation.

From my point of view I see marketing as an entity that knows the tools and tips to getting your product out there into the hands of the right people. Oftentimes, especially in games, it can be frustrating to see a game that has been labored on sometimes by a 100 people or more over 2 years, get reduced down to a really crappy marketing idea. I believe the main complaint from the developer of the product is that the outside marketing team "doesn't get it". They have no idea what the game is about, and they went with the lamest hook they could come up with.

There are those rare moments though when marketing has done it's due diligence. That whole Civil War banner thing that Marvel put out...you know the one..."I'm with...'put your favorite noun here'? Simple, identifiable and viral. Everyone would like to claim to be viral in their marketing...and often have whole campaigns that are 'viral' but it's not viral if it doesn't spread like wildfire. It's all wishful thinking at best.

So for the past few months we've done our best to create a presence with our banner ads on many forums and we've offered hosted banners to help boost this effort. But it's not sticky enough to take hold. We've yet to find that sticky factor lest we lose sight of our goal. Namely to get the word of The Overman out there, and to get people to sample our book.

On Comicspace I'm running a CONTEST where we'll draw a name at the end of each month and give away art. I update the bulletins every so often to catch the eye of a passerby on the public bulletin section in hopes of getting more people to include us in their 'FAVS' list. It too is not taking off like wildfire...but our viewing numbers are up to 1500+ views of the preview pages. What more could we ask for given that it's all free?



That being said...here's a print ad that will be appearing soon in the backs of other Image titles.




Let me know what you think.

=s=