[MUD-Dev] Advertising Thread

[Koster]

From: Marc LaFleur
> Dave Rickey wrote:
 
>> For that matter, has SWG had enough advertising to account for
>> 139,000 beta signups?
  
> Is that 130k a guess or is it accurate. If its accurate, my mind
> is melting!

The figure is actually low by tens of thousands; I believe we've
publicly stated 150,000 already but it's much higher than that
too. It continues to rise every week, as well. SWG hasn't had any
advertising per se, but there has certainly been marketing effort
going on.

The primary effort has been this... We've engaged in a very
conscious effort to build a word-of-mouth community from the
get-go. We opened our boards up years in advance of launch, and
engaged in very close contact with the public, in an effort to
establish a relationship with future players early on.

Our objectives were to

  - establish a level of trust (to this end, we have not only hyped,
  but we have also been upfront about cuts from the product, etc)

  - build a core audience of hardcore people who were likely to
  provide word of mouth marketing

  - adapt the game's specs to more precisely target the core
  audience

  - build loyalty and buy-in so that even if other projects were
  announced in the interim, board participants woiuld feel loyal to
  SWG, using the "people are unlikely to depart a community they are
  invested in."

This serves both crass purposes and noble ones. Yes, it leads, we
think, to higher sales, better word of mouth marketing, etc. It also
leads, we think, to better customer service, an ethos of treating
the customers as stakeholders and intelligent human beings, and a
better game.

We've been fairly upfront about what we're doing (even the motives)
with our players as well. (Heh, typical: they AREN'T our players
yet. But both we and the forum posters tend to think of them that
way). They are customers and community members, even if there's no
server to log into yet.

As far as traditional marketing--mostly press, and much of that
driven by the press itself. Reminds me of UO, where the amount of
actual marketing done was dwarfed by the sheer hype that was
generated out of seemingly thin air. Press approaching us, rather
than the other way around, that sort of thing. Early on in UO, when
all we had was a FAQ on the website, we used to get perplexed phone
calls from the marketing dept asking "why are the gaming mags asking
about this garage project when we're trying to sell them on the new
Wing Commander game?"

-Raph

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