Making and Marketing Your Game

Part 9: A Look at the Market

by Steve Peek

So how do we start the ball rolling You should have the names, addresses and rate information for magazines read by special interest groups that may find the game's theme appealing. (This was discussed in the second article in the series.) The next step is to schedule some ads to appear when the game is ready to be shipped.

Don't get too anxious. Ads should not appear before games are ready. If someone orders a game, pays for it in advance, and then has to wait a month to get it, they're going to be feeling very negative about it when it arrives. You don't want that. if possible, ship the games the same day you receive the order. You want your customers to think from the very beginning that both your game and your company have something on the ball.

This may seem a little exaggerated, but it isn't. I've seen people so turned off by waiting for a mail order item that by the time it arrived they had completely lost interest in it.

Spend a lot of time creating ads. The headline, regardless of the size of the advertisement, has to draw attention. If people won't read the headline, they're certainly not going to read the copy. It's best to include a black-and-white photograph of the game all laid out, with the box standing up behind the board and components. Then comes the copy. It has to be upbeat, honest, and full of enthusiasm. In short, it has to sell the game. Since it's the same job the back of the box did, you may be able to use much of the work already put into it.

The headline for the act is the grabber, the bait. Look through some magazines and find the mail order ads. They're there. I'll guarantee it. Find those that continue to appear and that run in more than one magazine. They should provide some ideas for your own. Headlines not only have to be attention-getting, they need to tie in to the theme of the game. This can be a roundabout tie-in, but it still needs to fit. For instance, a headline proclaiming, "INSTANT SEX AVAILABLE NOW," might get attention, but it won't do much to convince people they should continue to read about a football game, unless it ties the theme of the ad and the theme of the game together quickly.

This may seem like a ludicrous example, but it's amazing what a good copywriter can combine that works efficiently. Some of the best advertisements I've seen take this approach. It's difficult to pull off, but it's effective. So be creative and don't worry about getting ideas from other as they're your best source.

I'm not advising you to steal an idea. Nobody likes plagiarism, and you could get in a lot of trouble for stealing an idea and running an ad that looks too similar to someone else's.

What I am recommending is that you look at the underlying ideas behind magazine advertisements, find one that is good and fits the game, and adapt it. Of course you may be an advertising genius and come up with incredibly creative, effective, and original ideas at the rate of seven or eight a minute. If this is the case, get out of the game business and into advertising. The truth is that creating an appealing and effective advertisement is very difficult. Most people don't appreciate how difficult it is until they have to come up with one themselves. Then they may sit for days and still come up empty. So my solution, one I discovered early on, is to read through magazines, glancing at each page. When an ad draws attention, stop to read the headline. If it really grabs, read the rest of the ad. After reading, ask yourself if you have any desire to buy the product or at least are curious to see it. If so, tear the ad out and put it in a folder.

After accumulating a thick stack of ads, several dozen at least, go back through them, rereading and trying to find out what was so appealing. Sorting through them, place the advertisements into three stacks; those that are the best, those that are good, and those that had no business being selected in the first place. Take out a pen and paper. Start with the ads that seem the strongest and best, write down anything that comes to mind about the ad, how it could tie in to your product, what the underlying theme of the ad is, or just anything that comes to mind.

Occasionally when doing this, you'll draw a blank while looking at a particular ad. Don't worry about it; just go on to another ad and come hack to it later. When you're finished you'll have a pretty good idea of how your ad is going to work. So while it's fresh, sit down and draft the ad. Start with a headline, do a quick sketch of the photograph, then write the body copy. Remember, you I re doing this with pencil and paper, not stone and chisel. Odds are that several changes will be made later even if you've decided to stick with the ad just written.

When writing the body copy, say what people want to know about the game. This is not as easy as it sounds. Basically people want to know: What is the game about? Is it fun to play? Why? Is it easy to learn and play? Who likes to play this game? How much is it? If I want it, where can I get it?

The wrong way to go about this is to say something like, "The game is about football. It is a lot of fun because people who like football will enjoy it. It's easy to learn and play and everyone will want to. it sells for $12.00 and you can order it from the address below."

This little masterpiece certainly answers all the questions, but it falls short of creating enthusiasm or desire. We'll try it again, only this time with a little umph."

"The score is tied, the two-minute warning seemed a lifetime ago. It's third down and Six, your last chance to get in field-goal range. The ball is snapped and the quarterback fades hack as the defenders blitz. He sidesteps one tackler, ducks under another, firing a long pass down the sideline. The receiver leaps to make the catch, only to be hit on his wav down. lie bobbles the hall, holds on, breaks a tackle, and heads downfield. He's at the fifty, the forty, the thirty-five, he's ....

You'll only know the excitement of professional football when you've played... learn, with fast-paced play, JOCKO creates the feeling of being on the gridiron as YOU make the decisions and call the plays. Don't suffer the frustration of only watching as your favorite team struggles against its arch rivals. In less time than it takes to watch a game, you'll actually play it! JOCKO, a great game for the whole family' is available at better stores everywhere. Ask for it or order directly from us. This exciting new board game is yours for only $12.00. So get out of those bleachers and on to the field. order today."

Maybe it's not perfect, but it's a whole lot better. It represents only one type of approach. Once you've looked through a ton of magazines, you'll find hundreds of approaches.

While looking through the magazines, don't just look for game ads. Any ad will do to provide ideas, whether it's hawking gasoline, medical supplies, or groceries. All you're after is a few good ideas.

You may find more than one ad you like. If so, great. Try to incorporate the ideas from both these ads into your own. Like the old saying, two heads are better than one. The same holds true for ideas.

After settling on an ad and getting it neatly typed and marked for headlines, bold and italic type, make another run to the artist. It'll probably be changed some more.

Most people write more copy than will fit comfortably in an ad, and the artist will check type to see how much space it will take. Then it has to be rewritten and cut down to fit. But as long as it's being rewritten, save some more time by telling the artist to have the ad laid out so it can run as a full-, half- and quarter-page advertisement. It's a sure bet you won't be able to afford full pages everywhere, so get as much mileage out the typesetting as possible.

Tell the artist how many copies of each size ad you'll need so when you pick them up everything will be ready to be mailed.

Once the ads are in the mail, forget about them for a month or two until they begin to appear. Start working on another type of magazine ad, one for trade publications. Trade publications are magazines that are sent to people in a particular trade, in this case retailers and wholesalers. The names and addresses of these publications can be looked up quite easily at local libraries, or by consulting hack issues obtained from toy and game merchants.

Before starting work on an ad for trade publications understand a little about the way game retailers and wholesalers think. They buy and sell a lot of games. Hundreds 4 titles are thrown at them every year. They don't have the time or the inclination to study each one. if a game is a big seller, they know about it before everybody else does. If a game is a real dog, they know that too. But if a game is new and doesn't really have a track record, they tend to base their decision on the following factors:

How does the package look? Will it get attention and make people want to pick it up? (Sound familiar? I didn't say all of this just to hear myself talk.) Will the back of the box sell the game if someone reads it? How much advertising is behind it? What are the discounts and terms-is there enough profit to make it worth handling?

Notice there's no mention of whether the game is fun to play, who's going to play it, or any of the things that are important for a game to become a big hit. These people aren't gaming experts, they are merchants. The only thing they are interested in is how fast they can sell this merchandise.

Obviously an advertisement that will get these people's attention has to concentrate on different areas. An ad for the trade Publications needs more picture and less type. Emphasize discount, packaging, and saleability. if you are running ads in any well-known magazines, put in a line, "As seen in Big Time Magazines," to create the illusion of a lot of advertising behind the game.

But in reality, unless you are a multimillionaire recluse, it is only an illusion. Because, relatively speaking, the amount of money spent on your initial ads is a proverbial drop in the bucket. When one of the major companies gets behind a game with advertising, it may spend upwards of $25 million promoting the product. But it does it for reasons other than those one might suspect.

Loss Leaders

The first time I ever saw this in action was at a trade show in Atlanta. There I was, sitting in my plain, cheaply outfitted eight-by-ten foot booth, while across from me I could see part of the elaborate booth of an internationally known toy and game company. Its exhibit was worth more than my whole company. It had an item that the toy buyers were lining up to order: a big plastic tricycle for little kids. At one point the line was so long it extended beyond its area and curved past mine. Quite a few of the buyers looked at my limited line of wares as they waited to place orders.

One was a particularly friendly gentleman, an oddity for a toy buyer at a trade show, and we struck up a conversation. It was during this conversation I learned how advertising could work in the toy and game industry.

It seemed the toy manufacturer was spending around $30 million to promote this particular product on television for the coming Christmas season. It had a big chart showing what channels and in what cities the ads would run during the weeks before Christmas. And as a special favor to the firms buying large quantities, it would let the retailer put a plug for his store at the tail of the commercial. You see this kind of thing all the time. A commercial comes on that was filmed on a Pacific island, full of grass-clad, toasty brown women drinking some sort of soda, then at the very end a sign flashes on the screen and a voice says, "Available at your neighborhood Fjpo Grocery Stores."

Anyway, these buyers were actually waiting in line to place orders for God knows how many thousands of dollars each, and the man I'm talking to is telling me what a good deal it is. The toy manufacturer is selling the items for $14.00 each and the stores in turn will be selling them to their customers for $13.95. Wait a minute! That can't be right. That means the stores will be losing a nickel on each item sold. What's going on here?

It's called a loss leader. The store buys the item for slightly more than it is going to sell it for because all the advertising the manufacturer is buying locally will bring people into the store, and it is gambling that once customers get into the store they are going to buy more than the one toy they came in for.

Now, how can you compete with that? You can't, not until your game is so popular and in such demand that people are clamoring for it everywhere. Thankfully, the major manufacturers usually only do this with only one item during the Christmas season.

Fortunately, these loss leaders won't affect you too much initially since you won't be selling to very many of the major chain store operations that get heavily involved in this type of activity.

Back to the Ads

Back to the trade ads. Most of these magazines charge more for advertising space than might be expected based on their circulation. The reason for this is simple. They are offering to send their magazine, containing your ad, to known buyers of a product category, and their only real income is from the sale of ad space. In many cases, the magazine is sent free to the buyers.

The people who sell space for these magazines are hustlers-not dishonest-just working hard to earn a living. Once they find out someone is in the market for trade space they can become relentless. Don't be persuaded to put all your eggs in one basket. When they call back to convince you to run an ad with them several times, make it perfectly clear you have a limited budget that has all been committed and you'll get back with them, based on the performance of the current series of ads. Don't be shy--they aren't.

All trade publications have a new product section. This is an area of the magazine devoted to showing new items that may be of interest to buyers. Send a copy of the game to the magazine for inclusion in this section and it will receive a small area showing a picture of the box top, a line or two about the game, the price, the name and address of your company, suggested retail price, and in some cases, a reader service number. Reader service numbers, when they appear, are seen throughout the magazine. in the back of the magazine is a postage-paid response card the reader can tear out and use to obtain additional information.

The reader circles corresponding numbers on the card and mails it to the publisher. The publisher then computerizes the data and sends a printout to you with the names and addresses of all the companies that circled the numbers for your products or ads. You follow up these leads to create new customers. It's a good service, and if you're going to be using trade publications to promote the game, take advantage of both the free publicity of the new products section and the sales leads generated by the reader service card.

By the way, don't expect these ads to fill your post office box with orders. What they should do is create dealer inquiries that have to be followed up and sold.

Bibliography of Business Trade Magazines

Games sell in many different "markets" -different retail outlets such as game stores, toy stores, hobby stores, gift stores, book stores, department stores, etc. Each market has its own business magazines which tell retail store owners and managers what's new, what's selling, what's coming, when trade conventions are scheduled, new business laws, tax laws, etc.

If you plan to sell your game in stores, you should decide which stores would be best for your particular game. For example, a "family" type game would probably be best sold through toy stores. On the other hand, an expensive, adult-oriented game would probably be a good seller in gift and book stores.

The following list was compiled from the hundreds of business magazines published in the United States. Only markets that sell games were considered for this list, and not all the trade magazines for that market are listed. (For example, the computer market has dozens of trade magazines and newsletters, but most don't deal with computer games.)

Game Market

Game Trade News, 1010 Vermont Ave- nue, N.W, Suite 910, Washington, DC 20005 (202) 393-5233

Toy Market

Playthings, 51 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10010 (212) 689-4411

The Toy Book, 264 West 40th St., New York, NY 10018 (212) 575-4510

Toys Hobbies & Crafts, 545 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10017 (212) 687-1185

Toy & Hobby World, 11 West 19th St., New York, NY 10011 (212) 741-7210

Hobby Market

Hobby Merchandiser, PO. Box 420, Route 9, Englishtown, NJ 07726 (201) 972-1022

Model Retailer, Clifton House, Clifton, VA 22024 (703) 830-1000

Book Market

American Bookseller, 122 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10168 (212) 867-go6o

The Comics Buyer's Guide, 700 East State, Iola, WI 54990 (715) 445-2214

Magazine & Bookseller, 3 2 2 8th Ave., New York, NY 10001 (212) 620-7330

Publishers Weekly, 205 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 (212) 916-1600

Gift Market

Gifts & Decorative Accessories, 51 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10010 (212) 689-4411

Giftware Business, 1515 Broadway, New York, NY 10036 (212) 869-1300

G ware News, 2700 River Road, Suite 409, Des Plaines, IL 60018 (312) 824-7440

Computer Software Market

Byte, 70 Main Street, Peterborough, NH 03458 (603) 924-6448

Compute!, 324 W Wendover Ave., Suite 200, Greensboro, NC 27408 (919) 275-9809

Compute! Gazette, PO. Box 5406, Greensboro, NC 27403 (919) 275-9809

Computer, 10662 Los Vaqueros Circle, Los Alamitos, CA 90720 (714) 821-8380

Computer Merchandising, 15720 Ventura Blvd., Suite 222, Encino, CA 91436 (818) 995-0436

Computer Products, PO. Box 1952, Dover, NJ 07801 (201) 361-9060

Creative Computing, One Park Ave nue, New York, NY 10016 (212) 503-5030

Macworld, 555 DeHaro Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 (415) 861-3861

Micro Marketworld, PO. Box 880, 375 Cochituate Rd., Framingham, MA 01701 (617) 879-0700

Nibble, 45 Winthrop Street, Concord, MA 01742 (617) 371-1660

Official COMDEX Show Daily and Preview, 300 First Avenue, Needham, MA 02194 (617) 449-6600

PC, One Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016, (212) 503-5100

PC Products, Cahners Building, 2 75 Washington Street, Newton, MA 02158 (617) 964-3030

PC Week, 15 Crawford Street, Needham, MA (617) 449-6520

PC World, 555 DeHaro Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 (415) 861-3861

Personal Computing, 10 Mulholland Drive, Hasbrouck Heights, NJ 07604 (201) 393-6165

Popular Computing, 70 Main Street, Peterborough, NH 03458 (603) 924-7123

Mass (Discount) Market

Catalog Showroom Business, 1515 Broadway, New York, NY 10036 (212) 869-1300

Catalog Showroom Merchandiser, 1020 West Jericho Turnpike, Smithtown, NY 11787 (516) 543-0505

Chain Store Age Executive, 42 5 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022 (212) 371-9400

The Discount Merchandiser, 2 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016 (212) 889-6030

Discount Store News, 425 Park Ave nue, New York, NY 10022 (212) 371-9400

Mass Market Retailers, 1 Park Ave nue, New York, NY 10016 (212) 889-8741

Stores, 100 West 31st St., New York, NY 10001 (212) 244-8780

Steve Peek is president of Yaquinto Publications, Dallas, Texas He has designed, developed or produced over 100 games

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© Copyright 1985 by Dana Lombardy.
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