Possible TV Spot for Fantasy Grounds - long version

[ddavison]

Word of warning -- this one is pretty bad. You can probably skip to the later ones to spare some discomfort. ;)

yRSTm1EB1QI

I was thinking about using this basic approach to put together some quick 15 and 30 second TV spots. Do you think that is too geeky or amateur-like or would it appeal to the target demographic?

[Czarisyn]

yRSTm1EB1QI

I was thinking about using this basic approach to put together some quick 15 and 30 second TV spots. Do you think that is too geeky or amateur-like or would it appeal to the target demographic?

Not to be harsh...but with today's average attention span equivalent to that of a piss ant, they would change the channel within the first 5 seconds.

Too much information, and nothing really that would make it stand out.

But I do applaud your attempt to advertising more

[Master]

You are trying to get too much information across. This isnt an infomercial it is a commercial. All you want to do is catch their attention, give a short bit of information, give them a reason to want to look for more information and then finish by giving them a means to find the information.

Example:
Ninja/investigator/pirate joke (less than 5 seconds.)
tell about FGII in less than 5 seconds.
Tell they why they need the product.
Give the website and price.

[Master]

Also... make sure the commercial does not play anywhere after 7pm. Any commercial that ends with fantasygrounds at night is going to be instantly linked to 900 numbers.

[phantomwhale]

Yeah... not overly convinced, but equally like the advertising strategy idea.

TV probably demands a professional advertising approach, for a minimal attention span audience it panders too. Personally, gave up on TV a while ago, hence I have time for this hobby instead !

Not sure what to suggest, other than "not this", unhelpfully.

[ddavison]

Okay, thanks for the suggestions so far. With a super short script, would it be worth pursuing the little animated, text-to-speech guys or no?

[ronnke]

I didn't like it, mostly because I found the obvious text to speech irritating. By about the 40 second mark I was forcing myself to continue watching to the end.

[cpbs]

I agree with most has been said, short would be better. As well as a natural human speaker and if animations is used better animation. I have no doubt there are people on here that wouldn't mind putting in there time to give voice overs or help out anywhere we can for free, in an advertising slot for FGII.

[ddavison]

Great, thanks guys. I have a 16 second one (need to trim another second) that is posting now. I am also downloading the full editor which should allow actual voice overs instead of the text-to-speech versions. I remember fondly using the early soundblaster text-to-speech program when I was a pre-teen so I actually thought that was funny. I am mostly interested in what your opinions are as the obvious target market though. Actually, posting added another several seconds to make it 23 seconds.


tXGl-wpRtaU

Better? Still horrible? Be honest.

[Czarisyn]

First...you need a catch phrase.

like
"Are you a player...or a god?"
"Why choose a deity, when you can be them all?"
"Extend your table (with Fantasy Grounds)"
"Tired of spawn points and AI...then open your mind and roll for initiative."

something like that

A concept I can see is that

Have a gamer sit at an empty table, dice out, screen up, sheets filled, but no one else. He is on the phone with the players saying "I can't make it because of such and such reason."

Have the gamer get mad and throw the dice that happen to hit his monitor but instead of breaking the screen, they get absorbed and FG2 appears on it.
In awe, he tells his buddies to log on and then it takes off from there.

just throwing ideas...

[joshuha]

Have a gamer sit at an empty table, dice out, screen up, sheets filled, but no one else. He is on the phone with the players saying "I can't make it because of such and such reason."

Have the gamer get mad and throw the dice that happen to hit his monitor but instead of breaking the screen, they get absorbed and FG2 appears on it.
In awe, he tells his buddies to log on and then it takes off from there.

just throwing ideas...

I like this idea. I think you if you did a survey a large portion of FG gamers are either groups of friends that want to stay together after some move away or older gamers, now family oriented who can't get away as much as they used to.

[SLB]

I don't recall seeing any T.V. commercials for D&D although it may be possible that they existed way back in the 70's or 80's. I don't recall seeing any T.V. commercials for Magic the Gathering either. Both became a huge success.

Personally, I think it would make more sense to target your advertising to the people who are likely to purchase and use the product. I would analyze your target audience like this:

Comfortable online - spends significant time online
Gamer - likely plays video games but very high likelyhood to play pen and paper games (not likely new to those)
Probably a GM - I am guessing that most purchases start with a GM who wants to run a game and convinces his players to purchase the software
Has similar hobbies - History buff? Weapons collector? SCA? - Most of the RPers I know have other, similar hobbies such as being a part of the Society for Creative Anachronism
Remote - Either remote area or separated from his/her original or favourite gaming groupSo, if that analysis of the primary target audience is correct then I would suggest that a targeted advertising approach which focuses on finding people in those categories would be far more effective than a blanket advertisement on T.V.

It's possible that you could have some success if you targetted ad time during a show such as Legend of the Seeker or during the broadcast of one of the Lord of the Rings movies. But I suspect you'd be better off catching someone while they are sitting at their computer and the site is only a click away.

So, where would I do advertising for Fantasy Grounds? Based on my analysis I would create a few creative and nifty/interesting animated banner ads and find ad space in the following categories (some obvious choices):

Game sites: Obvious choices like RP manufacturer's sites if possible, but also video gaming sites, and research sites like ENWorld and roleplayingtips.com etc.
Game supply stores: Online game stores along with other places people buy gaming supplies which might include search ads (pop up for specific keywords) on bookstore sites, ebay etc. Miniatures sites might also prove effective.
Hobby sites: Sites related to target hobbies. Places like the SCA, NERO (do they still exist?), gaming clubs etc. Other sites might include history sites like the history channel, or online armorers (swords, armor), horror fan sites and H.P. Lovecraft fan sites.
Remote targetting: Finding sites where players look for gamers would be a good start for this category.
Play By Mail sites (what about these, do they still exist?)
Meet-up sites (meetup.com - did you know there are 1,128 meetings with D&D in the subject - no ads though so perhaps we'd have to create a meetup group!)
Yahoo groups, google groups etc.
Alternate advertising:
I listen to a radio show called Coast to Coast AM - biggest overnight audience in North America (perhaps the world?). They talk about UFOs, conspiracy theories, weird science, ghosts etc. How many of you also listen to this show? Might be cheaper and closer to the target audience for a spot here. Also easier to produce.
What about finding hobby stores in small towns and doing some sort of advertising there.
Most libraries have websites now, are there places to post ads?
Most community newspapers are owned by bigger chains - perhaps a small ad in a series of small-town community papers might generate some interestI'm not going to claim to know all the answers, nor even suggest that my ideas are better. This is just my personal thoughts on what I might do to advertise this product before I would try for T.V. Hopefully I can at least provide a few good ideas for debate.

[philth]

no offense but...I hate the sound of the computer voices.....there I said it! stop making me cry like this and come up with something else :cry:

[ddavison]

Thanks for the suggestions. SLB, you have a lot of good suggestions as well and we currently target many of those too. One thing we noticed is that advertising for Fantasy Grounds as a virtual tabletop is less effective than advertising for people to play Call of Cthulhu online, Savage Worlds Online, etc. D&D would be best but there are a lot more competitors in the D&D online space with DDO and lots of related sites. This makes CPC type advertising expensive in that space. Other than D&D, Cthulhu typically generates the most clicks for us, followed by Rolemaster and then Savage Worlds.

I am looking at TV ads as an additional outlet, but only if we can keep the cost low enough and succeed with a guerrilla style marketing campaign. Google AdWords TV campaigns look to be both cheap and very flexible. Targeting late-night SyFy channel shows for instance might be a good target. Targeting the History Channel might be good as well or anything else that covers shows such as medieval weaponry, mythology, history of battles, etc.

You get what you pay for though, and doing something on the cheap with a tool like a text-to-video tool and without professional talent may not be the best approach. Czarisyn's ideas are more like what I envisioned originally but getting to that point could be costly or out of reach.

[SLB]

Glad you found some ideas at least! I did mean to mention that it was clear you were trying to stretch out into other markets/areas so I do understand where you are trying to get to.

One of the thoughts I had but forgot to mention was the possibility of getting a commercial or mention on one of the online geek shows - but I don't subscribe to any so I can't make any suggestions there.

I'll think about the emphasis on Online vs. VT and see if I can offer any other suggestions.

[Kalan]

Glad you found some ideas at least! I did mean to mention that it was clear you were trying to stretch out into other markets/areas so I do understand where you are trying to get to.

One of the thoughts I had but forgot to mention was the possibility of getting a commercial or mention on one of the online geek shows - but I don't subscribe to any so I can't make any suggestions there.

I'll think about the emphasis on Online vs. VT and see if I can offer any other suggestions.

For adverstising, you should really approach some of the more popular podcasts: Fear the Boot, The Games The Thing, Pulp Gamer, Geek Radio Daily...while many of the audiences overlap, they do have the advantage of being fairly well distributed (even outside of the RPG industry if one believes what is said in some of the shows), and reasonably inexpensive when compared to traditional TV or Radio media.

[Czarisyn]

Send demo discs to Game store that has the demo and the tutorials on it.
Make a poster or a cardboard display.

Get an booth at GenCon, DragonCon, etc... and do events that demo the program with players actually playing.

Ad pages in gamer magazines

[ddavison]

Okay, I am scrapping the text-to-video approach and looking into the Google TV Spot Mixer. These look more like regular commercials.

I also really appreciate the honest feedback. It kept me from wasting money and resources.

[ddavison]

Okay, here is a new one that I think turned out much better. I also tried to use as much of the feedback here as I possibly could -- without actually shooting video or hiring talent.

https://www.spotmixer.com/create_video/view_shared?p=14780d141567f82f3f4b5b&skin_id=10598

The thought would be to eventually do one for each of the major rulesets as the primary focus. I focused on Call of Cthulhu first because it does well with keyword searches. It can also be targeted to shows on the occult, ghosts, unexplained mysteries, etc. The D&D and Rolemaster ones can be targeted towards mythology, knights and medieval fantasy.

[ronnke]

Much better. :)

However... :P

1. It would be great to see a nice map with tokens on it.
2. Towards the end you are blowing into the mic. With regards to the voice recording, if you use a proper microphone, and record in a sound studio, there is a huge difference in quality. When sound studios are not available, a wardrobe full of clothes can produce remarkably similar results. :)

[Czarisyn]

Okay, here is a new one that I think turned out much better. I also tried to use as much of the feedback here as I possibly could -- without actually shooting video or hiring talent.

https://www.spotmixer.com/create_video/view_shared?p=14780d141567f82f3f4b5b&skin_id=10598

The thought would be to eventually do one for each of the major rulesets as the primary focus. I focused on Call of Cthulhu first because it does well with keyword searches. It can also be targeted to shows on the occult, ghosts, unexplained mysteries, etc. The D&D and Rolemaster ones can be targeted towards mythology, knights and medieval fantasy.

Much better definitely on the right track

[drahkar]

Much, much better. Don't forget to have it actually display the link to the site at the end. But that is a lot better.

[ddavison]

Much, much better. Don't forget to have it actually display the link to the site at the end. But that is a lot better.

Yep... the preview is a little small but the www.fantasygrounds.com is displayed on the bottom throughout the whole ad with that particular layout.

[dm-crazy]

Good Work Doug! :)

[Granite Stonebones]

That's getting better...but as someone who is in marketing in his "day job", i wonder if your marketing dollar shouldn't be focused somewhere other than TV?
I'm a closet geek, and I was desperate to find this app, but I stumbled across it after shoving about a bazillion searches into google starting with "virtual whiteboard".
Maybe more focused marketing? The game stores, conventions, comix shops, and various online portals that cater to our beautiful nerdiness? Anyone else name a target demographic besides traditional pen and paper gamers who are separated by distance?

[tdewitt274]

That's getting better...but as someone who is in marketing in his "day job", i wonder if your marketing dollar shouldn't be focused somewhere other than TV?
I'm a closet geek, and I was desperate to find this app, but I stumbled across it after shoving about a bazillion searches into google starting with "virtual whiteboard".
Maybe more focused marketing? The game stores, conventions, comix shops, and various online portals that cater to our beautiful nerdiness? Anyone else name a target demographic besides traditional pen and paper gamers who are separated by distance?

I agree. Possibly Podcasts? TV is expensive and isn't necessarily going to hit your target audience.

Radio may be a better option than TV. The last video works well for visual and audio.

[Master]

That last video was probably about as good as you can get for a tv spot IMHO. You can go in other directions but that was pretty damn good IMHO.

How about a dragon or dungeon magazine ad?

[SLB]

I like the looks of the last ad - has all the correct information, shows a lot of nice shots of the product. I agree with the idea of having a high quality map in there somewhere.

Having a quality audio track could make the difference - you should be able to find audio for this short a clip for $200-300 or perhaps less - as long as you don't book a union talent. Might be worth the investment.

[Callum]

As was mentioned earlier, you might find members of this community willing to donate their voice talent for free, or a nominal fee. I'm sure there are plenty of us who have been involved in professional or amateur theatre, TV or radio, and who would be able to provide a decent-quality audio track.

[Czarisyn]

I've seen ScreenMonkey at GenCon...it might not be a bad idea to see about getting a booth there, just to at least demo the program.

[Veldehar]

That one was concise and to the point. One of the big problems is that "virtual tabletop" isn't really in most people's lexicons, and it has to be shown. This achieves that. When I was first looking for a program such as this, it was a crapshoot of searches before I got to Fantasy Grounds, as I don't frequent gaming websites. Overcoming that would be god, because I know there a lot of old timers out there who have no idea they could get together with old friends and roleplay without without plane trips and risk of divorce, heh heh.

Veldehar

[LilCthulhu]

Vin Diesel might be the best person to do an ad for Fantasy Grounds... he owns Tigon Studios, a video game production company, he's a big fan of RPG and D&D, has even mentionned it more than one interview...

and has it's own video game coming out re: D&D :

Melkor
A game that appears to be based on one of Vin Diesel's Dungeons & Dragons characters, Melkor. Melkor is a fantasy "epic" that has been scheduled to be a series of games. According to the website, Melkor's game-style is influenced by "Dungeons & Dragons, Conan and Lord of the Rings".

Would'nt be nice to have a FG:Pitch Black ruleset based on a specific RPG rulebook ?

Unfortunately, his "fee" might be too high... unless Tigon Studios becomes interested in FG :)

[LilCthulhu]

Furthermore, maybe the ad could somehow include a part with interactive "playing" with something like skype... showing someone in one city and one in another one ;)

[ddavison]

I actually tried to contact Vin Diesel since I thought FG would be great for him when he is away working on a movie. I was not able to get through to anyone at Tigon studios though.

[LilCthulhu]

You got a great list of celebs that played it here :

https://loremaster.org/general-topics/786-celebrity-d-d.html

How about Kevin Smith or Wil Wheaton ?

Also could be considered :
Christopher Lee : LOTR, SW, Has done voice-over for a role-fantasy-related-metal-band called Rhapsody (now Rhapsody of Fire)... Has a great voice too ;)

And then there's the Hogan ;) : https://i7.tinypic.com/2mzlevt.jpg *joking*

[osarusan]

I like the last commercial MUCH better than the other ones. Big improvement! :-)

That said, I think SLB has made some awesome points about the target audience. The folks who would be into playing D&D (or whatever) online are the folks who are already online in their free time, rather than watching TV. I like this commercial, but maybe TV isn't the way to go -- maybe spread it around the big gaming forums and the internet via YouTube links or whatever. I noticed ENWorld has started included "commercial" videos for their War of the Burning Sky campaign in their email newsletters. Perhaps you could pay for some ad spots in email newsletters?

I like this commercial, I just wonder if TV is going to reach anyone who is really a target audience member. I would think aggressive marketing in the online nerd/gamer camps would be most effective.

(Incidentally I loved the idea of Christopher Lee doing a voiceover, because I love that Rhapsody album! Wil Wheaton is also very outspoken about his D&D gaming and could probably be talked on board.

I think the commercial really needs to focus on how beautiful and usable FG is compared to the other. There are tons of Virtual Table Tops out there, and some really good free, open source ones. But FG is the only one that is this beautiful and fun to use.

[MacLeod]

Actually Talking to ENworld and maybe getting a banner there may not be a bad idea at all. I know they have "Heavy" Traffic.