Selling Points

[pandora114]

Hence why I said "this game community embraces diversity"  "We are a very diverse gaming community from all walks of life, faiths, creeds, and beliefs"

[Zolgar]

edited to add: So, while these can be selling points to target audiences if we're careful about not making them seem like central things, we should be cautious about throwing them about willy-nilly, especially without explanation.

A better approach is to, for all such potential hot-button "X-friendly" labels, mention how it's friendly to all sorts of traditionally-not-welcome-feeling groups because of those elements that make it so. Emphasize the elements and not the groups. People ARE intelligent analytical beings when acting as individuals. Let them have the information and draw their own conclusions, rather than giving them the conclusion and having them concoct their own (often wrong) information.

That's pretty much what I said. >.>

The intent of this thread was not selling point to gamers, but selling points to a business. A business will need to look at the game purely from the numbers perspective: How marketable is this? What will make this game worth our time and money to purchase and get it up and running?

Marketing it to seniors: Most likely a waste of money, a miniscule fraction of the people who see the advertisements will actually be interested. It also has the potential pitfall of making the core demographic go "This game is for old people, ech, I'm gonna go play something cool."

Marketing it to girls: Would maybe work if they did it right, but they probably wouldn't. It would likely end up being wasted money, and possibly cause the core demographic to turn away from it 'cause the game is "girly".. Additionally it might cause a backlash from real gamer girls pissed about the advertising campaign.

Marketing it to the LGBT community: Quite possibly would work- but it is guaranteed to cause at least some level of backlash. You and I may say "Well if people quit because they're homophobes, fine." unfortunately gay money is the same as straight money, so the business has to ask itself "Well we get enough LGBT players to overshadoow the loss of homophobic players?". Additionally, this could cause a /major/ problem in the game: If there is an advertisement for a F2P game that makes it clear it is LGBT friendly... you know what's going to happen, right? The game will likely get hit with throw-away accounts just to be bigoted cocks. It's a sad fact, but there are an unfortunate number of people that feel it is their God-given mission to try and shame homosexuals out of existence.

[Victoria Victrix]

Marketing it to seniors: Most likely a waste of money, a miniscule fraction of the people who see the advertisements will actually be interested. It also has the potential pitfall of making the core demographic go "This game is for old people, ech, I'm gonna go play something cool."

The core demographic would never see the specialized advertisements.  How many teenagers do you see reading AARP magazine?

Just like--how many homophobes were/are aware that Travelocity has specialized advertisements in gay publications?

Targeted ads are just that, and becoming more sophisticated all the time, to the kind of creepy extent that Target knows someone is pregnant, sometimes even before she has told family members....

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www

That same holds for any other demographic group. 

It's even easier to insert online ads that are demographic-targeted without making it obvious that your demographic is BEING targeted.  Google does that all the time with their sidebar ads.  For girls, for instance, all you need to do is pay Google to insert a sidebar for CoH when the combination of female + gamer turns up, though obviously you can get a lot more specific than that.

[QuantumHero]

Folks I have a marketing background and currently work in an offshoot of the field.

I don't pretend to know everything an investor is going to look for but there is a major misconception about marketing options.

Different adds with completely different approaches are often created for the very same product when courting different audiences.  Does every product do this, of course not.  But if I wanted to appeal to pull in a specific demographic I would put advertising efforts geared toward them in a venue seen mostly by them while keeping more general appeal adds in more main stream venues.

For instance look at how "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" was approached very differently in the more evangelical versus secular community venues.

It was the exact same movie and it contained some Christian themes which that audience could point to but it was also reasonably balanced so as not to alienate those who were not necessarilly looking to see that aspect of them.  I know because I was watching very closely when they began promoting that movie and saw them play both sides of that fence quite well 

The add I might place in the AARP magazine would be very different from the one that might go in an LGBT venue, or the one in a gamestop.

I'm not completely sure what to put on there for an investor business but I know how I would seperate those advertising efforts and intertwine them.

[Zolgar]

Folks I have a marketing background and currently work in an offshoot of the field.

I don't pretend to know everything an investor is going to look for but there is a major misconception about marketing options.

Different adds with completely different approaches are often created for the very same product when courting different audiences.  Does every product do this, of course not.  But if I wanted to appeal to pull in a specific demographic I would put advertising efforts geared toward them in a venue seen mostly by them while keeping more general appeal adds in more main stream venues.

For instance look at how "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe" was approached very differently in the more evangelical versus secular community venues.

It was the exact same movie and it contained some Christian themes which that audience could point to but it was also reasonably balanced so as not to alienate those who were not necessarilly looking to see that aspect of them.  I know because I was watching very closely when they began promoting that movie and saw them play both sides of that fence quite well 

The add I might place in the AARP magazine would be very different from the one that might go in an LGBT venue, or the one in a gamestop.

I'm not completely sure what to put on there for an investor business but I know how I would seperate those advertising efforts and intertwine them.

The real question is though:
For an MMORPG: how likely would advertising to those demographics be to actually work?

If for every $X spent on marketing to (demographic), they can get 1 senior citizen, 2 LGBT people, 4 girls, or 10 'gamers'.. which is a company going to do?

[Osborn]

The real question is though:
For an MMORPG: how likely would advertising to those demographics be to actually work?

If for every $X spent on marketing to (demographic), they can get 1 senior citizen, 2 LGBT people, 4 girls, or 10 'gamers'.. which is a company going to do?

Realistically all of them targeted at different venues if that senior citizen is spending more than the ads cost.

[QuantumHero]

The non-traditional gamer is our core audience, IMO, now we can either let that be an assett or a weakness.  This is a game of inclusion that unites families across distance and generations.  It is a game of community we can't compete in the same realm of other MMOs and we don't want to...we have our own niche and spun correctly that can be our strength instead of our weakness