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We rececently recived a new video teaser for the inevitable Space Marine update. The video posted on the Warhammer TV youtube channel was the regular affair of some rousing music that didn't necessarily meet with the images on screen and then just a short montage of some artwork and models.

https://youtu.be/jbrScdRDrT0

This has been the practice for pretty much every video GW have released. You'd think that a company the size of GW would commit to higher production values with their video marketing.

Especially when you compare it to the recently released Infinity video.

https://youtu.be/8Nfx_YcCsi0

All prior knowledge of either game aside i certainly know which video has me the most excited.

It strikes me that GW are dragging their feet when it comes to entering the video world!

Its probably done by unpaid interns.

Or just interns with no Real experience.

Then again GW does like to get spendy without getting much back in return like there new Website.

GW: Where only the bare minimum is good enough!

GW isn't too good at the whole marketing for themselves thing and even worse at the whole Internet and Social Media stuff.

Though at least they've improved, look at the first Knight teaser (for last years codex). Literally kids playing with toys, expected them to smash the Knight into the guys going "Pew Pew, Smash Smash, I WILL DESTROY YOU".

GW teaser videos do suck. Looks like one of Uncle Rico's home videos.

Or it's done by a team in marketing with poor video skills.

Or maybe they've offshored it to some weird video company in
god knows where.

Hey, look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9GkEwPnSbI

Wow, interviews with the designers talking about their stuff -- what a concept!

It does boggle my mind that GW, which has a ton of money and a beloved IP, produces videos that are often barely-strung together photoshoots of (admittedly well-painted) models.

I have come to the conclusion that the answer to many of the questions we ask GW is "because feth you, that's why".

Why are they increasing prices?
Why aren't they doing market research?
Why are their rules cluttered and vague?
Why don't they inform the public about their future releases?
Why do their videos suck?

Because feth you, that's why.

 Desubot wrote:
Then again GW does like to get spendy without getting much back in return like there new Website.

Yeah, that's sad. GW will flush, what was it, £4million down the toilet on their crappy new site, but then when it comes to nearly everything else they spend practically pennies. Even when it comes to their models they can't be arsed to do more than the bare minimum...not including enough special/heavy weapons for the entire squad (the new Eldar bikes are one of the only kits where there's enough bits to equip the entire unit with whatever options are available in the codex), apparently can't be bothered to make the long-awaited, much-desired Knight kit fully posable, charging insane prices for individual models in clampacks but making them fixed poses (and completely wasting one of the main advantages that plastic models have over metal and resin; posability), etc.

ComTrav wrote:
Hey, look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9GkEwPnSbI

Wow, interviews with the designers talking about their stuff -- what a concept!

Funnily enough GW did do a few videos back when Dark Eldar got their big revamp, Jes Goodwin and Phil Kelly sat down to talk about the new book and the models. They uploaded videos over the course of about a week I think.

They did it maybe once more with Tomb Kings I think, and then never again.

 xbenblasterx wrote:
It strikes me that GW are dragging their feet when it comes to entering the video world!

IIrc GW were actually the first miniature company to start doing this type of promo vid, so in some ways they can be quite forward thinking. Others have used the format and made it far better.
They're painting videos are actually among the best out there, quality wise even if the techniques are somewhat basic.

Their painting videos are some of the best around, simply stellar. Duncan is so dreamy. Promotional videos not so much.

Sidstyler wrote:

ComTrav wrote:
Hey, look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9GkEwPnSbI

Wow, interviews with the designers talking about their stuff -- what a concept!

Funnily enough GW did do a few videos back when Dark Eldar got their big revamp, Jes Goodwin and Phil Kelly sat down to talk about the new book and the models. They uploaded videos over the course of about a week I think.

They did it maybe once more with Tomb Kings I think, and then never again.

Indeed. They were some of the most interesting things they had produced then they stopped them because... reasons.

Back to the main topic, GW obviously spend no budget on their marketing videos. It would cost only £10,000 to do a half decent set of videos for a new product with interviews with the designer, a walk-through of how to assemble and paint them, and a live action battle report.

Presumably GW find their 10 pence productions are effective enough and they don't need to spend the money to do something more elaborate.

I doubt it'd cost anywhere near that. IIRC they've got video facilities in house, so they can corner the designer for 30 minutes and have an intern/WD team member do the rest.

Maybe call it £1000 in wages.

I could argue about the fixed costs of owning a video studio and retaining trained staff but actually it doesn't matter if it is £1,000 or £10,000 to make a video, the point is the cost would not be £100,000 which is the kind of level where it would impact the year's figures.

Also, if the videos were good and got loads of hits they'd be losing money to you-tube. Kinda, but not really, but it would upset them.

Because the videos rely on the Internet - which is just a passing fad....

The Auld Grump

 Sidstyler wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Then again GW does like to get spendy without getting much back in return like there new Website.

Yeah, that's sad. GW will flush, what was it, £4million down the toilet on their crappy new site, but then when it comes to nearly everything else they spend practically pennies. Even when it comes to their models they can't be arsed to do more than the bare minimum...not including enough special/heavy weapons for the entire squad (the new Eldar bikes are one of the only kits where there's enough bits to equip the entire unit with whatever options are available in the codex), apparently can't be bothered to make the long-awaited, much-desired Knight kit fully posable, charging insane prices for individual models in clampacks but making them fixed poses (and completely wasting one of the main advantages that plastic models have over metal and resin; posability), etc.

Wait... We're not supposed to like the website now either? I think its a great site, no lack of function really and lets you sort pretty well.

And for the kits, they don't include all the weapons because they make more money having you scrounge bits from other kits. And the new Eldar bike kits actually gave us enough weapons, but thats a complaint too?

 clamclaw wrote:

 Sidstyler wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Then again GW does like to get spendy without getting much back in return like there new Website.

Yeah, that's sad. GW will flush, what was it, £4million down the toilet on their crappy new site, but then when it comes to nearly everything else they spend practically pennies. Even when it comes to their models they can't be arsed to do more than the bare minimum...not including enough special/heavy weapons for the entire squad (the new Eldar bikes are one of the only kits where there's enough bits to equip the entire unit with whatever options are available in the codex), apparently can't be bothered to make the long-awaited, much-desired Knight kit fully posable, charging insane prices for individual models in clampacks but making them fixed poses (and completely wasting one of the main advantages that plastic models have over metal and resin; posability), etc.

Wait... We're not supposed to like the website now either? I think its a great site, no lack of function really and lets you sort pretty well.

And for the kits, they don't include all the weapons because they make more money having you scrounge bits from other kits. And the new Eldar bike kits actually gave us enough weapons, but thats a complaint too?

It's.not.worth.four.million.pounds. Sure, it's an OK site but I have a business analyst friend that could have done as well on a fraction of the budget. And if they had gone that route, they probably wouldn't have had an excuse to hire Kirby's no-experience wife to head the whole operation.

Cant say I give a blankity about teaser videos or indepth preview videos.
Do you really buy a new kit/model/codex because some designer shows you the design process? Highly doubtful.
Whilst it does add to customer engagement and goodwill, neither of those translate into a bottom line dollar. And GW is plainly in the mode of kit selling not hobbying anymore.

 agnosto wrote:

 clamclaw wrote:

 Sidstyler wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Then again GW does like to get spendy without getting much back in return like there new Website.

Yeah, that's sad. GW will flush, what was it, £4million down the toilet on their crappy new site, but then when it comes to nearly everything else they spend practically pennies. Even when it comes to their models they can't be arsed to do more than the bare minimum...not including enough special/heavy weapons for the entire squad (the new Eldar bikes are one of the only kits where there's enough bits to equip the entire unit with whatever options are available in the codex), apparently can't be bothered to make the long-awaited, much-desired Knight kit fully posable, charging insane prices for individual models in clampacks but making them fixed poses (and completely wasting one of the main advantages that plastic models have over metal and resin; posability), etc.

Wait... We're not supposed to like the website now either? I think its a great site, no lack of function really and lets you sort pretty well.

And for the kits, they don't include all the weapons because they make more money having you scrounge bits from other kits. And the new Eldar bike kits actually gave us enough weapons, but thats a complaint too?

It's.not.worth.four.million.pounds. Sure, it's an OK site but I have a business analyst friend that could have done as well on a fraction of the budget. And if they had gone that route, they probably wouldn't have had an excuse to hire Kirby's no-experience wife to head the whole operation.

And in many ways has less functionality than the site it replaced.

GW spent 4. Million. Pounds. And got a less effective website than the one that they already had.

But, hey! At least Kirby's wife made money!

The Auld Grump

And the new site completely ditched all of the old content. The new site is a storefront, nothing more.

Anyway, at least Forgeworld does a pretty decent job with their vids. But then, that could be because I actually care about what Forgeworld produced, and I don't care much at all about what comes out of GW proper.

-

 Ratius wrote:
Cant say I give a blankity about teaser videos or indepth preview videos.
Do you really buy a new kit/model/codex because some designer shows you the design process? Highly doubtful.
Whilst it does add to customer engagement and goodwill, neither of those translate into a bottom line dollar. And GW is plainly in the mode of kit selling not hobbying anymore.

Personally I used to like the designer notes and so on, though I prefer them presented in text and picture format rather than video. However video is very popular with a lot of users and is fairly cheap and easy to do these days.

 clamclaw wrote:

Wait... We're not supposed to like the website now either? I think its a great site, no lack of function really and lets you sort pretty well.

It seems to pretty much be worse than the old site in every way; it's harder to browse, search, the sorting this is pretty awful, it lost all of the actual content (there's a WD: Daily hidden on there somewhere but you'd never find it without help), it lost all of the customer accounts and history and it cost £4,000,000. Though only about £200,000 of that went directly to Kirbys wife in wages. God knows where the remaining £3,800,000 went, because that's a £500 off-the-shelf website.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ratius wrote:
Cant say I give a blankity about teaser videos or indepth preview videos.
Do you really buy a new kit/model/codex because some designer shows you the design process? Highly doubtful.
Whilst it does add to customer engagement and goodwill, neither of those translate into a bottom line dollar. And GW is plainly in the mode of kit selling not hobbying anymore.

In-depth involving and interesting videos sell product. Anyone with any experiencing in marketing knows this.

It inspires the customers, gives them a better idea of what's in the kit, makes them feel involved, and gains mind-share. They may not want it immediately but they'll remember about it and maybe they'll see it in a store and recognise it. Considering the costs of making the kits, producing a decent video to market it is peanuts. Though I'd rather it was text/images as well, because I browse from work.

I second the "unpaid intern" theory, albeit in a different form. Unpaid interns quit their internship after a while and with even a slow turnover there would have been at least one somewhat capable or motivated intern by now, so we'd see something better at least once in a while.

No, it's not an unpaid intern, it's just one guy who usually has a different job. My guess is marketing department since they have the arrogance to "know" what gets customers into the spendy mood. The Art department would do better, production and the beancounters are busy and the janitor wouldn't do anything unless paid for while the upper management would rather go for two hours straight without expensive cognak than doing any actual work.
So you end up with Mike from marketing (probably the whole of GW marketing, judging by the state of affairs) who in his off time does these "awesome, trendy teaser-videomovies" with skills he learned in 3 youtube tutorials and never improved upon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 clamclaw wrote:
Wait... We're not supposed to like the website now either? I think its a great site, no lack of function really and lets you sort pretty well.

The overall design isn't too bad but the execution is lacking. If you mark a category the whole thing automatically refreshes, dragging you to the top of the page and adding some extra loading times. I've seen pages where you could easily mark several categories without getting shoved to pos1 every time while the main frame updated the filter results on the fly. Yes, it is not a big deal, I'm talking about what? 3 seconds you spend more? But for a new and costly site I'd demand this to be better than that.

Herzlos wrote:

 clamclaw wrote:

Wait... We're not supposed to like the website now either? I think its a great site, no lack of function really and lets you sort pretty well.

It seems to pretty much be worse than the old site in every way; it's harder to browse, search, the sorting this is pretty awful, it lost all of the actual content (there's a WD: Daily hidden on there somewhere but you'd never find it without help), it lost all of the customer accounts and history and it cost £4,000,000. Though only about £200,000 of that went directly to Kirbys wife in wages. God knows where the remaining £3,800,000 went, because that's a £500 off-the-shelf website.

If every former fitness instructor and secretary for a fictional company made that kind of money, the world would be a different place...

The remaining 3.8million went to attorney's fees to sue anyone using the same software since it had to be invented by GW, even if it was an off-the-shelf application... Actually, I think they hired a big-name company to do the site which explains the over-inflated cost. I think the user issues may be directly attributed to the inexperienced person who headed the project from the GW side. If you want something like this done properly, you hire a Business Analyst to work between the company and the vendor; but what do I know, I only coordinate multi-million dollar projects for a living.

GW... has a hard time with advertising.

The only advertising that they really do is in White Dwarf and Visions - which are bought by people that are already in the H-H-H-obby.

Which means that the advertising is not reaching new audiences, it is reaching to the people that are already interested.

I know that an awful lot of the Warhammer and 40K players that I know started because of tournaments in local stores - with prize support from GW.

Been a while since I have seen any of that.

The Auld Grump

I see what you did there.
+1 internet for you.


Edit: Okay I thought that the MEdge advert was part of your post, that's a new thing, can we make it so it doesn't run into other posts with a border or something.
I remove my internet point, sorry TheAuldGrump.

 agnosto wrote:

Herzlos wrote:

 clamclaw wrote:

Wait... We're not supposed to like the website now either? I think its a great site, no lack of function really and lets you sort pretty well.

It seems to pretty much be worse than the old site in every way; it's harder to browse, search, the sorting this is pretty awful, it lost all of the actual content (there's a WD: Daily hidden on there somewhere but you'd never find it without help), it lost all of the customer accounts and history and it cost £4,000,000. Though only about £200,000 of that went directly to Kirbys wife in wages. God knows where the remaining £3,800,000 went, because that's a £500 off-the-shelf website.

If every former fitness instructor and secretary for a fictional company made that kind of money, the world would be a different place...

The remaining 3.8million went to attorney's fees to sue anyone using the same software since it had to be invented by GW, even if it was an off-the-shelf application... Actually, I think they hired a big-name company to do the site which explains the over-inflated cost. I think the user issues may be directly attributed to the inexperienced person who headed the project from the GW side. If you want something like this done properly, you hire a Business Analyst to work between the company and the vendor; but what do I know, I only coordinate multi-million dollar projects for a living.

Putting my pedantic pants on, a BA should be the bridge between the business's requirements and the (project's) technical team, you should have architects (enterprise, solution and infrastructure) working under a programme director to manage the teams involved for the project: hosting, software, middleware, etc. All the UX stuff should be directly captured by the UX team/contractor working with the business, its a two week job split over a month at best for that site.

£4 million with licensing, hosting, BAU costs, etc. for a 3 or 5 year period isn't bad, £4 million for just implementation is pathetic, I've spent less for far more at bigger companies over the last ten years of running such projects.

The website on the other hand is awful, all of it centred around poor UX work, I wouldn't be surprised if that part hadn't been done in house rather than qualified experts as the website is full of unnecessary clicks, scrolling, etc. that makes the website frustrating to use unless you know exactly what you want.

I'd suggest that the videos suffer from the same problem, people in house want to do the work and lack the time, experience and tools needed to do the job properly. More than likely they are using imovie, given the brief on the morning that the announcement is due (GW's policy on leaks strikes again), and think that because they once edited a go pro video of them falling off their bike they are James Cameron.