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It would be better to to be more upfront anyway - If you're about to sink a hojillion dollars into designing a new plastic kit (stormraven, dreadknight) and the majority of the people looking at it think it's crap (or the rules are awful - looking at you, chaos spawn and possessed marines) then you have the opportunity to possibly make adjustments in time to prevent a catastrophe.

This flexibility would be worth more than the potential negative of seeing, for example, a new jetbike 3 months early and not liking it - for hypothetical shareowners as well as the people GW tries to sell stuff to.

Making people delay their purchases is stupid too - every dollar you're not putting in my pocket at any given second for overpriced plastic stuff is a dollar that you could be using for movie tickets, restaurant food, warmachine minis, deodorant, finding a girlfriend, failing to find a girlfriend and giving your money to internet dating sites, etc.

Doesn't Apple use the same strategy of not telling anyone what' up. Like even when you know something's coming out you usually don't know the exact specs or release date until just before it's released.

See earlier in the thread Forest Fire.

Got stung by buying an Orcs and Goblins Army Book only to find it was obsolete less than 6 months later.
This doesn't get GW 2 books sold because I am not impressed and won't buy the new one. It does not make me feel inclined to buy any others either.

If I had some definite idea that the O&G were going to have a makeover I would have most likely bagged the new one even with the price increase.

Not to get sidetracked about any specific item btw. The anecdote is an example how customers can potentially get hacked off with the policy of being ill informed. Pops digging into my wallet for little Jimmy Tinwhistle is not likely to be any more impressed.

H.B.M.C. wrote:What Yak says about GW might be true if not for the fact that Forge World and the Black Library do exactly the opposite – news on upcoming releases, promotions, previews, sneak peeks, and so on. They also show up to trade shows and events to promote their own wares.

GW does none of this, and as I’ve said before in a similar discussion, if the small areas of your company are getting it right, how come the whole body can’t get it right?

Because Black Library and Forge World offer different product lines than GW's core does,and a marketing strategy that is effective for one line is not neccessarily effective with another product line? Heck,General Electric owns NBC,so should they be trying to sell dishwashers and refridgerators with the same strategies they use to sell TV advertising? Or the marketing strategies Honda uses to sell it's Infiniti car line will also apply to their line of lawnmowers? Subsidiaries within a company are USUALLY marketed differently to appeal to different groups. That's why Cadillac is marketed differently than Chevy. That's why you see tough,burly guys in pickup truck commercials,not female fashion models.

I'm by no means saying that GW is beyond question,but it's also very easy to play armchair CEO on a message board. As a publicly traded company,"getting it right" means making the most $ for the company. If GW's shareholders and financial analysts feel that their sales aren't as strong as they should be due to their tight lipped marketing practices,then they will change their marketing practices. Obviously,they don't feel that's the case.

I can see the apparent logic behind GW’s marketing strategy but in reality, secrecy has always been a turn off for me rather than something that generates interest as I’m the type who likes to make an informed purchase. At the end of the day, if I don’t know any details, then I don’t care.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:See earlier in the thread Forest Fire.

Got stung by buying an Orcs and Goblins Army Book only to find it was obsolete less than 6 months later.
This doesn't get GW 2 books sold because I am not impressed and won't buy the new one. It does not make me feel inclined to buy any others either.

If I had some definite idea that the O&G were going to have a makeover I would have most likely bagged the new one even with the price increase.

Not to get sidetracked about any specific item btw. The anecdote is an example how customers can potentially get hacked off with the policy of being ill informed. Pops digging into my wallet for little Jimmy Tinwhistle is not likely to be any more impressed.

Not saying that some people don't get honked off when something like that happens. However,90+% of people will pony up the money to pick up the new book instead of having hundreds of dollars of mini's sitting around that they can hardly play with because they don't have the current book. If you decide to sell your army,then GW will still get their book sale off the person you sell your army to,anyways. The only way GW doesn't get their 2nd sale is if you just sit on the army and keep it in mothballs somewhere forever[or until the Warhammer Fantasy line ends completely].

Another question is,just how long does a book have to be current for before people feel ripped off? There's no set answer to that question,and everybody's different. For some people,if GW opened up a 1 year rumor window,and they're book was invalidated after 60 weeks,they'd feel ripped off. On the other hand,some people are fine with a 3-4 month window,and feel that they will get enough use out of the book in that time period.

Whatever1 wrote:I'm by no means saying that GW is beyond question,but it's also very easy to play armchair CEO on a message board. As a publicly traded company,"getting it right" means making the most $ for the company. If GW's shareholders and financial analysts feel that their sales aren't as strong as they should be due to their tight lipped marketing practices,then they will change their marketing practices. Obviously,they don't feel that's the case.

The point of this thread is that what they "feel" is ill-informed. People have been, and will continue to, point to the fact that GW performs worse every year in a time when other minatures companies are on the rise, to back this up.

People feel like their needs are not being met, how is this possibly a good thing?

The army book sales may hold firm (which is more than can be said for some of the army books ) but they are not doing themselves any favours hacking off potential customers.

There will always be a cut off point at which there will be someone upset, but I would rather like to be in a position of making a choice rather than leaving it in the lap of the GW "gods".

Thank goodness it was only an army book I had just purchased and not some units that become useless. Honking people off, even if they need to buy a product, is poor form imho, and in the long run poor business sense.

I won't be selling fwiw.
If the army expands it will be using Mantic Orcs.

MikeMcSomething wrote:

Whatever1 wrote:I'm by no means saying that GW is beyond question,but it's also very easy to play armchair CEO on a message board. As a publicly traded company,"getting it right" means making the most $ for the company. If GW's shareholders and financial analysts feel that their sales aren't as strong as they should be due to their tight lipped marketing practices,then they will change their marketing practices. Obviously,they don't feel that's the case.

The point of this thread is that what they "feel" is ill-informed. People have been, and will continue to, point to the fact that GW performs worse every year in a time when other minatures companies are on the rise, to back this up.

People feel like their needs are not being met, how is this possibly a good thing?

GW is the only publicly traded gaming company so they are the only company whose financials we get to see. We have absolutely no idea how other companies are doing, and even when a company seems to be 'on the rise' they can often still be operating in the red attempting to push to a point of eventual profitability by riding through a lean period.

Say what you will about Games Workshop, but they are still far and away the most successful miniature gaming company ever, by a large margin. While their sales have certainly eroded from their LOTR peak, as I've said before there are a number of potential culprits for this. The way they choose to market their products may be part of the cause (or even the chief cause for all we know), but it may not be either...again we lack the real capability to find out how their marketing affects the customers outside of those who frequent forums.

Most important for me I would love the company to embrace the type of open communication with its fans that Privateer Press does...have forums and have the designers on there conversing directly with the gamers. Post previews of upcoming stuff and post heartfelt notices explaining exactly why prices have to be raised when they do, etc, etc, etc.

But the problem is that openness and honesty are generally anathema to a publicly traded company. I have a hard time thinking of any publicly traded corporation that is really 'open' giving information to the public because generally it isn't considered a wise move because as I've pointed out before, any leak of information that is perceived as negative has the very real possibility to cause the price of their stock to drop.

So unfortunately I don't think we'll ever see Games Workshop become much more transparent than it is now, and it does make me sad. While going public helped Games Workshop turn into the giant powerhouse it still is today, and that in turn helped to make miniature gaming a LOT more popular today than it used to be, I feel like the price they paid to build their castle is almost too high.

With all that said, I still take umbrage with the idea that their current marketing strategy is 'bad'. One method of marketing is the slow burn of putting out morsels of information long in advance, but another method is keeping things firmly under wraps and then trying to create a big 'splash' release that gets people to impulse buy. Both are used by very successful companies, so to say one is 'bad' when the other is 'good' is just silly.

They're just two different ways to approach marketing and while you may strongly favor one approach over the other it doesn't necessarily mean the other method is 'bad' in any way.

From the DE Wave 2 thread, but more appropriate here:

Cerebrium wrote:Yeah, it's not like it's the equivalent of a movie trailer or anything, no, it's clearly GW BEING MORONS..

The shorthand for this, sadly, is that "Games Workshop knows that other, better run companies run teaser campaigns, but they don't know why".

Or, more specifically, why this is not appropriate for their industry.

On a side note, I'm not sure I buy the "GWS profits have been plummeting because of video games" narrative, despite the fact they obviously believe it. The fact is, when I was a kid and the NES was announced, within 2 years every home had one, it seemed, even relatively poor homes like mine. So that was around 1988. I don't buy that the new Halo release is really causing them new, unforeseen troubles.

Some good points on this thread... GW marketing seems to be based on the Momentum, big splash and keeping silence until last moment... yes its a competent marketing strategy for some but alas only a company that his well knowened, established and has a very strong presence in mainstream public can pull off that right IMO... nintendo, mac etc all do apply that strategy and they are also VERYYYYYYYYYYYY agressive in publicity... everyone knows them.

So lets see ask your neighbour if he knows what, GW are or warhammer are, and ( apart UK XD) mostly are clueless to what they are... add to this that GW doesnt make ANY relevant publicity ( fewer people will get to know GW) and you will probably see that a marketing policy based on silence is a suicide ( specially agravated if the splash releases sucks).

Marketing and publicity should be applied to each company reality and just because company Y can pull something doesnt mean company X can.

Now I will put my guessing hat and say that GW marketing department is detached from GW reality and is pulling off a formula that will kill interest and that will cost them sales... and that publicity department is inexistant and runned by someone stuck in the early 90's still discovering the net and that has no perception of how invisible they(gw) are to the world... hat off.

H.B.M.C. wrote:What Yak says about GW might be true if not for the fact that Forge World and the Black Library do exactly the opposite – news on upcoming releases, promotions, previews, sneak peeks, and so on. They also show up to trade shows and events to promote their own wares.

GW does none of this, and as I’ve said before in a similar discussion, if the small areas of your company are getting it right, how come the whole body can’t get it right?

I think it has something to do with Forge World selling good models on the strength of them being good models, where GW is selling bad models on the strength of Clowns like Matt "Toss Bucket" Ward that are masquerading as game developers while giving bad models over-powered and broken rules that appeal to the dregs of GW Hobby that need to win to validate themselves (Reference: Trashraven and Failgatron).

Draigo isn't going to be making an appearance in ever battle involving Grey Knights because he's an awesome model, he's gonna be there because he's the mutant offspring of Mary Sue, Wolverine, Arthas and Darth Vader.

On the internet, everyone is a marketing genius.

I will put on my guessing hat and say that we know squat about what really drives sales best –for GW– apart from what we learn from their yearly financial report and what some faceless dude on the internet heard one guy at Bugmans say to another dudes cousin.

Get a hold of some proper financial reports that we can correlate to marketing drives (or the lack of) and we can perhaps do a proper analyisis. Until then it's merely speculation on what works and what doesn't. Even if your local gaming club "never plays Blood Angels" doesn't mean that thousands of customers buy the FOTW army and never paints or play with it. People that might not even frequent Dakka (oh the horror).

There's a reason people study and work for years in order to analyze economics & marketing. I will put on my OTHER guessing hat and guess that 99% of everyone posting in this thread haven't even heard of Kotler. And if they have, haven't read more than the blurb on the back of the cover.

The third hat guesses that smarter people than you and me are in charge of GW's marketing and will act accordingly to what's best for the company. But hey, who knows? They might take random knowitbests from the internet like you and me and have them run marketing?

econtutor wrote:The ONLY reason I can think of is that the secrecy prevents customers from delaying purchases until new models are released. If true, this is a pretty S&%$^ reason, I'd be pissed if I dropped cash on a new army and two months later the rules and models for it were completely redone!

This is exactly the reason...

The sales for Grey Kngihts would have been nil for the last three months if they had informed customers of the new releases. It always comes back to the same thing with GW. Every thread on every forum that questions their motivation need just be answered with the following caption copied and posted into every reply.

£££ AND $$$


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Whatever1 wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:What Yak says about GW might be true if not for the fact that Forge World and the Black Library do exactly the opposite – news on upcoming releases, promotions, previews, sneak peeks, and so on. They also show up to trade shows and events to promote their own wares.

GW does none of this, and as I’ve said before in a similar discussion, if the small areas of your company are getting it right, how come the whole body can’t get it right?

Because Black Library and Forge World offer different product lines than GW's core does,and a marketing strategy that is effective for one line is not neccessarily effective with another product line? Heck,General Electric owns NBC,so should they be trying to sell dishwashers and refridgerators with the same strategies they use to sell TV advertising? Or the marketing strategies Honda uses to sell it's Infiniti car line will also apply to their line of lawnmowers? Subsidiaries within a company are USUALLY marketed differently to appeal to different groups. That's why Cadillac is marketed differently than Chevy. That's why you see tough,burly guys in pickup truck commercials,not female fashion models.

I'm by no means saying that GW is beyond question,but it's also very easy to play armchair CEO on a message board. As a publicly traded company,"getting it right" means making the most $ for the company. If GW's shareholders and financial analysts feel that their sales aren't as strong as they should be due to their tight lipped marketing practices,then they will change their marketing practices. Obviously,they don't feel that's the case.

Forgeworld does not have the same customer base as the main GW body, but the strategy works in their favour too. If GW were to announce a plastic Thunderhawk, bye bye Forgeworld sales... announce Baneblade plastic kit, they'd have not sold any forgeworld kits, etc!

pixelpusher wrote:

The third hat guesses that smarter people than you and me are in charge of GW's marketing and will act accordingly to what's best for the company. But hey, who knows? They might take random knowitbests from the internet like you and me and have them run marketing?

I'm not doubting that smarter people than me tend to run companies. I -am- doubting that those people always act in the best interest of the company. (Reference: current global financial issues).


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geordie09 wrote:

This is exactly the reason...

The sales for Grey Kngihts would have been nil for the last three months if they had informed customers of the new releases. It always comes back to the same thing with GW. Every thread on every forum that questions their motivation need just be answered with the following caption copied and posted into every reply.

£££ AND $$$

Who says that the sales of GK hasn't been nil for the last 3 months anyway? Who says it hasn't been nil for longer because the army has been perceived as "squatted"?

I know far more people that have sold or tried to sell their GK armies in the past year (3) than I know people that have bought GK anything (0).

And yes, you're going to wave your hand and dismiss my post as "anecdotal".

I doubt you make tons of millions in courtage if you work as head of sales & marketing for GW. You might perhaps see more of your favorite army on the shelves (if you even play) but thats probably it.

The biggest incentive when you work in marketing is usually a bonus depending on how well the company did. In GW's case that most likely equals shifting more units of product than the year before. Not exactly comparable with Lehman Brothers et al. And definitely not at the same level.

I've worked with some complete tools that's "Head of Marketing" in pretty big companies though. So it's not like it's unlikely.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:
No company is going to get things absolutely right all of the time. Are the shareholders really that fickle? There is a lot of trustfunds iirc and while I cannot be certain, they won't be watching Dakka closely to ensure part of the portfolio is behaving itself.

As a shareholder, albeit a small one, no, no I'm not that fickle.

I suppose the other reason is that they are concerned that if they announce what they are doing by the time they get to release there will be many other companies releasing similar things at the same time. I'm only basing on comments I've seen elsewhere today about the number of small companies producing thunderwolves for SW while GW has not really done any.

With all that said, I still take umbrage with the idea that their current marketing strategy is 'bad'. One method of marketing is the slow burn of putting out morsels of information long in advance, but another method is keeping things firmly under wraps and then trying to create a big 'splash' release that gets people to impulse buy. Both are used by very successful companies, so to say one is 'bad' when the other is 'good' is just silly.

I would say it is bad.
It may be successful for GW but it is not necessarily good for the customer imho
Sorry Yakface but the manner in which GW communicates with a very loyal customer base leaves a lot to be desired.

The problem maybe the customers themselves for throwing cash at GW regardless.
Guess you are correct inasmuch as GW have no need to change any policies while things tick along nicely for them as they are.
But even if silly and in a minority I take umbrage at the way that GW goes about their business.

They still do not need to behave the way they do. If different methods work for other successful companies, why not be seen to show some respect for the customer?

The sales for Grey Kngihts would have been nil for the last three months if they had informed customers of the new releases.

If GW were the genius business being suggested they would be able to work around that problem.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:I would say it is bad.
It may be successful for GW but it is not necessarily good for the customer imho

Why is it bad? Is not GW being successful good for the customer? You may not like the way they do marketing, but it's most likely –for GW– successful marketing. The customer base is still loyal even though a vocal minority feels it's treated "bad" while still buying the models and/or play the game. Why change something that clearly works before it doesn't work anymore?

Could GW benefit better from marketing in another way? Trickling out new figures 3 months before release? Mayhaps. I still haven't seen anyone with any sort of credibility explain why their current business model is so flawed as many of the knowitalls here on Dakka try to portray it.

Such interesting thread of people debating personal opinions, some based on work experience others based on intuition and why but oh why does it always appear a fella screaming asking for credentials Reality check Pixelpusher... you can have the most expert persons on marketing but if your boss boss says no and wants to move the company direction otherwise your expertise is as good as nothing... Is GW model of business sucessfull depends on your measure... from a bitzone-garage-company prespective its huge... from hasbro its tiny... from me personally ( havent you noticed this is apublic forum and people express their opinions without having to pick up the credentials sheet?) I think its small because not only it fails to catch my interest but it also pushes me to buy elsewere.

Sure no one is saying GW is a bunch of dumb people in fact most have said that they dont know the full reality of GW biz... what I and many here are questioning is if this Marketing model is good for a company not that well knowened outside its bubble... your opinion may be diferent than mine and I respect it as much as anyone elses, regardless of pedigree.

The one thing I've never understood is why they don't seem to have, you know, a Commercial. See, there's this thing called Television, that most children, teens and young adults are constantly watching, and there's these things called Commercials that let those children, teens and young adults know about games and products.

I suppose there must be some sort of production of this sort of thing, due to the trailers you can find online for DoW, but I have not once seen a GW commercial. It's not like Space Marines Krumpin' and being krumped by Orks isn't interesting, and it's not like they can't have animated ads for toy soldiers. Heck, even a tie-in badly done cartoon would probably be a ridiculously good way to get the word out.

I don't care for your credentials, or anyone elses, in the matter of this discussion unless you're posting to verify your claim about GWs business model. I just wanted to point out that as far as we know, we really don't know jack. The common trend seems to be that GW is doing a bad thing and I just wanted emphasise that we dont know and just speculate usually based on very uninformed opinions.

Now I thought I made it kinda clear that even I speculated, based on my work experience, about if their current business model is sound or not. Apparently I missed the mark. (If I tried to move this discussion into who had the most credentials, if any, and therefore decided what -opinion- is valid enough to grace this thread. I would have made that pretty clear.)

What irks me though, is the apparent Dunning-Kruger effect that's rampant in threads like these. Some people are internet-experts instead of plainly stating "I'm out of my lane, but I don't like the way GW is marketing their product". Instead it's portrayed as "bad" or "not getting it right" as some sort of facts based on most likely nothing.

Why is their current business model bad? Is it any substance in that opinion? What would work better for GW? Can you back that up with anything else than "I believe…" or "I would like to…"?

I'm all for speculating "what if"-scenarios. But when it comes to the same type of speculation as "What if Godzilla was real" there really isn't much point continuing is there?

The substance in the claims that they are getting it wrong would appear to be borne out by their financial results over the past few years which show declining sales figures.

Like Aston-Martin, Porsche and other companies producing luxury-items?

This is about the point when someone posts the Razorgor shouting "Weee, I'm a porsche!"

Actually, Lanrak summed it up quite succintly in one of the other frequent threads that crop up about GW business practice:

Lanrak wrote:
Just looking at the financials for GW in the mid to late 1990s.

When GW supported all thier games (board and SGs,) and 40k was a large skirmish game of 2nd ed.
1995 to 1998, GW plc turn over rose from 30 to 60 million pounds!
DOUBLED their turn over in 3 years.(When they focused on gamers and game support.)

After the 'rushed hatchet job' of 3rd ed 40k ,turn over growth slowed down a bit, 60 million to 78 ,million from 1998 to 2000.
GW turn over rose from 78 million to 98 million at the start of the LoTR 'bubble,' 2000 to 2001.

GW plc period of greatest growth was when they actively supported and promoted a wide range of games to appeal to a wide range of gamers.

Since GW plc has declared it self to be '...in the business of selling toy soldiers to kiddies...' they have lost sales volumes year on year.
And now even their massive price increases can not make up the shortfall in sales volumes.

GW plc are in serious trouble , they can not make the radical changes required to secure long term growth without loosing short term revenue.

TTFN.

Falling sales has been an issue for GW long before the Global Financial crisis. This problem has thus far been masked firstly by the so-called LOTR bubble and subsequently by a round of cost-cutting and price hikes, but as anyone will tell you, this is not a sustainable model for growth.

The figure could also be interpreted as reduced individual items selling as boxsets including more options reduces the need for individual blister purchases.

As for the original premise of the thread GW drop hints and show in progress sculpts at Games Day or at least the many threads that it generates attest to this.

A 3 month heads up on a forthcoming line seems like a decent amount of notice to me. Never could understand the bellyaching over this issue. This to me is clearly done for sound reasons (stock, reputation and on time delivery all as stated by Yakface), preferable to the maelable release dates and stock levels that other companies have.

To be fair, GW can only double it's earnings so many times in a given decade, they aren't exactly producing cold fusion reactors. Saying "They supported their games (an assertion at best, and one that doesn't exactly smack of firm objective analysis) and this made their sales grow the most" isn't painting the most complete picture.

Stretched analogy time!

Really pixelpusher, if there's a new brand of, say, soft drink on the market, and it's in a store I live in, but I've never heard of it because it was never advertised, and it comes in a poop-colored can, and is named something disgusting, so nobody buys it, and the company fails, do I need experience in a corporate marketing department or a degree in business to know that their marketing strategy was bad?

Do you need one of the securities analysts that hang out on Dakka to re-iterate for the 50th time why GW isn't worth going near with a 10-foot pole? Or can we all agree that a company that is losing money while actively irritating players to the point where they buy other people's games is maybe doing something wrong?


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I'm also going to wager 5 internetbucks that if you spent 5 minutes on Google you could find blogs by at least 5 individuals representing publicly-traded companies, where more information is discussed about their new and upcoming products in a month than GW does in 3 months.

In what way is it bad?
It is bad in my experience to treat people like 5 year olds, to be so insular and not to keep people informed.

I find the corporatre manner of GW to be arrogant, which is also bad.
There is a load of other stuff that gets my goat but am to tired to rehearse them right now.

Sorry Pixel just the way I was brought up to treat people with respect. Again, I find there are other succesful hobby companies able to treat their customers a great deal more so and I don't see why an exception is to be made for GW.

As for the ludicrous analogies to luxury cars.
Do Porsche et al hide their concepts and future products behind a veil of secrecy and no one must see them till the official day when the manager at the car store opens the black crate
tee hee

good grief Charlie Brown,
Black Boxes!
Such a grown up business way to sell shiney new toy soldiers. Jelly and ice cream all round.


Just be absolutely clear, I am speaking from experience as a customer with no allusions to being an armchair CEO