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Weird how so many internet neckbeards have better marketing techniques than a profit making public company. I assume you guys are all on mega salaries.

While I don't really care enough to enter the argument completely, that's not a logically sound argument.

Just because a company is making a profit doesn't mean that it is doing so in an efficient and effective way. It could be making a profit DESPITE its practices, based off of a different variable.

Kroothawk wrote:It is official now (posted by store owner xxRavenxx over at Warseer):


Be aware that discussing Dakka rumours instore is now a capital crime not tolerated by GW management. Thank you for your cooperation

Remind me how we're all benefitting again?

Remember everyone, buying GW models is a sacred priviledge.

I am astounded by the new levels of paranoia in GW HQ.

That's true, but given the amount of highly skilled marketing people there are floating around, it's unlikely that GW's marketing strategy is ineffective.


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Ehsteve wrote:

Kroothawk wrote:
Be aware that discussing Dakka rumours instore is now a capital crime not tolerated by GW management. Thank you for your cooperation

Remind me how we're all benefitting again?

Remember everyone, buying GW models is a sacred priviledge.

I am astounded by the new levels of paranoia in GW HQ.

Yeah, why the hell wouldn't they want to be sued by New Line Cinema? Pussies.

*sniff*

I smell something... fish... a herring. A red one perhaps. What about you Testify?

Testify wrote:Weird how so many internet neckbeards have better marketing techniques than a profit making public company. I assume you guys are all on mega salaries.

GW is tiny midget of a company. Their relative market cap and yearly revenue is less than a single Super Walmart location.

I'll trust the 100+ year proven marketing approach of the established companies out there who know that building excitement in advance is a good thing.

Testify wrote:That's true, but given the amount of highly skilled marketing people there are floating around,

At OTHER companies.

frozenwastes wrote:

Testify wrote:Weird how so many internet neckbeards have better marketing techniques than a profit making public company. I assume you guys are all on mega salaries.

GW is tiny midget of a company. Their relative market cap and yearly revenue is less than a single Walmart location.

I'll trust the 100+ year proven marketing approach of the established companies out there who know that building excitement in advance is a good thing.

Well okay...what percentage of people watching tv are going to buy a sofa in the next year or so? Maybe about 10%.
What percentage of people watching tv are going to buy tabletop minitures? 1%? 0.1%? Less?

There simply aren't enough media streams available that would offer a decent rate of return, with the exception of a miniature-based magazine like, you know...White Dwarf.

And GW's revenue is ~£140m. Any company with a revenue that large is going to be damn sure they know what they're doing.


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Melissia wrote:

Testify wrote:That's true, but given the amount of highly skilled marketing people there are floating around,

At OTHER companies.

I could find 2 or 3 unemployed marketing graduates in my facebook friends alone. People skilled in marketing are hardly hard to come by.

Testify wrote:
Well okay...what percentage of people watching tv are going to buy a sofa in the next year or so? Maybe about 10%.
What percentage of people watching tv are going to buy tabletop minitures? 1%? 0.1%? Less?

There simply aren't enough media streams available that would offer a decent rate of return, with the exception of a miniature-based magazine like, you know...White Dwarf.

*facepalm* My point has nothing to do with traditional advertising mediums like television commercials, but proven marketing approaches.

GW has the opportunity for all sorts of online buzz. People into miniature games are often tech savvy and likely to use social media. Other companies would kill for that kind of an audience and would gladly feed information to bloggers and certain well followed twitter accounts.

However you have to advertise to get people excited about your product in advance, you do it.

You're the one who insulted a bunch of people and pointed to GW's profitability as proof that no one here could be right in criticizing GW's approach. I simply pointed out that GW is a tiny company and their approach flies in the face of how products have been successfully sold for over a century.

If GW wants less people to talk about their product over a smaller period of time, that's their choice.

.

Yeah it's a shame they haven't released youtube video spoilers or anything. Double shameful they haven't used modern media like, i dunno, facebook, in order to plug this directly to the user.

What exactly would you like to see GW do?

Not make stupid policies and threaten their independent retailers with penalties that will make both of them less money?

frozenwastes wrote:Not make stupid policies and threaten their independent retailers with penalties that will make both of them less money?

That's not a marketing policy, try again.

(Also, are you serious? You think a company should just ignore leaks? Even when that means being sued by New Line Cinema?)

Yeah, I'm sure Testify's unemployed, inexperienced, fresh graduate friends could revolutionize GW's marketing. But I think GW is full up on marketing folks who don't know what they are doing right now.

I don't know, I kind of like their current marketing scheme. It's allowed me to ignore the hype they created before (when I did buy just about every army they came out with, because of the hype and early looks at the models) and instead of saving some of my hobby money for them, I gladly spend it on other companies who are giving me lots of pre-release information...

Thanks, GW! ;-)

Well for apparent lack of excitement that surrounds GW new releases there is a lot of blogs, forums, miniature websites (including retailers) that talk a lot about the new releases even through the appraent lack of " marketing".
I think GW have cornered their marketing perfectly with marketing designed to get all the involved parties discussing the upcoming releases, every releases everyone bemoans GW's "stoopid marketing" , but there is a lot of hubbub about it and everyone still buys their crack. I think they have the internet using wargamers figured out. let them hype themselves into a mouth frothing frenzy then let me at it on release. I don't think gw cares if you hate them as long as you like their minis and you are motivated enought to buy them which I think everyone is.

I think many small miniature gaming companies would sacrifice a small child if they could even get partial access to the hordes that GW could have if they acted like it was 1998 again.

Testify wrote:

frozenwastes wrote:Not make stupid policies and threaten their independent retailers with penalties that will make both of them less money?

That's not a marketing policy, try again.

(Also, are you serious? You think a company should just ignore leaks? Even when that means being sued by New Line Cinema?)

I'm facepalming again. It's like we're not even talking about the same thing.

Leaks come from inside. An independent stockist should never be able to leak anything because anything sent to them should be stuff ready for public consumption.

And yes, it should be a marketing policy to not threaten your independent stockists with penalties if they tell their customers about upcoming products.

I think Privateer has a pretty good model. Every day they post an "insider" article that has some sort of information about their products or events. Then they post preview pictures of models that are not going to be released for some time. Then they have pictures again of what the new releases actually are. I know local stores have big preorders already for some of the Hordes Gargantuans that don't even have prices or product codes yet.




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spiraleddie wrote:Well for apparent lack of excitement that surrounds GW new releases there is a lot of blogs, forums, miniature websites (including retailers) that talk a lot about the new releases even through the appraent lack of " marketing".
I think GW have cornered their marketing perfectly with marketing designed to get all the involved parties discussing the upcoming releases, every releases everyone bemoans GW's "stoopid marketing" , but there is a lot of hubbub about it and everyone still buys their crack. I think they have the internet using wargamers figured out. let them hype themselves into a mouth frothing frenzy then let me at it on release. I don't think gw cares if you hate them as long as you like their minis and you are motivated enought to buy them which I think everyone is.

GW has had a good year, but they're still way, way down from their heights. Their after inflation growth is less than a percent for 2011-2012.

And people don't just keep buying. If you factor in the price increases and look at their yearly revenue, their sales of individual units sold has likely halved over the last 8 years or so. Less people are buying less. GW then increases the price to make up the difference and make a bit more money. The cycle repeats year over year.

There are tons of life-long hobbyists out there that would make great customers for GW, but they've chosen to go after the kiddy market. They expect the majority of their customers to never play the rules (Jervis in 2008 called these people "craft hobbyists" and said they make up two thirds of their customers) and they expect people to quit within a couple years of their first purchase as they discover girls and beer and the like.

People will indeed still talk about their product, but now they're going to be talking about it for a shorter period of time, and by extension, with fewer people. Local stores can no longer drum up sales for future releases in advance. Instead they have to wait until GW says it's okay, and then they'll have to compete with GW direct as the first exposure to the new models will be GW's website and White Dwarf.

Frozenwastes - Honestly man I think we're being trolled. I can't explain it any other way. Best to just ignore him for the time being lest the smell of red herring rub off on us.

I think you might be right.

From August 17th, Games Workshop are changing their trade terms. This will effect the way that New Release information will be handled.

After August 17th, any shop selling White Dwarf or any New release item before the release date, discussing New Release information or posting images on Facebook, forums etc before release date will be punished by not being allowed to stock New Releases for 6 months !

I have no problem with this. The people at GWS retail stores are employees of the company, and doing the things above significantly weaken the strategy of the corporation they work for.

I'm not defending the strategy, it's utterly asinine. But it's not for the toes to question where the foot walks.

Question - the email specifically singles out trade accounts. I have several newsagents near me that always release white dwarf as soon as it arrives, which is generally a week before. Would they be trade accounts? Because there's a hell of a lot of them for GW to try and monitor.

I don't think so, well not currently....

I think White Dwarf distribution is mostly managed through the folk they get to do their publishing. As in, the non-GW company you ring up when you want to get your subscription changed in some form.

Of course, if GW if GW realises that white dwarf is out a week early some places then they might start clamping down on that.

Ouze wrote:

From August 17th, Games Workshop are changing their trade terms. This will effect the way that New Release information will be handled.

After August 17th, any shop selling White Dwarf or any New release item before the release date, discussing New Release information or posting images on Facebook, forums etc before release date will be punished by not being allowed to stock New Releases for 6 months !

I have no problem with this. The people at GWS retail stores are employees of the company, and doing the things above significantly weaken the strategy of the corporation they work for.

I'm not defending the strategy, it's utterly asinine. But it's not for the toes to question where the foot walks.

Erm ... that is for their trade customers, i.e. independent stores. And restricting free speech of customers is not a small thing.

If a store gets suspended from selling GW products the only thing that will happen is GW losing sales and customers switching to other miniature games that store owners will then promote instead of 40K/WHF. The effect of impulse buys is underestimated massively here.

I understand GW doesn't want stuff to come out ahead of time, and they are entitled to that, but as usual they are being morons about it. These leaks only happen in the first place because GW doesn't preview a decent damn's worth of anything. How many times can one shoot himself in the foot and not learn from it?

Breaking street date can be a no-no. It happens with computer games as well. The publishers often don't like it, and I can see why.

But not giving out information is one step too far.

They way GW is set up is by having their Trade Sales department and Mail Order departments buy their stock from GW manufacturing (many companies work this way).
This means that their own Mail Order department is a trade account and is breaching the rules set out in that letter/email by posting product a week before the release.

It might sound like I'm taking the piss but this will provide retailers with a good starting point to fight this nonsense.

H.B.M.C. wrote: stuff that makes sense ...

frozenwastes wrote:even more stuff that makes sense ...

better cease and desist with this whole logic thing you guys have going on!

What is a Trade Account? Would that be an FLGS?

AduroT wrote:What is a Trade Account? Would that be an FLGS?

Anybody who gets their product from the GW Trade Sales Department.
So that is online retailers, brick&mortar shops, news agents, distributors.

Despite having personal experience of stores where GW came down like a big sack of ... erm.. spuds on independent retailers in the past, trying to drive them out of business in the 90's, and having heard many other accounts of the same thing there has often been a fair amount of disbelief from others with no experience of it to question if and why GW would do such a thing.

I hope this document puts any such questions about the mindset of the company we are dealing with here to rest, and the level of self-importance and aggrandisement they must possess. And as I have said, it is completely failing to consider that these independent retailers, who have supported GW closely for so long for mutual benefit, actually have a massive range of other manufacturers to fall back on.

This kind of trick is reminiscent of the way that GW treated independents in the 90's - 'you need us more than we need you, now put up or shut up' attitude can only serve to polarise the independent retailers against them, much as the crappy ordering system and quality control issues of Finecast have done more recently.