City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Advertising!!

Aett_Thorn

By Aett_Thorn,
Posted on: 2009-12-08 10:25 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bete Noire View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redoubtable View Post
There's tons of NCSoft product placement in that show, including the guy in sweatpants who wears a Statesman t-shirt.
I believe I saw an episode of The Big Bang Theory where in the comic store were large standup adverts of CoH and CoV
Chuck regularly showed CoX packages on the shelves at the big box store where he worked... Chuck is coming back in January, I belive.

I love Chuck

Storm

Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace amid the storm ...

 

Posted

Television advertising is extremely expensive, especially during "prime time" when a lot of people are expected to be watching. There's also the problem of demographic - of the people watching, how many are interested in the type of product you're shilling?

This is why you see ads for vocational colleges and injury lawyers during the day, and ads for cars and furniture in the evenings... and ads for adults-only party chat lines late at night.

For a game like City Of... the ad money would be better spent on short ads on YouTube videos, specifically in gaming and machinanima categories, or ads on gaming blogs/review sites. Product placement in geek/gaming related TV shows is also good. The idea is to narrow down your audience to those people you KNOW would have an interest... because as much as you want to get new players in, the return on investment in general-audience ads will be very low.

Blizzard and World of Warcraft are a VERY special case. By all demographic studies, the game shouldn't be as successful as it is... but it is a well-designed game that has a lot of appeal to gamers young and old, so it breaks the rules.

Of course, if a well-known Hollywood "geek" persona were to show up on TV wearing CoH/V swag, or do an 'advert' video and post it up, the buzz would probably attract considerable attention. I'd just not spend the money to pay someone to do it.


"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."