#marketing

[animentality]

[prokopetz]

I've had a couple of people ask for a digestible version of the whole "the real problem with Dungeons & Dragons is false advertising, not anything that's present in its text" thing I keep alluding to, so here's the bullet point version of that argument:

Dungeons & Dragons is owned by Hasbro. Yes, the same Hasbro that owns Monopoly and My Little Pony.

Hasbro wants D&D to be the only tabletop RPG that anyone plays.

In order to accomplish this, Hasbro needs D&D to be a universal entry-level game.

D&D is not a universal entry-level game.

All game rules are opinionated about how the game ought to be played, and as tabletop RPGs go, D&D's rules are more opinionated than most. This is not a flaw, but it's not what Hasbro needs.

D&D is also on the high end of complexity as far as tabletop RPGs go, and it's complex in a way that strongly rewards system mastery, so it's pretty far from "entry level".

Hasbro could produce a version of D&D that's at the very least less opinionated and more entry-level than it presently is, but they don't want to, because they've determined that certain rules features which run counter to both of those goals are critical to D&D's brand identity.

They also don't want to produce multiple versions of D&D tailored for different audiences, because they want every single D&D group to be a potential purchaser of every single D&D product; they'd be effectively competing with themselves for their own customer base if the published game was actually modular in any meaningful way.

So how does Hasbro square that circle?

Simple: they lie. They insist that D&D is in fact a universal entry-level game in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and back their advertising up with sponsored thinkpieces and podcasts and such to "prove" it.

Further, they've spent decades fostering a culture of play which conceals the gap between the game they're advertising and the game they're selling by ascribing any appearance that D&D isn't a universal entry-level game to the incompetence or malice of individual GMs.

The game the rules want to produce disagrees with the game the group wants to play? Nonsense – even the rankest beginner should be able to produce any experience of play using any set of rules, and if your GM can't, they're a Bad GM.

The game is hard to learn? No, it isn't – your GM is merely gatekeeping you. This wouldn't be a problem with a Good GM.

The upshot is that the published rules are more or less irrelevant with respect to achieving the desired experience of play, because they're operating within a culture of play which dumps 100% of the work of making that desired experience of play happen on the GM.

Indeed, much of what modern D&D presents as GMing best practices are really methods of working around the fact that the rules you're using disagree with you about what kind of game you're playing.

(It's not a coincidence that D&D's entrenched culture of play also insists that it's normal for GMs to be miserably overworked and treats GM burnout as a big funny joke, then turns around and loudly wonders why there's a constant GM shortage.)

The trick is, because you're still at least notionally using the rules of D&D, the fruits of all that GM labour are perceived as the product of "playing D&D", not of the GM's hard work.

In essence, Hasbro's business model for Dungeons & Dragons is selling you your own GM's labour with a D&D sticker on it.

It's a very neat trick, if you can pull it off.

Now, at this point some readers may be asking: well, sure, but not all GMs are doormats. What about "killer" GMs who do gatekeep and railroad their players and otherwise act like complete tyrants? I hear horror stories about them all the time.

That's the second trick: these are not opposites. The GM as human Xbox and the GM as tyrant of the table both represent the GM doing all the actual work of making the game happen. The latter isn't the outcome that Hasbro wants, but it's a logical conclusion of the position they want the GM to be in.

[bethanydelleman]

My dad raises grass-fed beef cattle and I help him sell it, mainly by maintaining an online presence. For a while, I kept having the most ridiculous conversations with people who I assume were marketing students. I didn't want to be rude so I'd try to let them down gently but this one guy just kept insisting that with his magical marketing skills he could grow our business.

What he could not seem to comprehend is that we could not grow our business, at least not without significant time and monetary investment. Cows take two years from pregnancy to the size that you can sell. If we buy adult cows, our margins become razor thin or even negative. Even if we somehow could acquire some cows, our barn and hay fields are already near maximum capacity. Renting another field would be relatively easy, building a bigger barn not so much.

Cows are living animals, they aren't widgets that can be produced infinitely. Besides that, many businesses inherently cannot grow, because if they do they'll become something else. The delicious bakery down the street cannot produce much more than they do, if they began mass marketing and production they'd eventually be selling the equivalent of Twinkies. We grow grass-fed, organic beef, if we expanded how long would that last? Eventually we'd become the very factor farms that we hate. Some things can only ever be made on a small scale and they are usually the best things.

But also, what are they teaching them at marketing school and how is it so disconnected from reality?

[forgedblack]

[innerchildabortionclinic]

i've only recently realized how much sugar is in soda while I was doing a customer's order, and it made me wonder, why? what I mean is, i've eaten all sorts of sweet desserts that still have a lower amount of sugar per serving than soda specifically.

so i've done some curiosity research, and as I predicted, it's 100% a marketing thing.

INFORMATION ACQUIRED: the absurd amount of sugar in soda, and also the inclusion of caffeine, may create more reliable customers due to how the human body reacts to it. simply put: they'll want to drink it again. that means more sales. i'd say describing this as "addiction" is inaccurate. what people perceive as addiction to sugar is (I posted an article on this semi-recently) often a result of someone lacking in nutrients. restrictive diets can create cravings for sugar, for example. regardless, it is a craving a lot of people can have that companies can make use of. soda companies claim that caffeine is added to soda to maintain a certain flavor customers like associated with coca cola specifically. i've posted before about that particular company's rather unsavory business activities. safe to say, do not listen to soda companies on this one, because people have indeed done flavor-related studies on this exact topic and come to another conclusion.

to be clear on something, sugar is not inherently bad, it's a source of energy you need. as someone who works a physically active job, people are occasionally surprised or concerned about how much sugar I consume. however, the amount of sugar in soda is just plain unnecessary for most people, which is why it made me curious. note I said "unnecessary for most people" before someone into running long distance finds this post

[evan-collins90]

Franklin Mills shopping mall - Philadelphia, PA (opened May 11th, 1989)

Architect: Cambridge Seven Architects

Branding and Graphic Design: Milton Glaser

Scanned from the following: Special Event Graphics (P.I.E. Books), a 1990 issue of VM&SD Magazine, Storefronts & Facades 4, Art is Work - Milton Glaser, American Shopping Centers (by I.M. Tao), and Food Retail Display & Design 2

[bikiniarmorbattledamage]

I feel like this is probably the clearest mainstream demonstration of how even marketing professionals know that bikini armor and general objectification of bodies (especially women's) is not popular because it works or "sex sells", its popular because it avoids having to engage with the actual product. Or, as it has previously been put - the emergency bikini button.

This is how Netflix markets the collection:

And this is how the first part was marketed before it bombed and once again confirmed that Zack Snyder is not a movie making god, he is a guy who was good at music videos during an era (notice the blurb glosses over Justice League).

"We have Dune/Star Wars at home..."

It turns out people didn't want Dune/Star Wars at home, and without that shorthand, the only thing they can think of to try to sell it robot boobs or the combination of manboobs and uninspired CGI monsters.

Sex sells as a marketing strategy for anything other than sex/porn/erotica/etc is the clearest indicator that your marketing team don't see anything of value in your product either because it's not there, or because they don't understand the appeal.

It is the warning sign that either you need a new approach, or a new marketing team.

– wincenworks