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Decades ago, branding was defined as a name, slogan, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of these elements, that distinguish one company, product, or service from another. Today, branding is more complex and even more important.

What Should a Brand Do?

Branding is not just about getting your target market to select you over the competition. It's also about getting your prospects to see you as the sole provider of a solution to their problem or need. In its essence, branding is a problem-solver. A good brand will:

Clearly deliver a message

Confirm the brand's credibility in the marketplace

Emotionally connect target prospects with a product or service

Motivate the buyer to make a purchase

Create user loyalty

Branding and Understanding Your Customer

To succeed in branding, you must understand the needs and wants of your customers and prospects. You can achieve this by integrating your brand strategies throughout your company at every point of public contact.

Think of branding as though your company or organization were a living, breathing person. Imagine this person explaining who they are, why they're valuable, and what they specifically have to offer.

As consumers begin to identify with you, your brand will live in the hearts and minds of customers, clients, and prospects, and they'll connect on an emotional level.

The Importance of Branding and the Three Key Questions

Your brand is the source of a promise to your consumer. If you're billing yourself as the manufacturer of the longest-lasting light bulb, your brand has to live up to that.

In developing a strategic marketing plan, your brand serves as a guide to understanding the purpose of your key business objectives and enables you to align the plan with those objectives. Branding doesn't just count during the time before the purchase-the brand experience has to last to create customer loyalty. You can create that by answering these three questions:

1. Did the product or service perform as expected?

2. Was the quality as good as promised or better?

3. Was the entire customer experience positive?

If you can get positive answers to these three questions, you've created a loyal customer.

Beyond Loyal Customers

Branding not only creates loyal customers, but it also creates loyal employees. A quality brand gives people something to believe in and something to stand behind. It helps employees understand the purpose of the organization they work for. They feel like they're a part of something significant and not just a cog in a wheel.

A Basic Checklist to Evaluate Your Brand

How do you know if your brand is strong enough to give you the internal and external value that you need? Start by asking yourself the following:

Does the brand relate to my target audience? Will they instantly "get it" without too much thought?

Does the brand share the uniqueness of what I am offering and why it's important?

Does the brand reflect the promise made to my target audience and hold value for my internal audience?

Does the brand reflect the values that I want to represent to my customers?

Let these questions serve as a guideline in the development of your brand. If you're not sure about the answers then you may want to revamp your branding efforts.

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Decades ago, branding was defined as a name, slogan, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of these elements, that distinguish one company, product, or service from another. Today, branding is more complex and even more important. Branding is not just about getting your target market to select you over the competition.

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UPDATED - MAKE SURE YOU READ THIS!!!!!   Here is an example of how a Manufacturer of Tabletop Games Might Budget for a Promotional Campaign to Improve Market Awareness of Their Brand

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UPDATED - MAKE SURE YOU READ THIS!!!!!   Here is an example of how a Manufacturer of Tabletop Games Might Budget for a Promotional Campaign to Improve Market Awareness of Their Brand

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Market in Focus: Tabletop Gaming in the UK | tutor2u Business

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We've just flicked the switch on moving all our digital resources to instant digital download - via our new subject stores. For every subject you can now access each digital resource as soon as it is ordered. This will always be the latest edition of each resource too (and we'll update you automatically if there is an upgraded version to use).

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What are Tabletop Games?
According to Wikipedia, tabletop games are "games that are normally played on a table or other flat surface, such as board games, card games, dice games, miniatures wargames or tile-based games".

Using this definition of tabletop games, it can be seen to include quite a wide variety of game formats, with the defining feature that the games in question are physical in nature rather than delivered or played digitally.

There is clearly some brand overlap between tabletop games and digital games. For example, some of the most popular tabletop games such as Ticket to Ride (with over 6 million games sold) are available as both physical and app-based versions. Similarly, the Warhammer game franchise operated by Games Workshop also has app editions.

Tabletop Gaming magazine is a good place for students to spend a little time getting used to the kind and range of products included in the Tabletop gaming market.
Market Size & Growth

According to Euromonitor, global board game sales increased to $9.6 billion in 2016 from $9.3 billion in 2013.

In 2016, the global tabletop market was valued at approximately US$3.2 billion. The global market is expected to grow to US$8.1 billion by 2021 (source: Technavio).

The overall UK games market is valued at £5.11 billion and grew by 12.4% in 2017.

According to the UK Games Expo exhibitor guide, in 2018 the UK tabletop gaming segment of this market is worth £350 million.

According to the market research company NPD, sales of tabletop games in the UK rose 20 per cent in 2016.

The key points for students exploring this market are, therefore:

More than just a niche market - the UK market for tabletop games is worth hundreds of millions of pounds

Strong growth - much higher than the overall toy market

Product Development

The rapid growth of the board game market has encouraged many new entrants into the global market.

According to the Washington Post, in 2017 over 5,000 board games were introduced into the U.S. market alone

A large number of new tabletop games are developed and launched by independent publishers, many making use of crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter to both raise finance for, and publicise the game's development. You can view examples of the latest tabletop games being developed by UK manufacturers and seeking crowdfunding on Kickstarter here.

Distribution: How TableTop Games are Sold

Tabletop games are sold using a variety of distribution channels. The most popular titles are sold online by e-commerce giants such as Amazon as well as an increasing number of specialist online retailers of games such as Games Radar, Games Lore and GamesQuest

In 2009, there were 479 specialist games and toy stores in the UK. Since then, this number has increased year-over-year, with figures reaching 901 in 2016. Specialist toy stores are also widening the range of tabletop games they stock

A high percentage of tabletop games sold in the UK are English language versions of popular European games (where tabletop gaming is a better-established and more mainstream leisure activity). The leading distributor of these games, acting as an intermediary between manufacturers and retailers is Asmodee UK.

Most tabletop gaming manufacturers also sell direct to consumers using their websites. The most popular tabletop games tend to have dedicated websites too providing players with tips, tricks, forums and support

An interesting development in the market has been the growth of tabletop gaming cafes, including in the UK. These act as a source of community for players as well as a means of promoting new games by manufacturers

Promotion of Tabletop Gaming by Manufacturers
The barriers to entry in the tabletop gaming market are relatively low. For an investment of less than £10-25k it is possible to get a game concept designed, trialled and launched.

As a consequence, there is strong flow of new product development which makes it harder for manufacturers to get their games and brands noticed (until they discover a successful format).

Word of mouth recommendation and reviews by tabletop gamers is a particularly important source of demand. PR and social media activity therefore play a key role in promotion.

This useful article describes the promotional activities of tabletop gaming manufacturers who were looking to build awareness of their new product as they prepared for, and launched a crowdfunding campaign. The comments from the entrepreneurs highlights the importance in promotion campaigns of:

Engaging with existing social media audiences specialising in tabletop gaming (e.g. getting feedback from market experts)

Making use of tools such as Facebook groups, Instagram and Twitter to build an engagement audience and generate interest and excitement

Using paid-for advertising on social media (the targeting capabilities of Facebook were particularly cost-effective for many projects)

Another key promotional activity in this market is the use of exhibitions and conventions.

Whilst the target audience for tabletop gaming manufacturers is growing and becoming less dominated by the so-called "nerds", there is still a very strong sense of community amongst the gamer audience.

Attendance at gaming exhibitions and conventions has grown strongly in recent years, not just in traditionally strong gaming countries like the US and Continental Europe, but also now in the UK.

As this promotional document for UK Games Expo (2019) illustrates, such conventions are now spread over several days and attract tens of thousands of potential customers, stockists and other relevant stakeholders.

For a relatively low promotional spend, a tabletop gaming manufacturer might consider taking stand space at an event such as UK Games Expo 2019 (and/or tabletop gaming live 2019).

As you can see from the UK Games Expo details, attendance is significantly cheaper than attending the longer- established international events such as GenCon 2019 which is a large tabletop gaming convention running over 4 days in the US.

The largest board and card game convention in the world is Internationale Spieltage, usually just called Spiel, held in Essen, Germany each October.

MARKETING CAMPAIGNS TO INCREASE AWARENESS OF TABLETOP GAMING Here is an example of how a Manufacturer of Tabletop Games Might Budget for a Promotional Campaign to Improve Market Awareness of Their Brand
Imagine a manufacturer of Tabletop Games wanted to invest in a promotional campaign to build awareness of their brand.

A cost-effective campaign of £10,000 over 12 months might include:
(1) Attendance at a leading Tabletop Gaming Exhibition (cost: £3,000)
Using exhibitor data for Tabletop Gaming Live 2019, a budget for this might comprise:
Costings:

Exhibition stand: 3m x 2m = £270

Advert in the exhibition brochure (to maximise visits to the stand): £500

Travel, accommodation and other costs for staff manning the stand: £1,000

Marketing materials (brochures, free giveaways): £1,000

(2) Advertising on Facebook & Google Adwords (£4,000)
Targeted at keywords on Google searches, Facebook audiences based on typical profiles of board game players + re-marketing campaigns targeted at the business' website users
(3) PR Campaigns (£3,000)
Hire of PR agency to write and distribute articles and other PR material targeted at:

Tabletop gaming magazines

Specialist online forums (e.g. BoardGameGeek)

Toy & board game retailers

USEFUL ARTICLES TO READ ABOUT TABLETOP GAMING IN THE UK https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/may/12/millennials-drive-board-games-revival
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/25/board-games-back-tabletop-gaming-boom-pandemic-flash-point
https://www.board-game.co.uk/success-of-tabletop-gaming/https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161228005057/en/Top-3-Trends-Impacting-Global-Board-Games RESEARCH VIDEOS Tabletop Gaming on the Rise in Nottingham

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Market in Focus: Tabletop Gaming in the UK | tutor2u Business

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What are Tabletop Games? According to Wikipedia, tabletop games are "games that are normally played on a table or other flat surface, such as board games, card games, dice games, miniatures wargames or tile-based games".

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It's a bright Thursday morning in Oxford, and the Thirsty Meeples cafe on Gloucester Green market is thrumming with activity. As we sit at a sun-warmed window table, the maitre d', Gareth, introduces himself and presents a list of recommendations.

First, he suggests Forbidden Desert. It is not a cocktail. "You have all crash-landed in a desert where you are searching for a lost civilisation," explains Gareth, who sports a purple Thirsty Meeples "Game Guru" T-shirt. "A sandstorm hits, and you have to find all the pieces of a mythical flying ship to escape." Next he offers up Escape: The Curse of the Temple, in which we'll become "Indiana Jones-type people" who have to flee a crumbling ancient tomb. "Or," Gareth says, "how about fighting fires?". Last, he recommends Flash Point, in which I, my wife and two sons would rescue people from a burning building. Pull enough of them from the flames and we all win. But if a certain number are lost to the inferno, we lose. We choose Flash Point.

As we battle the conflagration, a 30-something couple next to us race against each other to construct railway routes in the Netherlands. Elsewhere, a young woman and two children play foxes raiding a farmyard. A pair of millennials create cartoon sushi meals depicted on playing cards. And a lone man from Bournemouth sits before an elaborate board, racing against the clock to defend a 1920s city from Lovecraftian horrors.

It's barely lunchtime and the place is close to full. Thirsty Meeples describes itself as "Oxford's first and only board-game cafe," and is one of a growing number of such establishments popping up all over the UK inspired by their growing popularity in the US. What has drawn these people here, from serious gamers to families? Eveline, a Dutch-born academic who is playing the railway game Ticket to Ride with her Belgian husband, Roger, thinks she has the answer. She looks around at her fellow patrons and the library of games that pack the shelves. "I would say it's the original social network."

We are seeing a much bigger crossover audience. The level of interest is much higher

Peter Wooding

We may now live in a world of Facebook, Pokémon Go, Netflix and iPads, but board-gaming is booming. Even the early 20th-century games explosion, which gave us such hardy perennials as Monopoly, Cluedo and Scrabble, has nothing on the current surge. Market research group NPD, which claims to measure around 70% of the UK toy trade, has recorded a 20% rise during the past year in the sales of tabletop games (including card and dice games, war games played with miniature figures and role-play titles such as Dungeons & Dragons, in which players imagine themselves as heroic warriors and wizards in imaginary, fantasy worlds).

Ben Hogg, marketing manager at UK distributor Esdevium Games (which imports the US-produced railway adventure Ticket to Ride, among many other titles) estimates that growth at closer to 35%. In 2012, he says, the full range of Ticket to Ride games (there are variants set in different countries) achieved 16,000 sales in the UK. This year, it has already sold 21,000. When he started at Esdevium, Hogg says the gamers they supplied were primarily interested in "geekier titles", such as fantasy war game Warhammer. Today, he says, "we are seeing a much bigger crossover audience. The level of interest is much higher than ever before."

Few have been better positioned to witness this phenomenon first-hand than Peter Wooding. A former punk rocker - he played guitar in 70s band The Jerks (who broke into the Top 100 in 1977 with Get Your Woofing Dog Off Me) - he opened the gaming store Orc's Nest in Covent Garden, London, in 1987. He and Jerks lead singer Simon Ellis were hooked on Dungeons & Dragons and tabletop war games. But specialist retailers were rare, so they put in an offer on a small, semi-constructed shop space. "There wasn't even a floor," Wooding says. "It was all just rubble." They raided skips to decorate the shop's interior in medieval dungeon style and scattered straw over the unfinished floor. They mostly stocked Dungeons & Dragons books and historical war games, but their best sellers were lead war-gaming miniatures, which dangled from boards lining the store's ground-floor walls.

"The first few years we were absolutely skint," says Wooding (Ellis has retired) as we chat behind the counter at Orc's Nest. Wearing a straw hat and decorated with facial piercings, the garrulous, imperially bearded 50-something is proud of his punk heritage. "We got investigated by the tax office. They said, 'Why are you doing this? You're only making 50 quid a week!' They thought we must have been embezzling the money or something..."

Today, almost 30 years on, the Orc's Nest logo of a skinhead-ish orc poking its tongue up its left nostril hasn't changed, but the floor straw and ye olde joinery have been replaced with brushed aluminium and black-and-yellow chevrons, giving it the look of a Peter Saville-designed 80s sci-fi space-station. And the stock and clientele are remarkably different.

"About five years ago, I noticed we were selling fewer miniatures," says Wooding, "so I started putting shelves of board games down here" - he gestures to rows of colourful game boxes with snappy titles, Small World, Agricola, Carcassonne, Pandemic - "and every time we did that the takings went up." He also noted a decline in what he tactfully describes as the "stereotypical gamer" - dyed-in-the-wool hobbyists who would typically be lone, white men.

"You get a lot more couples now - young, professional, just bought somewhere. They still want to meet up with mates but they don't want to go out and get pissed any more. They like the idea of getting a game out, having a few drinks, bit of fun for two or three hours around the table."

Once, he admits, this more casual, "mainstream" gamer, certainly the women, would have blanched at walking into his establishment. He points out the cover of Pandemic, a key title in the board-gaming resurgence, whose players must collaborate to fight global disease outbreaks. Front and centre on the box art is its Scientist character, a woman. "Much more inclusive," says Wooding. "Much wider appeal. More friendly."

The awful thing about Monopoly is the first person to go bankrupt is left in a corner and everyone else plays on

Catherine Howell, curator of toys and games at the V&A Museum of Childhood in east London, describes Pandemic as "the game of the moment". She chose it as one of four focus games, alongside chess, Game of the Goose and Monopoly, in her exhibition Game Plan: Board Games Rediscovered. Howell describes herself as more of a traditional gamer, whose strongest memories of childhood are playing Scrabble and Cluedo with her family. She confesses that, until she began thinking about the exhibition around five years ago, she wasn't familiar with the new wave of board games that populate the shelves of Orc's Nest and Thirsty Meeples, part of what she calls a "designer-led resurgence" that originated in Germany, then spread across Europe and North America. But she was struck by advances in game design that made the experience of playing these games far less fractious (and more enjoyable) than those family Monopoly sessions.

"Eurogames", as they are known, are notable for their relatively gentle themes (farming, landscape-building, dock-working), the fact that they reduce the element of luck and - most importantly - the way they ensure no player is eliminated before the end. The game zero for this revolution is The Settlers of Catan (now rebranded Catan), created by a German designer, Klaus Teuber. Since its publication in 1995, it's sold more than 22m copies in 30 languages. Players competitively establish settlements on an island and trade resources with the other players, deeping participants fully engaged and sustaining the drama of the narrative right to the conclusion. "That's very important," says Howell, "because nobody feels left out. That's the awful thing if you're playing Monopoly: the first person to become bankrupt is left in the corner while everyone else plays on."

That crucial development finds its ultimate refinement in the most recent tabletop trend, the "co-operative game", whereby every player wins or loses as a team member, whether fighting fires (Flash Point) or saving the world from infection (Pandemic). "It provokes a lot more social interaction," says Howell.

Pandemic was created by a 43-year-old Californian, Matt Leacock, who is one of tabletop gaming's most successful designers. He was inspired by Reiner Knizia's 2000 Eurogame title Lord of the Rings, which requires players to cooperate as one of the four questing hobbits from Tolkien's fantasy epic. "When I played that with friends we got scared," recalls Leacock. "There was self-sacrifice. There were all sorts of highs and lows. At the end, everybody felt good, whether they won or lost. I wanted to see if I could do something like that."

Leacock's passion for board games goes back to his experience of frustration with them as a child. "Games were my favourite birthday gift," he says, "but I'd get very excited, open up the box, then we'd play and there would just be crushing disappointment. The games never seemed good enough to me." So, with the help of a game-enthusiast uncle, young Leacock would flip over the boards and try to design something better using the same components.

Decades later, while leading the design team at a communications start-up, he concocted Pandemic, curious to see if he could create a game "where there was a lot of really frightening non-linear growth" - in other words, sudden surprises and twists. At the time, he recalls, pandemics were "in the news", with outbreaks of bird flu and Sars, "so that was very much in the back of my mind".

Pandemic has been a runaway success, and the latest version, Pandemic Legacy: Season One, represents another leap forward in game design. Co-created with rising board-game star Rob Daviau, it incoprorates, Leacock explains "a tremendous amount of storytelling. It's similar to an electronic game in that you develop your characters, you get new rules and the state of the world changes. Irrevocably, in fact. It is an unveiling story. We named it Season One because it has an arc, so it's akin to watching a season of one of your HBO favourites."

The growth of the video games industry has, perhaps counterintuitively, been one of the biggest factors in the proliferation of these modern, innovatively designed board games - largely because the presence of games consoles under so many millions of TVs and the rise of mobile gaming have normalised game-playing.

"[Video games and board games have] learned an awful lot from each other," says Esdevium's Ben Hogg. "Everyone's a mobile gamer now. Speak to anyone who's got a smartphone, they've got at least one game they like to play on it. Now there are more people who are open to the idea of playing a game than ever before." (It's also not uncommon to find app versions of board games, such as the popular map-building game Carcassonne, which works very well on a tablet.

At the same time, crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter have lowered the barrier to entry for people trying to break into the board-games industry. Tabletop games can raise more money on Kickstarter than their digital counterparts. The designers of the forthcoming video-to-board-game adaptation Dark Souls, for example, sought £50,000 on Kickstarter. They hit that in three minutes, and ended up with £4.2m.

The internet has also vastly accelerated the word-of-mouth on which the tabletop industry relies. Sites such as BoardGameGeek provide a valuable archive of reviews and YouTube shows such as Shut Up & Sit Down or TableTop - presented by American actor Wil Wheaton, star of Stand By Me and Star Trek: The Next Generation) - have flung open the window of interest. There is now something known as the TableTop effect: if Wheaton features a title on his show, in which he and other celebrities play a game while commentating on their decisions, its sales will spike. "The TableTop effect is massive," says Peter Wooding. "If Wil features a game, it immediately becomes unavailable!"

You connect with people across the table. It's a very human thing

Matt Leacock, creator of Pandemic

Wheaton's zeal for board games borders on the evangelical. "The mission of TableTop is to share the joy of gaming with the world," he says. "I think we live in a time where our entire world is so divided, it's almost balkanised. If we're to emerge from the goddamn dumpster fire that is 2016 intact, we're gonna need to see our shared humanity, and I [hope to] show by example that tabletop gaming can be about the journey you go on together when you're playing a game. It can be about the friendships and relationships that form. So when I hear games are selling out all over the place, that thrills me. It means that people who are not already gamers, or maybe not as insane about it as I am, they're going out and buying them. It's like Muggles are buying tickets to Hogwarts."

Back at Thirsty Meeples in Oxford, I talk to owners John and Zuzi Morgan. In 2012 they decided to sell tickets to Wheaton's Muggles, quitting their jobs as social workers to try and turn their love for tabletop games into a full-time business.

They already had an extensive game collection, and John had heard about a cafe in Toronto named Snakes & Lattes - the menu listed games rather than meals - that had sparked the spread of board-game cafes across North America. After a visit to sample its appeal, the Morgans opened Thirsty Meeples (a "meeple" is a game component that represents the player, typically in Eurogames a plump, triangular wooden figure), and it's certainly paid off. "The trend is upwards," John tells me when I ask how business is doing.

Why does Zuzi think the love of tabletop games grew to such a point that she and John could turn their hobby into their livelihood? "There's so much technology," she says. "Everybody's busy and you want to bring people back together in a way that's not just staring at screens. It's a natural thing in people. We are supposed to be together and communicating with each other."

For a time, video-gaming offered a level of physical social interaction, at the arcade or through multi-player sofa games that friends or family members could play at the same time, in the same room. Then multi-player video games moved online, and fellow players became physically removed from one another, if not completely anonymous. In some digital gaming arenas, that anonymity brewed a poisonous atmosphere.

"Multi-player video-gaming was fun," says Wil Wheaton. "And then dickheads ruined it. It just became this cesspool of toxic aggression and unpleasant behaviour. I wonder if people who had enjoyed all that at first started looking for another way to play games where you could see the person you were playing with."

Direct interaction is important to Matt Leacock, too. "You connect with people across the table," he says. "It's a very human thing." And it's tactile: "You need to handle the physical components, to get the feel for the texture on the cards and see the wood grain on your components."

Gaming has always had a social function. Fernand Gobet, Professor of Psychological Sciences at the University of Liverpool and co-author of Moves In Mind - The Psychology Of Board Games, says that in some countries "playing a board game is part of the culture - such as mancala games in some African countries - and can be seen as a soft kind of initiation ritual. But in most countries, the benefit of board games is to offer the opportunity for families to play. In a sense what matters is having such a common activity, and not the detail of the game being played."

These points are echoed by Thirsty Meeples' patrons. "It's the more social thing to do these days," says Mark, a 35-year-old information modeller from Portsmouth.

Roger and Eveline, the couple playing Ticket to Ride, explain that they are in the middle of packing up all their worldly possessions to return to the Netherlands because, says Roger, "we can no longer afford to live in Oxford." As cafe regulars, they couldn't depart without enjoying one final session. "We seem to be living in an age where we've become scared of our sophistication," he says. "We crave things that feel authentic. Or which remind us of the simpler time of our childhood." Board gaming is "innocence regained in a world that..." He looks at me with a small smile. "Who'd have thought David Bowie was indeed the mystical force holding us all together?"

For Roger and Eveline, as for Wil Wheaton, tabletop gaming has become more than entertainment. "A game is not a puzzle to be solved," Wheaton believes, "but a narrative to be told." And, in our increasingly online society, to be shared, too - directly and physically, in the real world.
Game Plan: Board Games Rediscovered is at the V&A Museum of Childhood, London E2, from 8 October to 23 April See also: Carcassonne (2000), Catan (1995)
Designed by Southampton-born Alan R Moon and published by US company Days of Wonder, this hugely-popular railway-construction game for two-to-five players is a great starting point for anyone intrigued by the new wave of gentle "Euro"-inspired games, which offer a friendlier, less-fractious experience than traditional titles like Monopoly. With its numerous variants, you can play on your choice of country around the world.
See also: Citadels (2000), Love Letter (2012)
A warm-up game is a quick, simple game - a kind of aperitif to the board-game main course. And Phil Walker-Harding's card game Sushi Go! is one of the most popular, lasting no longer than 20 minutes and requiring its players to frantically construct sushi dishes in a restaurant.
See also: Mysterium (2015), Robinson Crusoe: Adventures On The Cursed Island (2012)
Matt Leacock's game-changing phenomenon, in which players team up to combat worldwide disease outbreaks before they spread beyond control. Intense and dramatic; if anybody pre-judges the idea of the cooperative gaming experience as easy, this will prove them wrong.
See also: Camel Up (2014), One Night Ultimate Werewolf (2014)
This espionage-based word game designed by Czech designer Vlaada Chvátil is best played with six to eight people. It sets two teams against each other, as they use one-word clues to try and guess the identities of all their own secret agents before the other team. The winner of this year's Spiel des Jahres award (gaming's best picture Oscar).
See also: Le Havre (2008), Five Tribes (2014)
Top choice for strategy fiends. Players must build and run a 17th-century farm, maximising their crop and livestock yields and protecting their families from starvation.

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Why, in the golden age of video games, are we choosing to get together round a table again to play with counters on a board?

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What is the Importance of Marketing Mix and why are the 4 P’s important?

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There are many Marketing mix articles here on marketing91 and we keep analysing more and more. We also encourage all small business owners and strategy

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Place refers to distribution or the methods and location you use for your products or services to be easily accessible to the target customers.

Your product or service dictates how it should be distributed.

If you own a retail shop, for example, the distribution chain ends with you and you supply to your customers directly.

If you own a factory, your options will be to either sell your products directly or sell them to retailers or vendors as your distribution strategy.
Selling Directly
Direct selling can be a good starting point, especially if the product supply is limited or you only sell seasonal products.

One advantage of selling your products directly is you get a more personal feel of the market because you interact directly with the customers so you can easily adapt to the changes.

Another is that you control your product's pricing and the methods on which it should be sold.

Distribution methods may include, but are not limited to, door-to-door, retail, e-commerce, mail order, or on-site.

You need to have a retail interface with the target customers if you want to sell directly.

You can sell either electronically or in person.

If this requirement will not work for you, you might need to consider selling through a reseller or an intermediary.

Selling Through a Reseller

If you want to have wider distribution for your product, you can sell it through a third party, either a retailer or wholesaler, who will then resell the product to their customers.

This distribution strategy also reduces the pressure of running a distribution system.

Reseller sales also reduce the storage space required for product stocks.

However, you will lose personal contact, and even company identity in some cases, with the customers since they will be talking now to your resellers.

Some resellers may request that your product be sold under their own brand.

Intermediaries can also be specific about supply flow before they can handle your products for reselling.

They would want the product available for distribution all year round.

This can put a lot of stress on the production line, especially if you only produce seasonally.

But if you can agree to that, you might consider selling through intermediaries as your distribution strategy.

Market coverage refers to how wide or varied you want your products to be distributed.

This applies to either direct sales or through intermediaries. There are three types of market coverage that you may want to adopt.

Intensive distribution

This ensures the widest distribution possible for your product or service.

You sell your products in as many locations or markets as possible. And often at times, you need to lower your prices.

This is the method most commonly used by large businesses or manufacturers to reach customers nationwide or even globally.

Examples of products effectively distributed using this distribution strategy are convenience products or things we buy regularly, like candy or chewing gum.

Selective distribution

You may also want to sell only to a few select businesses or customers.

This is called selective distribution and is the strategy commonly used for selling upscale products and is sold by resellers who deal only with high-quality products.

It's easier to establish consumer relationships using this distribution strategy as compared to intensive distribution.

Exclusive distribution

This strategy restricts your product distribution to only one reseller.

The reseller will have exclusive rights to sell your product or service, and in return, you may also be the sole supplier.

This works more effectively with specialty products that you can promote as prestigious because you are the sole supplier and the intermediary is the sole reseller.

Other Factors to Consider

The product sales volume and its characteristics will influence what inventories you should maintain and also how the products should be transported.

You may opt to ship in large volumes across countries or do it via retail to single individuals.

If you're into manufacturing, you need to carefully monitor the total costs by considering every factor required in production like the acquisition of the materials and the distribution strategy you choose to use.

Each of the distribution strategies has its own characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages.

Choose one that best applies to your product and business.

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Place - Marketing Mix Distribution Strategy

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Place refers to distribution or the methods and location you use for your products or services to be easily accessible to the target customers. Your product or service dictates how it should be distributed. If you own a retail shop, for example, the distribution chain ends with you and you supply to your customers directly.

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This post first appeared on Brandon The Game Dev's blog!
Self-publishing a board game is a long, drawn out process. Some of this goes back to the process of creating your game, getting it manufactured, and raising funds. Yet if there were a single thing that self-publishers regularly fail at, it's marketing.

Marketing covers a wide array of activities that convince people to care about and eventually buy your game. Yet that definition doesn't do it justice. Marketing is best understood as an ongoing process that breathes itself into everything you do as a self-publishing board game developer. As an example, look at this old project timeline for Highways & Byways. That gray bar at the bottom of the chart that stretches from the beginning to the end is labelled Marketing.

Marketing is something I put tons of time and thought into. I've graduated with my MBA and I'm a published researcher in the subject of online viral marketing. Even still, there is so much to learn that even with that background, I have a hard time getting my arms around marketing as a whole.

For that reason, this is going to be a long post. I've broken it into 12 distinct sections for the sake of readability.

1. Targeting

2. Attention, Interest, Desire, And Action

3. Product

4. Your Niche

5. Price

6. Process & Logistics

7. Promotion - Core Concepts

8. Promotion - Outreach

9. Promotion - Reviews

10. Promotion - Distribution

11. Promotion - Kickstarter

12. Promotion - Advertising

Targeting
There is no perfect product. There is no perfect audience. When it comes to marketing, there is no way to make something that is objectively the best in all situations. Because value is so subjective, what you need to focus on is making the perfect product for a very specific audience.

In board gaming, there are lots of little communities. Remember, the board game community is not a monolithic singular entity, but rather a whole bunch of different mini-communities with interests that roughly line up. For example, I'll never get people to play Twilight Struggle with me at a party, but Codenames ...now we're talking. All the considerations that go into making a game - length, weight, price, art style, gameplay, packaging, and so on - needs to be tailored for a very specific audience. Alternatively, you can make whatever you want and just find the perfect audience later. Both approaches work and have different pros and cons.

The goal of marketing, especially when you're small and just getting started, is not to broadcast your message. Until you have a big media presence, you can't really use "the hype machine" to your advantage. You just don't have the power to do that. You can, however, target a very particular audience - this is the best use of your limited resources and it's much more effective. Don't broadcast. Narrowcast instead.
Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action
I've mentioned the AIDA model before in How to Get Big on Twitter as a Board Game Dev. Much of what I said there bears repeating.

AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. When you're a marketer, the first thing you need to do is get people to know you exist - attention. Then you have to make people care about your game - interest. If they start to want your game, that's a good sign - desire. Next, they get on your website or Amazon with intention to buy - action. Marketing is a slow dance. You have to very slowly build your reputation.

The idea here is that marketing is not just about getting attention and targeting your audience well. No, it's about convincing people to buy your game and to talk about. This is a multi-step process and you need to understand that. You cannot simply shout about your game into the void of Twitter and pray for the best. You need to create a "sales funnel."

Here is an example of a sales funnel:

Use social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to "generate leads" or garner Attention.

Ask people individually if they'd like to sign up for your newsletter. If they say yes, that's Interest.

Use your newsletter effectively to create Desire.

Once you've created desire, ask them to take Action, like backing your Kickstarter.

There are a million ways to do this and I can't tell you the best. In fact, I'm still tweaking, learning, and growing all the time on this because I've not yet perfected my sales funnel.
Product
If you look on Board Game Geek, you'll find that there are so many types of games out there. It'll make your head spin. You want to know exactly what sort of game you're making so that you can select the ideal target market and tweak around them. If you can't describe your game, you're in deep marketing trouble.

I suggest you look on Board Game Geek to find similar games to yours. There will always be similar games. Know how to make comparisons of your game to other games. Highways & Byways, for example, is a racing game with a board that looks like Ticket to Ride crossed with a highway map.

Know how to describe mechanics that are in your game and see who it appeals to. Some people dislike "take that" mechanics because they're too mean-spirited, such as the well-regarded reviewer, Rahdo. It's no use selling a game with "take that" mechanics to him, then, is it? Likewise, some people really, really love "take that" mechanics and they're the ones I sell to.

Know exactly who you're trying to appeal to. This determines your target audience. Your target audience will differ with each game.
Your Niche
The intersection of your product and your target makes your niche. This is a special place in the market that you occupy better than anyone else (ideally). Your niche in the board game industry is your competitive advantage. You want to own a niche. You want to scratch a particular itch for a particular person better than anyone else.

When you have the perfect product for a specific target, that's how you get a niche. When you have a working sales funnel that your target audience responds to, that's how you turn a niche into cash.
Price
Price is not terribly important. I know, blasphemy, but bear with me for a second. If you're making the perfect game for your niche, your customers are lot less likely to nickel and dime you. For that matter, in my observation, board gamers are willing to spend money hand over fist for a lot of new games. That's why you see a lot of big titles retailing at 70, 80, or 100 dollars.

The degree to which customers make decisions based solely on price is called "price sensitivity." Board gamers aren't all that sensitive to price, and here's some proof...
Process & Logistics
Marketing is more than simply product, niche, pricing, and setting up a marketing system. It's also about the subjective experiences that people have while they're dealing with you. It's also about what people think about when they hear about your game, when they hear about your website, and when they hear your name. This can all be classed under the bailiwick of "branding."

How do you control your perceived branding? Yes, your website, logo, and all that stuff matters, but let's talk about four specific logistics processes which affect how people perceive your brand:

1. The sales process. Everything about how you approach people affects your brand. From the language you use, the venues you reach out to people through, and the entire process by which you persuade people to buy your product falls under the sales process.

2. The buying or pre-order process. The website or offline sales channels you use to facilitate buying or pre-ordering affect how people see you. You want purchasing to be as seamless as possible so you appear professional.

3. The fulfillment process. You need to fulfill games as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. You want people to think of you as someone who keeps their promises.

4. The returns process. If people decide they don't like your game, you need to have a seamless return process. People who return your games but have a good experience returning the game will have a more positive view of your brand. They might choose to buy from you later.

While processes and logistics may seem just like means to an end, it's important that people feel like they're being treated well at every step of the process. This is an important part of marketing because these processes will determine your reputation.
Promotion - Core Concepts
Wikipedia says that "[p]romotion covers the methods of communication that a marketer uses to provide information about it's product." In short, promotion is how you spread the word about your business. When you're a first time business owner, or especially a first time game dev, mastery of promotion is absolutely critical to your success. That's why half this guide is dedicated to promotion and promotion alone.

Promotion is a big tent that covers a lot of different concepts which I cover in more detail below. The first is outreach - how you find first-time customers (also known as "lead generation"). One very specific type of outreach that is critical in the board game industry is the review process. Then you have distribution, which tends to overlap with promotion in some critical ways. Kickstarter itself, which many people falsely see as the means of succeeding in the board game industry in and of itself, is a form of promotion. Finally, there is also advertising - a very effective and nuanced form of promotion that tends to scare people off because it costs money.
Promotion - Outreach
Outreach is how you find people to care about your game. It is how you find your target and tell them about your product so that you can carve out your niche. Some people call this "lead generation."

There are a number of great ways you can run an effective outreach campaign. You can use social media, go to conventions, do an email newsletter, start a chat room, create a Facebook group, and even advertise. While there are some methods that are more effective than others, you want to choose a form of outreach that you like and really stick to it. Just try one or two forms of outreach at first and work your way up if you find that you have enough time to do more.

Social media includes Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and other popular websites where people tend to hang out. This is what people immediately jump to when they think of outreach. However, mastering social media is a challenge all of its own and that requires nuanced thinking which I spell out in Setting Up Social Media as a Board Game Dev: A Primer Course. This is the most approachable way to find and reach out to your target audience, but it's also a fantastic way to get ignored in the unending shuffle of these constantly noisy networks.

You can also meet a lot of people very quickly by going to board game cons. By meeting people face-to-face and getting contact information such as phone numbers and email addresses, you can get reach out to lots of people in a short amount of time. Cons, however, are intimidating, cost a lot of money, and take a lot of time. As I have a full-time job and can't take off that many days, cons are not right for me most of the time - though I am beginning to seek out more weekend cons. Don't write them off just because they don't work for me yet!

Email newsletters are a great way to reach out to people, too. You have to ask for a lot of email addresses and put out a regular, high-quality newsletter with a service like Mailchimp. It's tricky to do both of these things, but email is by far one of the greatest ways to contact people online. Given a choice between a mailing list of 100 and a Twitter following of 1000, I would take the mailing list every single time - no contest. I have personally had great results with my newsletter ( which you should totally sign up for).

I cannot begin to list all the different forms of outreach. This aspect of business rewards creativity and hard work. As long as you can reach out to a highly targeted group of people and keep in touch with them on a systematic basis, you're well on your way to succeeding with outreach.
Promotion - Reviews
Reviews warrant their own section as a very specific form of outreach. They are such a critical credibility-builder for new game devs. Good reviews convince people to buy your game. The occasional bad review still gets your name out there for others to discover you later, plus it makes you look more authentic.

Use Reddit, Board Game Geek, and social media to identify reviewers who fall within your target market. You'll want to send games to them when it comes time for the review stage of your game's development. If the reviewer is a professional with an engaged audience and you select based on them falling within your target market, you have a good chance of getting a good review that is seen by people who were already predisposed to like your game's style from the get-go.
Promotion - Distribution
Distribution involves ways that your game is seen outside of just your website or company Amazon account. It is sometimes helpful to have third-party retailers or subscription boxes sell your game on your behalf. When you're starting out, the exposure alone can be extremely useful to you. Good distribution gets your game seen by more people.

Want to know a secret? This is actually something I've bungled on War Co. in the past, so I don't want to purport to be an expert on this. I encourage you to ask questions about the ideal way to distribute your game and do better than I did my first time.
Promotion - Kickstarter
Kickstarter is the last step in a long marketing dance for a lot of game developers. Your Kickstarter campaign is generally only the Action part of AIDA. Getting people to pay Attention, growing their Interest, and cultivating Desire - those are all up to you. Kickstarter is nothing more than a struck match on a pile of tinder that you assembled yourself.

That said, about 30-40% of backers tend to find you through the search, meaning Kickstarter is a good form of outreach. A lot of people who don't care at all about social media are trawling Kickstarter in search of the newest new. Still, the degree to which Kickstarter contributes dollars-wise tends to pin itself to how much of an entourage you bring on your own.

I think it's also worth mentioning that $1 rewards are one of the best things you can have on Kickstarter. Yes, it makes your backer count go up, which is itself a good thing. More importantly, though, once the campaign is done, you can ask everyone to fill out a survey - meaning you can ask for email addresses if you have a newsletter. Kickstarter is not just a way of convincing people to give you money, it can also be a way to capture and hold attention for future games.
Promotion - Advertising
Advertising is the last thing I wanted to cover. People tend to get spooked by advertising because they hate the idea of giving up their hard earned cash for something abstract. Plus, it's super easy to get burned by advertising and you see a lot of smart people talking bad about advertising because they failed to understand more critical, basic marketing lessons. Still, the potential time savings might just be worth a few hundred bucks in Facebook ads. You'd be a fool to dismiss advertising entirely.

Facebook and Board Game Geek tend to be pretty good places to advertise board games. I'd stick to Facebook when you're new, though, because Board Game Geek has a really high minimum expense. Facebook doesn't require you to spend much at all and it also comes with robust analytics that let you make the most of your ad.

When you make an ad, you need to act like a scientist, creating ads and seeing how people react to them. You subtly tweak them until you get better and better responses. But where do you begin? Start with something that your target audience will respond to. Start with the tightest, smallest possible audience.

Once you have a tight target and a good basic idea of what to say to grab attention, you need one last thing. You need to make sure your ad goes to a page that leads to high conversions. The word "conversion" here means "a person who does what you want them to do" in marketing jargon. Do you want them to follow you on Twitter, buy your game, back your campaign, or sign up for your newsletter? Think hard about what you want people to do once you start an ad.

Marketing board games can be very tricky. This article was designed to give you a broad overview of all the different things that go into marketing. My hope is that by spelling it all out, you'll be more equipped to pitch your game to people who care. Use this guide to ask more questions, run more tests, and get your wheels turning.
Thanks Brandon for sharing your post here! Check out Brandon's blog: Brandon The Game Dev.

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A Crash Course in Board Game Marketing & Promotion - Black Shell Media

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This post first appeared on Brandon The Game Dev's blog! Self-publishing a board game is a long, drawn out process. Some of this goes back to the process of creating your game, getting it manufactured, and raising funds. Yet if there were a single thing that self-publishers regularly fail at, it's marketing.

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Over the last few weeks I have been thinking a lot about inclusivity, diversity and microaggression in boardgames and the boardgaming world - in terms of design, playing, advertising and assumptions that are made by those commissioning, publishing and promoting board games.

According to the YouGov Profiling tool, I am very much THE average UK boardgame player - female, 25-39, middle class, works in education / research / entertainment, lives on the south coast and has less than £125 per month spare. The only place we differ is in the average UK boardgame player's tendency to be slightly right wing (which, thankfully, I really am not!!).

I don't, however, look that much like the illustration used (she looks like a kind of slimmed down Nigella Lawson)... although, much more like that than the average BoardGameGeek reader/user from the same poll (although this is based on a tiny sample size of 6, so not statistically very useful - used here more as a provocation).

I'm not surprised by this at all - I personally FEEL very much like the average boardgame player in this country. However, this may come as quite a surprise for many of those in the groups that hold dominant positions in the boardgame industry and discourse around boardgames more widely - I really don't LOOK like them at all. I don't have a particular axe to grind here - I love and respect people of all genders and identities, men, women, cis, trans, non-binary, and of all manner of persuasions, races, creeds and cultural background equally. What I'm interested in is the true diversity of humans and human experience being better represented in this community that I am part of.

I'm consistently heartened by the outright feminist stance of the (predominantly white, middle class and male) team behind Shut Up and Sit Down - you can read their excellent review of Cards Against Humanity here. It's refreshing to see and hear commentary by those who are actively re-examining their positions in relation to dominant discourses, who are approaching the hobby they love with an increased sense of responsibility to ensure a greater inclusivity and an awareness of the politics that surrounds making and playing games.

In response to last summer's GamerGate controversy, Matt Lees (SU&SD contributor and video / board game journalist) made this video to help address issues around a reluctance to talk about the implicit politics involved in games and gaming. He's talking more directly about the video games industry but I think there are clear relationships to the boardgame and 'hobby' game discourse here too.

Luckily, the level of overt aggression and the excessive trolling experienced by those involved in GamerGate doesn't translate so much into the world of boardgaming - it is far harder to be overtly abusive to those who sit across the table from you within what was charmingly termed as 'slapping distance' in this Unplugged Games interview with Esther MacCallum-Stewart.

This does still leave us with those covertly aggressive or hostile actions, and the actions taken that may not even be seen or deemed as in any way aggressive by those making them. Gil Hova (boardgame designer and player) writes about this eloquently in his post on the idea of Invisible Ropes.

"An invisible rope is something that most people in gaming don't notice, but that can turn off someone just entering the hobby. They start walking to us, but then they get stopped by one of these invisible ropes. They turn away, and try to approach from another direction, and hit another invisible rope. Then they try another approach, and hit another invisible rope. And that's it; they turn away. All these ropes add together to tell them: Gaming is not for them. They can't tell us why, because they can't easily see the ropes that kept them away. Again, this isn't about one huge wall keeping people away from gaming. This is death by a thousand tiny cuts. It's a bunch of tiny actions we perform." (Hova, 2014)

Hova goes on to list and expand on many of the factors (repeated "microaggressions") that might dissuade anyone outside of the dominant white cis male group from joining the community (as players, and by default as designers or working within the industry):

lack of representation of women as equal female characters on the covers & within boardgames and gameplay

inadvertently condescending strategy help

the language used in rulebooks, to communicate & discuss games

reinforcing societal expectations of gender roles

He also reinforces, in the post, that these are on the whole unintentional actions, and in my experience I would tend to agree - when I find myself in different situations within the boardgames industry, hobby and community, my being a woman is not usually an overt problem. People I meet on the whole are welcoming, friendly and simply love to play and talk about games - they are excited and passionate, sometimes even evangelistic about this community they are part of. There are, however, regularly times when my experiences, abilities, perspective, ways of thinking, tastes, likes and dislikes are belittled, ignored, 'mansplained', assumed or excluded. And this is coming from me, THE average UK boardgame player and someone who is pretty embedded in the hobby, community and industry - I have already passed the 'invisible ropes' Hova describes, I am 'in'. Imagine what it is like for anyone 'outside' of this...

At last weekend's UK Games Expo, I was excited to see Cat Tobin (chair) (MD at RPG publishers Pelgrane Press), and speakers Esther MacCallum-Stewart (research fellow and author) & Monica Valentinelli (author and game designer) talk on inclusivity and diversity in games. I had intended to live tweet the event, but was scuppered slightly by my patchy internet connection. What follows are snatches of the conversation (composed originally as tweets), so apologies for any slight mis-quoting or paraphrasing. The panel were coming from highly-qualified positions in the world of RPGs, rather than strictly boardgames, but again (as with the crossovers into the video game discourse) much of what was said relates.

"Addressing under representation, why bother? People don't notice the absences or lack of diversity." Esther MacCallum-Stewart

Much like the ideas expressed in Gil Hova's 'invisible ropes', Esther MacCallum-Stewart raised the point that many people involved in gaming (design, publishing and playing) don't actually notice the under-representation of diversity throughout the hobby. It's worth taking a look now at the boardgames on your shelf now as a quick test - how many of them explicitly feature female, non-binary, non-white or disabled characters on the box and in the gameplay? How representative / diverse is your gaming group? Are there any potential barriers or 'invisible ropes' stopping that from being wider?

"People want to see themselves represented. There's a business case for this too..." Monica Valentinelli

These aren't simply questions about tokenism or political correctness. The case was made repeatedly during the panel discussion that games publishers are missing out on large potential markets by unintentionally excluding people through under-representation. Monica Valentinelli also raised an important point of difference between the positions of 'e ssentialism ' (only writing from your own background and experiences) and 'mutual respect' (writing from careful research, not making assumptions about a person's experience our background and not reinforcing stereotypes). There was also a strong recognition across the panel that writers and designers are working harder in the background to widen representation, and that things are starting to improve slowly.

"Creating characters that are three dimensional is important, really human rather than with bolt on 'female' attributes" Esther MacCallum-Stewart & Monica Valentinelli

"On making interesting characters: The recently rebooted Lara Croft is a real person doing real things, and struggling with them" Esther MacCallum-Stewart

MacCallum-Stewart and Valentinelli both called for more application of the ideas of mutual respect in design - rather than characters depicted and played in games (and I would say by extension modes of gameplay and game mechanics) being included simply to satisfy a quota or a set of out-dated assumptions about what would attract players (through imagery, marketing, art direction and visual styles), that publishers should be rethinking the 'human' qualities being addressed and represented. This sense of beginning with human experiences, and a wider and more thoughtful consideration of experiences outside of your own, should lead designers to a wider diversity of styles or play, types of representation and more diversity in the industry as a whole.

"Gamers are coming into the hobby from lots of different directions. We need to consider this when designing for new players." Esther MacCallum-Stewart

This represents a potentially uncomfortable shift for those in dominant positions, as Matt Lees alludes to (above) in his tongue-in-cheek comments about the 'fearful, pitchfork chat about how ladies might get into game and make all the games about lady things', but if the industry is going to catch up with the demographics they actually serve, this needs to continue to build quite rapidly.

"Including more people and more perspectives doesn't mean that your game will be bad..." Esther MacCallum-Stewart

"Multiple perspectives means more challenges, but this is really productive for design [...] There's some outreach that can be done to encourage fans to become makers and producers. This would encourage a larger variety of voices in the industry." Monica Valentinelli

Again, these statements speak to the need for a shift in the culture and mindset of the industry as a whole. The panel offered some useful examples and strategies for starting to think about how to achieve this through writing and design - eg in RPGs, using archetypes to allow for wider representation and developing of richer characters, or the use of the gender neutral pronoun 'zhe' in Mortal Remains RPG. They also addressed the complex problems that arise when designers and players encounter or meet head-on challenges to a desire to create safe spaces within gameplay.

"How to deal with historical detail that might be sexist, racist or exclusionary? Important to put this in context for readers/players in bite sized bits rather than replay existing dominant narratives" Monica Valentinelli

"Having people roleplay to treat genders equally is difficult because of ingrained and learned behaviours, phrases and challenges." Esther MacCallum-Stewart

The suggestion is that these could become points full of creative potential, and that the space of play (and design) allows those involved to confront and question dominant narratives rather than simply conform, reiterate, repeat and reinforce them (knowingly or unknowingly). Pretty amazing stuff, right?

My hope is that, in future, when I use the word feminism in conversations to do with boardgames, it won't be misunderstood, disregarded or thrown out. In this case, it really refers to the process of working to identify and slowly change things. It about challenging assumptions, HAVING MORE FUN & MAKING EVEN BETTER GAMES!!! And don't worry, we can still swear, drink booze, have a laugh and get on with enjoying ourselves around the table...

Here's a little pep talk from Anita Sarkeesian if you're still a little nervous about using the word feminism yourself...

"So when we talk about how to be a feminist, for me that means being committed to something much larger than ourselves. It's understanding what role you play in our collective movements for liberation. It's reexamining our desires and interests and understanding how those are often shaped by capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy. It's understanding our own intersections of privilege and oppression and how that will fundamentally change our behaviours and attitudes and values. It's realizing that being a feminist is a life long learning endeavour and that we will make some mistakes on the way and we should be compassionate to ourselves when that happens. It's realizing that others will make mistakes and we should extend that compassion to them as well. Feminism is not about striving for perfection, its about striving for justice." (Sarkeesian, 2015)

and Rachel Dobbs is the founding organiser of the Plymouth Board Games Meetup, a regular open games night held in Plymouth, UK. She also works as a freelance art director for Grublin Games (an indie boardgame publisher based in Cornwall, UK) who have just won the UK Games Expo Best Family Game for Waggle Dance. You can check out Rachel's recent tweet from the UK Games Expo on @BoardGamesPlym some more writing on boardgames here.

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Being the average UK boardgamer (and inclusivity, diversity and microaggression in boardgames) - Rachel Dobbs: artist & educator

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Over the last few weeks I have been thinking a lot about inclusivity, diversity and microaggression in boardgames and the boardgaming world - in terms of design, playing, advertising and assumptions that are made by those commissioning, publishing and promoting... Continue Reading →

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It Can Seem Like An Attractive Quick Fix. But How Much Does Media Advertising Cost?

When you're launching a business or looking to make a name for yourself advertising is an attractive option. But that might be until you see the prices. Media advertising on a scale that is going to reach people in a meaningful way is far from cheap. In this blog post we've put together the latest figures on how much it costs to buy advertising space in the media. If you've ever wondered how much it costs to advertise on TV, Radio, Magazines or Newspapers we've got it covered.

It's fair to assume that the media companies have calculated their prices on years of experience based on what a mention of a certain size on their media platform is worth. Looking at these eye-watering figures it's no wonder so many people and companies who aren't on big budgets are switching their efforts from ads towards trying to get free mentions in the media instead.

As an example based on these figures, if you or your brand can be the subject of a quarter page article in the Daily Telegraph, the newspaper themselves have estimated that coverage is worth at least a value of £22,000. That price also doesn't take into consideration that audiences tend to take more notice of articles than adverts.

N.B. the following figures are just for buying the space, or airtime. They do not take into consideration any costs for producing the ads, which especially for television is going to be extremely expensive.

So before you open your wallet to advertise, consider how dealing with the media can get you the same publicity for free.

Magazines

GQ

According to GQ's latest rate card :

Newspapers

The Daily Telegraph

According to the Telegraph's latest rate card :

The Times

According to the Times' latest rate card :

The Sunday Times

According to the Times' latest rate card :

The Sun

According to the Sun's latest rate card :

Local Newspaper (with readership of around 50,000)

Radio

According to radioadvertising.co.uk

"a week-long campaign that uses a 30 second ad (minus production costs) could cost anything from:

Television

According to televisioncampaign.co.uk the costs for a single 30 second ad are as follows:

ITV

Channel 4

We hope you found this media advertising cost breakdown useful. If you're wondering how to get publicity in the media and get huge publicity and credibility for you or your business, try our Full Report on Getting the Media's Attention. It shows you how to follow a simple 3 step programme that will make you and your story irresistible to the media.

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Media Advertising Cost - How Much Is It Really?

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When you're launching a business or looking to make a name for yourself advertising is an attractive option. But that might be until you see the prices. Media advertising on a scale that is going to reach people in a meaningful way is far from cheap.

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Mattel's 'There's magic in words' advert

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Mattel's 'There's magic in words' advert

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Mattel has launched a new film in support of its Scrabble board-game franchise and it's a winner. It has heart, it tells a great story, and best of all it's a product demo. Give it a look and I'll break it down.
Great use of storytelling.
Let's just start there at the highest level. This film tells a nice story. Sure, it's a well-trodden "boy meets girl" story, but that doesn't make it any less compelling. We all know early on that the Apple Pie is going to end up with the Pineapple, yet we still watch all the way through so we can get that satisfying ending.

That's good acting, good directing, and excellent editing. Especially editing - I love the movement of the screens as one friend calls the next, as an example.

But none of that is what I love most about this film.
It's a product demo.
What makes this film so great to me - remember I am a strategist above all else - is that the film artfully includes Scrabble's scrambled-letter tiles as a form of product demo. At first, we're not sure what's going on (at least I wasn't), but then you see that the pairs of words on the screen, each mirroring the parallel lives of our two male/female heroes, are anagrams of each other.

Which is exactly what happens when playing a game of Scrabble. The realization of what's going on with the words in the film effectively replicates the satisfaction of finding a winning word in your pile of seven tiles.

To me, it's this realization that reminds me why I loved to play Scrabble and, more to the point, makes me wonder why I haven't played it in so long (and whether I need to go out and buy a new one).

But the power of this film doesn't end there.
"There's magic in words" will resonate with word sorcerers everywhere.
Though that line, "There's magic in words," is only on at the end of the film for five seconds, it wraps up the film beautifully in that it demonstrates the "magic" of words in this magical story.

Better yet, the fact this film makes words a central character in the plot of the film shows great deference to words. And anyone who would ever want to play Scrabble is someone who shares that deference for words. This film will connect with those word sorcerers in a profound way. And will not connect with the word-foolish. But they wouldn't play Scrabble anyway.

As new products like " The Force Awakens" Hot Wheels are planned, it's nice to see Mattel RESCUE an old franchise like Scrabble. Or is it SECURE?

Either way, well done.

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Mattel's New Scrabble Ad Wonderfully Demonstrates There's Magic In Words

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VideoMattel has launched a new film in support of its Scrabble board-game franchise and it's a winner. It has heart, it tells a great story, and best of all it's a product demo. Give it a look and I'll break it down. Great use of storytelling. Let's just start there at the highest [...]

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SWOT Analysis of Mattel with USP, Competition, STP (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) - Marketing Analysis

Below is the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats (SWOT) Analysis of Mattel :

1. Big brand name and one of the largest toy company in the world
2. Diverse line of products in its portfolio
3. Brand recall is high

4. Efficient top management with nearly 30,000 employees

5. It has brands like include Fisher Price, Barbie dolls, Monster High dolls, Hot Wheels and Matchbox toys, Masters of the Universe, American Girl dolls etc

6. Strong financial position compared to other competition with a wide global reach

7. Good advertising and branding through TVCs, online presence and print ads

1.Involved in a lot of controversies like toxic toys which hurt the brand image
2.Fake products easily available in the market leading to loss of revenue

1.Potential to tap into comic and movie franchises
2.Reaching out by organizing contests on existing franchises

3. Can put holograms or something similar so that imitation is not easy

The brandguide table above concludes the Mattel SWOT analysis along with its marketing and brand parameters. Similar analysis has also been done for the competitors of the company belonging to the same category, sector or industry.

Browse marketing analysis of more brands and companies similar to Mattel. The BrandGuide section covers SWOT Analysis, USP, STP & Competition of more than 6000 brands from over 20 categories.

Search & Explore : BrandGuide

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Mattel SWOT Analysis | Competitors & USP | BrandGuide | MBA Skool-Study.Learn.Share.

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SWOT Analysis of Mattel with USP, Competition, STP (Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning) - Marketing Analysis Below is the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats (SWOT) Analysis of Mattel : 1. Big brand name and one of the largest toy company in the world 2. Diverse line of products in its portfolio 3.

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The Sims never had shit on Settlers of Catan.

Tread carefully, O ye uninitiated, lest you incur the wrath of the tabletop geeks.

Researching this story got me privy to a culture of game enthusiasts who are happy to share their hobby but equally happy to eviscerate the filthy casuals who dare write about it without doing proper homework - in fact, referring to tabletop games as "board games" is a big no-no. "This article isn't about Monopoly and Life," wrote one disgruntled commenter on a Vice article that chronicled the rise of tabletop gaming but made the mistake of using the B-word. "Go into any game store and refer to them as board games and you will be getting some mad hard stares from the geeks!!"

So what's the difference between board games and tabletop games, and why are tabletop games suddenly so popular? My theory is that screen saturation has made people hungry for structured, real-life interaction. There's something unique about the alliances (or enmities) born of a tabletop night - something you simply can't get from a group text or a night at the bar or six rounds of Battlefield.

Tabletop vs. board

The chief difference between what most hobbyists consider a board game (like Parcheesi or Clue) and a tabletop game (like Dominion or Settlers of Catan) is a point of debate. General consensus seems to say board games are made the American way and tabletops the European. What does that mean? Game designer Scott Nicholson believes it comes down to the style of play:

American games would typically have players engage with one another through aggression. European games tend to use more indirect conflict - so rather than just fighting one another, we might be competing for the same pool of resources, or trying to accomplish the same goal most effectively.

Spike in tabletop popularity

I'll be the first to admit: This article is a decade late. Video and podcast network The Dice Tower has been around since 2005, promoting board- and tabletop gaming. " Watch It Played" is a YouTube series that began in 2011 which gives the rundown on different games to help viewers decide whether a particular game tickles their fancy. " Tabletop," hosted by Wil Wheaton, has been airing online since 2012.

In addition to shows like these, there are also some pretty healthy numbers associated with the tabletop boom. Despite video games' overall dominance of the market, physical games have seen steady growth.

A 2014 New York Times article dropped the following figures:

At brick-and-mortar shops, board game sales rose 15-20% each year from 2011-2013.

Amazon reported a double-digit percentile growth in board game sales from 2012-2013.

What's more -  according to the gaming site Polygon, in the first 6 months of last year board games raised six times more money on Kickstarter than video games did.

So why the explosion in popularity? It could be a few things:

The internet

Somewhat ironically, it might be the internet that deserves credit for getting people offline. Guardian writer Owen Duffy suggests three ways the web has contributed to the "Golden Age of Gaming":

1. Easier access to digital copies of games give players the chance to test them out before fully investing in the physical copy.

2. Online retailers like Amazon make it possible to buy any game at any time. This wasn't always the case - in days of yore, gamers had to find a specialized hobby shop (and even those didn't guarantee the breadth of variety current online shoppers enjoy).

3. The information-sharing power of the web allows people like Wil Wheaton and Rodney Smith (the host of "Watch It Played") to review and promote games that would be otherwise ignored by the regular media.

Increased quality

Thanks to crowdfunding platforms (most notably Kickstarter), the market has been flooded with independent tabletop games. A happy side effect of this saturation is the consumer's ability to choose from a huge sampling of games, which in turn motivates producers to up the ante on quality of game mechanics and artwork.

Sociability

Perhaps the biggest reason, though, is sociability. Unlike video games, which rely primarily on headsets to interact with your fellow players, tabletop games require that their players be physically present and attentive. This might seem a no-brainer: Obviously you have to be there to play a board game. But European-style games, by nature of their play style, encourage cooperation and constant attention. Unlike games that are purely turn-based, many Euro-style games allow for trade and bargaining even when you're not up to bat. This constant involvement engages all players and helps maintain a sense of freshness and urgency during play that's lacking in more traditional (and now maligned-by-geeks) games like Monopoly.

Helping the cause even further is the advent of board game cafes. The global introduction of these establishments draws people in to play games and have coffee (or something stronger) with friends - it's a refreshing reprieve from screen-riddled workdays and constant digital communication. The games provide an opportunity for conversation, laughter and working together toward a concrete goal.

It might seem weird that in a world that prizes the latest tech, people are "regressing" to these seemingly old-fashioned forms of entertainment. Seems there's a limit to how much human interaction we're willing to sacrifice before we start fighting to get it back.

How to get involved

If an evening of friendly competition 'round the tabletop sounds like a welcome alternative to your typical weekend, there are a few resources you should check out to get started.

The/r/tabletop subreddit is a good place to for the burgeoning enthusiast to get suggestions.

Searching by city can yield helpful lists of the best board game cafes in your area. (Example: New York and Los Angeles.)

Geek and Sundry is a website that - among many other things - helps newbies tiptoe into the world of tabletop gaming. (They also host Wil Wheaton's "Tabletop" show.)

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Our Love Affair With Tabletop Games - Dose - Medium

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Tread carefully, O ye uninitiated, lest you incur the wrath of the tabletop geeks. Researching this story got me privy to a culture of game enthusiasts who are happy to share their hobby but equally happy to eviscerate the filthy casuals who dare write about it without doing proper homework - in fact, referring to tabletop games as "board games" is a big no-no.

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Consumer behaviour regarding tabletop games

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Consumer behaviour regarding tabletop games

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Building Your Value Proposition

Step One: Think Deeply

Write your thoughts down as you meditate on the idea of why. Why are you are passionate about the industry as a whole? Why board games? Now write, words, sentences, or sketch. Ask yourself, what drives you?

In the context of my love for board games these are some of the words I reflected on; adventure, randomness, role-playing, cooperation, player interaction, the social aspect, easy pick up and play, player choice, fun, engaging, dice chucking, player characters, solo game, challenge, Let's the world disappear.

For me, it's the idea of escaping the world for a bit. It's being challenged in a exciting new world. This 100% explains my love for games like , , Mage Knight, Charterstone, and many more waiting discovery.

Step Two: Repeat

Now repeat the above steps but this time think genuinely about identifying what needs your products fills for customers.
Customer Value for Project EOS Rise
high replay-ability, team cooperation, minimal downtime between turns, light RPG elements, get lost in the adventure, level up your skills, explore space, science fiction theme, no two games are alike, command a spaceship, save humanity, race against time. Game mechanics Motivators
Adventure, the social aspect, engaging, challenge, easy pickup, Get lost in the game. exploring
Product-focused Examples Solo play, role-playing, dice chucking, randomness, cooperative.

1. Command the world's first interstellar starship, in a galactic adventure to find a new home for humanity in Project EOS Rise.

2. In Project EOS Rise challenge yourself or team up with friends, as you race around the universe in a desperate attempt to save humanity.

3. In Project EOS Rise Immerse yourself in the deep tension of exploring space while humanity waits desperately for you to succeed.

Step Three: Decode & Bring it all together.

Next, we will begin to make sense of our brainstorm. Look for common themes and metaphors within your words. Start to pool the words together into simple buckets.
How can it be validated?

1. Try posting your value proposition in a group and look for the engagement metrics.

2. Run some advertisements with a small budget using the different Value propositions.

3. Create a poll with the different value propositions and send it out to a test audience.

4. Ask your peers in populare Facebook groups.

STARTUP Board & Card Game Designers Tabletop Game Designers Marketing Network Tabletop Game Kickstarter Advice
Step Four: Just Write
Unlock the Hidden Potential of your TableTop Email List.
Start writing sentences that tell people precisely what your product or brand provides. Keep it short and group themes together. It should be no more than one sentence. The sentence structure can look like this. However, this structure can easily be dismantled and rearranged..

[Company name or product name] [Core benefit] [How].

Project EOS Rise fills the need for a cooperative/Solo adventures set in a science fiction world.

Step Five: Test Test Test!

Finally, once you have a couple of suggestions use whatever means you can to validate that the proposition is communicating the value appropriately.
ProjectEOSRise.com
Vola! You now have an eye-catching value proposition. To learn more fantastic marketing tips and trick, please feel free to join the Tabletop Game Designers Marketing Network on Facebook. Additionally, the following blog post can provide insights on your email marketing list.

F our Behaviors That Drive People To Subscribe To Your Game Mailing List.

Thanks for reading please feel free to leave any additional advice for new game designers in the comments. If you enjoyed this article please give it a clap to show your support.

Let's get funded!

James Baker

Designer of Project EOS Rise

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Building A Value Proposition For Your BoardGame. - Jim Baker - Medium

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Write your thoughts down as you meditate on the idea of why. Why are you are passionate about the industry as a whole? Why board games? Now write, words, sentences, or sketch. Ask yourself, what drives you?

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Building an audience for your tabletop game

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Building an audience for your tabletop game

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This is a question I see all the time from aspiring designers who are interested in launching their game via crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter. How do I build up an audience and a mailing list for my unpublished game? As Richard Bliss of Funding the Dream often says, when it comes to launching a successful crowdfunding campaign, you often don't have a funding problem but a crowd problem. That's not to say that money is not important but the way you need to approach hitting your funding goal is not to focus on the money but on the crowd, and building that crowd can be a long process that many people don't know how to approach.

If you are looking for a silver bullet, you won't find one here. Building an audience is time consuming and hard work. There are multiple avenues to pursue and doing more than one can help build your audience faster. Ideally you begin this process six or more months before you launch.

Social Media and Mailing List

The first thing you need to do is make sure that people can find you. I would recommend making a Facebook page and getting a Twitter handle. I suggest having a website as well for gathering emails for a mailing list. Facebook is a great place to encourage engagement and publicize events that you will be at. Twitter can also engage your fans but more importantly, I've found it to be an invaluable tool for networking. It will let you meet other designers, publishers, game reviewers, and other influential people within the tabletop community. Your goal will be to build brand awareness and also funnel people to your email list, which will be your most valuable asset for bringing a crowd to day one of your Kickstarter campaign. If you plan on attending many events, I would recommend getting business cards with all your social media information.

Playtesting

One of the best ways to get people to sign up for a mailing list is to collect emails after a playtesting session. You are playtesting your game, right? If you are having trouble finding people to playtest your game, do some research and see if there are any local playtesting/designer groups and meetups. You can also bring your game to open game nights or local game stores. After playtesting, invite players to sign up for your mailing list if they are interested.

This can be a slow process for collecting emails since you only get a handful of emails each session, but these can also be your most valuable emails since players often enjoy supporting and owning a game they were a part of. It's also the best way to discover super fans, who will help you spread the word when the time comes.

Create content

Another way to build an audience for your Kickstarter is to create helpful and interesting content. This might be a blog post, a podcast, a YouTube channel, or any number of things. The important thing to remember is that this is not content just about your game. People have to identify your content as useful and relevant to them, and if you continue to create that useful content, people will be drawn to you and your game.

Attend conventions (on the cheap)

Bringing your game to a gaming convention is a great way to expose your game to many people. I recommend that you look up what kind of gaming conventions there are near you. Ideally there are a few throughout the year that are close enough that you won't need to fly or book a hotel.

What do you do at these conventions? There are several ways to build exposure. You can always book a table/booth, but without an actual product to sell, this can be fairly expensive. Sometimes there are organizations like Unpub that will provide indie game designers table space for free. In Seattle, we have PlaytestNW which is a fantastic resource for designers.

Also see if any of these conventions are taking applications for things like indie showcases. There are a surprising number of opportunities out there. For example, I was able to exhibit Fantastic Factories at PAX South on the main show floor as part of the Indie Showcase. I got a table at the Evergreen Tabletop Expo (ETX) by entering the LUCI Award competition. And I also showcased via Indie MEGABOOTH at PAX West. As long as you put some effort and polish in your application, you could qualify. All these opportunities were free or nearly free. Once you get a table, if your goal is to build your mailing list, consider developing a short demo of your game that captures the essence of your game while maximizing the number of people who can experience it. Check out my post about how to create a compelling demo.

If you can't secure dedicated table space, I recommend just setting up shop on any available table. Conventions often have freeplay areas that you can use to play any game. Get an eye-catching table sign and a LFG (Looking For Gamers) sign, and just invite random people who are wandering around to try your game.

Make your game available and accessible

You can't be everywhere all the time, but sometimes people will want to check out your game. If you make your game freely available through Tabletop Simulator/Tabletopia or as a print and play, some people will be willing to try it out. I've written a post about how TTS can be used - one of the purposes being extra exposure.

If your game is primarily cards and/or fairly small, you can also release a print and play version of your game. People who are interested in trying your game can print out their own copy of the game.

Participate in the community

There are pockets of community all around us. There is a vibrant community of tabletop gamers on Facebook covering all kinds of focuses ranging from designing, publishing, art, or just getting excited about gaming. There's also a community of people on reddit for both designers and players. And of course there's BoardGameGeek. For face-to-face interactions, there may be a lot of local game meetups that often meet on a weekly basis.

Just as with content creation, it's important to contribute and add value to the community and not just self-promote. Once you establish your reputation within each community, people will be much more receptive and friendly towards your projects.

Multiple Touchpoints

Ultimately, unless people spend time playing your game or demo, they won't remember you or your game the first time they see it. It's only after the second or third or even fourth time that they see your game that they'll begin to recognize it. That's why when it comes to building an audience, I recommend pursuing as many strategies as you can handle and starting them as early as possible. Over time you can build your mailing list, your reputation, and your brand.

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Building an audience and mailing list for your tabletop game

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This is a question I see all the time from aspiring designers who are interested in launching their game via crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter. How do I build up an audience and a mailing list for my unpublished game?

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Preparing marketing materials for a tabletop game

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Preparing marketing materials for a tabletop game

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My previous post covered how to create a demo for a tabletop game. This week I'm covering how we prepared our marketing/promotional materials for PAX South with only 7 weeks to prepare.

The first thing I did was prepare a list of the items I needed. I created a Trello board to track all the tasks and what their statuses were. The major items were:

Order game prototypes

Order a banner

Order t-shirts

Order takeaway cards (business cards in our case)

Order button pins

Order playmats

Once I had my items planned out, I had to figure out which items had the longest turnaround time and make sure I completed those tasks with enough time to spare. In addition to placing the order, all of the items needed to be designed and proofed as well.

Prototypes and Shirts

I had ordered game prototypes from The Game Crafter and shirts from Tee Spring before so I knew that it would take roughly 2 weeks for them to process and deliver. The Game Crafter has this handy status page that tells you the estimated processing time based on their current volume of orders. But even with the estimated processing time, it's still just an estimate. Make sure you place your orders with time to spare. I ran into some technical issues that delayed my placement of my order by two days. As a result, my prototype only arrived just a couple days before my flight! It's always a challenge ordering a nice prototype when the game is still in development because you never feel like you're ready to place the order. In fact, it's almost always a given that the game will already be an iteration behind by the time the prototype arrives.

Banner

Next, I prioritized my banner because it's really important to have that visual presence to draw people to your table. At first, I didn't know what I needed. It seemed like flying across the country with a massive banner would be difficult, but it turns out transporting signs to and from conventions is a very common scenario so most companies that do promotional banner prints design their products for easy transport.

When I asked around, the two suggestions I received was to either order a massive 8' x 10' "wall" wrap that would serve as the backdrop for my table or a nice and compact self-retracting vertical banner. The $500-$800 for the 8' x 10' was more than I was willing to invest at the time and I liked the portability of the vertical banner so I opted for a $120 vertical banner from GotPrint instead. The vertical banner came with its own travel bag and self-retracts into a nice compact canister.

Buttons and Cards

After the banner, buttons and business cards were next. I couldn't decide on a button design. Luckily I found Wacky Buttons which didn't charge anything extra for additional designs. The tricky part then was deciding how many buttons and cards to order. In my previous post, I mentioned that the demo we were running was about 10 minutes long. With 3 days, 8 hours a day, and 2 demos at the same time, that totals to around 300 demos. Each demo serves about 2-3 people and there are some people who won't have time for the demo, so I estimated I needed around 1000 buttons and cards. In the end, it was very much overestimated, but it was better to have more on hand than to run out. I think we gave out maybe 500 cards and 700 buttons.

Playmats

I wanted to design and order some custom playmats to bling out the table. At the same time, I wanted to explore the idea of using a playmat design to lay out the game components. In the end I scrapped that idea because aesthetics were more important for demoing purposes. I got the mats for a very reasonable price ($25 each) from Inked Gaming, who delivered them blazingly fast.

The Gimmick

Finally, between all the visual elements like the banner, playmats, and shirts, it's amazing to hear what stood out the most - our hard hats.

Somehow the hats were the most visually compelling component and many people told us that's what drew them to our table. I bought a pack of 20 of them for $10 and it didn't even really fit my large head, but yet they were incredibly popular.

So there you have it. Each thing I ordered also had to be designed and refined. Luckily I've been doing all the art and design myself, so I was able to iterate quickly. If you hire a designer, things get trickier and communication becomes critical. Even if you're a one-person team, it helps to be organized and plan out your timeline. Preparing for a convention is no small task, but it's an experience like none other when you get the chance to be an exhibitor instead of an attendee.

Later, I'll write about how we managed to get over $500 worth of prizes to give away for free and why giving away prizes can sometimes be more harm than help.

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Preparing marketing materials for PAX South - Joseph Z Chen - Medium

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My previous post covered how to create a demo for a tabletop game. This week I'm covering how we prepared our marketing/promotional materials for PAX South with only 7 weeks to prepare. The first thing I did was prepare a list of the items I needed.

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Pricing Strategies - What is Pricing Strategies ? Pricing Strategies meaning, Pricing Strategies definition - The Economic Times

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Pricing Strategies definition - What is meant by the term Pricing Strategies ? meaning of Pricing Strategies, Definition of Pricing Strategies on The Economic Times.

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Defining Price

Price is both the money someone charges for a good or service and what the consumer is willing to give up to receive a good or service.

Learning Objectives

Define price and its relationship to cost

Key Takeaways

Key Points

When you ask about the cost of a good or service, you're really asking how much you will have to give up in order to get it.

For the business to increase value, it can either increase the perceived benefits or reduce the perceived costs. Both of these elements should be considered elements of price.

Viewing price from the customer's perspective helps define value - the most important basis for creating a competitive advantage.

There are two different ways to look at the role price plays in a society; rational man and irrational man.

Key Terms

value: a customer's perception of relative price (the cost to own and use) and performance (quality)

benefit: an advantage, help or aid from something

bartering system: Barter is a medium of exchange by which goods or services are directly exchanged for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money.

What Is a Price?

Buying something means paying a price. But what exactly is "price? "

Price is the money charged for a good or service. For example, an item of clothing costs a certain amount of money. Or a computer specialist charges a certain fee for fixing your computer.

Price is also what a consumer must pay in order to receive a product or service. Price does not necessarily always mean money. Bartering is an exchange of goods or services in return for goods or services. For example, I teach you English in exchange for you teaching me about graphic design.

Price is the easiest marketing variable to change and also the easiest to copy.

Even though the question, "How much? " could be phrased as "How much does it cost? " price and cost are two different things. Whereas the price of a product is what you, the consumer must pay to obtain it, the cost is what the business pays to make it. When you ask about the cost of a good or service, you're really asking how much will you have to give up to get it.

Different Perspectives on Price

The perception of price differs based on the perspective from which it is being viewed.
The Customer's View
A customer can either be the ultimate user of the finished product or a business that purchases components of the finished product. It is the customer that seeks to satisfy a need or set of needs through the purchase of a particular product or set of products. Consequently, the customer uses several criteria to determine how much they are willing to expend, or the price they are willing to pay, in order to satisfy these needs. Ideally, the customer would like to pay as little as possible.

For the business to increase value, it can either increase the perceived benefits or reduce the perceived costs. Both of these elements should be considered elements of price.

To a certain extent, perceived benefits are the opposite of perceived costs. For example, paying a premium price is compensated for by having this exquisite work of art displayed in one's home. Other possible perceived benefits directly related to the price-value equations are:

Many of these benefits tend to overlap. For instance, a Mercedes Benz E750 is a very high-status brand name and possesses superb quality. This makes it worth the USD 100,000 price tag. Further, if one can negotiate a deal reducing the price by USD 15,000, that would be his incentive to purchase. Likewise, someone living in an isolated mountain community is willing to pay substantially more for groceries at a local store than drive 78 miles (25.53 kilometers) to the nearest Safeway. That person is also willing to sacrifice choice for greater convenience.

Increasing these perceived benefits are represented by a recently coined term, value-added. Providing value-added elements to the product has become a popular strategic alternative.

Perceived costs include the actual dollar amount printed on the product, plus a host of additional factors. As noted, perceived costs are the mirror-opposite of the benefits. When finding a gas station that is selling its highest grade for USD 0.06 less per gallon, the customer must consider the 16 mile (25.75 kilometer) drive to get there, the long line, the fact that the middle grade is not available, and heavy traffic. Therefore, inconvenience, limited choice, and poor service are possible perceived costs. Other common perceived costs include risk of making a mistake, related costs, lost opportunity, and unexpected consequences.

Ultimately, it is beneficial to view price from the customer's perspective because it helps define value - the most important basis for creating a competitive advantage.
Society's View
Price, at least in dollars and cents, has been the historical view of value. Derived from a bartering system (exchanging goods of equal value), the monetary system of each society provides a more convient way to purchase goods and accumulate wealth. Price has also become a variable society employs to control its economic health. Price can be inclusive or exclusive. In many countries, such as Russia, China, and South Africa, high prices for products such as food, health care, housing, and automobiles, means that most of the population is excluded from purchase. In contrast, countries such as Denmark, Germany, and Great Britain charge little for health care and consequently make it available to all.

There are two different ways to look at the role price plays in a society; rational man and irrational man. The former is the primary assumption underlying economic theory, and suggests that the results of price manipulation are predictable. The latter role for price acknowledges that man's response to price is sometimes unpredictable and pretesting price manipulation is a necessary task.

Terms Used to Describe Price

Depending on whether they are describing a good or a service and the product's industry, people may use terms other than the word price.

Learning Objectives

Name the different terms used to reference pricing

Key Takeaways

Key Points

From a customer's point of view, value is the sole justification for price.

The price of an item is also called the price point, especially when it refers to stores that set a limited number of price points. The words charge and fee are often used to refer to the price of services.

The transportation industry charges a fare for its services.

Key Terms

price: The cost required to gain possession of something.

price point: The price of an item, especially seen as one of a number of pricing options.

Introduction

We've been using the word "price" a lot. There are, however, other terms you may come across in your studies and daily life that serve as synonyms.

Price Point

The price of an item is also called the price point, especially where it refers to stores that set a limited number of price points.

For example, Dollar General is a general store or "five and dime" store that sets price points only at even amounts, such as exactly one, two, three, five, or ten dollars (among others). Other stores will have a policy of setting most of their prices ending in 99 cents or pence. Other stores (such as dollar stores, pound stores, euro stores, 100-yen stores, and so forth) only have a single price point ($1, £1, 1€, ¥100), though in some cases this price may purchase more than one of some very small items. Price is relatively less than the cost price.

Charge

When someone wants to know the price of a service, they may ask, "How much do you charge? " In this context, the word "charge" is a synonym for price.

Value

From a customer's point of view, value is the sole justification for price. Many times customers lack an understanding of the cost of materials and other costs that go into the making of a product. But those customers can understand what that product does for them in the way of providing value. It is on this basis that customers make decisions about the purchase of a product.

Fee

Service providers may present you with a fee list as opposed to a price tag if you ask for the price of their services.

Fare

You pay a price to fly, ride the bus and take the train. The price in these industries is expressed as a fare.

The Importance of Price to Marketers

Since pricing has a direct impact on a company's revenue, and thus profit, setting the right price is essential to a company's success.

Learning Objectives

Discuss how pricing impacts marketing and business strategy

Key Takeaways

Key Points

Price is important to marketers because it represents marketers' assessment of the value customers see in the product or service and are willing to pay for a product or service.

Adjusting the price has a profound impact on the marketing strategy, and depending on the price elasticity of the product, it will often affect the demand and sales as well.

Pricing contributes to how customers perceive a product or a service.

Key Terms

value: a customer's perception of relative price (the cost to own and use) and performance (quality)

marketing mix: A business tool used in marketing products; often crucial when determining a product or brand's unique selling point. Often synonymous with the four Ps: price, product, promotion, and place.

Price is important to marketers because it represents marketers' assessment of the value customers see in the product or service and are willing to pay for a product or service. The other elements of the marketing mix (product, place and promotion ) may seem to be more glamorous than price, and thus get more attention, but determining the price of a product or service is actually one of the most important management decisions. Here's why.

While product, place and promotion affect costs, price is the only element that affects revenues, and thus, a business's profits. Price can lead to a firm's survival or demise.

Adjusting the price has a profound impact on the marketing strategy, and depending on the price elasticity of the product, it will often affect the demand and sales as well. Both a price that is too high and one that is too low can limit growth. The wrong price can also negatively influence sales and cash flow.

Problems occur if the marketer fails to set a price that complements the other elements of the marketing mix and the business objectives, as pricing contributes to how customers perceive a product or a service. A high price indicates high quality. The term luxury comes to mind. If, however, a firm wants to position itself as a low-cost provider, it will charge low prices. Just as they do with high-end providers, consumers know what to expect when they see low prices.

So, as you can see, it is important that a company sets the right price. A company's success can depend on it. However, with so many factors to consider along with the lack of a crystal ball that will show the effect of a price change, It isn't so easy to do.

Value and Relative Value

Value is the worth of goods, and relative value is attractiveness measured in terms of utility of one good relative to another.

Learning Objectives

Discuss the different concepts of value and how it influences consumer buying decisions

Key Takeaways

Key Points

Value is the worth of goods and services as determined by markets.

Something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.

The utility for the seller is not as an object of usage, but as a source of income.

In term of pricing, prices of valued items undergo questionable fluctuations.

Key Terms

utility: The ability of a commodity to satisfy needs or wants; the satisfaction experienced by the consumer of that commodity.

marginal utility: The additional utility to a consumer from an additional unit of an economic good.

Surplus value: The part of the new value made by production that is taken by enterprises as generic gross profit.

What is Value?

Value is the worth of goods and services as determined by markets. Thus, an important part of economics is the study of policies and activities for the generation and transfer of value within markets in the form of goods and services.

Often a measure for the worth of goods and services is units of currency such as the US Dollar. But, unlike the units of measurements in Physics such as seconds for time, there exists no absolute basis for standardizing the units for value.

One of the most complicated and most often misunderstood parts of economy is the concept of value. One of the big problems is the large number of different types of values that seem to exist, such as exchange value, surplus value, and use value.

The Buyer's Utility

The discussion of values all start with one simple question: What is something worth?

Today's most common answer is one of those answers that are so deceptively simple that it seems obvious when you know it. But then remember that it took economists more than a hundred years to figure it out: something is worth whatever you think it is worth.

This statement needs some explanation. Take as an example two companies that are thinking of buying a new copying machine. One company does not think they will use a copying machine that much, but the other knows it will copy a lot of papers. This second company will be prepared to pay more for a copying machine than the first one. They find a greater utility in the object.

The companies also have a choice of models. The first company knows that many of the papers will need to be copied on both sides. The second company knows that very few of the papers it copies will need double- sided copying. Of course, the second company will not pay much more for this feature, while the first company will. In this example, we see that a buyer will be prepared to pay more for the increase in utility compared to alternative products.

So we can summarize this with the statement that the economic value of an item is set by the increase in utility for customers. This increase in utility is called marginal utility, and this is all known as the marginal theory of value.

The Seller's Utility

But how does the seller value things? Well, in pretty much the same way. Of course, most sellers today do not intend to use the object he sells himself. The utility for the seller is not as an object of usage, but as a source of income. And here again it is marginal utility that comes in. For what price can you sell the object? If you put in some more work, can you get a higher price?

Here we also get into the utility for resellers. Somebody who deals in trading will look at an object, and the utility for him is to be able to sell it again. How much work will it take, and what margins are possible?

Subjective Value

Not only do the two different buyers have a different value on an object, the salesman puts his value on it, and the original manufacturer may have put yet another value on it. The value depends on the person who does the valuation-it is subjective.

Relative Value and Pricing

Relative value in the marketing context is attractiveness measured in terms of utility of one product relative to another.

In term of pricing, prices of valued items undergo questionable fluctuations. For example, even though housing provides the same utility to the individual over time, and supply and demand are relatively constant and stable, the relative price of housing fluctuates, even more so than with stocks, oil, and gold.

This price volatility appears to occur in cycles and is caused by a myriad of factors. Figure 1 is an attempt to overlay the prices of housing, stocks, oil, and gold by normalizing the price streams. Normalizing is achieved by applying a discounting formula which converts a price to the price it would be at a certain date, given a certain discount rate. This would normally be used to cancel the effects of inflation, in which case the inflation rate would be used.

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Price is both the money someone charges for a good or service and what the consumer is willing to give up to receive a good or service. Define price and its relationship to cost Key Points When you ask about the cost of a good or service, you're really asking how much you will have to give up in order to get it.

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1. They get to the point.

Weak marketing messages meander.

Example: "In today's highly competitive business world, every company needs our software to run their manufacturing more efficiently."

Brilliant marketing messages immediately express what's important.

Example: "Our software halves your manufacturing time."

2. They take the customer's viewpoint.

Weak marketing messages speak to how the seller sees the world.

Example: "Our world-class engineering team designed our product set to be both usable and flexible."

Brilliant marketing messages address what's relevant to the customer.

Example: "It takes 10 minutes, tops, to learn our product."

3. They use familiar language.

Weak marketing messages contain obscure technical jargon.

Example: "Our sales enablement system creates an integrated computing framework for profitable customer interactions."

Brilliant marketing messages use plain, simple words.

Example: "We help your sales team close deals more quickly."

4. They feel informal.

Weak marketing messages sound stilted and unnatural.

Example: "Our strongest form of communication is behavior that's consistent with our vision for leadership."

Brilliant marketing messages sound like off-the-cuff remarks.

Examples: "No surprises. Ever."

5. They say something original.

Weak marketing messages sound as if they could belong to any product or service.

Example: "Our award-winning product set decreases costs and increases revenue."

Brilliant marketing messages are one-of-a-kind.

Example: "You'll save so much you'll think you won the lottery."

6. They need no further explanation.

Weak marketing messages must be decrypted before they make any sense.

Example: "We're the double deuce in your multimedia deck."

Brilliant marketing messages have immediate and unmistakable meaning.

Example: "We win way more eyes for your ads."

7. They make you smile.

Weak marketing messages are all work and no play.

Example: "Our system achieves the highest quality industry standards."

Brilliant marketing messages often have a tinge of humor.

Example: "It's rocket science meets brain surgery but easy-to-use!"

BTW: The examples of weak marketing messages are adapted from real ones that people have sent me. The "brilliant" marketing messages came from my own imagination and were influenced by this great list of legendary tag-lines.

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The 7 Components of a Brilliant Marketing Message

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1. They get to the point. Weak marketing messages meander. Example: "In today's highly competitive business world, every company needs our software to run their manufacturing more efficiently." Brilliant marketing messages immediately express what's important. Example: "Our software halves your manufacturing time." 2. They take the customer's viewpoint.

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It's no secret that small businesses play a vital role in the US economy. However, most non-employer small businesses average just $44,000 a year in annual revenue, with many of these companies earning $25,000 or less. While various factors can affect a business' revenue potential, one of the most important is the pricing strategy utilized by its owners.

Good pricing strategy helps you determine the price point at which you can maximize profits on sales of your products or services. When setting prices, a business owner needs to consider a wide range of factors including production and distribution costs, competitor offerings, positioning strategies and the business' target customer base.

While customers won't purchase goods that are priced too high, your company won't succeed if it prices goods too low to cover all of the business' costs. Along with product, place and promotion, price can have a profound effect on the success of your small business.

Here are some of the various strategies that businesses implement when setting prices on their products and services.

1. Pricing at a Premium

With premium pricing, businesses set costs higher than their competitors. Premium pricing is often most effective in the early days of a product's life cycle, and ideal for small businesses that sell unique goods.

Because customers need to perceive products as being worth the higher price tag, a business must work hard to create a value perception. Along with creating a high-quality product, owners should ensure their marketing efforts, the product's packaging and the store's décor all combine to support the premium price.

2. Pricing for Market Penetration

Penetration strategies aim to attract buyers by offering lower prices on goods and services. While many new companies use this technique to draw attention away from their competition, penetration pricing does tend to result in an initial loss of income for the business.

Over time, however, the increase in awareness can drive profits and help small businesses to stand out from the crowd. In the long run, after sufficiently penetrating a market, companies often wind up raising their prices to better reflect the state of their position within the market.

3. Economy Pricing

Used by a wide range of businesses including generic food suppliers and discount retailers, economy pricing aims to attract the most price-conscious of consumers. With this strategy, businesses minimize the costs associated with marketing and production in order to keep product prices down. As a result, customers can purchase the products they need without frills.

While economy pricing is incredibly effective for large companies like Wal-Mart and Target, the technique can be dangerous for small businesses. Because small businesses lack the sales volume of larger companies, they may struggle to generate a sufficient profit when prices are too low. Still, selectively tailoring discounts to your most loyal customers can be a great way to guarantee their patronage for years to come.

4. Price Skimming

Designed to help businesses maximize sales on new products and services, price skimming involves setting rates high during the introductory phase. The company then lowers prices gradually as competitor goods appear on the market.

One of the benefits of price skimming is that it allows businesses to maximize profits on early adopters before dropping prices to attract more price-sensitive consumers. Not only does price skimming help a small business recoup its development costs, but it also creates an illusion of quality and exclusivity when your item is first introduced to the marketplace.

5. Psychology Pricing

With the economy still limping back to full health, price remains a major concern for American consumers. Psychology pricing refers to techniques that marketers use to encourage customers to respond on emotional levels rather than logical ones.

For example, setting the price of a watch at $199 is proven to attract more consumers than setting it at $200, even though the true difference here is quite small. One explanation for this trend is that consumers tend to put more attention on the first number on a price tag than the last. The goal of psychology pricing is to increase demand by creating an illusion of enhanced value for the consumer.

6. Bundle Pricing

With bundle pricing, small businesses sell multiple products for a lower rate than consumers would face if they purchased each item individually. Not only is bundling goods an effective way of moving unsold items that are taking up space in your facility, but it can also increase the value perception in the eyes of your customers, since you're essentially giving them something for free.

Bundle pricing is more effective for companies that sell complimentary products. For example, a restaurant can take advantage of bundle pricing by including dessert with every entrée sold on a particular day of the week. Small businesses should keep in mind that the profits they earn on the higher-value items must make up for the losses they take on the lower-value product.

Pricing strategies are important, but it's also important to not lose sight of the price itself. Here are five things to consider, alongside your strategy, when pricing your products.

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6 Different Pricing Strategies: Which Is Right for Your Business?

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It's no secret that small businesses play a vital role in the US economy. However, most non-employer small businesses average just $44,000 a year in annual revenue, with many of these companies earning $25,000 or less. While various factors can affect a business' revenue potential, one of the most important is the pricing strategy utilized by its owners.

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With the plethora of releases in the year so far, it's been a busy year of playing games as we've sorted through the new hotness that 2018 has offered. To help you filter through all the titles out there, the Geek & Sundry editorial team has put together a list of the 10 games released this year that continue to hit our tables and are all contenders for 2018's best game of the year.

Heroes of Land, Air & Sea - Gamelyn Games

Charlie Theel described Heroes of Land, Air & Sea as "a big 'ol game. This is, of course, ironic because it's the latest project from Scott Almes, the man behind the Tiny Epic series. Here, we have scads of miniatures, a huge board, tons of cards, and of course 3D airships and boats and castles for those vehicles to assault. All of this fuels Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, and Humans throwing down in the name of lord victory point. On the whole, it's impressive and provides a great deal of personality."
Read how Heroes of Land, Air & Sea mega-sized fun despite its tiny epic heritage in the full overview.
Rising Sun - CMON Games

To say CMON Games' was one of the most hotly anticipated releases for 2018 is a bit of an understatement. Given how many hit games designer Eric Lang has had a hand in creating over consistently over his career and how this game was billed as the spiritual successor to the beloved Blood Rage, expectations for Rising Sun were quite high. But as Ruel Gaviola put it in his overview, " Rising Sun is not the streamlined dudes-on-a-map experience of . It's a longer and much deeper game, with several factors influencing your overall strategy. [...] This is an epic experience, best shared by your favorite gaming partners, especially those who aren't going to be upset when you betray them to further your clan's objectives."
Find out how Rising Sun rose to our expectations in our full overview.
Stars Without Number 2nd Edition - Sine Nomine Publishing

Yes, this RPG was technically released in 2017 but as Ian Williams put it, "The masterpiece of sandbox gaming released in late 2017, late enough that it was hours from being 2018. Stars Without Number Revised Edition, a snazzy update of a nearly decade-old work by its author, Kevin Crawford (Sine Nomine Publishing), is like a shot across the bow of what we think of as sandbox gaming. It's both deeply traditional and wildly new. It should be reckoned with as one of the best games of the year."
Learn about the innovations and refinements Stars Without Numbers 2nd Edition brings to the RPG genre in our overview.
Dinosaur Island - Pandasaurus Games

With a dash of nostalgia and a fantastic theme, this strategy game was one we kept pulling off our shelf to play. As Jessica Fisher put it, "Just like an Argentinosaurus (one of the biggest dinosaurs ever discovered), Dinosaur Island is huge and intimidating at first glance, but the designers, Jonathan Gilmour and Brian Lewis have excelled at making a cohesive and well flowing game that I keep going back to play again and again. Dinosaur Island truly captures the spirit of Jurassic Park and provides deeply strategic gameplay while maintaining a level of accessibility in the way it separates out the different types of choices you have to make."
Find out why Dinosaur Island stomped its way onto this list in our overview.

Dusk City Outlaws - Scratchpad Publishing

We have a soft spot for RPGs that are accessible and light, while still being fun and immersive, and that's what Dusk City Outlaws offers in putting players in the role of thieves. As Rob Wieland described the game, "The rules and setting are light, allowing for games that feel like a mixture of Lord of the Rings and Ocean's Eleven right up until the Heat comes down. [...] Dusk City Outlaws may have come together to steal jewels or gold, but it would not be a crime to let it steal some time at your table this year."
Check out the reasons Dusk City outlaws stole our hearts and attention in this feature.
Azul - Plan B Game

A beautiful game with stunning components doesn't have to rely on its looks alone. As Raf Cordero described the game, " Azul is one of those wonderful games that can be played as casually or aggressively as you like. You can take the time to examine everyone's board, draft aggressively, and drive the game to end when it works best for you. You can also play lighter, focusing only on building up your mosaic and planning out your own strategy. "
Learn why this fantastic gateway game is compelling for seasoned and new gamers in our overview.
Stuffed Fables - Plaid Hat Games

Designed by Jerry Hawthorne, who also designed Mice & Mystics, the story-driven game has accessible themes that draw players into a beautiful and compelling world while being family-friendly. As Raf Cordero put it, "It's a tale of friendship, adventure, and overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds."
Check out why Stuffed Fables is a dream game for families in our overview.
Space Base - Alderac Entertainment Group

Engine-building games often have the players' eyes locked on their own tableaus, minimizing player interaction and often feeling as though you're playing a game of solitare alongside your opponents. That isn't the case for , as Shea Parker described the game as "a wonderful engine building experience that does something that many similar games struggle with. Whereas a lot of economic strategy games have players eyes' locked on their own player board, Space Base has you watching each roll of the dice like you're at a Craps table in Vegas."
Find out why we keep on customizing spaceships with this game in our overview.
Street Masters - Blacklist Games

Charlie Theel mused that while some games, "feature poetic commentary on culture and the human condition. Other games simply let you beat the hell out of some bad dudes. Street Masters from Blacklist Games is comfortable in that latter category, offering a high octane beat 'em up full of aggression and a sense of cleverness. It's smooth and burly and it knows how to execute a roundhouse. [...] This is a remarkable experience. It's physically a looker and mechanically a beast. It maintains a high velocity throughout play and clocks in at a comfortable 60 minutes. Hell, it even warms the belly as a solitary endeavor. Street Masters is a fantastic release that's willing to fight for its top-shelf status."
Learn more about how Street Masters brings that Double Dragon action to the tabletop in the full overview.
The Fall of Delta Green - Pelgrane Press

There are some RPGs that make us want to keep the nightlight on when it's bedtime, and The Fall of Delta Green is one such RPG, but is also a masterwork. As Ben Riggs put it, " Fall is a game you need to try because it is one of the greatest settings of all-time, uses a system that perfectly matches the investigative genre, is produced by a team of publishers, designers, and artists all working at the height of their powers to produce what may prove to be an iconic product of this current golden age of role-playing."
Learn more about The Fall of Delta Green in our overview. What games released this year are your favorites? Tell us in the comments!
More Board Game Goodness!
Image Credits; Raf Cordero, Charlie Theel, Jessica Fisher, Sine Nomine Publishing, Scratchpad Publishing, Ruel Gaviola, Shea Parker, Pelgrane Press Teri Litorco is the contributing editor of Geek & Sundry. She's also a gaming nerd who wrote The Civilized Guide to Tabletop Gaming, a survival and ettiquite guide for gamers. She's on Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

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10 of Our Favorite Tabletop Games & RPGs of 2018 (So Far) | Geek and Sundry

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With the plethora of releases in the year so far, it's been a busy year of playing games as we've sorted through the new hotness that 2018 has offered.

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Brand: Monopoly "Here and Now" Client: Hasbro Brief: Launch the limited edition board game Monopoly "Here and Now" Target audience: All adults with a core target of mums with children aged eight to 13 Budget pounds: 500,000 AGENCIES Media: OMD UK Creative: DDB London Interactive: Tribal DDB PR: Brazen PR

STRATEGY

Monopoly "Here and Now" was launched in June 2005 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the classic board game. The board was updated to reflect modern-day London, with new movers, new locations and new property prices.

The challenge was to re-ignite people's passion for Monopoly, while communicating the new board game's changes. DDB London and Tribal DDB encouraged consumers to play Monopoly Live, a game of Monopoly played out on the streets of London with black cabs as the playing pieces, and a grand prize of your mortgage or rent paid for a year.

OMD planned an integrated campaign, with TV, radio, PR and word-of-mouth activity promoting both the "Here and Now" board game and the "Live" game.

EXECUTION

- Interactive: To play Monopoly Live, players registered online, chose their piece, represented by a taxi, and decided where to spend their £15 million capital. Eighteen Monopoly-branded taxis were fitted with GPS transmitters. As the taxi drove around London, the player paid rent as their cab passed properties they didn't own, and received rent when other cabs passed their properties.

People could also SMS for Chance and Community Chest cards, equivalent to bonus cash.

- TV: The campaign targeted appointment-to-view programming over the week, including a spot in the eviction night of Big Brother.

- Radio: A national radio campaign delivered a high level of frequency over the week, making sure that the launch of the game would not be missed.

- Online advertising: Online marketing included advertising across major portals and ownership of the Yahoo! UK homepage on launch day.

- PR and word of mouth: Brazen PR's campaign placed articles in the Financial Times, The Times, the Evening Standard and Esquire magazine in the week before launch. Tribal DDB also seeded the site in discussion forums.

Through this activity, around 10,000 pre-registrations were obtained.

Continuing PR during the course of the promotion obtained coverage on BBC World's Click Online show, as well as wired.com and online media publications.

RESULTS

Monopoly "Here and Now" is already one of the best-selling board games of 2005. The PR coverage generated alone was worth well over £2 million to Hasbro - nearly five times the cost of the entire campaign.

During the 28 days the site was live, more than one million people visited the website and 189,699 people played Monopoly Live. Hasbro's CRM database was bolstered by nearly 100,000 opted-in users, keen to hear about new developments from Hasbro. The game is now a valuable asset for Hasbro, and there are plans possibly to develop the idea further.

THE VERDICT - Iain Jacob chief executive, Starcom

One of my less successful presentations ended in my client (an ex-American football player) leaning back and saying: "Son, you're breathing your own exhaust."

While I'm sure that my thinking was integrated, interactive and indeed "resonant", I had proposed something that I found interesting, in the glorious absence of any real understanding of the consumer.

I think this strategy might be suffering from the same problem. Superficially, this work looks spot-on - the new contemporary twist on an icon, bought to life with the technology that has touched all of our lives.

While undoubtedly a well-crafted and elegantly executed idea, ultimately this does appear to be a case of execution over insight.

I am not sure how many of Hasbro's target audience - "mums with children aged eight to 13" - the team had talked to, but this exercise in PR appeared to largely miss them.

With PR in the Financial Times, Esquire, the BBC's Click Online show and even wired.com, I am convinced that our own "community" was widely covered. But wired.com and mums with kids? Unless wired.com has become a help site for mums that are pushed too close to the edge on the school run, this just doesn't feel right.

The results look mouthwatering at first sight: 190,000 online players - wow. But hold on, how many hassled mums are really following the journey of their chosen black cab and texting regularly while cooking the fish fingers? More importantly, how does this magnificent number actually create sales? It sounds as if the online experience doesn't need you to get down to Hamley's and spend some money.

"Here and Now" may have been a success for Hasbro. I am sure much of that is down to the TV and radio advertising that ran nationally to make sure "the launch would not be missed".

However, much of the energy and effort on this campaign has been expended behind an approach that doesn't appear to be rooted in any real target audience behaviour or motivation.

While this is a finely crafted and extremely clever piece of work, ultimately it will have done more for the digital literati than for the school-run mums. As my American client once said: "Son, you're breathing your own exhaust."

SCORE: 2/5.

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Media: Strategy Analysis - The biggest ever game of Monopoly

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Brand: Monopoly "Here and Now" Client: Hasbro Brief: Launch the limited edition board game Monopoly "Here and Now" Target audience: All adults with a core target of mums with children aged eight to 13 Budget pounds: 500,000 AGENCIES Media: OMD UK Creative: DDB London Interactive: Tribal DDB PR: Brazen PR STRATEGY Monopoly "Here and Now" was launched in June 2005 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the classic board game.

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Toy Industry : Present and the Future 2010TOYS INDUSTRY & FUTURE OUTLOOK A REPORT The r eport details the specifics of t...

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Mizgin AhmedHivi Hurori Rachel Masingill Jesus Mendez Joseph Nguyen Rebaer Tovi Table of Contents 1. Compan...

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Ravensburger Limited - Company Profile - Endole

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Ravensburger Limited is an active company located in Bicester, Oxfordshire. View Ravensburger Limited profile, shareholders, contacts, financials, industry and description.

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Board Games Market Report | Size, Share, Growth and Forecast

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Board Games Market report covers statistics on market size, share, sales, growth, forecast and industry analysis. Besides, the report also details about the current trends and industry dynamics. The study includes data on manufacturers, demand, consumption and revenue followed by the current market scenario and future perspective.

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Toy market UK value 2011-2017 | Statistic

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This statistic shows the value of the toy market in Great Britain from 2011 to 2017. In 2017, a 2.8 percent decrease in sales meant that the British toy market fell to a value of 3.4 billion British pounds, down from 3.5 billion British pounds the year before.

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There is a wolf baying at the door of the global entertainment market, and for a change, it doesn't require digital downloads or Wi-Fi connection.

This creature is of a far more modest construct; carving new milestones in a traditional market as old as the toy industry itself. This creature is board gaming. And, generating some big money across the market, it appears ready to blow down the foundations of the current technological zeitgeist.

Let's put it into perspective. According to market analysts Euromonitor, the sector totalled $9.45 billion in sales in 2016. On a more localised scale, games and puzzles has just become the fastest growing category year-to-date ending June 2017. The NPD Group has also revealed that the sector is up 24 per cent versus the same period last year, indicative of the swell in its popularity.

Whether you paint this as a renaissance or a rebellion, the board games and puzzles sector has been seeing a global growth for quite some time now.

In 2011, it was worth $7.6bn. Over the course of five years that value has grown by 17 per cent, fuelled in large by 2015's gaming revival. We all remember Pie Face, of course, and the home video that helped propel the game to global fame. It proved to be quite the pivotal moment not just for the brand but family gaming in general.

Since then, not only has Hasbro rebranded its games portfolio under the Hasbro Gaming arm and launched numerous concepts within the field, including subscription boxes to deliver curated content to fans, but more and more, we have witnessed a widespread of toy companies express a growing interest in the sector.

This year alone, Character Options introduced its first slew of family games, Thames and Kosmos' UK division detailed its renewed focus on the tabletop sector and all the while, smaller businesses - Big Potato, Bananagrams and Accentuate - have each reported enviable sales figures.

Of course it will come as no surprise that, according to 2016 results, Hasbro remains the dominant force in the family gaming sector with a 22.6 per cent share of the total global market. Behind it sits the likes of Mattel, Ravensburger, Asmodee and in the Eastern market, Shanghai Yaoji Playing Cards.

But between them, this leader board of the 'big five' totals only 40 per cent of the market. So who is taking the lion's share of this global phenomenon?
Indie rock and roll
Board gaming; whether it's quick-fire family games or the more intense tabletop variety, is arguably one of the most accessible areas of the contemporary toy industry.

Increasingly, indie board game publishers are finding shelf space here in the UK, while smaller companies and distributors such as Coiledspring Games are recognising the potential gains to be made by introducing them and the plethora of titles to already dominate the European market into their offering.

According to the most recent ICO Partners analysis, the total amount generated by Kickstarter's database of successfully funded board game projects exceeded $70m in the first half of this year. That's seven times the amount generated by its former leading sector, video games.

It would seem then, that the independent board game publishing scene is awash with more talent than ever before. But more so than that, the sector is equally complemented with a global community of fans ready to invest both time and money into it.

"The best bit is, the awareness of games is not yet saturated," said Ben Hogg, marketing manager at Esdevium Games tells ToyNews. "We can see this in the growth of sales, the rising attendance at conventions and the emergence of Kickstarters and Board Game Cafes."

If there's one thing to highlight about the rise and rise of the board game market, it's community; between players, publishers, investors and more.

It wasn't just Hasbro that spotted this dynamic when it partnered with Indiegogo two years ago in a campaign to find its next board game designer. Big brands have been infiltrating the crowdfunding community for quite some time now, helping to bring popular licensed properties to the space while allowing indie publishers to maintain their individualism among a fan base that just loves an auteur.

IDW Games found success with its Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles title while Space Goat Productions scored with Terminator, but perhaps the best example is Dark Souls: The Board Game. A physical spin-off of the hit video game franchise published by Bandai-Namco, it was the seemingly unknown games publisher Steamforged that launched the project to Kickstarter in April 2016. By the end of May, the board game had cleared £3 million in funding.

Did it ride the crest of a wave of recent successes within the tabletop gaming spectrum? Undeniably, yes. But more than that, it presented the perfect melee of licence to medium and medium to platform to its global fan community.
Culture club
Pop culture and board gaming has gone hand in hand for a fair few years. Look at Winning Moves' varied collection of licensed titles, from The Walking Dead Monopoly and Game of Thrones Risk to Big Bang Theory Cluedo and Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit.

It's thanks to the likes of Waterstones and the few retailers that took the chance on the sector early on, that geek culture has been rehomed from the shadows and brought onto the High Street where mainstream audiences are not only privy to, but indulging in a market that for far too long had remained one of the continent's best kept secrets.

"It seems as though the UK is catching up with Europe in realising that table top gaming is a great way for families and friends to have fun together," says Roger Martin, owner of Coiledspring Games.

"With the noticeable rise in board game cafes, finding more and more titles in local pubs and libraries combined with ambassadors for titles across social media, it is not surprising that many of the mainstream retailers are reacting to the growing trend."

Such is the rise in demand for international titles that Thames & Kosmos recently detailed that its renewed focus was on bringing its German owner Kosmos' array of titles in to the UK market.

"Many board gamers have expressed their delight that they can finally buy the games in English and not have to translate from German," explains Thames & Kosmos UK's sales director, Jo Drage.

"But with so many good titles to choose from, our main problem is to decide which are the right ones to translate first."

It's not a solitary problem. Owing to the vast quantity of board game titles available, (the online directory Board Game Geek estimates this at around 89,000, not including the thousands of titles
from amateur publishers), the concept of purchasing for first time buyers is understandably a daunting one.

The multi-million pound 'gateway gaming' market - a breed of table top games designed to ease players into the hobby - does help, of course, and many popular titles from Coiledspring and Esdevium Games, (such as Talisman and Pandemic), offer the ideal launch pad
into the market. But, perhaps nothing has done more for geek culture-mainstream relations than the explosion of the licensed board gaming market.

Winning Moves is the UK distributor of a great number of popular and pop-culture licensed titles and has cited a stark rise in demand for licensed board games from both children and adults in the last couple of years.

In fact, Q4 2016 saw the firm's unit sales numbers increase from four to five figures driven by the likes of Game of Thrones, Harry Potter and Pokémon and helping the company to its 28 per cent overall growth last year. This year, it expects much of the same with new licenses on board, including Rick and Morty and Super Mario.

Interestingly, two of the five big hitters for Winning Moves are based on IP to have emerged from the video games market. Add to this the success it is seeing for its Skyrim licensed games via online gaming retailers, the flurry of video game licensed board games to have hit the market in recent years overall, and the success of the likes of Dark Souls: The Board Game, and you can start to see the beginnings of a new sub- culture forming.

Of course, the same could be said of comic book IP or movies making the transition to board games - the Batman-themed Rory's Story Cubes, for instance. There are plenty out there. But how many can lay claim to setting the foundations of an entire sub-category of board gaming, one that quite wonderfully crosses into the live experiential market?

The escape room phenomenon really took off in the UK towards the end of 2015. Following a flurry of new experiences popping up across the capital, the trend soon went nationwide, mirroring the success it had seen internationally.

The concept was simple, if somewhat maniacal: lock a group of friends or strangers (or strange friends) in a room for one hour and challenge them to break free by solving a network of intricate and convoluted puzzles.

Its popularity has not only been well- documented but successfully translated into the board gaming sphere, with titles such as Escape the Room, Mystery at the Stargazer's Manor among Paul Lamond's raft of bestsellers in the last year.

However, the escape room phenomenon actually emerged from the video gaming culture; a direct translation from the vastly popular The Crimson Room, a Japanese title that gained vast success from an underground culture. Around it, an entire sub-culture of gaming now appears to have emerged, one that transports the game's algorithms into the physical space.

The relationship between video games and board games doesn't end there, and the potential for bringing in technology closely aligned with the video gaming market - augmented and virtual reality - is slowly being recognised.

"I think there is still considerably more to come from adding technology into games, such as companion apps that we have seen in a number of games," continues Esdevium's Hogg. "A great example of this being our own escape room style game, Unlock."

While many traditionalists will rebuff this addition of tech in the sector, others argue that its inclusion only goes to heighten the experiential element of board gaming. This is, after all, a market that thrives on the collective experience of its players and community.

According to fan website, The Board Game Cupboard, the UK's first official board game cafe? - The Games Hub in Edingburgh - opened its doors in 2012. Inspired by the Toronto-based outfit Snakes and Lattes, the cafe? kickstarted a new trend that has spread across the UK,

totalling 15 destinations from North to South, and counting.

Of course, that's not taking into account the numerous pubs and libraries throughout the UK that have chosen to increase their board gaming offering, as well as the hobby and toy shops that offer their own unique board gaming events.

Such is the rise, it has infiltrated the manufacturer's mindset and indie outfit, Big Potato has even hinted at a desire to open its very own cafe? for the community to enjoy.

As for the future of the market, the industry appears to be in unanimous agreement that it will only grow stronger as larger and wider spread audiences are exposed to its many benefits.

"We are certain that the board game trend will continue to grow globally," says Rena Nathanson, CEO of Bananagrams.

"With this renewed interest in the sector come new initiatives and fan activities, Casual gamer conventions are growing in popularity, with exposure to new products renewing the return to grassroots marketing efforts," she concludes.

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Dice Age: The unstoppable momentum of the board games industry

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There is a wolf baying at the door of the global entertainment market, and for a change, it doesn't require digital downloads or Wi-Fi connection. This creature is of a far more modest construct; carving new milestones in a traditional market as old as the toy industry itself.

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Dublin, Aug. 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Board Games Market in Europe - Industry Outlook and Forecast 2018-2023" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The growing popularity of strategy and war games and educational games is primarily driving the growth of the Europe board games market. The lure of hands-on and heads-on skill and knowledge development for different age groups is attributing to the popularity of these table top games in the European market. The leading manufacturers in the market are focusing on designing and creating an engaging and competitive environment that requires players to focus reinforce and apply to learn. These games are expected to improve games elements, problem-solving skills, discussions, and communication among players in the European market.

The complexity of several of these games will encourage the end-user to solve problems and handle situations that allow players to think through and apply what they have learned in an effective manner. The main advantage of playing these games help consumers to build on their communication and relationship skills. The economic development and increase consumer's purchasing power are driving the demand for these products in the European market. Countries such as Germany and the UK are the largest consumers and highest revenue generators in the Europe board games market. Some games designed specifically for corporates will enhance the learning ability of professionals and helps to improve the working relationship with employees in the market.

Some of the award-winning games available in the European market include Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, and Pandemic. The games designed for this region focus on building resources and optimum management of resources, thus keeping all the players engaged until the end of the game. Development of such consumer specific games will help manufacturers gain a larger market share in the European market.

Europe Board Games Market - Dynamics

The proliferation of the internet and social media channels are shaping the end-users' purchasing behavior and boosting sales in the Europe board games market. Top retail giants such as Sainsbury's, Target, Carrefour, Lowe's, Metro, Costco, Groupe Auchan, and Walmart account for over 68% of the total sales volume in the European market. The market is also witnessing a shift to digital channels where consumers research about pricing and other related information of various games available in the market.

Online platforms are used extensively by end-users to compare prices and features of games. This shift in consumer behavior is encouraging marketers and retailers to adopt omnichannel retailing to facilitate seamless shopping experience in the European market. The increasing penetration of wireless broadband internet, strong adoption of smartphones and tablets, and growth of social media users are some of the factors that will attribute to the growth of online retail channels in the Europe board games market.

Europe Board Games Market - Segmentation

This market research report includes a detailed segmentation of the market by product type, theme type, distributional channels, and geography.

Europe Board Games Market - By Product Type

"Table top games to boost critical thinking among end-users in the Europe board games market"

The Europe board games market by product type is categorized into tabletop games, card & dice games, collectible card games, miniature games, and RPG board games. Tabletop games dominated the majority of the market share in 2017, growing at a CAGR of around 7% during the forecast period. The growing demand among grade-schoolers, teenagers, and adults for strategy-based tabletop gamesis propelling the growth of this segment in the European market.

The rise in the number of social gatherings amongst the millennial end-user group and the popularity of the game night concept will contribute to the growing revenues in this segment in the market. France, Germany, and the UK are the largest consumers of this type of games in the European market. Publishers of tabletop games target mass market due to their wide user base, which is driving the growth of this segment in the Europe board games market.

Europe Board Games Market - By Theme Type

"Fantasy-based TV shows are driving the demand for games in the Europe board games market during the forecast period"

The theme type segment in the Europe board games market is classified into strategy & war games, educational games, fantasy games, sports games, and others. Fantasy-based games segment occupied the second largest market share in 2017, growing at a CAGR of more than 4% during the forecast period. Fantasy games are adventure-based games that incorporate a definite setting and players play as an individual. The growing popularity of TV series such as Game of Thrones is acting as a catalyst for rising traction and increasing revenues of this segment in the European market.

The recent shift in game designs from tactical to strategical design types are helping companies to attract young adults and increase their Europe board games market share. The vendors are designing games that allow the players to finish the game in a certain duration and enables their need to interact with fellow players in a meaningful way. Such game designs will help publishers generate higher revenues in the European market during the forecast period.

Europe Board Games Market - By Distribution Channel

"Price comparison ability through online platforms will increase sales in the Europe board games market during the forecast period"

The Europe board games market by distribution channel is segmented into retail (specialty store, mass-market players, and other stores) and online stores. Online stores dominated a portion of the market share in 2017, growing at a CAGR of over 6% during the forecast period. The exponential growth of online platforms such as Amazon, eBay, Argos, and John Lewis are leading to the growth of this segment in the European market. The increasing availability of a variety of products and instant price comparison are two of the major factors attributing to the rising popularity of this distribution channel in the market. The leading vendors are promoting the concept and use of these games through social media and other digital platforms to increase their market share and gain a wide consumer base in the Europe board games market. The ease-of-accessibility and convenience afforded by such channels will increase the revenues generated through these channels of distribution in Europe during the forecast period.

Europe Board Games Market - By Geography

"Popularity of family games in France to augment growth in the Europe board games market during the forecast period"

The geographical segment in the Europe board games market is divided into France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, Turkey, and others. France occupied the largest market share in 2017, growing at a CAGR of more than 5% during the forecast period. The growing demand for family games, strategic card games, and trading card games is attributing to the growth of this region in the European market. Monopoly, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, and Uno are the most popular games available in the French market. The French market for toys and games is growing at a moderate rate with tabletop games and puzzles registering highest growth among all the segments including plush toys, artistic activities, construction toys and games, and preschools toys, among others. The average expenditure on toys in France is 60% higher than the European average. Such factors will help in the growth and development of the French and Europe board games market.

Key Vendor Analysis

The Europe board games market is moderately concentrated and the top two players dominate the largest share. The top vendors are focusing on altering and refining their unique value proposition to sustain the intense competition in the European market. The market is also very fragmented due to the presence of various regional and international companies. The entry of various international players in developing economies such as Poland and Russia will intensify the level of competition in the European market. The players are using new business models and focusing on developing their franchises to gain a larger market share and attract new consumers. The shift towards digitization of games or developing supporting mobile applications to enhance customers' experience will help transform the Europe board games market over the next few years.

The major vendors in the European market are:

Asmadi Games

Asmode Editions

Bezier Games

BoardGameDesign.com

Buffalo Games

CMON

Clementoni

Fremont Die Consumer Products

Games Workshop

Gibsons Games

Goliath

Hasbro

IELLO Games

INI LLC

Indie Boards and Cards

International Playthings

Kamings Trade

Learning Resources

Legendary Games

Loony Labs

Ludo Fact

Mattel

Melissa & Doug

Mindware.com

North Star Games

Orchard Toys

Panda GM

Paul Lamond Games

Pegasus Spiele

Piatnik

Playroom Entertainment

Pressman Toy

Ravensburger

Reaper Miniatures

Rio Grande Games

RoosterFin

Schmidt Spiele

Spin Master

Spontuneous Games

SunsOut

Surprised Stare Games

TREND Enterprises

Talicor

The Grey Fox Games

The Haywire

The Regency Chess Company

The Walt Disney Co

ThinkFun

USAopoly

Ultra PRO International

University Games

Winning Moves Games

WizKids

Wonder Forge

Zobmondo

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Related Topics: Toys

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Europe Board Games Market Size is Expected to Reach Revenues of Approximately $4 Billion by 2023, Growing at a CAGR of Around 6% by 2017-2023

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Dublin, Aug. 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Board Games Market in Europe - Industry Outlook and Forecast 2018-2023" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The growing popularity of strategy and war games and educational games is primarily driving the growth of the Europe board games market.

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LONDON--()--According to the latest market research report released by Technavio, the global board games market is expected to register a CAGR of almost 23% during the forecast period. However, the growth momentum of the market is expected to decelerate due to a decline in the year-over-year growth.

This research report titled 'Global Board Games Market 2018-2022' provides an in-depth analysis of the market in terms of revenue and emerging market trends. It also includes an up-to-date analysis and forecasts for various market segments and all geographical regions.

This report is available at a USD 1,000 discount for a limited time only: View market snapshot before purchasing

The market research analysis categorizes the global board games market into the following products:

In 2017, the table top board games segment accounted for 62.81% of the global market and is projected to decline to 59.73% by 2022, exhibiting almost 3.08% decrease in market share.

Global board games market: Top emerging trend

The growing development of apps based on board games is an emerging trend in the jewelry space. The idea of developing applications based on board games has emerged due to the increasing use of smartphones. Although, playing a board game on a smartphone will not give the experience that a traditional board game offers, it can at least become an option for playing board games rather than replacing it with a substitute.

Looking for more information on this market? Request a free sample report

Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report including the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more.

Technavio's report provides expert market research on the following topics:

Executive Report

Market Outline

Global Board Games Market Overview

Market Insights

Market Sizing and Forecasts

Market Growth

Market Drivers and Challenges

Key Emerging Trends

Market Segmentation Analysis

Regional comparison (APAC, Americas, and EMEA)

Key leading countries

Market segmentation by product (table top board games, card and dice games, and RPGs)

Vendor Landscape

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Competitive scenario

Analysis of top vendors (Asmodée Editions, Goliath B.V., Grand Prix International, Hasbro, and Ravensburger)

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 10,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com.

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Global Board Games Market 2018-2022 | Table Top Board Games Segment Dominates the Global Market | Technavio

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LONDON--()--According to the latest market research report released by Technavio, the global board games market is expected to register a CAGR of almost 23% during the forecast period. However, the growth momentum of the market is expected to decelerate due to a decline in the year-over-year growth.

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https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-uk-toys--games-market-2017

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In addition to the Ravensburger blue triangle, the Ravensburger Group also includes other brands such as Brio, Wonderforge, Nathan, Carlit and F.X.Schmid.

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Esports - competitive organized play for videogames - has blown up into a $465 million global industry, according to market researcher Newzoo, and is projected by Juniper Research to hit $3.5 billion by 2021. But videogames aren't the only arena in geek culture where armchair athletes square off in pitched fantasy battles. Tabletop games have also seen a huge surge in popularity in the past half-decade and represent a fun, compelling entertainment option for millennials hungry for real-life social interaction.

Now a new player is looking to bring the excitement and competition of esports to the tabletop world with a software-enabled platform for organized tournament play and a high-stakes nationwide match featuring a quarter million dollars in prize money.
Play's The Thing
Hobby games, a segment that includes board games, collectible card games, role-playing games and assorted other forms of tabletop competition, represented a nearly $1.2 billion market in the U.S. in 2015, according to the industry site ICv2, with growth at a remarkable 29% year over year. Dozens of publishers are hitting big with ingenious games that combine creativity, cooperation and competition with elements of chance, strategy and collectability. Last year, tabletop gaming's main gathering, GenCon in Indianapolis, set a new attendance record by drawing over 201,000 through the turnstiles over a weekend in August.

With the popularity of hobby gaming on the rise, there's no reason why tournaments that pit the best players against each other in competitive, spectator-driven environments couldn't become more popular and lucrative. The main barrier has been logistical. To play tabletop games, people need to get together in person, and that requires coordination. Setting up a tournament or competition adds another layer of complexity.

Enter Oomba, a California-based social media company that builds software to enable and manage tournaments, leagues and teams. It uses simple technology tools to solve one of the fundamental problems of communal activities: finding people to play with and arranging convenient times to get together. It also has functionality to let anyone set up competitions, keep score and rate players based on their performance in events. While Oomba can be used for any team-based sport, the company saw a huge opportunity to focus on the hobby gaming space.

"Tabletop games appeal to the same geek culture demographic as comics, video games or fan-oriented media," says Oomba CEO Michael Williams, "but they are more of an active, lean-in experience and provide more of a sense of community."

Williams points to the growth in hobby game stores nationwide, which provide a venue in which people can meet up and compete socially. He says Oobma's vision is to extend that sense of community beyond the living room, gaming store or rec center by making it easy to organize larger tournaments.
Tournament Of Champions
While competitive board game play has been around for literally centuries if you count things like the World Chess Championship and global matches of games like Go and Scrabble, new global and national tournaments based on the Esports model used by videogames are also part of the brand-building arsenal for companies in the hobby game space. Because of the practical challenges of organizing in-person board gaming competitions, however, the spectrum of sponsors of events has been constrained to organizations with long histories and brands with deep pockets.

Magic: The Gathering, the popular card-based game from Wizards of the Coast (a division of Hasbro), has been running the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour since 1996, an invitation-only event awarding a total of $250,000 in prizes ($40K for the winner). Several independent tournaments for M:TG also exist, including those run by StarCityGames, which offers $100,000 in prizes.

The Pokémon World Championships is an invite-only event where the best players of the season compete for scholarship money, prizes and the title of World Champion. Another popular event is the Yu-Gi-Oh World Championship, an international, invitational Yu-Gi-Oh tournament held annually-usually in Japan- between the top-ranked Duelists of various countries. In order to receive an invitation to the World Championship, a player generally must win a National event in their native country during that year's main tournament season. That gives the tournament an international flavor that adds to its interest and reach.
To the Winner Goes The Spoils
Now Oomba is raising the stakes with a new tournament called Unrivaled, which the company hopes will be the largest annual tabletop event in the United States as well as a large-scale proof of concept of its technology platform.

"With Unrivaled, we're trying to expand the tabletop gaming audience by exposing more people to the community and the games themselves," says Williams.

The Unrivaled event will feature six games:

Ascension, a fantasy-oriented deck-building game from Stone Blade Entertainment;

Munchkin, a "fast and silly" deck-building game from Steve Jackson Games;

Epic Spell Wars II, a magic oriented board game from Cryptozoic Entertainment;

Nevermore, a casual card game from Smirt & Dagger Games;

Villagers & Villains, a dice and card-based quest game published by Studio 9;

King of Tokyo, a dice-based combat game featuring giant monsters, from Iello.

The tournament starts with competitive play at the local retail level in April-June. Winners will face off at the Regional qualifiers over the summer. Champions from each region will then gather at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas on October 27 to decide the grand prize winners for each game. Oomba the prizes for the tournament total $250,000.

"Unrivaled is a celebration of social aspects of tabletop gaming," says Williams. The company and its partners are betting that the excitement generated by the tournament gets more people into the world of tabletop games, and generates greater outside attention to the marketing, sponsorship and engagement opportunities for organized play. If their strategy pays off, it may open a whole new field of play for the esports model and a new point of engagement for the fan economy that has taken over popular culture.

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High Stakes Tournament Aims To Make Tabletop Games The Next ESport

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Esports - competitive organized play for videogames - has blown up into a $465 million global industry, according to market researcher Newzoo, and is projected by Juniper Research to hit $3.5 billion by 2021. But videogames aren't the only arena in geek culture where armchair athletes square off in pitched fantasy battles.

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Check out our YouTube Channel for archives of our streamed events

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In the 1970s, amongst the Space and Tech Lego, Evel Kneivel figures and Action Men, two new forms of entertainment stirred.

In 1972 the video game Pong appeared in limited quantities at arcades. The simple digital bat and ball game was surprisingly addictive and by the middle of the following year was a runaway, mainstream success as one of the first home console games. In turn it spawned classics like Space Invaders, Asteroids and Missile Command. The video game revolution had begun.

At around the same time Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson gave the world Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). This novel take on a Tolkienesque universe, where players cooperated to forge their own heroic stories, gripped hold of the imagination and hasn't let go since.

Over four decades later these two pillars of geekdom still stand. Video games dominate the world of entertainment generating over twice the revenue of the film industry. RPGs, whilst not in the same league, nonetheless have not only survived in this digitally-obsessed culture, but positively thrived, and enjoy greater popularity now than ever before.

In fact the entire tabletop gaming industry, including board, card and dice games, has seen a resurgence in recent years which has baffled many and, combined with so many celebrities "coming out" as closet tabletop gamers, attracted mainstream interest in this relatively niche hobby.

These mainstream, non-geek outsiders aren't just voyeurs either: they want in. They're going from playing family staples like Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit, via "gateway" games like Catan, Carcassonne and Ticket To Ride, to the brain drain of heavy Eurogames and glossy excitement of Ameritrash. They're becoming full-on geeks and bona fide Gamers.

This could be attributed to a general upsurge in gaming as a whole, particularly video games. The days where the gaming demographic was socially awkward teenage males are gone. That's not to say they're now under-represented, but the environment is considerably more diverse. Most are aware there's a huge female player base for mobile gaming, but you might be just as likely to come up against a girl in your average FPS too.

There's also a mainstream acceptance of fantasy themes across media that's been building for a couple of decades. Harry Potter wasn't just a runaway success with children: Bloomsbury even printed more "grown up" covers of the books to allow adults to read them in public without feeling too self-conscious. The fantasy epic Game of Thrones has become one of the most successful TV series ever, boosting further the sales of the novels which had been popular with fantasy nerds since 1996.

Remember that many of the folk that gush excitedly to their co-workers about last night's Game of Thrones episode or how on earth they'll be able to wait for the next series, are the very same people that less than a decade ago might have disparagingly looked down their noses at geeks and nerds immersed in the very same folklore iconography.

However, none of this necessarily explains the boom in tabletop games, often in favour of their digital counterparts. To find the answer we'll have to look more closely at the two main generational groups that are driving this Golden Age of Tabletop Gaming in an environment dominated by video games.

Generation X

This is the generation that started it all. My generation. The children of the 1970s and 1980s who grew up alongside both video and alternative fantasy gaming. Our parents were utterly baffled by these twin alien worlds that evolved and grew with us. Worlds which were novel and exciting to us, and that we felt a certain ownership over.

No internet. Hell, no LAN in the beginning. Multiplayer video gaming was a social pastime, whether it was playing Joust on your friends Atari console, or a decade later gathered around someone's SNES enjoying Super Mario Kart. It was raucous, split-screen mayhem.

By the first decade of the new millennium that had mostly moved online. Our gaming groups had expanded to encompass countries and continents across the globe, and most modern games featured online lobbies where we could meet and play against total strangers at the touch of a button.

Today it's never been easier to find folk to play video games with, and the couch-based split-screen gatherings of yesteryear are almost obsolete.

Generation Xers also grew up in an age where there was a clearly defined geek culture, meaning a proportion of those playing a lot of video games into the 21st century were also still playing their RPGs and board games, however infrequently and despite often being seduced by the likes of Oblivion and other digital incarnations of various analogue fantasy genres.

However, with multiplayer video games going global and often no longer even supplying an offline multiplayer mode, and analogue gaming like D&D requiring the kind of planning that many Generation Xers now encumbered with families just couldn't manage, things were looking bleak on both fronts.

As the first decade of the new millennium was drawing to a close there were many Generation Xers hankering for a return to more social, face-to-face gaming experiences once again. The same geeky camaraderie felt when gathered around a CRT television shooting each other in the face playing Goldeneye on the N64, but without the time sink of an RPG campaign.

That's where board games come in.

A board game provides the same social interaction that the Generation Xers crave from their console huddles of yesteryear, along with giving them the kind of gaming escapism that they might have got from RPGs, but wrapped up in packages that (with a few notable exceptions) can be played in an evening over a bottle or three of wine, and aren't such self-conscious endeavours as RPGs for those who have become used to gaming alone in front of a screen.

Millennials

Sometimes referred to as Generation Y, Millennials grew up fully immersed in the digital age. There was no life before the internet/mobile phones. There was no 8-bit game loading from cassette tapes (whereas I swear I can understand audible binary) or dot-matrix printers. Millennials arrived in a world where personal technology was integrated with life. I can no more conceive of what that's really like than Millennials can of a world where a mobile phone is the size of a house brick.

As such you might also think the same generation would be equally unable to enjoy the simple pleasures of analogue entertainment, but you couldn't be more wrong. Millennials are flooding new board game cafes and meetup groups, and are often the most outspoken on forums and social media.

This has led some to suggest that it is Millennials alone that are driving our present Golden Age of Board Gaming, although that opinion is usually expressed by Millennials themselves, who as a group exhibit around 16% more narcissism than older adults, so this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise! [N.B. It's fair to say too that they're usually naysayed by Generation Xers who are 100% more likely to harp on about how good the old days were and how Millennials have it so easy. And they'd be right of course.]

However, statistically the 20-30 age demographic is the most prevalent in the online board game community by a long way, even if it's the Generation Xers that are the most likely to have large amounts of disposable income to spend on the hobby, and those most likely to be designing the games we play. Think of your favourite tabletop designers and you'll probably be picturing beards with grey in them.

Whatever the truth of the matter, Millennials are undoubtedly abandoning video-gaming for the tabletop, but for subtly different reasons than Generation X. There's obviously a shared desire for more face time away from social media and online games, and a shared nostalgia, although for Millennials that may be fond memories of board games with the family as kids, rather than Generation X desire to return to the "good old days" of social gaming.

That's not to suggest that there aren't many geeky Millennials that have been playing RPGs, Magic: The Gathering and Warhammer 40K since their pre-teens, but in terms of the uninitiated mainstream, their generation has been far more openly embracing of this tabletop culture, perhaps because they were born into a world where the Geek was already inheriting the Earth?

Gaming is Dead. Long Live Gaming!

So in fact it's two generations driving the board game boom, coming from different technological and gaming backgrounds, but both sharing a general desire to switch from online gaming with it's faceless friends and foes and beautiful, yet intangible content, to a world where friends gather face-to-face to laugh and battle and cooperate and game over tactile components.

Nostalgia aside, the environment is also more conducive to attracting non-gaming friends and family. With video games the main barrier to inclusion is the method of interaction itself: the controller. Even experienced gamers from one platform might baulk at the controller of another device, branding it poorly designed and nigh on unusable.

Board games on the other hand require no such muscle memory and hand-eye coordination from the player, barring dexterity games like Flick 'Em Up of course. True, they still need a certain level of mastery to beat experienced players, but at least noobs can compete without being made to feel incompetent or uncoordinated. At least most of the time.

Being a Generation Xer myself I tend to compare board games to video games in the same way I compare the Commodore 64 to the PS4: the graphics might be a bit shit, but there's often much more actual game there.

So if you're tiring of the faceless online world of gaming, or just fancy a change, then pull up a chair with us, crack open a frosty beverage, and prepare to be entertained!

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Here's Why Boardgames Are The New Videogames - TABLETOP TRIBE - Medium

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In the 1970s, amongst the Space and Tech Lego, Evel Kneivel figures and Action Men, two new forms of entertainment stirred. In 1972 the video game Pong appeared in limited quantities at arcades. The simple digital bat and ball game was surprisingly addictive and by the middle of the following year was a runaway, mainstream success as one of the first home console games.

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DUBLIN, September 25, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The "Global Board Games Market - Strategic Assessment and Forecast 2017-2022" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering.

The board games market will grow at a CAGR of 9% during 2016-2022.

"Global Board Games Market - Strategic Assessment and Forecast 2017-2022," considers the present scenario of the market and its strategic assessment for the period 2017-2022. It includes a detailed study of growth drivers, trends, and restraints. The report includes the leading four vendors in the market and other key vendors.

Board games are witnessing a high-value proposition for investors and general population than other advanced video games. A major factor that is encouraging the general population to invest is that board games are easy to understand and people can connect with the concept rapidly and can set realistic targets. Hence the increase in crowdfunding platforms for the game publishers is a major factor that is driving the growth of the market.

These games, which were traditionally played in their physical format using boards, cards, dice, and playing tokens, are increasingly being translated into the digital form for devices such as smartphones, computers, video game systems, and tablets. The increasing digitization of these games is one the emerging trends that is going to boost the market during the forecast period.

The board games market continues to face a challenge from the digital games segment, however, the market along with other games segment have remained stable in the past three years.

The retail sale has increased tremendously and the demand has mainly been from the teen and adult population. Board games are not only beneficial for learning among toddlers and infants but also, they are helpful in creating learning environment among adults and are increasingly becoming a part of corporate classrooms. Also, the development of mobile applications supporting these games have increased the gaming experience among several age groups. As the purchasing power of middle-class families is increasing, the sale of board games is likely to accelerate.

A high average lifecycle is another factor for the growth of the market. Board games have an average lifecycle of eight years, however with product extensions, it is expected to reach ten years.

The global board games market is dominated by the tabletop segment because of its increasing demand across geographies. Publishers of tabletop games target mass market due to their wide user base, which is driving the growth of the market. The collectible card games segment is the second popular segment in the global board games market.

The report profiles major companies in the global board games market and provides the competitive landscape of the leading players. It covers the entire market outlook regarding the value chain operating in the market.
Key Topics Covered:
Section 1 Research Methodology

Section 2 Executive Summary

Section 3 Report Coverage

3.1 Report Assumption

3.2 Market Derivation

3.3 Currency Exchange Rates

Section 4 Introduction

Section 5 Key Market Drivers

5.1 Increasing Millennials Population

5.2 Increasing Crowdfunding Platforms for Board Game Publishers

5.3 Shifting Themes of Board Games

Section 6 Key Market Trends

6.1 Growing Trend of Board Game Cafes

6.2 Increasing Digitization of Board Games

6.3 Growing Visual and Sensory Appeal in Board Games

6.4 Growing Mobile Applications for Board Games

6.5 Increasing Focus on Online Strategy

Section 7 Key Market Restraints

7.1 Threat from Other Gaming Platforms

7.2 Volatile Raw Material Prices

7.3 Lack of Product Awareness and Limited Access to New Vendors

7.4 Loss on Royalty Fees due to Counterfeit Board Games

Section 8 Global Board Games Market

8.1 Introduction

8.1.1 Case Study

8.2 Global Board Games Market Size and Analysis

Section 9 Global Board Games Market by Type

9.1 Tabletop Board Games Market

9.1.1 Market Size and Forecast

9.2 Card and Dice Games Market

9.2.1 Market Size and Forecast

9.3 Collectible Card Game Market

9.3.1 Market Size and Forecast

9.4 Miniature Games

9.4.1 Market Size and Analysis

9.5 RPGs

9.5.1 Market Size and Analysis

Section 10 Global Board Games Market by Theme

Section 11 Geographical Segmentation

11.1 Geographical Overview of Board Games Market

Section 12 Board Games Market in Europe

Section 13 Board Games Market in North America

Section 14 Board Games Market in APAC

Section 15 Board Games Market in Latin America

Section 16 Market Size and Analysis of MEA

Section 17 Competitive Landscape

17.1 Porter's Five Forces Model

17.1.1 Threat of New Entrants

17.1.2 Bargaining Power of Suppliers

17.1.3 Bargaining Power of Buyers

17.1.4 Threat of Substitutes

17.1.5 Threat of Rivalry

17.2 Competitive Scenario

Section 18 Key Vendor Analysis

18.1 Asmodee

18.1.1 Introduction

18.1.2 Financial Performance

18.1.3 Key Strengths

18.2 Hasbro

18.2.1 Introduction

18.2.2 Hasbro Brand Architecture

18.2.3 Traditional Game Play Portfolio

18.2.4 Emerging Brands

18.2.5 Product Categories

18.2.6 Financial Performance

18.2.7 Key Strengths

18.2.8 Key Strategies

18.2.9 Key Opportunities

18.3 Mattel Inc.

18.3.1 Introduction

18.3.2 Brand Architecture

18.3.3 Traditional Game Play Portfolio

18.3.4 Product Categories

18.3.5 Financial Performance

18.3.6 Key Strengths

18.3.7 Key Strategies

18.3.8 Key Opportunities

18.4 Ravensburger

18.4.1 Introduction

18.4.2 Financial Performance

18.4.3 Key Strengths

18.4.4 Key Strategy

18.4.5 Key Opportunities

Section 19 Other Prominent Vendors

19.1 Asmadi Games

19.2 Bezier Games

19.3 BoardGameDesign.com

19.4 Clementoni

19.5 Disney

19.6 Gibsons Games

19.7 Goliath BV

19.8 Grey Fox Games

19.9 Fremont Die Consumer Products

19.10 Indie Boards and Cards

19.11 INI LLC

19.12 International Playthings

19.13 Kamings Trade

19.14 Learning Resources

19.15 Legendary Games

19.16 Loony Labs

19.17 Ludo Fact

19.18 Mayfair Games

19.19 Melissa & Doug

19.20 Mindware.com

19.21 North Star Games

19.22 Orchard Toys

19.23 Panda GM

19.24 Paul Lamond Games

19.25 Playroom Entertainment

19.26 Pegasus Spiele

19.27 Piatnik

19.28 Pressman Toy

19.29 RoosterFin

19.30 Reaper Miniatures

19.31 Rio Grande Games

19.32 Schmidt Spiele

19.33 Spin Master

19.34 Spontaneous Games

19.35 Surprised Stare Games

19.36 SunsOut

19.37 Talicor

19.38 The Haywire Group

19.39 The Regency Chess Company

19.40 ThinkFun

19.41 TREND Enterprises

19.42 Ultra PRO International

19.43 University Games

19.44 USAopoly

19.45 Winning Moves Games

19.46 Wonder Forge

19.47 Zobmondo

Section 20 Appendix

For more information about this report visit
https://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/bfrmw9/global_board Media Contact:
Laura Wood, Senior Manager
press@researchandmarkets.com

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470
For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630
For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907
Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

Markets Insider and Business Insider Editorial Teams were not involved in the creation of this post.

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Global Board Games Market - Strategic Assessment and Forecast2 | Markets Insider

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DUBLIN, September 25, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Board Games Market - Strategic Assessment and Forecast 2017-2022" report has been added to Research and Markets' offering. The board games market will grow at a CAGR of 9% during 2016-2022.

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THOSE who complain that Britain doesn't make anything any more should be heartened to learn that the country's most successful listed firm is in fact a manufacturer-sort of. Business at Games Workshop, which makes the miniature figures used in its Warhammer series of tabletop games, is booming. Shares in the Nottingham-based company have risen by 660% over the past two years, making it the most successful firm in the FTSE 250 share index.

For years, Games Workshop was known primarily for two things: pricey products (a Warhammer army can cost well over £300, or $390) and unfathomably complicated rules. Since installing a new boss in 2015, the company has simplified its Warhammer series and relaunched a number of older, more casual games, most notably "Blood Bowl", which pits orcs against elves in violent American-football matches. The strategy is working. In the 12 months to June 2018 the firm reported net profit of £60m, up from £13m two years earlier.
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Games Workshop's growth is part of a broader rise in interest in tabletop games. Figuring out exactly how many epic battles between dwarves and goblins are taking place across pub tables is hard, because most such games are made by private firms. But 22,000 people went to this year's UK Games Expo, the country's largest tabletop-gaming convention, up from 12,000 two years ago.

One reason is an improvement in games' quality. The most popular board games in the Anglosphere have tended to be ones that are aimed at children and rely on luck. Since the mid-1990s, more complex continental board games have won a following. Titles like "Settlers of Catan", originally published in German, have proved a hit. They have also inspired competition. Tabletop games are the second-most popular type of project on Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform.

Another reason is that games have become a bit less uncool. One Warhammer player in his 20s says that his hobby made him such a target in school that he had to take up boxing to keep bullies at bay. Since then, sagas like "Game of Thrones" have sexed up the fantasy genre. Meanwhile, nerds have taken over the City and the tech industry, making them rich. One IT manager at a big bank says that tabletop games help him decompress. Warhammer may be an expensive hobby for most, but not for workers like him who are used to spending £150 on a night out.

Perhaps the biggest reason, however, is the proliferation of social media. Each Warhammer miniature takes hours to build and paint. Online tutorials on sites like YouTube have made it possible for even the artistically challenged to assemble beautiful armies of space marines. Social networks such as Facebook have made it easier for people with niche hobbies to meet up. Online games may represent a rival to the tabletop sort. But Peter Davies, founder of the London Wargaming Guild, points out that virtual gaming can be a lonely experience compared with playing in person.

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Britons are increasingly turning to tabletop games for entertainment

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THOSE who complain that Britain doesn't make anything any more should be heartened to learn that the country's most successful listed firm is in fact a manufacturer-sort of. Business at Games Workshop, which makes the miniature figures used in its Warhammer series of tabletop games, is booming.

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Less than two years after turning his dream into a reality, a shop owner is moving to bigger premises to cope with the demand.

Nathan Long took his love of gaming and made it a business, opening Mighty Lancer Games in Springfield Avenue.

He already ran a website but branched out to open premises selling a range of miniatures, board games, family games, dice and hobby supplies.

But its rapid success has led Nathan and his wife Emma to move into a former restaurant in the heart of Bridlington town centre.

Nathan said: "It has always been my dream to own my own gaming hobby store and provide other gamers with top class hobby products easily accessible and at a reasonable price.

"We've grown beyond that initial dream and that also means we have outgrown our shop.

"Springfield Avenue was a fantastic starter and provided us with the opportunity to establish Mighty Lancer Games and meet our fantastic customers but when the opportunity arose to move to a much bigger shop we had to take it."

He is also organising a festival at Driffield Showground later this month, alongside the move to Prince Street.

The new shop has a much larger floor space and will allow Nathan to expand his range of products as well as running more gaming tables and demonstrations for enthusiasts.

He added: "It is a big step, but the new shop will provide much needed extra room and enable us to provide more gaming space and larger events such as Friday Night Magic, Bolt Action and Warhammer.

"I hope that the Bridlington community will get behind us and our new step along this path and will all agree that it's great to see a local business doing well."

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Less than two years after turning his dream into a reality, a shop owner is moving to bigger premises to cope with the demand. Nathan Long took his love of gaming and made it a business, opening Mighty Lancer Games in Springfield Avenue.