Four Wheels of Fury! October 8, 2007
Posted by Kendricke in Everquest 2, World of Warcraft.trackback
So you thought that World of Warcraft in a South Park episode was a marketing coup, eh? How about World of Warcraft during a football game.
That’s right. World of Warcraft and Toyota apparently teamed up to produce a Toyota truck commercial inside World of Warcraft which played DURING the football games this past weekend.
Tell me if the truck “driver” doesn’t sound like Dane Cook?
(Video below the cut)
I see marketing like this, and get physically upset when I think about the trip to Best Buy to see row upon row of World of Warcraft boxes, hats, maps, books, and t-shirts…but just 2 outdated boxes for Everquest II. I can’t recall the last time I even heard of an Everquest II ad – no magazine, radio, or TV ads anywhere. I’m not looking for a Superbowl ad, mind you. I’d just be happy with something.
And this, of course, leads into today’s discussion topic: How important is marketing for established games?
Talk amongst yourselves.
Ouch!
Okay, I do not like the EQ2 home page to start with. It seems too busy and too crowded to me, plus it actually has little in the way of information that I need. Tacking ads on to one side was not an improvement.
What is the point of having 3rd party ads on your games main page?
Hey, let’s see if we can drive some traffic to somebody elses site!
Did AdSense suddenly become lucrative? Is SOE marketing having a budget crisis after flying you all out for summits?
This is the sort of thing that keeps SOE from being taken seriously.
I agree. The ads on the Everquest 2 home page look really, really tacky. I can’t imagine they are making enough money on ad clicks to be worth the negative press they likely get from it. Plus what kind of message does that send to a new player who visits the site to find out about the game and if it is worth playing? To me it seems to say we are doing so poorly that we need ads to support our game. That is a great message to be sending a new player.