Marketing In The Nerd World: Game Trade Magazine – Something Something Insert THAC0 Joke Here
8 Comments | Posted: September 3rd, 2008 | Filed under: Thinking about Comics Marketing | Tags: game trade magazine, web marketing
This is Game Trade Magazine, a publication that describes itself as follows:
The serious games magazine for serious gamers, Game Trade Magazine remains the most comprehensive and accessible monthly resource for the latest, up-to-the-minute product information in the world of games, anime, and hobby supplies going on 8 years and running! Packed with reviews, previews, product excerpts, exclusive scenarios, giveaways and collectible inserts from your favorite games and manufacturers, there’s no better source to feed your gaming needs!The magazine is closely associated with Diamond Comics Distributors, which means it’s available in many comics shops and frequently handed out alongside Previews. I’d never seen a copy (as I tend to go to comics shops that just sell comics exclusively) before Pal Dave showed it to me. He then pointed out something interesting involving a contest they’re having in the latest issue (September, 2008.)
Readers can win all of these (apparently very desirable) Dungeons and Dragons 4th editions books if they fill out the form that’s attached and get lucky. They can also visit This is gametrademagazine.com to enter the contest. Or so they claim. When you visit the website, you see nothing about the giveaway or any new content since February 28th of this year.
Yeah, this is what I’d like to think of as a pretty definitive online marketing failure. This isn’t a website not being updated on a Thursday for next week’s comics; this isn’t a publisher forgetting to put easy-to-grab images on their website – this is a company serving a sector that’s hungry for content, that’s generally very computer savvy. From the content that’s present, it looks like there was once an organized effort to maintain and update the site with content from the magazine, but it appears that the organization dropped the ball completely and letting their website rot instead of treating it like a valuable resource.
