The Adventure Time Card Game hit the shelves nationwide on
Friday and, at least at our stock, sold out by mid-afternoon. We received our
full order but I heard tales of stores getting allocated significantly. We did
not order too heavily on it because, as is typical unfortunately, none of our customers
asked about the game until the Tuesday before release. After the first flurry of interest, sales in
the Adventure Time comic had dropped to almost zero and, while the Adventure
Time trade paperbacks sold, they didn’t turn at Walking Dead levels, but closer
to that of Empowered, decent sales but nothing out of the ordinary. Ergo, our pre-orders reflected the
comparative lack of interest our customer base had shown in all things
Adventure Time. I figured six of each
deck would last us for quite some time.
Boy, was I wrong.
So, we sent our order off to alliance and posted on Facebook
and Twitter that the decks had released and would hit the shelves Friday. Wham.
Within 2 hours we had a dozen posts asking about it and half a dozen or
more calls. On Friday, as mentioned
above, our entire stock had sold out by mid-afternoon with one customer driving
over an hour to pick up a copy. Happily for him, he called in advance and we
set one back for him. Those who did not wound up out of luck until our restock
comes in.
Imagine how we could have sold this given better
communication and tools. Maybe we received
emails mentioning it but none by
themselves to make the product stand out.
Why not a promotional poster sent out weeks ahead of the release
date? Maybe a sign-up sheet sent as a
PDF? Though I am not a huge fan of Games Workshop’s promotional strategies,
they do send out sign up forms for what they consider major new releases. As
long as I am dreaming, how about a demo copy of the game sent out a week or two
or even three before the release to gauge interest? Having this sort of
information helps drive pre-orders.
Pre-orders help the store, help the distributor, help the publisher,
heck, they even help the customer by giving us an indication of how much
interest there is in the product. More
interest means more pre-orders which means must less likelihood of an out of
stock which means the customer is more likely to find the game on the store
shelf.
Last year, Cryptozoic discussed some really impressive plans
they had for promoting their product lines, with launch events for new releases
and game days to continue to generate interest in their catalog titles, something
Fantasy Flight Games already does to great effect for their LCG lines. However, aside from making demo copies of
their games available through Alliance Distribution at reduced cost and a long
delayed game day promotion for the DC Heroes Deck Building Game, the cards for
which just showed up a week or so ago, we haven’t seen anything in store.
Cryptozoic has some great licenses, and some great games
using those licenses. Here’s hoping they
get the promotional campaigns up and running to match those licenses as I
really want to floop the pig with their games for a long time to come.