Marketing Bananzi

Last post, I was talking about starting adventures, stories, games, movies, whatever. I was talking about the little peices of information you have to get whe you start something to determine whether or not it will be interesting to you. But really, there's more than that. There's even things you get before you have access to the product that might determine whether you'll like it or not.

It's called marketing.

Before you even turn on your console, before you even open the first page of a book you see it in the stores. Most of the time, your first impression will be the size, color, cover image, and title of a product. You have to form your initial impression before you even touch it. Many people will know the difference in what they like between 'The flowers of Jehusbeth' and 'war of the death-tyrants', but what abou 'Mr. Smith'? It could be anything, and while it's most likely to be a biography or something similar, it doesn't provide enough information.

Now, we get to the image they pick for the cover. Most of the time, the images you'll see on any advertisements are artist representations of some of the content. Sometimes it'll be totally accurate to the content, sometime it won't. Terra in the final fantasy series is a good example. In the games, she has yellow hair. You can see it right there. In all the advertisments, she has bright green hair. Needless to say, people were confused at the time, but not much. Fast forward a few years, and Final Fantasy Dissidia comes out, using the advertisment art as the basis of the characters, instad of the in-game art. Now people are totally confused, because Terra looks totally different. These characters were based off a character based off her character.

Still, the images are really the selling points on most products. You probably would buy a air freshener with flowers on it. You might by an air freshener that was in a solid red container. You probably wouldn't buy an air freshener if it featured the picture of a fire hydrant. Who wants their house to smell like fire hydrants and dog-pee?

The problem here arises because you're most often going to see a dozen of these things at once. Artists have to pick either one of the most dramatic scenes of the book to illustrate or someone looking at the cover will choose the dragn breathing fire on a princess over the guy with a cloak in a hallway.

Ah, for the simple call of 'hey guys, let's play some DnD'