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Finlay Mander
Types of marketing material:
- Product brochures, a product brochure is a brochure used to promote or detail the features of a product.
- Destination guides, a destination guide offers basic information or instruction on holidays and destinations. A tour package to Hawaii may be presented in the form of a destination guide.
- Promotional fliers and leaflets, promotional fliers and leaflets are normally used to promote simple services. For instance, a transport service may promote itself by a one page leaflet that would outline schedules and costs.
- Conference, programs and registration forms, conference, programs and registration forms are marking materials that promote a specific event. These type of marketing materials are usually made available only to interested parties. For instance, a conference for star wars fans.
- Display materials, display materials are materials exhibited publicly, such as a Real Estate agency presenting a flyer of available houses or a board notifying the public of the sale of a property.
- Product support manuals, product support manuals detail the use of a product. An international alarm clock may come with a reference guide that explains how it is used.
- Advertising materials, advertising materials materials aiming to attract public attention to a product or business. Advertising materials come in many forms including print, television, via the internet, radio and billboards.
- Electronically, electronic marketing material is produced by electronic means. A new hotel may be advertised by a virtual tour.
- Websites, A web site is a set of interconnected Web pages, usually including a home page, prepared and maintained as a collection of information by a person, group, or organisation.
- Radio, radio is the transmission of programs for the public by radio broadcast.
Before I can create any marketing for my product, I had to take a look at what work I produced on the target audience for the Mad Max franchise since visually my environment took inspiration from the Mad Max films.
Deciding marketing strategy
Since I am promoting an upcoming game through the screenshots of the environment I need to consider relevant promotion options. I’ve highlighted below a few of the potential marketing strategies.
Since I produced renders of my scene I feel as though it would be best if I promoted them as advertising materials to attract public attention for an upcoming game. Using this type of advertising, its important to chose websites which have good monthly traffic so that being on the trending tab has meaning and strengths, putting the work in front on everyone who visits the front page.
I did some research into finding out how I can measure how popular a website is or how many visitors a website gets each month or week. I used an online tool called https://app.neilpatel.com/ . This website allowed me to look at ArtStations organic monthly traffic and its monthly visitors. This information can be used as a way to understand how many people would see the art work uploaded for the up coming game whilst also being cost free.
The graph showcased 1 million visits in September 2020, then 1.1 million in October 2020, by November this number had increased by over a million, coming to a total of 2.3 million then flat lining at 2 million in December.
With these kind of numbers, advertising renders of environments for upcoming games is a great way to create a buzz about the game and start building a community/fanbase for it.
ArtStation also allows publishers to see how many views their work has accumulated, how many likes its received and also allows for people to comment on and share your work.
Likewise, promoting on other social outlets can be beneficial, however it attracts people from all different audiences, the problem with this is its rare on YouTube to see a reel of game environment renders being used as premature game promotion over using a teaser trailer. So if I were to upload a video compilation of my environment renders to YouTube, a place were this sort of video isn’t as likely to be promoted, talked about and positively perceived then I’m wasting my time. The reason for this is that people who are interested in the industry will use sites such as ArtStation to see the process behind the games, get inspiration and are genuinely interested in the industry or development company, where as YouTube is used differently.
This is evident in the views game trailers pull over videos highlighting environments and scenes of the same game on YouTube.
How Upcoming Games are Promoted on ArtStation.
A recently released game was Hitman 3 which came out on the 20th of January 2021 and a lot of promotional material for the scenes and environments of the game were uploaded to ArtStation. ArtStation – is the leading showcase platforms for games, films media & entertainment.
Hitman 3 showcase on ArtStation.
Since these are in essence just showcases of renders used to promote screenshots of in-game levels and points of interest. The type of marketing this falls under would be an advertising material displayed on a website. Since ArtStation has traffic from people who are primarily interested in the artistic side of games rather than just being a fan of a game. This unique traction held by ArtStation makes it one of the best places to promote upcoming games through this metric.
This type of promotional “art” doesn’t only serve the purpose of being used online, its entirely possible that this kind of simplistic game promotion could be used in public exhibits. For instance, at promotional event for Sony or Microsoft showcasing upcoming games. However, taking the state of the world right now into consideration digital advertising will be a lot predominate at the moment since conventions and events are postponed globally or held online in live streams digitally.
The advertisement on ArtStation can also gain traction my being on the trending tab or popular in certain categories at a given time.
Producing the right marketing for my environment:
With the examples I found for Hitman 3 there was the Hitman 3 logo in the corner, indicating what game the art is from.
From what I found on ArtStation it seems customary to have the logo of the game somewhere on the art work, so this is what I want to implement in my advertising.
First I needed to have a name for my ‘game’. To do this I went back over my mood boards that I created for inspiration in part 3 of this task. The dystopian future showed the desert as an empty life less place after a catastrophic event forcing everyone to leave. Creating an apocalypse. These kind of scenarios are known as “Doomsday” scenarios. So this is how I came up with the name for the game.
Although the logo appears basic, I feel as though in comparison to others it looks subtle and unimposing, not distracting the eye. I thought the nuclear explosion image was a nice touch as it ties into the theme of my game environment being post a ‘doomsday’ scenario.
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