Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne shares his reflections on the first International TableTop Day.
Winding down from and reflecting upon the first International TableTop Day, my first thought was "Wow." My second thought was "Whew." And my third thought was "Boy, am I glad that I didn't invest at the $500 level in the event." Why? Pray let me enlighten you.
First of all, this was a great event. I was glad the store participated and quite happy to have spent the $100 to get a pair of the basic TableTop Day kits. We had quite a bit of interest in the event, though not the crowds that other stores reported as we had eight to twelve people in playing for most of the day, unfortunately, the same eight to twelve people. Even though I understand the event had been planned for quite some time, we only heard about it in late February, as I mentioned in a previous column, not leaving much time to promote it, which is why the promotional items (window clings, posters, bag stuffers) included complemented the items we made here in the store for the event. Some of the promos included were quite cool, especially the Official Munchkin Bookmark for International TableTop Day (only usable in stores that have an International TableTop Day poster or window cling posted. Needless to say, we are keeping one up so the bookmark is always usable here. Hah!) and the pack of Gloom cards featuring Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day. Indie Board and Cards also did a nice job of piggybacking on the event, including a demo copy of their Resistance game, promo cards for the game to give away and entry forms for a contest in which the winner gets their picture in an upcoming game or promotional items. Nicely done.
The only problem I really heard regarding the promotion of the event was with the event map as a number of stores, ours included, that submitted events both through Alliance Distribution and the site itself, did not see them show up on the map.
Less impressive were the Skype interviews by Amy Dallen with stores that had signed up for the Premium level event. Oh, Dallen did a great job, remaining as enthusiastic about the interviews during the eighth hour as she was during the first. However, the interviews were quite short, only about two to three minutes (I understand the game stores that participated had been informed of this beforehand) and, especially during the earlier part of the day, the video often consisted of the head of the interviewee filling the video screen. If I was spending $500 to get interviewed over Skype, I’d want to make sure the camera got a good shot of the store and the people playing there rather than of my forehead. Stores called later in the program appeared to realize this as we saw more views of the store and customers playing. The Skype calls seemed less well organized than the rest of the event as I heard of several retailers waiting over an hour past the time of their scheduled call and, in several cases, being told by Geek & Sundry they would not get called at all. If they didn't get a call, here's hoping that G&S and TableTop do something to rectify that situation as Alliance and G&S had positioned the Skype call (along with a lit G&S sign) as a major inducement for a store to sign up at the $500 level.
The best use of TableTop Day I heard reported was from a store that signed up for a free listing on the website, made their own promo material and promoted it in-store, and had sales double a typical Saturday. That's the way to leverage an event like this!
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.