Publishing Advice - Managing the Brand

Posted by: Newt Newport On: May 24th 2013 edited

Ok here's a pretty broad one, but one I'm struggling with. How do you manage your brand or in less fancy terms how people view your publishing endeavours?

I used to be a big fan of Fred Hick's "You are your Brand", which basically boils down to the idea that how you behave on-line and in public colours the buying public's perception of your games, but then realised I'm not nearly as charismatic or prolific on-line as him. I also have the 'issue' that because I put out Old School games (OpenQuest/Crypts and Things), alongside storygames (Monkey, Wordplay, Generic HeroQuest Supplements) , the various audiences of thouse games label with me either the Story Gamer or Old School tag. Then throw in my Gloranthan stuff (Hearts in Glorantha/Gloranthan Adventures) , whos fans blithely ignore everything else. It often feels like D101 is a wobbly schitzo brandwise. I don't concentrate on one thing you see.

Posted by: mindwanders On: May 24th 2013

Hmm. I've only got one small collection of RPG products, but that is only one of the things I do.

I normally build each range of products into their own brand, even if it's just having a distinct brand name and seperate shopfront (somewhere). It does mean that I have a bunch of orphan brands from projects I've moved on from.

If you are promoting different things in different locations then it's simple to tailor your message and promoted products to those places. To be honest it sounds like you have done that already from the way your customers are reacting. Just accept it and formalise it in your blog and forum footers and it will go a long way towards focussing your brand.

Posted by: Newt Newport On: Jun 6th 2013 edited

Thanks for that.
Accepting that I have multiple product lines and being clear about how I represent them is there way foward.

I've made a small update to the D101 games website. I've split the "books" page into separate pages that now link from it. "Glorantha" , "Old School Renaissance" and "Storytelling Games" that should make it easier for people to find stuff they are interested in.

Posted by: Matt On: Jun 9th 2013

I wouldn't worry too much about it one that scale. I think your split on your website does a good job of showing the categories you cover.

You can actually make a feature of the way you cover different areas, it shows you have a diversity of tastes and avoid being pigeonholed. Has the potential for drawing people across the, fairly artificial, lines of sub communities too.

Posted by: Newt Newport On: Jun 24th 2013

He he I've just cleaned up my typo of "punishing endeavours?", a Freudian slip born of all those late night layout sessions :)

Thanks Matt for your last bit of advice, that had occured to me. I should really make a big thing that D101 is pretty much what Evil Gaz a "Trindie" (a composite of Trad + Indie", borne out of discussions on UK Roleplayers)

I think I'm pretty much done with my "re-branding" exercise, which has turned into a small tweak and some much needed reassurance.

Cheers :)