Games Workshop have appointed their very first digital agency according to Sarah Shearman over at Campaign.
Bio won the work after a four-way shootout between three other, undisclosed agencies. Bio will step up to produce a global digital strategy for Games Workshop.
This blogger works in digital marketing and would (half) like to have won that work and (half) pleased we weren’t invited to pitch (Disclaimer: I’ve no idea if we were or not..
Why? Games Workshop live in a fan bubble and fight fiercly to protect their IP. This cuts both ways. On one hand if you get some gamers interested in playing Games Workshop then that tends to bring other gamers into the fold. On the other hand you need to get groups of gamers interested at once.
Games Workshop will need to build a community (community begets customers, loyal customers too) and that is not easy when attack lawyers are trained to pounce anyone who creates community content outside of the official spaces. That’s not ideal from a digital marketing point of view.
I think with the margin Games Workshop makes on its products that affiliate marketing would suit it very well. It would rake in the cash as blogs like Geek Native would be given a stronger reason to pay attention to releases and news. However, there’s a community out there who’ll pay Games Workshop that level of attention anyway without being rewarded with commission so the management of the affiliate campaign would be very tricky indeed.
As Shearman points out, at the start of this month Games Workshop started to distribute digital content from the iBookstore in the form of interactive books. The company is certainly aware of its future – it will need to straddle both worlds; digital and physical.
Do you think Games Workshop does well with the web? What should they do?
