01/17/00

Dreamcast: Best System Available, Worst Marketing Possible

My god. Has anyone seen the latest print ads from Sega? Man, these things are the last straw. First, they have some 15-second teaser TV spots in August, with a bunch of spastic images followed by the trademark "9/9/99". Then, after the system launch, they have 60-second spots for each of the games, which basically consist of 50 seconds of pre-rendered crap, 9 seconds of gameplay shots, and 1 second of the "It’s thinking" whisper. Yippee.

At the same time, Sega ran print ads in every mag you can think of, which had a column of screen shots along the side and a bunch of generally insulting captions aimed at the reader. And now, the new print ads consist entirely of some shapes made out of words, with the tag "Screen grabs suck, see it for real at sega.com". Pure genius.

I have some advice for the wunderbrains at Sega’s marketing department: First, in the TV ads, show some more gameplay, for Brad’s sake! You are trying to sell a system mainly on its graphical assets, and yet you don’t show any. That’s bad. Next, don’t you think it’s a tad premature to be insulting consumers in print ads? Mayhaps, instead of saying "Too bad you have the same lame reflexes", the caption should read: "See the pretty graphics? Please buy our games. Please?". You guys should probably give the reader a little credit, especially when you’re advertising in gaming mags. Maybe after you sell five million systems, you can start insulting your customers. And now, you guys eliminate the screen shots completely and fill the page with useless tripe? A poorly trained rhesus monkey could come up with a better campaign than this. I really hope these suits aren’t getting paid too much for this "work".

Here’s Uncle Brad’s campaign: Drop the fluff and show more gameplay. Lose the mysterious image and go for the cool factor. And, for the love of Zeus, get rid of that awful "It’s thinking" slogan and bring back the "Sega!!!" scream. You should be yelling, not whispering. Am I right, or am I right?

Note: The inflammatory comments spewed forth in Brad's Soapbox are his own editorial steps on the brink of madness, and are not necessarily the opinions of Gamehits, or anyone else on Earth, for that matter.

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