SpiritWars™

Flyer Campaign

(Grass Roots Marketing in the truest sense!)

Welcome to our gorilla marketing campaign for SpiritWars. As we struggle along with this stupid lawsuit, its no secret that we can't afford a real advertising campaign. But we do have a very supportive group of players who have asked what they can do to help. So we're launching this "grass roots" advertising campaign.

We've got a pretty good looking SpiritWars flyer and we're using our player base to distribute them.

This was initially going to be a two-sided flyer.  However, it needs to be printed on heavier paper or there is a significant amount of bleed-through. I'm having pretty good luck using 35 pound paper. If used on lighter paper, it should only be printed used the front page.

While I am going to do some two-sided ones, for the most part we are just going to focus on getting as many one-sided ones printed as we can.

Preview Page 1
Preview Page 2

Where to Put Them?
For the initial distribution effort, we are going to focus on one-sides flyer that we can post places. (After we get a good effort made at that and we have a better feel for how many we can realistically crank out on our printers, then we'll start looking at doing enough to use as hand-outs at key locations.)

Here are some of the kinds of places we will be looking to post the flyer:
     Internet Cafes***
     College Dorms
     College Computer Labs***
     Software Stores
     Game or Hobby Shops*** (especially those that sell war games and strategy titles)
     Card Shops***
     Military Bases (Best options?  You military guys can give us some feedback on this one. But we've always done pretty good with this demographic.)
     Book Stores?  (Not sure on this one.  Any ideas?
     Chess Clubs or Tourneys
     Libraries with Internet Access ??  (Again, not sure.)

(*** = Prime Location)

If you have other locations you think we should be putting on the priority list, please let us know.

It is important that everyone realize that we never post one - or leave  them - anywhere we don't have permission. Many software stores won't be interested since SpiritWars isn't a product they sell. However, smaller shops. or places you know the folks, may be willing to listen and let you post one. The key thing is to ask. We don't want to waste flyers by putting them in places where they will just be thrown away.

The one place I would like to try to do some initial hand-out efforts are at local tournaments. If you are aware of places holding Magic tournaments (or other gaming sessions), this would be an ideal opportunity to actually hand out copies to individuals. If you think you could do this, contact myself or kitten and we'll arrange to get you extra copies for this purpose.
 
What We Need:
At this point we need three things:  people who can volunteer to help us print flyers for those who don't have color printers but would be willing to help distribute them; people to distribute them, and folks who would try going to game tournaments in their area and hand out flyers at those events.

Purring Kitten has volunteered to help coordinate the team effort for this project. If you want to help, please contact her. She will initially be helping match up those who can print extra flyers with those who need them. She will also be keeping track of who's helping in what areas.

Printing Guidelines:
We are printing this on standard ink-jet color printers. I'm using "normal" quality setting and regular bright paper on my HP 820 and getting very good results. If you want to print some two-sided ones for handing out to individuals instead of posting, however, you should use at least a 35 lb. paper to avoid bleed-through when you print the back side.

We will be generating a limited number of glossy high-quality flyers (printing on photo-finish paper). These are pretty expensive to generate (in both paper costs and ink consumed), so we will want to use this in prime posting locations. (If you think you have a very good place that would warrant the use of one of these, let us know and we'll let you know if any are currently available.)

Thanks!
Lyn and I want to thank you in advance for the help in this project. While we may not have the resources of a big software publisher, we do have something we really appreciate:  the most loyal and supportive group of players a game designer could ever hope for.