No, seriously. There are great marketing lessons in the game of Dungeons & Dragons. This is a updated, annotated version of a presentation I've given three times now.
3. 3A LITTLE HISTORY
WHATISTHISâD&DâOFWHICHYOUSPEAK?
Now, prepare yourself. Youâre about to
dive deeper into nerddom than ever
before.
Before I dig into the marketing stuïŹ, it
helps to get a 1-minute lesson in
Dungeons and Dragons.
Dungeons and Dragons (D&D, or DnD) is a
role-playing game. Players assume the
identity of characters and participate in a
story.
Think of it as Choose Your Own Adventure
on steroids.
5. A typical interaction might go like this:
Dungeon Master: You hear a sound down
the hall.
Player: I charge towards it!!!!
Dungeon Master: A swarm of spiders
attacks you.
Player: @)#($*!@
Then theâcombatâis resolved using dice.
6. Photo
 by
 Philip
 Mitchell
Â
Â
h.p://www.dwarvenforge.com/dwarvenforums/viewtopic.php?pid=15595#p15595
Â
dice
Â
âminisâ
Â
character
Â
sheet
Â
Hereâs a great D&D gaming table, set up
with all manner of neat stuïŹ.
You can easily play, though, with your
characters written down, a few dice, and a
pencil.
Of course, thereâs one essential
componentâŠ
9. A bit about me. Donât worry, this is going
somewhere marketing-related, I promise.
I got my first D&D set when I was 12. My
aunt bought it for me. My mom didnât
speak to her for 2 months.
Now, this was kind of a new thing. In my
innocence, I invited some friends to try it
out. We played, but they blabbed. Word
got out around the middle schoolâŠ
You can imagine what happenedâŠ
10. I became social roadkill. Now, it wasnât all
because I played D&D. I was pretty far into
the nerd vortex by then. But D&D didnât
help. Iâll spare you the details. I stopped
gaming for about 3 years.
But now, Iâm going to indulge a bit: I have a
message I need to send to all the
neandrethals who spent their days knocking
books out of my arms, slapping me around
and other fun stuïŹ, then peaked in high
school and and are now making a living
screwing caps onto toothpasteâŠ
12. PEOPLE ARE
WEIRD
LESSON 1
AaanywayyyyyâŠ
In a futile attempt to survive, I brought the
start of my gaming career ground to an
inaupsicious halt. But when I was 15, we
moved from NJ to Los Angeles.
First few weeks at my new school, one of my
new friends says,âHey, you look like you play
D&D. Want to join our game this Friday?â
13. THEREISNONORMAL
PEOPLEAREWEIRD
LESSON 1
This was my first, most excellent lesson.
People are generally weird. Theânormalâones
become toothpaste cap installers. If, as a
marketer, you can appeal to this, you win,
period.
14. WOMEN Hereâs another story from my youth. Iâm sure
this comes as a shock: On the high school
dating scene, I had a bit of a hard time. The
audience is really small.
Face it: When youâre a teenager, youâre not all
that picky.
19. WOMEN
WHOLIKENERDS
TOUGHSELL WHOLIKEME
BOOMSOLD!!!
STILLTOUGH
At the age of 27, I finally met my wife.
Before I proposed, I figured Iâd better come out of
the gaming closet. When I did, she didnât leave.
She didnât even look at me like I was a cuttlefish.
What she did do was tell all of her friends, who
asked meâSo, whatâs D&D like?â
Iâd found the perfect audience.
20. WOMEN
WHOLIKENERDS
TOUGHSELL WHOLIKEME
BOOMSOLD!!!
STILLTOUGH
By narrowing my audience and focusing more and
more on the people who were least likely to avoid
eye contact, I got married.
OK, it wasnât that scientific. There was romance, I
promise. I bought flowers. I pointed out binary star
systems (seriously). But you get the idea.
21. READWEAREALLWEIRD
(SethGodin)
Seth Godinâs We Are All Weird explains
this entire concept.
Never make the entire marketplace
your audience. Find all the groups of
weird, and speak to them.
22. LIKEMUSIC
CANâTDANCE
GANGNAMSTYLE
Psy is very likely a marketing genius. He
came up with a song, yes. He also
came up with a dance that works
perfectly if youâre completely incapable
of dancing.
23. No, I wonât demonstrate. Actually, the
entire state of Washington has a
restraining order against me every
trying to do anything other than slow
dance.
Psy found his audience â hisâweird.âItâs
people who like his style of music but
canât dance. The response was
completely oïŹ the charts.
Iâm only slightly tongue-in-cheek here.
It really worked whether he meant it to
or not.
24. You can be more scientific about it. This
is Google Analytics data from the
Portent web site. People who find us
after a search for our Title Maker tool or
the acronymâPPCâmay be more likely
to sign up for our e-mail series.
The sample here is tiny, but a longer
study bears this out.
26. USEAMAZON:SEARCHFORAPRODUCT
âŠbut other times, they donât. To find
thoseâother times,âtake a look at
Amazon.com. Find a book related to
your core product.
For example, pretend youâre writing a
travel book that will compete with
Lonely Planetâs Europe guide.
I search for their bookâŠ
27. SORTARANDOM
âŠand then take a look at the
âCustomers Who Bought This Item Also
Boughtâsection.
There are several items that appear
pretty much random.
I call stuïŹ like this a random aïŹnity.
28. TRAVELS
LIKESSMOOTHIES
Iâll go with smoothies. If I want to sell to a niche
audience, I might include a section in my book
about the best smoothies around Europe (Iâm
not kidding).
Or, if Iâm the marketer in charge of selling the
book, Iâll test ads on smoothie-related sites,
and write aâGuide to Smoothies in Europe.â
I can check the results and see if this random
aïŹnity worked.
29. FOLLOWERWONK SEARCH BIOS
One easy way to find random aïŹnities
is to find an audienceâcenterââ the
person who dominates the topic â and
then move outward 1-2 degrees of
separation, and see what that broader
audience likes.
It doesnât always work perfectly. Here I
searched forâpuppies,âbecause I want
to sell a puppy-related product that
drugs them so theyâll sleep at night
(kidding. mostly).
I find Dara O Briaian. OK. So now, I need
to look at his followers and see what
they like.
33. 33A LITTLE HISTORY
HOWDIDIKNOW?
I can verify. I go to Facebook, start to
create an ad, and then look under
âClothing > Womenâs.â
34. 34A LITTLE HISTORY
HOWDIDIKNOW?
Sure enough: Business apparel.
How can I use this data? Pay per click
marketing key phrases, obviously. But I
can also use it to guide copy, imagery,
message and the sites I use to buy ads.
Two little words can change a whole
campaign.
35. PEOPLEAREWEIRD
DONâT FIND 10000 PEOPLE
FIND 10 AUDIENCES OF 1000
So, the rule is: Donât find one audience
of 10,000. Find 10 audiences of 1,000
and sell to each, precisely.
Focus on the weird. If youâre a gamer, it
might just save your life.
37. ARMOR + DEX = ARMOR CLASS
DOUBLE DAMAGE
THAC0 D&D is surprisingly mathematical. Other,
similar games even more so.
I used D&D to improve my kidsâmath skills.
Iâm sneaky that way.
There are all manner of calculations that
can change at any time depending on
conditions.
38. ARMOR + DEX = ARMOR CLASS
DOUBLE DAMAGE
THAC0
you are so puny. I just got 1500
experience points! I leveled up.
why?
The player has to do the math. Itâs not so
much that the calculations are hard as the
fact that you must have those calculations
at your fingertips. In many confrontations,
math determines success or failure.
39. ARMOR + DEX = ARMOR CLASS
DOUBLE DAMAGE
THAC0
because
math
Sorry. Couldnât resist. Wonât
happen again.
Horrible jokes aside, marketing is shockingly similar to
D&D in that math can come up and bite you in the ass at
any time.
40. LTV = VALUE/CUSTOMER
LEAD TO CUSTOMER
VISIT TO LEAD
CLICKS TO SITE
B2B I donât care if youâre selling to 10 people or 10,000,000.
You need to do the math. Know the essential numbers,
by heart.
Sell Business-to-Business (B2B)? Figure out the average
value of a visit like so (LTV = LifeTime Value).
41. LTV * VISIT TO LEAD * LEAD TO CUSTOMER
B2B
UNIQUE VISITORS
$$/VISIT= MAXIMUM VISITOR VALUE
Now you know the value of a visitor. Apply
desired margin and you also know exactly
how much you want to spend to acquire
that visitor. There is no more important
number for you, the marketer.
42. LTV = VALUE/CUSTOMER
VISIT TO SALE
CLICKS TO SITE
B2C Same goes for Business-To-Consumer (B2C),
although this is easier.
43. LTV * VISIT TO CUSTOMER
B2C
UNIQUE VISITORS
$$/VISIT= MAXIMUM VISITOR VALUE
There you go.
Note that youâre not even considering attribution
yet. Nor are you considering all the stuïŹ you can
learn by analyzing reams of data.
My motto: Before you do big data, get the small
data right.
44. USESOMETHING
AVERAGE SALE
AD SALESAVERAGECLIENT$
DONâT KNOW LTV?
If you canât figure out lifetime customer value, find an alternative. Do not simply throw up your hands.
If you donât know this number, you cannot do smart marketing!
That doesnât mean you should give up. Start figuring out LTV. If you have customers, and you know when
they start and stop buying in any broad sense, you can eventually figure out LTV. Go do it.
45. MEASURE
Hereâs the other half of theâmathâequation. Once
you know your basic numbers, use measurement to
better target, find theâweirdâand apply
segmentation, improve user experience and so on.
I did this all the time in D&D. If my character had X
âhit pointsâ(your health â if you lose them all, youâre
kind of comatose), and the first 10 times we played
every opponent had 2X hit points, and finally killed
me, itâs time to adjust. Zarth the Destroyer may be
dead, but at least I know how to build my next
character.
46. CONVERSIONSMICROCONVERSIONS
FORM BAILOUTONSITE SEARCH DATA
CALLS TO CALL CENTERSITE SPEED
SITE ERRORSPRRANKINGSPPC
SOCIAL MEDIA SHARESCONTENT
WRITING GRADE LEVEL
CLICK LOCATIONS
All manner of stuïŹ to measure. Donât make yourself crazy. Pick what you can handle and start there.
However, certain things have a very broad impact:
Conversion rate â If you improve it, every channel improves
Site speed â Everything improves, including conversion rate.
Content performance â Helps you build theâhouse list.â
47. Click location tools like CrazyEgg will show you
where folks click, including things that arenât links.
Use that to improve the user interface.
48. Scroll distance measurement can tell you whether
content performs or not. This page isnât bad, but we
need to either improve scroll distance, or reduce
page length.
49. Keep stats on content performance. This is a tool we
use in-house at Portent.
Weâre maintaining an ongoing set of performance
numbers for every site page. Weâre also maintaining
stats regarding words per page, social shares, topic,
etc.
That lets us start to consider and test hypotheses,
likeâPages at a 10th grade reading level perform
better.â
This data is not the answer. Itâs the first questions.
50. No need to start with a custom tool, though.
You can start with custom reports in a tool like
Google Analytics. You can import this using the link
in the link bundle.
51. BUT YOU CANNOT
MEASURE EVERYTHING
Great! Measure!!!! Measure!!!! Measure more!!!!
Donât even go out to lunch without measuring!!!
Yeah. No. You have to be willing to try stuïŹ you canât
measure. And be prepared to be wrong sometimes,
even if you do the math.
You can measure your way right into paralysis,
becauseâŠ
52. RANDOM
HAPPENS
LESSON 3
Random happens. It just does. Weâre not selling to
computers. Thereâs no formula.
Weâre selling to highly evolved apes. They change
their minds. And theyâre weird.
53. PEOPLE ARE
WEIRD
LESSON 1
HAPPENS
In D&D, there are at least two things that introduce utter randomness.
First, there are these pesky dice.
If you get into any kind of confrontation â say an argument with a troll, or a fight
with said troll â or try to do something very specific â say, pick the pocket of the
same troll, if youâre really a slow learner â youâll probably roll dice to figure out if it
works.
Yes, there are things about your character that modify that die roll. A veteran thief
has a better chance to successfully pick a pocket than, say, a fully-armored fighter
dude. But the dice are there, and everyone fails if they roll a 1.
54. Start here
End here
Fun! Adventure!
YAY!!!!!!
And then there are those pesky players. As a dungeon master, Iâve often spent
time carefully preparing a detailed adventure with nifty twists and turns. Maybe I
designed it to last 4 or 5 gaming sessions. Maybe only 1.
But I created story, and with it people theyâll meet, monsters theyâll fight and
treasure theyâll collect. Itâs a lot of work.
55. Start here
End here
SONOFAâŠ
So itâs really aggravating when the players evade
everything and head straight to the conclusion in 2
hours.
But thatâs the way it goes. And youâre better oïŹ not
forcing the players into a predetermined course. You
can sayâHey, go this way, itâs better,âbut eventually
the players find you out and lose trust in your game.
Itâs a bit like, I dunno, deceptive advertising saying
âHey, buy this, itâs better.âEventually, consumers find
you out and lose trust in your brand.
56. PEOPLEDOCRAZYTHINGS
Part of random is peopleâs never-ending ability to do
crazy things, like flush four days of work preparing a
D&D game down the toilet.
You can do research until your pupils weld themselves
shut. You still wonât be able to sayâI am 100% certain
this will work.â
57. HAVE A PLANBUT KNOW ITâLL CHANGE
AND BE READY WHEN IT DOES
So yes, have a plan. But understand that no matter
what you do, itâs going to change. And be ready when
it does.
Clients and bosses hate this. They hate it. Thereâs
always someone out there who will guarantee it.
Thereâs a simple question you can ask:
âDoesnât that seem too good to be true?â
Because it probably is.
58. PEOPLEDOCOOLTHINGS
Also, the flip side of this is that people do really cool
things. Probably more often than crazy things,
actually.
I published a blog post thinking,âHey, folks might like
this.â
It went ballistic. I know some people will look at these
numbers and sayâyawn,âbut I was really flattered.
59. RANDOM CAN BE GOOD
So random can also be really good. Donât fear it.
Itâs part of what makes D&D fun â if nothing was
random, and you knew every outcome ahead of time,
itâd be pretty boring.
Itâs what can make marketing fun, too. Itâs certainly
what makes us valuable. Without random, no one
would need marketers.
61. SOMETIMES, RANDOM MEANS
TURNING A FRIEND INTO A FROG
this was Not
the plan
Remember random? Sometimes,
in D&D, random means you turn a
fellow player into a frog, or
accidentally pitch them oïŹ a cliïŹ.
Iâve had one fellow player blow me
up. Twice.
But you do not fear it. It happens.
With good players, itâs part of the
story. Things go wrong. Move on.
If you know me, you know how ridiculous it is that Iâm making this statement.
Iâm a neurosis, wrapped in a phobia, inside a personality disorder.
But, Iâve come to accept this. You canât be an entrepreneur for 20 years
without accepting it. So there.
63. FEAR LEAVING
CUSTOMERS FEELING
LIKE THEY GOT
You should have that kind of fear when it comes to
screwing customers, or deliberately bumping oïŹ
fellow players in your D&D game.
These are things that you can foresee 80% of the
time. If you have a healthy fear of them, you can
avoid them.
64. ohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrap
Thereâs the other 20%, when random causes the
worst kind of screw-ups (or things that appear to
be screw-ups).
For those times, avoid the cranial-rectal inversion
(a term learned from my brother).
That leads to you ignoring trends, ignoring
mistakes, ignoring your audience and instead
running in circles gabbling like an idiot.
65. DONâT FREAK OUT
Just donât!!!!!
How you deal with these mistakes may just
make or break your career, or your brand.
66. In 1982, someone poisoned random bottles of Tylenol
capsules. People died. The first case occurred September 29,
1982.
Many corporations would have had the crainial-rectal
inversion, hired an army of lawyers and hunkered down.
In less than a week, Johnson & Johnson had distributed
warnings to all hospitals and distributors, stopped production,
issued a nationwide recall (the deaths all happened in and
around Chicago) of 31 million bottles and bought advertising
warning consumers not to take the capsules.
They also oïŹered to exchange the capsules for safe tablets,
instead.
I canât even guess how much that all cost.
That is a company responding well to a huge mistake.
Because no matter where the tampering happened, J&J was
going to wear this for decades. It was a mistake for which
theyâd be blamed.
Instead, theyâre a case study of how to respond to a crisis.
67. 100 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Day
Orders(thousands)
In less fatal circumstances, maybe you tweak a marketing
campaign and sales plunge. You could panic and turn back the
clock.
Or, you can dig into the numbers and realize that a power
outtage aïŹecting ÂŒ of the United States population might be
hindering online sales just a tad.
68. HATERS GONNA HATE
IF YOUR HEADâS IN THE DIRT, ALL
YOU CAN TALK OUT OF IS YOURâŠ
TOOT
69. DONâTGET PARALYZED
Most important, donât let fear completely
paralyze you.
Back to D&D for a second: If youâre fighting a
horrific monster, and itâs kicking your butt,
yeah, youâre in trouble.
I donât know if youâll survive. I guarantee you
wonât survive if you just stand there.
71. HE WHO
ACTSISNâT DEAD
AND THEN WHAT HAPPENS?
Itâs a long story. SuïŹce it to say that no D&D
player appreciates being left to get chopped
into fist-sized chunks simply because the
other players stood around watching.
And yes, it happens.
74. No bashing here, but the Republican Party really failed to adjust
in the 2012 presidential campaign.
More and more data showed their audience wasnât on land lines.
They forged ahead, looking at poll numbers.
They got stomped.
They needed to do something. They didnât. Would that have won
the election? I have no idea. But it wouldâve helped.
75. COMPUSA responded to lower in-store performance by doing
nothing. Unless you include reducing in-store salaries, of course.
Conde Nast flew Gourmet Magazine right into the ground by
ignoring everything from site speed and user experience to
organic search and social media. Thud.
77. WEBPAGETEST.ORG
Sometimes someone else is refusing to budge. There are a few ways to get them unstuck.
First, appeal to their competitive nature. Here, Iâm comparing the load speed of two sites.
78. Next, show really easy wins. If a phrase costs 4.2% of your budget and generates .6% of your traïŹc,
it had better generate serious revenue. Otherwise, cutting that could save a lot of money.
In this case, the phrase only generated .3% of sales, and lost money. We yanked it.
79. you're not doing a
regular newsletter
right now. you should.
Also, start with stuïŹ you can predict reasonably
accurately. Here, e-mail sure seems like a powerful
channel.
80. Work within the client (internal or external) systems.
Deliver recommendations and data the way they want
it.
83. PEOPLE INVEST
TIME FIRST
The first thing most people invest in any
activity is time.
If you want to keep their attention, you need
to generate a good return on time invested
(ROTI).
84. IF IâM GOING TO BE A SOCIAL OUTCAST,
MAKEITWORTHMYWHILE
Playing D&D requires sacrifices: Staying up
until 3 AM. Eating crappy food. Becoming a
total social outcast.
If Iâm going to do those things, it had better be
worth my while from hour 1.
85. AWESOME
Luckily, every gamer gets a little rush of happy
juice when they introduce a cool character or
hears the Dungeon Master sayâYou open the
chest and findâŠâ
86. 86A LITTLE HISTORY
330,000 gold pieces
110,000 ounces of gold
$143,000,000
A quick aside: I did some math. I figure in a 33-
year gaming career, Iâve collected about
330,000 imaginary pieces of gold.
That comes to 110,000 ounces of gold (yes,
someone figured out the size of a D&D gold
piece. No, it wasnât me.
That comes to $143,000,000
88. NERD
Whatever.
But hereâs the thing: I collected all that fake gold
days or weeks into a particular D&D game. It wasnât
there, sitting on the imaginary ground, for my
character to collect on day 1.
So, whyâd I stick around?
89. BUT FIRST
A GOOD STORY
A GOOD SETTING
GOOD SNACKS
Something else got me my Return on Time Invested.
Maybe my fellow players brought good snacks. Maybe I had a
crush on a girl in the group (yes, girls do play D&D). Or maybe
weâre just all really good friends.
Regardless, thereâs a great ROTI, and Iâll stick around because
of it.
91. CONTENT IS YOUR
FIRST PRODUCT
Whether theyâre reading a blog post, watching a video,
looking at a product or reading about your Board of Directors,
content is the first product they sample.
Content generates ROTI. There is no escaping this.
That means you have to look to many factors:
92. SPEED
Site speed â the speed at which a page appears in
a visitorâs browser â may be the single most
important factor in internet marketing.
OK, thatâs a bit much.
But think about it: The speed of your site aïŹects all
channel performance, conversion rates, customer
satisfaction, user experienceâŠ
Itâs a big deal.
93. 75kb
I could do a whole other talk about this. Go run
Yslow on your site.
But at least, please, donât have a 75kb, 4 pixel wide
image designed as a background. OK?
Please?
94. READABILITY
How easy is your copy to read, or images to
view, or videos to watch? Reading online is
hard. You need to make it easier.
95. This is not so great. Maybe the writing is
great (cough I wrote it cough cough). Maybe
it isnât. But the spacing makes me feel like
Iâm in a very small room.
97. But Iâm not a design pro. I canât just pull great
typography from one nostril.
So I go by the numbers. Use Pearsonifiedâs
awesome Golden Ratio Typography Calculator
and youâll get a great starting point for font
size, line spacing, etc.
Or, maybe youâre better at this than I am.
98. The way you write matters, too. Donât use 11
words when 1 will do.
I love Nozbe. Theyâre awesome. So I can gently
poke fun at their home page copy. Thatâs one
sentence. I nearly passed out reading it. Not
good.
99. I used a metric called Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease
to gauge the Nozbe copyâs diïŹculty.
Yikes. FKRE isnât the be-all end-all. But it does
provide a basic measure to verify gut feelings.
Iâve got a link to this tool in the link bundle.
102. WRITE
WELLBelieve it or not, customers do care whether they can
actually understand your writing.
No, I donât have test data. No, you donât need to test it.
Which Harrison Ford movie do you remember? Witness or
Hollywood Homicide?
Case closed.
So write well, or hire someone who does.
103. WRITEEVERYDAY
The first real writing talent I ever knew said
âwrite every day.âHe said it, well, every day.
You need to.
104. You can track which content performs best. This is a great
custom report by Avinash Kaushik. Itâs in the link bundle.
Use it.
105. AVOID
GAZEBOS
This is a gaming legend. Go search forâEric
and the Dread Gazebo.â
Do not have a mouthful of beverage when
you read it.
106. DENIM
JEANS
NO
YES
Less funny in marketing. OK, strictly speaking
âdenimâis better. But no one searches for
denim. They search for jeans.
107. UNBOUNCE
Test it! Build a landing page and iterate the
heck out of it, using diïŹerent wording.
Unbounce and Optimizely are great tools for
this.
108. LOOK AT ONSITE SEARCH
Look at your onsite search numbers. Or at
Adwords keywords data. Or Twitter bios.
Use that data to show what gets more
attention. Thatâs your target phrase.
No Gazebos. No denim.
110. NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE COWS
MOO. I HAVE 3 HIT POINTS
AND AN ARMOR CLASS OF
10.
One of the best dungeon masters I know has one terrible
habit: He etches out every detail of the imaginary setting.
Down to the number of cows each farmer owns, and the
total hit points of each cow.
Not kidding.
111. EGO
I do the same thing with my company. When writing a
proposal, I feel like I have to show every detail of how we do
what we do.
Does anyone care? Probably not. My trouble starts with my
ego. Itâs usually small, damp and badly shredded, but get
me talking about my company and it swells into a football
stadium.
112. EGO
XTake ego out of the equation. Maybe weâre right. But the
audience wonât appreciate our brilliance. Remember ROTI!
Your audience will appreciate it if you use their language
and cut to the chase.
113. FOCUS ON THE END
NOTTHEMEANS
Focus on the end â how youâll get a customer what they
want â instead of the means.
114. ANSWER âSO WHAT?â
- STEVE GAHLER
As Portentâs CEO likes to ask:âSo what?â
If you donât answer that, no amount of detail will help.
115. Specialized goes straight to the type of tire. Thatâs what I
need. I know what kind of tire I need. Just let me get to it.
116. And then, they use a quote to cut right to the advantage of
the tire. Yes, itâs pure marketing. But it also talks up theâso
what.âThis tire will make me faster!!!!
Well, no. But you get the idea.
117. Then they get to details. I
can drill down if I want.
118. Schwinn, on the other hand, is a
Greek tragedy.
Can you find anything, anywhere,
that tells me why I want this bike?
121. SLAYING
MONSTERS IS
HEROIC
you slay me. Uh,
figuratively speaking.
Part of D&D is doing extraordinary things. The worst games are
the ones where you have to attend to every detail of buying
supplies, negotiating a night at an inn or experience mile by
grinding mile of travel. The cows thing, again.
I donât know about you, but I get plenty of that in real life.
D&D â and most games like it â is about being heroic.
122. SLAYING
MONSTERS IS
HEROIC
i am stuffed
with
awesome
You Beat The Bad Guy. You beat the odds and come out in one
piece. Or maybe twoâŠ
This is not a D&D mini. I got so much hate
mail the first time I used this guy, I have to
point that out. Itâs from a diïŹerent game. I
painted it. Iâm using it. So there.
123. UNTIL
ITâS NOT
OH Boy. golly gee. i found
another +12 sword of slaying.
i am excited.
But you can ruin a great game by making it too easy.
Campaigns where great stuïŹ falls from the sky are just boring.
They ruin the story arc we all love.
124. EXPOSITION COMPLICATION CLIMAX
RESOLUTION
STORY ARC
The classic story arc:
First, you get familiar with stuïŹ in the exposition.
Then, something happens that sets up a challenge of some kind.
Then, you resolve it.
Then you get your cool stuïŹ, or die, or fail, or whatever.
125. YOUâRE IN A BAR
YOUâRE HIRED
IT ALL GOES HORRIBLY WRONG
SCREAMING OCCURS
YOU GET TREASURE
(OR KILLED)
STORY ARC
Hereâs a typical D&D story arc. Itâs pretty straightforward.
126. LIFE
PROBLEM
CRAP!
GET STUFF
STORY ARC
Most customers are going through this when they start
looking for your product or service. They are likely at
âProblemâorâCrap!â
Respect the arc.
127. DISCOVER
RESEARCH
BUY
REWARD
STORY ARC
Here are the most likely actions at each
phase of the arc.
Before thereâs a problem, the audience
may simply discover you, without
searching. Social media excels at this.
Once the problem pops up, they start
actively researching a solution.
Then they buy or not, which resolves the
problem.
128. SOCIAL
SEARCH
SITE
REWARD
STORY ARC
Think of your channels like this. It
changes, of course. But if youâre running a
simple web business or services firm, this
is pretty much what happens.
130. WHAT DO I DO NOW?
Iâm happy to bring new people into the cult of
Dungeons & Dragons. But at some point, you
gotta learn the rules.
There is nothing more maddening than
stopping the game for 25 minutes every time
one player needs to swing a freaking sword.
Tell me Iâm wrong, fellow gamers. I dare you.
131. 131A LITTLE HISTORYSo you learn the rules. But you also learn the
setting. You watch movies. Read books. Take me
for exampleâŠ
132. 132A LITTLE HISTORY
33 years
300 hours/year
9900 hours played
Iâve put a ridiculous amount of time into
D&D and other games. I figured out itâs a
bit under 10,000 hours.
133. 133A LITTLE HISTORY
33 years
300 hours/year
9900 hours played
7500 hours studying in law school
Which is more time than I dedicated to
law school.
Which probably explains a lot.
135. 135A LITTLE HISTORY
LEARNINGMARKETING
45,000 HOURS
Marketing? A lot of time. And thereâs still a ton I
donât know. So Iâm learning, all the time, which is
fantastic.
You need to do the same.
142. again?! wtf people???
âŠI donât like playing the evil folks. Itâs just not fun.
I want to be Captain Kirk, not Khan, no matter how
awesome the the bad guy seems.
143. LESSON 10
NEVER,EVER
TOUCHANOTHER
PLAYERâS DICE
I SAW THAT!!!! YOU ROLLED
A 4, NOT A 14!
GAAAH! DUDE! LIGHTEN UP!
Donât cheat.
In D&D, you just wonât be invited back.
In marketing, itâs calledâlying,ââscumbaggery,âand
sometimesâa crime.â
In D&D terms, this is evil.
145. If you do this for yourself,itâs chaotic stupid.
If you do it for a client and donât tell them, itâs 100% evil.
Youâre putting a client at risk by risking a Google penalty.
146. Lying, using your skills to spread that lie â those
are pure evil.
Propaganda is a form of marketing. And Goebbels
was a marketer. He just sold catastrophe.
147. GREATCOMMUNICATIONSCAN
SAVE THE WORLD
Iâm not going for shock value here. Iâm just
illustrating that what we do matters.
I firmly believe that great communications can
save the world.
148. MARKETING IS
COMMUNICATIONS
And what we do is a form of communiations. Itâs important
because it makes other things important. It impacts
folksâperception of whatâs important to them and whatâs
not.
149. Thatâs the last reason I love Dungeons & Dragons, too. It
lets you, for a few hours, completely change whatâs
important fromâpay the billsâtoâsave the world.â
Which may tag me as crazy, but I find it pretty fun.