And Reports Initial Response

Beginning next Monday, Wizards of the Coast will offer the first 1000 retailers that sign up for and report a Kaijudo event with eight or more players aged 8-12 a special multi-brand package of free goods, including the guild boxes from the Return to Ravnica pre-release and a set of the Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition core rulebooks. WotC is also providing Kaijudo sample decks to support organized play events.

We recently had the opportunity to talk to Wizards of the Coast’s Kierin Chase, Senior Kaijudo Brand Manager, about this promotion and the initial response to the game.

How do retailers participate in the "Free Goods Rewards for Participating Retailers" promotion that we heard about?

That’s easy enough. They’re either automatically in the WPN [Wizards Play Network], and if they just sanction one through WER [Wizards Event Reporter], they’re automatically entered into it. If they are not part of the WPN they just need to get involved by calling one of their reps and being able to get into the WPN system.

So you need to be the first 1,000 stores and have eight or more players in the target age range?

Yes-- and we are supplying sample decks for that promotion, so every store is going to be receiving 20 sample decks--four of each of the five different civilizations. That’ll help those stores be able to run those events and do those demos.

Have you announced any releases for next year?

Not yet.

What was the response like at mass? Did you get good distribution? What was sell-through like?

Yes, we had fantastic presence. [There was a] promotion we did with Walmart with promo cards. That was a limited distribution; it was the first wave that hit Walmart. We were also in Target and TRU. We had a circular ad in TRU which went very well and sell-through has been pretty good. We’ve been very happy with how much distribution we had as well as the sell-through.

What was the Walmart promo card promotion?

That promo had five different common cards done with a different treatment and that was very limited edition. We just wanted to make sure that mass had something special to go out with, considering that we released the product to core first with Dojo and the Battle decks.

Was that packs or a free- with purchase?

It was free- with.

Was there any impact on interest level, sales or play in the hobby after you launched at mass?

I would say that the locations that had the most amount of success already had increased success in the core stores. These are stores that were already seeing large play groups because they were already running events through Dojo and then they were getting able to bring more people in. I would say that mass has supported the locations that have already been doing very well.

You mentioned the circular. What other consumer advertising did you do to support the launch?

We did do a TV commercial that ran for four weeks in September and into October. We were on all major kid networks--Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and WB. That was an outstanding buy for us. We saw the impact immediately both on our Website and in stores.

Was that a one-off or are you going to do more TV?

Right now that was the big buy that we wanted to do for the launch of Rise of the Duel Masters. Whether or not we’re going to do another big buy for Evo Fury, we’re still working on it.