blog ngày 4.10.2007 nội dung là về FM 2008 Blog: Marketing FM.
Hello once more. I hope you're still enjoying the demo and giving us constructive criticism/praise on our forums.

Today's blog is about some of the marketing and PR things we'll be doing around the game. I tried to think of a better word to use than "thing", but couldn't. Sorry about that.

Now, in some countries, we sell a lot more games than others. So in those countries, we are able to do a lot more marketing and PR, and cooler stuff too. So if you sit there going "how come in the UK they have panda's parachuting into football grounds with copies of the game playing on monitors tied to their bellies, but in Bolivia all we will see is some posters in a games shop" it's because we sell a lot of games in the UK, and none in Bolivia. Although please note that we won't have parachuting panda's as that would be cruel (panda's don't like heights).

The first thing that I'd like to talk about will be mainly an English thing, as it'll be concentrating mainly on English football, but featuring football from other countries too, and probably some specials about Scottish football otherwise I'll get lynched by the Scottish SI contigent. And that is the Football Manager Podcast, which will be starting tomorrow as long as the recording of it goes well tonight, and it isn't complete rubbish. The idea of the podcast is to basically have me and a few jouno's talking about what's gone in in the world of football that week, but also have a Football Manager flavour to it too, whether that be hints, tips, secrets or interviews with some of our researchers about what goes in in their clubs. It will likely change as time goes on, and morph into something completely different, but that's the idea, and we're planning on releasing one weekly, every Friday for the foreseeable future.

There's also a viral video that's currently being worked on, which I'm very happy with, and should be available in lots of different languages. We are hoping to be able to give a world premiere of that next week. Whilst most people choose a posh London cinema, or Venice, we've decided for as many people to attend the premiere as possible, so had this idea of putting it on the interweb for everyone to see. Clever, huh?

As some of you no doubt know already, we released the vanilla demo of Football Manager 2008 exclusively with the News of the World, which was a pretty big deal in itself and one I didn't think we could top. But in the next few days, there will be a special version of the demo made available in partnership with Coca Cola Zero, which will be available from their website, and their football website. For those who don't know, Coca Cola and Coca Cola Zero are huge supporters of football in the UK, so we're very proud to be working with them.

There'll also be some very large posters going up all over the country in the UK, a Football Manager of the Month competition throughout the football season on Ian Wright & Adrian Durham's show on Talk Sport, a nationwide pub quiz (details will follow soon), plus all the normal print and online advertising in sports sections and sports sites.

In Spain, we are proud to announce a parternship with Juande Ramos, the world renowned manager of Sevilla. We will also be releasing the game through the popular kiosk distribution method with standard kiosk pricing. Mr.Ramos will, as well as being on the sleeve replacing "Manager Man", will also be part of an intensive print advertising campaign taking in the major football magazines and newspapers, doing a press conference and possibly even signing some copies of the game for certain retailers, although we don't know when or who yet!

In France we're working with Match Retour and Les Specialistes TV shows, with adverts in and out of both shows, some promotions and adverts on RMC, plus lots of press and print advertising.

Keep an eye out for Football Manager 2008 cars in Denmark, promotions with Aftonbaldet and XL Coach in Sweden and so much in store activity you won't be able to move for images of "manager man" in Norway mean that the Nordics, which is always an important area for us, will be well aware that the wait is over and the game is on it's way.

In Greece Football Manager is taking to the airwaves with partnerships with Kiss FM and Gamesradio.gr plus lots of print and online media.

In 'Benelux', which the marketing people insist on calling Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg, we're working with Voetball International magazine and also Sport 1 TV to promote the release, as well as again in press and online.

Heading a bit further south in Europe we're working with another sport TV channel, called "Sport TV" (it does exactly what it says on the, um, screen) to sponsor their coverage of Portuguese, English and Spanish football which we are pretty excited about.

In the home of the current World Cup holders, Italy, we're working with two of the biggest football partners in their areas, you'll find us on Radio Dee Jay on the Deejay Football Club show and online on gazetta.it as well as other places online and in magazines.

We're also pretty excited with what we are up to in Australia. We're working with the A-league to give out copies of an exclusive Australian demo at A-league matches so that fans can try before they buy, and get a discount on buying the full game when they hand in a copy of the demo.

There's plenty of other stuff going on in the countries I have mentioned, and loads of stuff happening in countries that I haven't, like Poland, the Czech Republic, the U.S.A., South Africa and many more. We're doing more to promote Football Manager 2008 than ever before, and who knows, maybe all those hours the marketing guys hours spend making PowerPoint presentations might achieve something after all!

Now all we need is dancing pandas with Football Manager logo's on their belly. But I doubt the RSPCA would like that.