Monday 6 July 2015

The Adventure Begins UK Release: Part 2

The last time I posted my thoughts on The Adventure Begins, we were reaching the halfway point as far as the waiting game was concerned. Now that we're in the home stretch, it's time for a quick re-visit of the long awaited special to see what's going on marketing-wise.

I said in my previous post on the subject that the reason why The Adventure Begins was delayed by four months was due to poor communication between Asda and HiT's marketing teams. Now that we're three weeks away, I'm thoroughly convinced that its launch is doomed to fail.

Remember when I said that Dinos and Discoveries had a trailer for it at the start of the DVD? Yeah, it turns out that's the only advertising there's ever been for the special, so unless fans or kids play that DVD constantly, they'll have absolutely no idea that this release is coming. But even that won't help as the trailer simply says "coming soon"!

And guess what? The only two toys available to celebrate the DVD are exclusive to Asda too, which means that you won't know that this special's coming unless you see the toys there.

But the biggest reason I think this is doomed to fail is Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure. The Adventure Begins will be released on the last week of SLOTLT's nationwide cinema run. And, as you can imagine, there are trailers all over the place, and the toys are also all over the place.

I get it: it makes more sense to market a special that has a broader release than one released in one chain of stores. But does that really mean they have to forget about the isolated release completely? TAB was made specifically for Thomas' 70th anniversary, which is something that, you'd think, HiT would be proud of. And it's definitely something you'd think Asda would be proud of since they were specially chosen to sell the thing in the first place!

Now before anyone says anything, I'm not going to look negatively on SLOTLT because it overshadowed TAB as it was just an unfortunate coincidence that both releases coincided with each other. However, I will look negatively on both Asda and HiT's marketing teams for not doing more to raise awareness that this special is indeed coming and, more importantly, when it's coming.

Instead, it seems like both have left it up to the fans that are aware to do their work for them, in the exact same way that we had to when the first four Railway Series eBooks were released or when they reintroduced the hardback books for 2015.

I truly believe that this whole thing has been a complete and utter shambles, and if this release does as poorly as I fear it will do, then HiT and Asda's marketing teams only have themselves to blame.

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