24 THE STARS’ FREE GIFTS

Trivial Pursuit was the board game of the 1980s. In 1984 it sold 20 million copies. A brilliantly simple idea based on our love of trivia and our love of friendly competition, with questions like:

What word was intentionally omitted from the screenplay of The Godfather? (Mafia)

How many rows of whiskers does a cat have? (Four)

Do you know what the other secret behind the success of Trivial Pursuit was?

The answer is word of mouth, that most powerful form of advertising. However, the owners didn’t rely on that alone. They helped stoke the fire through the clever use of what is sometimes called “buzz” marketing.

They sent a series of single sample cards to key buyers attending Toy Fair 1983. The game itself and the purpose of the intriguing cards were only revealed on the third mailing.

Later, they gave free copies to radio stations which promised to use the questions as the basis of on-air competitions. Linda Pezzano, the PR Manager on the launch of the game, remembers how the idea developed:

“In New York there was a guy on the radio who loved to ask trivia questions, so I thought he was a natural guy to do a promotion with. And then I thought, ‘Well there must be guys like that in every market’.”

So Pezzano hired a student to call up the different stations and identify their “trivia” disc jockeys. Soon, over 100 stations were running Trivia Pursuit competitions. Taking this idea a stage further, sample cards were offered to bars that agreed to host trivia parties.

One final twist saw free copies of the game sent to the celebrities who were mentioned in the questions or answers. “The celebrity mailing turned a lot of opinion leaders to the game, and they loved it,” recalls Pezzano.

And the moral is that (to quote Bill Bernbach) word of mouth is the best form of advertising. What could you do to generate positive word of mouth?