#139: Trivial Pursuit – Hard, But Not Too Hard

The Empire Builders Podcast

A Canadian invention that sold for $80,000,000 to Hasbro in 1993. Now it is a worldwide sensation. Come on, you’ve played it.

Dave Young:

… welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is… Well, it’s us. But we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients, so here’s one of those.

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Dave Young:

Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast. I’m Dave Young, and Stephen Semple is alongside, and we’re talking about empires, empires that got built up by people that started businesses with an idea and a dream. And Stephen just whispered today’s topic into my head, and… Through these headphones, and I’m blown away because the topic is Trivial Pursuit, and he told me that it was a Canadian company that started Trivial Pursuit. Instantly, I have a million questions, like did they just steal U.S. state secrets to make all these questions?

Stephen Semple:

I wish I had the recording on earlier when you were like, “They’re a Canadian company?”

Dave Young:

You Canadians are smart. Nothing gets past you.

Stephen Semple:

We’ve done… God, what number are we at? We’re 130 or 140, and you’ve never reacted with that level of surprise. I was like, “Damn. I wish I had that recorded.”

Dave Young:

I mean, you stop and think about it, it kind of makes sense. Up in the frozen north, you’ve got to spend a lot of time on board games.

Stephen Semple:

There you go.

Dave Young:

When it’s too cold to snowboard.

Stephen Semple:

That’s it. That’s it. It’s never too cold to snowboard, that’s the only problem. So it was created by fellow Canadians, yes, Chris Haney and Scott Abbott in 1981, and in 2008, Hasbro bought the full rights for $80 million. As of the most recent data I could get was, 2014, they had broke through 100 million games sold, in 17 languages. 1993, it was named the at the Games Hall of Fame, and basically it’s sold over two billion copies worldwide.

Dave Young:

Amazing. I haven’t played it in years. It’s still around though, right? I mean, you still…

Stephen Semple:

Oh, yeah. And there’s lots of different versions now.

Dave Young:

Well, I remember clearly the original version, whatever that was called. It was just called Trivial Pursuit-

Stephen Semple:

That’s right. Yes.

Dave Young:

That’s what it was.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

And it had enough questions that you could play it a bunch of times before you really needed to buy an expansion pack kind of thing.

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

That was what was fun. But I think I played it so much with friends, and classmates, workmates eventually, that nobody would play against me on that original version.

Stephen Semple:

Right, ’cause [inaudible 00:04:08]

Dave Young:

Then you get in, like, “Oh, the sports version. Nah, I’m no good at that.” I might remember the name Gordie Howe. Actually, that explains that it was a Canadian company, ’cause there were a lot of hockey stars in a lot of the question answers.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the origin goes back to 1970, it took them a while to get it going. So it’s the ’70s, and the market’s dominated by games for kids, there’s no adult games out there. And Chris Hanley’s a photojournalist, super creative guy. Scott Abbott’s a sportswriter-

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

That might be part of the sports part to it.

Dave Young:

Probably Gordie Howe’s cousin?

Stephen Semple:

There you go. And so one night they’re going to play Scrabble, and it’s missing some tiles, and they decide instead to do trivia. But to make it competitive, they decide to keep score.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

So here’s the interesting thing is, trivia is a popular game as a game show format, because Jeopardy! was big.

Dave Young:

But try to figure out how to make a board game out of it.

Stephen Semple:

Right. So the idea was popular, but there was no board game around. So they decided to make a game, and they created it that night. They had started with a circle-

Dave Young:

No kidding.

Stephen Semple:

Had not been done before, they had spokes for each category. But the one thing that they realized is, to increase the competitive part of the game, the score needs to be seen. That’s what creates the tension.

Dave Young:

So you have the little player piece that the little wedges of pie go into, you can see who’s getting close.

Stephen Semple:

Right.

Dave Young:

And you can start to gang up on them.

Stephen Semple:

Yes, that’s right. But they also realized that what they needed was a catch-up feature, because if somebody gets too far ahead, how do you keep the game still exciting?

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

It’s like when you play chess, there’s a certain point where you lose interest, ’cause it’s like, “Yeah, I know I’m going to get slaughtered here.” So there’s that exact role to get to the center, ’cause sometimes, man, it could take a long time for that to happen.

Dave Young:

Oh, yeah.

Stephen Semple:

And that gives the opportunity for others to catch up. When they were deciding the name, they said, “Okay, it should be trivia, plus something else. Trivia plus Pursuit.” And it was one of their wives that said, “No, no, it should be Trivial.”

Dave Young:

Man, it’s the same, but it’s so different.

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

Trivia versus Trivial.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

That’s such a bold move that they even accepted that.

Stephen Semple:

And they did. The idea behind the game was designed in a night, but here’s now where the fund really begins. They have no idea how to produce or make a game, but there’s a toy fair going on in Montreal in 1980, and it’s hard to get into these toy fairs, and it’s also to get new games going. Look, every year there’s about 500 new games at these shows, about 50 get into stores, and about five are profitable.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

But they decide to go to the fair. And they’re resourceful journalists, they’re both journalists.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

So they use their journalistic pass to get into the toy fair, saying, “Hey, we want to interview these people.” Yeah, they do want to interview them, ’cause they want to figure out how to get a game going. They go around interviewing all the toy executives on how to get a game made into market.

Dave Young:

So my absolute favorite times of playing Trivial Pursuit was that I worked in the news department of a little radio station in Fort Collins, Colorado where I went to school, and the news and sports department, we would get together and play Trivial Pursuit, all the journalists.

Stephen Semple:

Okay, there you go.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

There you go. So after doing all these interviews, they realized that they wanted to be a high quality board game, they figured out how to get it made, and they realized it was going to be 40K to kind of get samples of the game made.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

So how do you raise money? Well, they offered shares in the company. That didn’t work. New Approach, now, crowdfunding didn’t exist really at that time.

Dave Young:

The internet wasn’t around. It had nothing.

Stephen Semple:

Right. Nothing. But they basically did a version of crowdfunding. They found 34 people who would kick in a few bucks. So now they’ve got the money to make the game. But what they figured was, to make it so that you could play the game on an ongoing basis, that they would need 1,000 questions for each one of the categories.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

There’s a sweet spot for the questions, not too hard, not too easy. So it took months of work to build those questions. And they quit their job to do the research, they go into massive debt. ‘Cause remember, this is before computers, this is almanacs, newspapers.

Dave Young:

Oh, gosh. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Ketchup bottles is where they got some of their questions.

Dave Young:

Journalists are perfect for coming up with all of those, they have this inquisitive mind, and they know where to find weird facts.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. And they came across this reference book called Super Trivia. This is going to have an impact later.

Dave Young:

This was the days of… There were some really pop culture classics out, like trivial books, Book of Lists. Do you remember that?

Stephen Semple:

Oh, I forgot about that one. Yes, yes.

Dave Young:

Where they had lists of all kinds of things. That made it easier probably, things like that.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

There were people out there doing your work for you.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. Yes. So it’s November 1981, it hits the shelves, they make 1,100 copies, and the recession hits. And this game is more expensive, it’s 30 bucks, and at the time, Monopoly is 10.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

So they sold some in local stores around Canada, and they did sell out, and they did a second print run of 20,000 units. But what they realized is that even if it sold out, they would still be in the red. And the problem was the tool and die costs, and this was an expensive game to do. And in 1982, they borrowed 70K to restock. They go to the New York Toy Fair, one of the largest in the world, and they try to sell direct to retailers. But this is the height of the video game trade, and everyone thought board games were done. So they come back from this show with a few hundred orders. The financial stress is rising, Hanley’s out one night and collapses, he thought he had a heart attack, but it was due to stress.

Dave Young:

Oh, wow.

Stephen Semple:

And they’re still able to sell some games in Canada, but they need to do something differently. So what they decided is, what they wanted to do was license the game, and they wanted a 15% license fee, which is three times what others get. So they go to the two biggest companies, Parker Brothers, Milton Bradley, and they pass. But they meet with a smaller player, Selchow and Righter, and they do a deal. And what they do is, they give them $75,000 plus 15% royalty for the game.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

All right, so now they’re out of debt, they’ve got this. 1983, they hire a PR company, Linda Pezzano, who is great. So she has this idea, and this is brilliant, and lots of people have this idea, send out games to celebrities. But celebrities are bombarded. Here’s what she does. She sends out copies to celebrities who are in the game, and say to them, “You’re in this game.”

Dave Young:

“We have a question about you.”

Stephen Semple:

“We have a question about you in this game. Here, Johnny Carson, here’s a copy of the game, and there’s a question about you in the game.” Now, what’s going to happen?

Dave Young:

Was Gordie Howe still alive then? Did they send him?

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. They sent one to every person who’s named in the game.

Dave Young:

Perfect. Yeah,

Stephen Semple:

Johnny Carson mentioned it on the Tonight Show. Boom-

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

1984, they shipped 20 million units that year. That year, they beat Monopoly. Monopoly sold four million units, they sold 20 million.

Dave Young:

Hey, Steve. I want to interrupt us. Can I interrupt ourselves?

Stephen Semple:

Well, look, it’s your podcast too, you could do what you want to do.

Dave Young:

Here’s the thing, this is where we would normally play that really cool, highly produced ad that our buddy [inaudible 00:11:49] voices in, and Gary has done some of them.

Stephen Semple:

Don’t forget Matthew Burns.

Dave Young:

Matthew, yeah.

Stephen Semple:

He’d be hurt if we forgot his name.

Dave Young:

No, they’re fabulous. But I thought, “Well, part of doing a campaign is you change it up every now and then, and do it a little bit different.” And I thought maybe you and I could do the ad.

Stephen Semple:

Okay. Well, let’s do it.

Dave Young:

Basically, this is the reason we’re doing The Empire Builders Podcast, is so that we can share stories of business owners, and hopefully the audience that likes The Empire Builders Podcast is a bunch of business owners. That’s sort of the plan.

Stephen Semple:

That’s the hope.

Dave Young:

We have a special offer for business owners.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

It doesn’t cost anything, and it’s fun for us, and it’s fun for you. We promise it’ll be fun, and it’s just basically, contact us and spend 90 minutes with us.

Stephen Semple:

Here’s how it works, just give a little bit of background, reach out, you can book the session online, go to The Empire Builders Podcast, and go to get started, and right online, you can book it. So nice and easy that way. You’ll receive an email with a scorecard and a questionnaire, so you’ve just got to take a little bit of time to fill that out and get it to us.

And what that allows us to do is, instead of it being this typical, “Hey, we’re great. Hey, we’re wonderful. Here’s our ad. You should hire us.” It actually allows us to do some research, so we can show up prepared, and give you, the business owner who contacts us, some solid advice for free. I don’t like sales, I’d much rather do that than be the sales guy. And here’s my attitude, if we give you great advice, and it’s something you think you can apply and helps your business, maybe then you’ll want to go to the next step and hire us. And even if not, go and apply those things and grow your business. The more people do that, just better off we all are.

Dave Young:

This questionnaire that you’re going to give them, again, remember, this 90 minute session is not about us, it’s about you and your business.

Stephen Semple:

Correct.

Dave Young:

So that’s why we need to know a little bit about you and your business, so that we don’t make it about us-

Stephen Semple:

Right.

Dave Young:

We want to make it about you.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. And it means the first 30 minutes, we’re not asking the basic low-ball questions, you’ve already given us the answers to those things, we can just get right at it. So take us up on it, man.

Dave Young:

Contact information is at our website. You’ll find us, you’ll find us. Let’s get back to the story.

Stephen Semple:

All right, back to the story. This success did lead to an interesting lawsuit. Fred Worth, his book, Super Trivia, he had planted a trick question in the book, and the question was the name of the famous Detective Colombo in the book was Phil, and that was incorrect, and they used that name in trivia-

Dave Young:

Oh, no.

Stephen Semple:

Trivial Pursuit. So there was a lawsuit around it. But here’s the interesting thing, the judge ruled you cannot copyright facts.

Dave Young:

That’s got to be like a… Been used in lots of other court cases.

Stephen Semple:

Yes, it’s one that has been referred to many, many times, you cannot copyright facts.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

In 1984, sales hit 20 million sets, then there’s spinoffs, there’s been 50 additions, over $2 billion in sales. But the interesting thing, again, another one of these… How many times have we seen it? Over and over again.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Now they’re one of these empires where the idea did not come from somebody in the toy business, the idea came from somebody who was looking for a game. But what they also recognize when they built this game, it’s about making it competitive.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

The competition is the part that makes it a game, and makes it fun. And they recognize that, and baked that right in, this has to be competitive. And the PR strategy was brilliant, so many people go, “Oh, all you have to do is send stuff out to celebrities.”

Dave Young:

No.

Stephen Semple:

What this PR person recognized, what Linda recognized was that to break through that clutter, you need to make it interesting to them. So Dave, you would get a game, your name is in this game.

Dave Young:

Exactly. It’s not that it’s interesting to them, it’s that, man, you made it about them, right?

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

There’s nothing we like better than hearing other people talk favorably about us.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

That’s a focus for any business. Man, talk about the customer in language the customer loves, in terms that are about the customer. You can’t go wrong with that.

Stephen Semple:

Right, right.

Dave Young:

You really can’t.

Stephen Semple:

And look, and that’s what caught Johnny Carson’s eye, and Johnny Carson mentions it on the Tonight Show, and boom, you’re off to the races. Especially at that time, and how big that show was. And look, it was going to be him or somebody else. ‘Cause we often talk about strategy versus tactics, and people get caught on that, ’cause it’ll be easy to read this, and go, “Oh, well, how they became successful, they sent out celebrities, so I’m going to send my stuff out to celebrities.” Tactic. The strategy was, “How do we get attention? Oh, celebrities are named in this game. Well, let’s send it to the people who are named.” It was a strategy that involved the tactic of sending it out, and that’s the difference.

Dave Young:

If you send it to a celebrity that doesn’t have a question, their name’s not even in it, they’re not interested in talking about it to anybody.

Stephen Semple:

Or even if you sent it and didn’t tell them that they’re in it, they’re not going to be interested looking at it.

Dave Young:

They probably aren’t going to dig through it, but if you tell them, “Hey, question on this card.” It’s going to work well with the people that are in it, it’s not going to work at all for the people that aren’t.

Stephen Semple:

Correct. Correct.

Dave Young:

‘Cause they’re going to feel a little hurt. It’s a great story.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

I like it. And I’m really pleased that they were Canadians, because you’re a Canadian.

Stephen Semple:

‘Cause I’m a Canadian. Well, we’ve got to every once in a while slide these Canadian stories in.

Dave Young:

And it’s still around.

Stephen Semple:

It’s still around. Yeah, they don’t own it any longer.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

Hasbro is who bought the full rights for it in 2008, but the game’s still around.

Dave Young:

Could I pivot on this? Are we done-

Stephen Semple:

Sure. Absolutely.

Dave Young:

Talking about Trivial Pursuit?

Stephen Semple:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

Wizard Academy in Austin, Texas… Just in all transparency, I wear two hats. So I’m a marketing consultant like Stephen, but I’m also the vice chancellor of Wizard Academy, and you’re one of our students, and one of our instructors.

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

And you understand the fun of being on campus for a class, we have two and three-day classes, and we have 19 student housing rooms on campus, and a big communal kitchen where 14 or 15 people will gather, and sit around the night before class, or the night after you’re done with a big long day of learning, and you’re sitting around in that kitchen, and we’ve got a whole bunch of board games, Yahtzee, and all kinds of things in the kitchen. I was wondering, Stephen, if I could convince you to pick us up a new version of Trivial Pursuit and bring it down the next time you come?

Stephen Semple:

Done. In terms of next time, because I’m there next week-

Dave Young:

I know.

Stephen Semple:

That means I’ve got to go buy it this weekend. Here’s one of the things I want to say to everyone, is the classes at Wizard Academy are amazing. I try to do a class every year. I’m doing two this year. And the getting together with people is awesome, ’cause I even say to folks, “When you do a class, do not plan on doing anything that evening, ’cause the people you’ll meet, the conversations you’ll have will be some of the best that you’ve ever experienced.” Please, please, please go to wizardacademy.org, take a look at a class, pick a class, do Magical Worlds if you can’t think of anything else to do.

Dave Young:

It’s sort of our starting point.

Stephen Semple:

It’s the starting point, and you’ll walk out of that class not looking at advertising the same way ever again. Because when I did my first class there, I had been working in this industry for over two decades, and I was blown away. It put me down a path that is remarkable. And you know what? It’s a fun class, it’s a fun environment. And the food is great, the drink is great, the company is great. Please, please, please take advantage of a class at the Wizard Academy, you will thank us.

Dave Young:

I always tell people too, like you said, the meeting people… Our classroom only holds 32 people.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

That’s it. That’s the biggest class we’ll have. And we have 19 student rooms on campus, and if you sign up before the student rooms are gone, your room is free. You pay for the class-

Stephen Semple:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

But the room is free. 19 people get a really well-appointed nice room on campus, the 20th person gets to pay for their own room in Holiday Inn Express somewhere and drive back and forth. But I tell people, “Man, don’t arrive on a late night flight the night before.”

Stephen Semple:

No, don’t.

Dave Young:

“Make sure you arrive in the afternoon, so that you can hang out in that kitchen with people that are arriving. And then don’t plan on taking a red eye early morning flight the morning after. Don’t plan on leaving like, ‘Oh, well, it’s a Tuesday, Wednesday class, I’ll just book my flight at 5:00 Wednesday, and get back home.” I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, you want to wait until the following morning, so that you have a chance to…” You’re going to miss out on things if you don’t arrive early, and stay a little bit later than you think maybe you ought to. That’s an insider tip, and that never fails.

Stephen Semple:

It never fails.

Dave Young:

No.

Stephen Semple:

You’re absolutely correct. So yeah, guys, go wizardacademy.org, check out the classes, take them, and you’ll meet Dave, and you might even bump into me if you’re unfortunate.

Dave Young:

I’m looking forward to the one next week ’cause teaching it, and you’re going to be one of the students in it.

Stephen Semple:

Absolutely.

Dave Young:

That’s a little scary. Hopefully you won’t throw things at me by the end of the second day.

Stephen Semple:

[inaudible 00:21:18]

Dave Young:

That’s my plan. That’s how I’ll be measuring success-

Stephen Semple:

All right.

Dave Young:

Is that I won’t be bruised and battered by the students. Thank you, Stephen. That was a fun story.

Stephen Semple:

And we’ll see you next week.

Dave Young:

All right. I’m trying to think of what piece I always wanted when I played Trivial Pursuit. Usually the green slice.

Stephen Semple:

We’ll make sure we pull-

Dave Young:

All right.

Stephen Semple:

All the green ones out ahead of time.

Dave Young:

Thank you, Steve.

Stephen Semple:

Thanks, David.

Dave Young:

Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app, and leave us a big, fat, juicy five-star rating and review. And if you have any questions about this or any other podcast episode, email to [e-mail].