Linda Pezzano; Trivial Pursuit Sales Genius

Linda Pezzano, whose unconventional marketing strategy launched the board game phenomenon Trivial Pursuit, died Tuesday in New York City.

Pezzano was 54 and died of cervical cancer.

The record-breaking sales of Trivial Pursuit--it grossed $1.4 billion by selling 40 million games in 36 months--was a triumph for the word-of-mouth sales strategy engineered by Pezzano, whose marketing brainstorm is legendary in toy circles and changed the way board games are sold.

A native of Schenectady, N.Y., she came to New York City to be a folk singer but wound up earning a master’s degree in business from Columbia University.

She founded her own marketing and public relations firm, Pezzano Co., in the early 1980s. One of her first projects was to devise a sales plan for a board game that tested knowledge of arcane facts, such as what was Cinderella’s real name or who signed Clark Gable’s military discharge papers, and who invented the roller skate?

But the company, Selchow & Righter, could not afford a glitzy advertising campaign.

Pezzano knew she could not sell an adult game unless she could create a buzz around it. That meant she had to get people to play it, find out it was fun, and then spread the word.

She persuaded company officials to distribute free copies to a select group of people, chosen for their ability to influence the opinions of others.

That included the 70 or so Hollywood stars mentioned in the game, such as Gregory Peck, Pat Boone and Larry Hagman; trivia experts on local radio stations who could use the games as prizes; and buyers for toy retailers.

The ploy was a smashing success. Several of the stars liked the game so much that they sent the company thank-you letters, which Pezzano promptly used in promotions.

In the marketplace, Trivial Pursuit struck a resounding chord. Sales hit 1 million the first year--an amazing performance in an industry where a successful game sold 100,000 copies. Trivial Pursuit broke all retail records within a few years of its introduction.

As the wizard behind the phenomenal sales, Pezzano soon was besieged by other game inventors who wanted her help selling their products. Some of them were too wacky even for Pezzano, such as the New Zealand couple who proposed a literal combination of Monopoly, Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit.

“People would hunt her down,” said Christopher Byrne, who worked for Pezzano when she was launching another obscure game: Pictionary.

She marketed that game, a variation on charades, much as she had Trivial Pursuit. But instead of handing out free games, she developed a mini-version of Pictionary: a packet that contained five Pictionary cards for players to act out, a pad and a small pencil. Byrne personally handed out scores of the packets, on airplanes, at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, anyplace there were people.

That approach helped to sell 1 million Pictionary games in 18 months. Now game marketers routinely promote new products by sending out samples. “It just became the way to do it,” said Byrne, now the editor of an industry publication called the Toy Report.

In 1986, after building her firm into a $1-million agency, Pezzano sold it for an undisclosed, but apparently far from trivial, amount. The sale enabled her to live in Italy for several years, where she taught and did consulting work.

In the early 1990s, she returned to the United States to reinvent herself. Indulging in a long-standing interest in healing arts and alternative lifestyles, she became a licensed massage therapist specializing in shiatsu, learned natural gourmet cooking and was certified as a yoga instructor.

Then she applied her former talents to her newly embraced interests, opening a company she called Marketing Alternatives. Her goal was to provide marketing, management and communications consulting to the alternative marketplace: health foods, holistic health care and environmentally friendly businesses.

When word got out that she was back in business, however, the game inventors with their latest gimmicks tracked her down again and begged for her help. She could not turn them down, even though she wanted a new legacy for herself.

“I really want to be known as the person who defined and promoted the alternative marketplace,” she said in a 1995 interview. “I’d rather have that as my epitaph than: ‘She launched Trivial Pursuit.’ ”