Adventures in Marketing: Embracing Change

Adventures in Marketing: Embracing Change

Sep 18

With a hat tip to Old Man Church, who writes frequently and well about the pitfalls of marketing comic books, a few words on Marvel’s “Embrace Change” TV ad, below.

1. I like the “Hail Mary” gutsiness of this ad as a concept; the idea that a comic book publisher would choose to allocate marketing dollars toward putting a longish, viral TV spot on ESPN2 during primetime is pretty outrageous and maybe not all that smart…yet I respect and admire that they even bothered to do it. I’d rather see them hire an entry-level marketing person to help support good, low-selling titles both in and outside the marketplace, or maybe even just come up with some crazy free publishing strategy to help battle illiteracy or get kids excited about reading, but whatever.

2. The ad itself feels cheaply done, like they had someone in-house cut it together from stock footage on Windows Movie Maker, and got folks around the office to read copy into a USB mic. (In fact, according to Marvel, that’s exactly what they did.) Nothing wrong with that, but it seems low-rent. Then again, they probably blew all their budget just paying for the ad space.

3. It’s way too long. It’s over a minute. I’m not sure if all of the ad actually aired, or if this was the full spot that got cut down to fit a shorter length of ad time, but this should be thirty seconds, maybe 45, and only a minute or more if there’s pictures of boobs, because seriously, this is fucking ESPN2 we’re talking about, not Oxygen.

4. Along those lines, it could stand to be a bit more edgy. I get what they’re going for, and it’s a clever idea, but why not frame it as a “real” ad that’s suddenly interrupted by a transmission from the Skrull homeworld, informing the planet that they’ve been occupied or something? They could still even use the same voiceover/stock footage/send to website strategy. Might have been more attention-grabbing and pushed the story they’re trying to sell a bit more to the forefront.

5. I’m no marketing genius; I just play one in an office cubicle. But what’s the goal here? Do they really think fans of minor league baseball will be so curious about a sideways advertisment for a sci-fi comic book that they’ll remember the URL and go to their computer, where they’ll input the address and be so thrilled by what they discover that they’ll travel to their nearest comic book store and purchase a title that has limited if any accessibility for a casual comics fan? Let’s say Joe Sixpack actually goes through that process, and gets his comics home, and cracks them for some reading time–what’s his reaction supposed to be to the fact that Jarvis is a Skrull? Or that Hawkeye thinks Mockingbird has returned? Or who any of the superheroes fighting the Skrulls in NYC even ARE? (I’m a Marvel fan, and even I don’t give a shit about that last one.)

Frankly, Civil War was a more reader-friendly concept than Secret Invasion is–Iron Man fights Captain America is about as straightforward as you can get. Even World War Hulk–once you’re past the idea that Hulk was on another planet, and now he’s home, and he’s pissed, it’s basically big smashy fight scenes. Even if a TV ad for Secret Invasion succeeds, it’s ultimately encouraging new readers to buy a comic that will just reinforce how insular and closed modern superhero comics are.

6. Finally, what I think is the ad’s greatest failure: The URL http://www.embracechange.org, at least until sometime yesterday, JUST POINTED TO THE MARVEL.COM WEBSITE. This morning, when I just put it in, they finally had a mock Skrull website up that at least furthered the viral story and offered some explanation and insight.

At first, I thought pointing to Marvel.com was the intent all along, which I thought was REALLY batshit crazy. Now I see it’s just a momentary lapse on the part of the Marvel marketing team, but unfortunately, they HAD to have lost most of the folks who actually responded to the ad by visiting the site. As soon as a neophyte comics reader puts in that URL and goes to the homepage of Marvel.com, which had no easily identifiable connection to the advertisement, I’d bet dollars to donuts that the curious surfer just shut the browser tab, shrugged, and moved on with his life.

(I could be off on this timeline, and if so, apologies; maybe the site was up as of Wednesday morning or Tuesday night, and I just missed it.)

Overall: Ballsy move, middling execution. Now I invite Marvel’s marketing department to visit my office and tell me what a shitty job I’m doing on my press releases.