There’s a lot of news happening right now.\u00c2\u00a0 While God knows what is going on in Iran, while a new iPhone is tantalizing the gadget-savvy, while the economy continues to do whatever it is it’s doing at this exact moment, and while Matt cradles himself against the weight of Orlando’s crushing defeat at the hands of the Lakers, Marvel has\u00c2\u00a0 managed to garner more MSM coverage that 1) spoiled its entire fanbase before comic shops even open, 2) fails to mention that the shocking event kicks off in a book that is available in stores today and 3) pulls the rug out from underneath a certain returning character’s well-received replacement, who has been kept insulated from the rest of the publisher’s shared universe until about six months ago.<\/p>\n
Every time that Marvel pitches a story like this to the press, I wonder about the quantifiable long term gain they expect\/realize in terms of new or returning readers.\u00c2\u00a0 Are there people out there who have never read a comic book or who have abandoned them in the ether of nostalgia only to come back to the fold based on a story in the NY Daily News?\u00c2\u00a0 Someone is running numbers over there, which is how they’ve calculated that this is going to be “Civil War #1” big instead of “J. Jonah Jameson is the mayor” big.\u00c2\u00a0 Do these people exist?\u00c2\u00a0 From the retailers that I know, the answer seems to be, “No.”\u00c2\u00a0 Some shops see a run on the issues from the investicomics set, yes, but I’m not sold that Marvel is creating new customers by doing this (while doing something of a disservice to the existing fanbase in sacrifice to this goal).<\/p>\n
I’m not talking about the content of the story itself, which I’m actually anticipating, but solely the PR\/marketing rationale behind it.\u00c2\u00a0 Given that your friendly neighborhood Alert Nerds work in PR\/Marketing\/Journalism when we’re not nerding out here, it’s only natural that we would.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d be interested to see the sales figures on the individual issues that have gotten press attention over the past few years – with the exception of the Obama appearance in Amazing Spider-Man, I’m predicting a trend of diminishing returns.<\/p>\n
If you’re a fan, I’d love to hear how this type of promotion affects your buying habits and your enjoyment of the book.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re a retailer, I’d love to hear about how you’ll be adjusting your orders\/how many new faces came through your door today.\u00c2\u00a0 And finally, if you’re Jim McCann or someone else in Marvel’s mighty marketing arm, I’d love to pick your brain about the strategy behind this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There’s a lot of news happening right now.\u00c2\u00a0 While God knows what is going on in Iran, while a new iPhone is tantalizing the gadget-savvy, while the economy continues to do whatever it is it’s doing at this exact moment, and while Matt cradles himself against the weight of Orlando’s crushing defeat at the hands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[413,37],"class_list":["post-2190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comics","tag-comics","tag-marvel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}