The recent Marvel promotion run by News Crop. was not the success expected according to newsagents I spoke with.
What was expected prior to launch to be a red-hot promotion was soft, delivering a bump but nothing like that necessary to justify the prime space taken and considerable investment in inventory.
Looking back, there are a few reasons why the promotion may not have worked for newsagents as expected:
- Timing. The promotion had to compete with two Marvel partworks releases and a raft of other product releases that were more appealing to Marvel collectors.
- Additional product support. News Corp. did some work on additional product but it was not enough for a store not in the Marvel space to reasonable play in the space enough to leverage the licence.
- Poor communication. News Corp., ever secretive, refused the opportunity to engage early on with newsagents who are seriously into Marvel. Their executives preferred to play the usual News Corp.arrogant line of they know best and there is no knowledge a newsagent could add that could help. The reality is, in this instance, they were wrong.
- Too low end. Marvel fans play at a higher end, a more valuable end, than the products supported y the News Corp. promotion. Age you sell a $1,000 figuring without difficulty after a couple of days of having the stock you are playing in a different world and serving a different shopper than that focussed on by News Corp.
- The usual mixed message. This is the chestnut issue of the coupon. Is it collected or not? Some do. Some don’t. Shoppers get confused and angry. There is an easy tech solution to this if News Corp. ever wants to be smart abut these promotions into the future.
The Marvel promotion did not generate the traffic or revenue I expected in the stores close to me. This is despite best efforts in-store: prime location, good collateral, engaging display.
The return on investment is not enough from this promotion – ROI is the only way to asses this. I hope News Corp. management take a thorough look at performance at the store level as I suspect they will be surprised with how it performed given the costs to newsagents of engagement.
The main reason the Marvel promotion is not as successful as other promotion is simply because the Marvel comic is a boys focused product where as all the other promotion they run in the past is a unisex product. As such it can only be half as successful as the other promotions.
We too thought this would be a great promotion but after seeing the product it was obvious it was not a product for the usual promo shopper.
The successful promos we find are purchased by the grandparents and they buy multiples, whereas marvel comics were for a much smaller audience who only themselves had an interest in marvel.
WHOA THERE SAM! that is an outdated, sexist remark that could harm your business. I have a grandson who thinks he’s Spiderman, and a grand daughter (different family branch) who is also in to Spiderman and other Marvel characters.
But, back on point, very underwhelming promo with us; we did what we could to generate interest, always offering the free one to every Advertiser purchaser.
Sam that is nuts. Marvel products appeal to all genders and ages.
Yep, Marvel appeals to both sexes not just males .
Mark , I think you hit it on the head. Most of the collectors are interested in the mid to high end stuff not the cheap and nasty stuff that Newscorp pushed (TBH I’m a little surprised Marvel allowed them to use their name and IP in such a production) . The other thing is that I think people are getting a a bit store blind to what appears to be an increasing free/bonus push by News in an effort to bouy up flagging paper sales.
Peter’s point about the grandparent is right on the mark and this is where my point of boys focused product comes in. Whether you agree or disagree you are mostly likely to see a boy head down delving into a Marvel comic then you would of see a girl. Yes it is a sterotype, but I call it what it is as we know 90% odd of these will be purchased for their sons or grandsons. The grandparents who are the main purchasers of these will only have their little Johnny (not Jasmine) in mind when they see the Marvel Comic. And again, whether we like it or not these newspaper promotion have always been $2 to now $2.60 odd and that’s what News Corp run with. I can’t see them changing to medium to high price of $20-$100 product. Please note here we are only talking about Marvel comic promotion and not other Marvel products in general.