Friday, September 07, 2007
Notes from the Field: Ad Nauseum
Back again with a small installment. Our book will be in this months Diamond Previews from the looks of it. That means retailers will be able to order our book for December. But what if they don't order it?If you're reading this that means you should tell them. Never assume they'll order what you want. Especially something that's not easy to categorize as The Overman. Yeah it's sci-fi, but it's also action, noir, and so on. That being said if you're not reading this, we'll have ads in other Image books. To start we have this introduction ad that should be appearing before and during the release of Book One.
This will hopefully give you the sense of what the series proposes it will be. It's not your typical character in your face ad. In fact there are no characters on it. Yet there are human elements to connect with...except you probably have no idea what's like floating dead in outer space. Which means if you're reading this you have definitely not had that experience.Once the book is to market and we're well into our 5 book run, then hopefully Image agrees to put this ad in their books as a follow-up.
Notice the lack of the title? We hope by now that the symbol will have done it's job and made you familiar with the graphic, what it means, and what it's connected to. We also put a URL to help you further your investigation of the mystery. The tagline is the same, so now we have context to who the hired killer is.
Oddly enough when shown to someone they did say, "Why would I want to buy a comic if I know the guy fails?" If they were to think about it a little more, there are so many more interesting ways to fail, thus so many different endings to stories. It's the journey that is most interesting.
Hopefully these ads do affect those who see them. Because by all accounts if we fail at this I can tell you our ending will be an unremarkable cascade of tears.
So do your part to stop grown men from crying, order The Overman today.
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Labels: Advertising, The Overman
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Notes from the Field: Marketing Arm
Despite what anyone thinks marketing is a necessary evil. Worse yet is usually marketing is outside of the busines that actually needs them, so there is bound to be things lost in translation.From my point of view I see marketing as an entity that knows the tools and tips to getting your product out there into the hands of the right people. Oftentimes, especially in games, it can be frustrating to see a game that has been labored on sometimes by a 100 people or more over 2 years, get reduced down to a really crappy marketing idea. I believe the main complaint from the developer of the product is that the outside marketing team "doesn't get it". They have no idea what the game is about, and they went with the lamest hook they could come up with.
There are those rare moments though when marketing has done it's due diligence. That whole Civil War banner thing that Marvel put out...you know the one..."I'm with...'put your favorite noun here'? Simple, identifiable and viral. Everyone would like to claim to be viral in their marketing...and often have whole campaigns that are 'viral' but it's not viral if it doesn't spread like wildfire. It's all wishful thinking at best.
So for the past few months we've done our best to create a presence with our banner ads on many forums and we've offered hosted banners to help boost this effort. But it's not sticky enough to take hold. We've yet to find that sticky factor lest we lose sight of our goal. Namely to get the word of The Overman out there, and to get people to sample our book.
On Comicspace I'm running a CONTEST where we'll draw a name at the end of each month and give away art. I update the bulletins every so often to catch the eye of a passerby on the public bulletin section in hopes of getting more people to include us in their 'FAVS' list. It too is not taking off like wildfire...but our viewing numbers are up to 1500+ views of the preview pages. What more could we ask for given that it's all free?
That being said...here's a print ad that will be appearing soon in the backs of other Image titles.
Let me know what you think.
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Labels: Advertising, marketing