thefreakytiki wrote:johnmayo wrote:
...I don't recall there being a full page ad for Daredevil in Entertainment Weekly when Kevin Smith relaunched the title....
...I don't recall there being a full page ad for Green Arrow in Entertainment Weekly when Kevin Smith relaunched the title.
The discussion at hand was on if doing ads in mainstream magazines would be cost effective or not. Had we seen a tripling in sales due to a major marketing push with the existing creative teams, that would be much more impressive.
Here's where I prove my point, You didn't see an ad in Entertainment Weekly... but they were all over Rolling Stone Magazine for both. Not articles... but 1/2 page ads
Marketing works. Tell people What your selling and where your selling it and they'll come. I will search out the ads and see if I can find them somewhere on the net. I'm not a magazine saver or else I would just scan it in (says the guy with 85 long boxes of comics).
(Sorry to make you do the footwork... I still have trouble figuring out how to use the database. That's my fault.
)
the Tiki
1/2 page color ads for Rolling Stone currently go for $94,730. Black and white 1/2 page ads cost $85,260.
Sales for Daredevil increase from to 91,700. Keep in mind that the #1 was only $2.50 compared to the $2.99 for #380 of the previous series. That works out to a gain of about $61,082.40. Subtract out the cost of the 1/2 page ad in Rolling Stone and you net out to a loss on the first issue. Obviously the marketing pays out in the long term but initially, it is a fairly expensive gamble.
On Green Arrow, the sales jumped from 34,300 with the #1,000,000 issue to 85,000 with the new #1. Both cost $2.50. The net increase for the publisher, at say for the sake of discussion, 40% of the cover price works out to $20,280.00. Again, subtract out the cost of the ad and it takes a couple of issues of increased sales to justify the ad.
In the case of Daredevil, Kevin Smith was off the title after 8 issues. On Green Arrow, he was on until issue #15.
And I think you are still missing the one of the points we were trying to make. We agree that marketing can work. I disagree that it is as simple as "tell people What your selling and where your selling it and they'll come" as that seems way too "Field of Dreams"-ish to me. The question was if the ads paid for themselves and increased
profitability.
What you haven't done is proven a cause-effect relationship between the Rolling Stone ads and the increase in sales. A case could be made that the sales on both titles would have gone up about the same amount based solely on the new #1, the change to Kevin Smith writing the titles and, in the case of Daredevil, the lower cover price.
Going back to the Marvel TV spot that triggered this thread, the I've had a chance to watch the commercial and found it to be insanely ineffective. Not only does it not answer the "where to buy" question but it doesn't really answer the "what to buy" question either.
