Friday, May 18, 2007

Morning Quick Hit

I forgot to answer to one of pat's points last nite...

The collective goal for us, as tom originally put it, was an increase in OVERALL sales. There's different ways of doing that obviously and I think that there's no reason we can't try several simultaneously. (Although, we don't want to dilute ourselves too much!)

Mini-Goal #1 -- Increase sales on existing books. WE've already got a base of (whatever number that was) so let's not just discard that. 200,000 x-fans can't be wrong, as it were. :) So for that we should put good creators on books and tell the best stories we can.

Mini-Goal #2 -- Increase brand awareness to increase overall Marvel sales. As i see it, that's more my job. This is marketing efforts and trying out new things company-wide. That's not to say you guys can't do marketing efforts on your own, mind you, but your marketing efforts would be focused more at the line/title level while I'm need to look atthe corporate level.

Mini-Goal #3 -- Add new sales by introducing new products. That's where things like BoP come in. Can we put out something new that will give us an additional bump in overall sales. Will the guy who's already buying Uncanny, Wolverine, Amazing, Spectaclar, FF, and ShehUlk ALSO buy BOP? There's a finite limit here, certainly, since we're drawing on the same pocket books and wallets. So we don't want to flood the market with new material, but this is definitely a tactic to bring in more revenue. Bear in mind, tho, that we need to do what we can to ensure that we don't lose sight of Mini-Goal #1 either. You stop paying attention to that in favor of #3, and your 200,000 x-fans are going to become 200,000 ex-x-fans!

Let me point out also that we're here to benefit each other. If Phil comes up with a great Spidey idea that you want to try, Pat, pick up the ball and see what you can do with it. If Mike comes up with a great corporate marketing opportunity, it's my job to pick that up and run with that. Mike had an interesting idea for a MAX book and we're going to lob that over to the MAX editor. Even if that doesn't come back to him, it could still benefit the bottom line so wer'e still all ahead,

2 comments:

Michael Heide said...

In your "200'000 X-fans" calculation, you neglected the fact that a large percentage of those buy UNCANNY X-MEN and WOLVERINE.

That being said, I completely agree. The first issue got many negative comments right out of the gate. I'll let Robert Weinberg do his thing in his second and third issues, because after that, we've got the Rise of the Defenders tie-ins starring Magneto. Both factors should raise sales a lot. By moving his subplots forward in those issues, I'm hoping to keep those new readers around. After the Rise of the Defenders issues, Adrian Alphona will be back and I'm thinking of bringing back another longtime X-Men foe. I'm not sure who yet. Might be Apocalypse. Might be Proteus. Might be Mr. Sinister.
From there, we will slowly move the focus of the book, showcasing more and more horror elements. And then we will have the huge Dr.Doom/Belasco Hellraiser storyline. I decided to go with the Dr. Doom double rather than with Diablo, because Doom sells better and we have a goal of 504k.

Sean Kleefeld said...

The 200,000 was just quick shorthand. WE have no real way of knowing what the overlap is, but you're right that there's probably quite a lot.