Fantastic Four: Blockbuster Secrets from the Marvel Marketing Machine

Recently, a trailer for the upcoming movie “Avengers: Age of Ultron” was leaked online. Marvel, acknowledging that the trailer was out there, decided to release their official version of the trailer a short time later. Twenty-four hours after the leak first hit the Web, the official trailer had already racked up 34.3 million views on YouTube! Marvel has what we all want – an audience eager to view, share, and discuss their content. The top two-US-grossing movies this year, namely Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, are both from Marvel. In 2013, another Marvel movie, Iron Man 3, brought in $409 million while Thor: The Dark World rang up an additional $206 million for Marvel. The year before that was 2012’s Avengers, which was worth $623 million and the number one spot for that year. With that kind of success, it’s amazing to think that Marvel Entertainment Group actually filed for bankruptcy protection less than 20 years ago. How Marvel has gone from the brink of bankruptcy to one of the biggest names in entertainment, with blockbuster movies, televisions programs, video games, toys and, of course, comics, is a great story. There are a number of lessons we can learn from Marvel as we seek to add the same level of superpowers to our own marketing campaigns and websites!

1. Start with great content.

It all begins with content. Marvel focuses heavily in making sure that all their products are top notch. The value of this cannot be overstated. You can market all you want, but if your content (or whatever you are marketing) is mediocre, you will be facing an uphill climb. If your content is great, it will be much easier to find that eager audience. Marvel assembles a team to create their amazing entertainment properties, including actors and actresses, writers, filmmakers, illustrators, and more. While you may not need as large a team for your own efforts, you certainly should not attempt to do it alone. If you have in-house marketing resources, they will obviously play a role in this effort, but you should also look to the subject matter experts in your organization for what they can contribute. Finally, you will want to work with whatever web or marketing agency you partner with to get their expertise added to your campaign plans and help you develop amazing content.

2. Diversify your promotional efforts.

When Marvel is preparing to launch a new movie, they look to the range of channels they have available to them to promote that release. They run ads on their television shows, they release special edition comics meant to raise awareness and excitement for the characters and the film, they even time the release of toys for the film perfectly so that kids see the figures on store shelves and make sure their parents know that they want to see that movie. This multi-faceted approach to marketing is often called “multi-channel marketing.” For websites, multi-channel marketing means using all the appropriate resources at your disposal to connect with an audience and make them aware of, and drive them to, your site and your company. If you are using social media to promote your content, that is great, but you cannot stop there. Email marketing, search engine and other online advertising, and sponsored content are all ways you can reach an audience online. There are also offline options you should consider, from traditional print and mailing pieces, to articles in print publications, to appearances on news or radio. Not all of these may make sense for your campaign, but the point is that all of these, and more, should be considered. This is another thing you will work with your marketing agency on – identifying which channels make the most sense for your particular campaign. Whatever you decide on, however, you are almost certainly going to find that multiple channels will play a part in your eventual plans.

3. Tie it all together.

One of the things that Marvel has done expertly is to tie their properties together to create something that is bigger than just the sum of its parts. The Avengers movies are an obvious example of this since they combine characters from a number of Marvel’s solo-movie projects, including Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor. In addition to the Avengers films, which feature an all-start cast of their characters, Marvel has also made it a point to include ‘teasers’ at the end of their films. These tie-ins create excitement and get people talking not only about the movie they just saw, but also what is coming next. When you are considering your own content and campaigns, you should be thinking about how you can tie things together. This could be something as simple as cross-promoting similar products on an Ecommerce site or adding links to related articles at the end of a blog post. These are both ways that you can tie things together and increase overall exposure. If you are a services driven organization, another avenue you may consider is explaining how those various services you offer tie-in together and complement each other. If you’ve ever told an existing client about another service you offer, only to hear them say, “I didn’t know you did that!”, then you can see the value in cross-promoting your offerings by tying them all in together in some way.

4. Introduce new offerings and embrace new audiences.

As mentioned earlier, this year’s top-grossing movie in the US is Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. This is notable because, before the movie’s release this summer, few people outside of diehard comicbook fans had ever heard of these characters! Heroes like Iron Man and Captain America were well known prior to their movie debuts, so there was already some name recognition that certainly helped fuel the success of those films, but Guardians of the Galaxy is about as obscure as it gets. Still, this movie has taken in over $738 million dollars in global ticket sales. The reason for this success is because the movie is great, but what is interesting is that, for people to discover how great the movie is, they had to give it a chance. People gave it chance because they trust Marvel. If you are consistent in the quality that you deliver, whether that is in the products you sell, services you offer, or content you publish, then you will build trust with your audience and customers. That trust is critical for when you want to introduce new offerings to help expand your business. Just like movie-goers trusted Marvel enough to give Guardians of the Galaxy a chance, if your customers trust you, they will be more inclined to give your new offerings a chance. If you are following the tips mentioned previously and tying things together, this trust can be doubly helpful as customers will be introduced to new offerings and the trust they have in you will encourage them to give them a shot.

In summary

We may not all be able to release a video and attract 18 million views in 24 hours the way that Marvel has done, but by following some of the same steps that Marvel uses to promote their releases, we can help our own campaigns take off.

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Deconstructing the Viral Hashtag

Pick your platform — whether it’s print advertising, video, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook or Twitter – hashtags have overtaken them all. Handy, catchy and often irreverent, hashtags are quickly becoming a mainstay of modern marketing. Like every aspect of marketing, though, some brands are more adept than others at creating hashtags that drive awareness and engage the public. As a marketing tool, hashtags can be a bit of an enigma. Many times the best ones are spontaneous and random. They have an incredibly short lifespan, and there’s no way to control them once they’re out there. So what exactly makes one hashtag succeed wildly while another one plummets into instant obscurity? Why are some hashtags so memorable and others imminently forgettable? The short answer: The most effective hashtags appeal to a wide range of people because they key into the human psyche in a powerful way. Let’s deconstruct a few of the most viral and memorable hashtag campaigns of the past few years and uncover the secrets of their success:

The appeal of social currency: #firstworldproblems

The nonprofit organization Water is Life (http://www.waterislife.com) was looking for a way to raise money to supply clean water to villages in developing countries. And they hit on an innovative way to do it, with a video and print campaign that capitalized on the popularity of the existing hashtag #firstworldproblems by juxtaposing the perceived problems of Americans against the all-too-real struggles experienced by those in less fortunate nations around the world. In the documentary-style video, complaints from actual #firstworldproblems tweets – including “I hate it when I go to the bathroom and forget my phone” and “My son got the wrong toy in his Happy Meal” – are read aloud by impoverished Haitian families. The stark contrast in conditions really struck a chord with viewers, who discovered newfound perspective on just how lucky they are to have such superficial issues. The campaign took off, with the video drawing a million views in just four days and response that generated enough donations to supply clean water to impoverished communities for a million days, according to Water is Life. The psychological appeal of this campaign and its signature hashtag is an interesting one. It leverages the natural human desire to accumulate social currency — to appear generous or to “look good” to our peers — to drive people to perform acts of generosity they might otherwise not consider. By poking a bit of gentle fun at the public while educating them to issues of real concern, Water is Life created a tidal wave of awareness and action.

The appeal of emotion: #SFBatKid

There’s no doubt about it: people share content that inspires strong emotions, and the BatKid story was one of the most emotionally appealing stories of 2013. The campaign, which was spearheaded by the Make-A-Wish Foundation, reached out to the city of San Francisco to help make a little boy’s dream come true. And five-year-old Miles Scott, who is currently in remission from life-threatening leukemia, got his dream — and then some. Powered by the Twitter handle #SFBatKid, the Make-A-Wish Foundation originally hoped to attract 200 volunteers in their effort to help Miles become Batman for a day. But the story and the hashtag caught fire, and the foundation was inundated by responses from as far away as Norway and Australia. About 10,000 San Franciscans turned out to watch as BatKid saved them from several dastardly villains. Even the mayor got into the act, giving Miles the key to the city as thousands of spectators watched from the steps of City Hall. It’s important to note that although this could have been framed as a sad story, it wasn’t. Sadness evokes a low-energy response that rarely results in action. Instead, the uplifting #SFBatKid campaign inspired a whole city to act by appealing to the most positive human emotion: hope.

The appeal of humor: #tweetfromtheseat

Who knew toilet paper could be so funny? In a cleverly designed campaign, Charmin managed to get people laughing in and out of the bathroom by transforming a taboo behavior into an ongoing conversation with their playful #tweetfromtheseat. With a little wink and some witty repartee, Charmin’s #tweetfromtheseat campaign incorporates current events and other brands into their Twitter feed — and the public loves it. As a result, they’ve turned a mundane household product into something special and built a huge, highly engaged following at the same time. It’s truly an inspired campaign, with an appeal that’s simple but nevertheless effective. After all, people do love potty humor.

The dual appeal of practical value and social proof: #40dollars

Talk about the power of a tweet: the Obama White House used the hashtag #40dollars to great effect to lobby for an extension on the payroll tax cut. The campaign began in February 2012 when the President tweeted “Taxes will go up for 160 million Americans by the end of this month if Congress doesn’t act. What does #40dollars a paycheck mean to you?” People all over the country responded — and a Congress infamous for not passing legislation was convinced to extend the tax cuts for the rest of the year. The #40dollars hashtag worked on two different levels: It inspired a response from Twitter users because it asked them to consider something of practical and personal value — what would an extra $40 mean to them? And it inspired action from Congress because humans are wired to respond to social proof. In other words, people embrace an idea or an action more easily when they see others agreeing with it.

#thebottomline

Even hashtags that seem to be completely spontaneous — and lucky at that — are often the result of some serious planning. (Check out Oreo’s #dunkinthedark Super Bowl tweet for a great example.) If your business is looking to leverage the power of hashtags to create a lasting impression, you can use these notable success stories as your model. Spend some time strategizing. Think about what type of appeal will work best for your brand, and make a deliberate effort to tap into it. Be thoughtful, be creative and be daring! If you can hit the right notes, you’ll not only be the brand of the moment but the one that people will be talking about for weeks, months and even years to come.

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