Does Marvel write it's own fan letters?

[TheCorpulent1]

All of the "buts" and "may haves" in your post don't count for anything from a business standpoint. Marvel doesn't care why people buy the comics, just that they do. The ultimate goal is to make money; OMD did that, hence it's a success.

 

[Themanofbat]

And yet, all I hear is Marvel claiming the sales prove that OMD wasn't as horrible as people on the internet say.

They can say that because sales for OMD were pretty good, in spite of a sh1tty story.

 

[iloveclones]

Is that the first thing you thing of when you think of a cop? Huh.

I'm a child of the 70s. What do you expect?

(Actually, my brother was an MP and my step-bro is with the Sherriff's Dept. If I could only claim a Navy man and an American Indian in my family, we could BE the Village People)

 

[Xofenroht]

Ummm...didn't Marvel go bankrupt at some point in the 90's? So wouldn't their main motivation be to do whatever they can to prevent going bankrupt again? Which means they'd have to keep our attention using any tactic they could?

Let them do their business, as long as I don't have to see them sell the rights to some of their characters just to stay in business.

 

[moraldeficiency]

My point was, though, that there is nothing special about the comic industry, which Corpy was lamenting about. It acts like every single other business. As it should. And if you don't believe that, try getting Coke to change it's formula. If anything, Marvel (and DC) respond to their customers much, much more than most companies.

Why should Marvel (or DC) care about the 100,000 or 200,000, or 1,000,000 people who think OMD or BND sucks? There are about 6,000,000,000 or so that don't even know or care either way. Are they supposed to cater to them, also? No, they cater to the people they believe that they can appeal to. Now and, if they're a well-thought out business, 10 years, 20 years, 50 years from today. And if disappointing 50K readers today (which even that high estimate hasn't been shown yet), to set-up the plate for gaining 200K or more readers 20 years from today, than it will have been worth it. Will that happen? I don't know (and either do any of you.)

Coke is always trying to change it's formula. I remember new coke and when enough people finally complained they brought back "classic" coke. I remember the clone saga with the same intent to get new readers at the expense of the old. That didn't work out so well either.

The problem with pissing off that 50k client basis for the sake of possible greater numbers is you start playing to trends rather than satisfying your base customers. I know that 50k number is bankable and will stick with ASM whether it's "cool" or not as long as you don't do something horrific to the character. I also know a vast majority of these "new, fresh, young and better" fans are trend followers and the minute the air of something fresh and new wears off they bail. Now you've lost these new fans and you have to beg to get your old customers back. Maybe you're right and maybe I am, but we won't know for month until the BND title is gone and the new shine wears off, if the numbers are still good in say 9 months then I'll concede the point and probably have to abandon the character permenantly, but I really doubt it.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is this "vocal minority" are the people that really love the character and comics in general. They care enough to go out of their way to give you their opinions, good or bad. They care enough to go pick up a book even before movies made the charcter cool and they'll care enough to pick it up after movies ran the character into the ground as well. These are the substance over style people, the type that will go out of their way to get their friends and family and random people on the street speeches about why they should read comics or how they're a legitimate medium. In a buisness perspective maybe they aren't as big a cash cow, but for the artists and writers these are the people you're actually writing for, because every and I do mean every, good writer/artist/inker/editor started out as one of these types of fans.

PS. to address the actual topic I'm sure every company has on occasion put a fake letter in to a page just to bring up a point, or difuse a situation but there are more than enough people on any point of an issue that they'd rarely have to do something like that. I doubt any BND letters are fake as there's plenty of people on this very message board that think SOS is just the cat's meow, but then some people also get turned on by a nice Cleveland Steamer.

 

[ZeroCorpse]

Coke is always trying to change it's formula. I remember new coke and when enough people finally complained they brought back "classic" coke.

Just so you know, the whole 'new Coke' thing was planned from the start. The idea was to drum up media attention by making Coke suck, and then see a boost in sales when they brought back the "classic" version. It was a case of a corporation purposely doing something unpopular in order to make people desire the old product even more. And it worked. Classic Coke sold like crazy when it came back.

And "New" Coke disappeared not long after.

McDonald's did something similar when they purposely used the "Mac Tonight" campaign without crediting the writers of "Mac The Knife" -- They knew they'd get sued, and that it would be a high-profile thing that the media outlets would cover.

As they say, no publicity is bad publicity.

I'm hoping One More Day is a case of Marvel going for the bad publicity in order to get ANY publicity. I hate OMD. Hate it. I have read it since it started, but I won't purchase it. I'm just waiting to see if it changes back to the Spider-Man I've read for 30 years.

So in a way, they got to me, too. If I didn't have a resource for reading the comics without having to walk out of the store first, I'd probably have bought a couple issues out of morbid curiosity.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I'm guessing you mean Brand New Day, since One More Day was only 4 issues and it's long over...

 

[iloveclones]

^ Conspiracy theories anyone?

Believe it or not, sometimes people just f-up.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I don't know what the behind-the-scenes deal is with OMD/BND, but I could definitely see a business-minded person sacrificing short-term adoration for long-term success. As conspiracy theories go, it's fairly plausible.

 

[moraldeficiency]

Just so you know, the whole 'new Coke' thing was planned from the start. The idea was to drum up media attention by making Coke suck, and then see a boost in sales when they brought back the "classic" version. It was a case of a corporation purposely doing something unpopular in order to make people desire the old product even more. And it worked. Classic Coke sold like crazy when it came back.

And "New" Coke disappeared not long after.

McDonald's did something similar when they purposely used the "Mac Tonight" campaign without crediting the writers of "Mac The Knife" -- They knew they'd get sued, and that it would be a high-profile thing that the media outlets would cover.

As they say, no publicity is bad publicity.

I'm hoping One More Day is a case of Marvel going for the bad publicity in order to get ANY publicity. I hate OMD. Hate it. I have read it since it started, but I won't purchase it. I'm just waiting to see if it changes back to the Spider-Man I've read for 30 years.

So in a way, they got to me, too. If I didn't have a resource for reading the comics without having to walk out of the store first, I'd probably have bought a couple issues out of morbid curiosity.

I've heard that before but I'm on the fence as to what coke story to believe. I do remember crystal coke though and that failure, now coke zero is going the same way. Coke has always kicked the crap out of other companies in terms of sales and influence. I've heard that "new" coke was made because it cost less and tested well. I tend to believe that story a bit more just for the plausability of it.

McDonald's has always been a bully and @ucker about copyrights. They'll step on anyone for almost any reason. Remember the company started with one employee stealing the buisness out from his friend and mentor and then screwing the founders out of any money for the buisness (which they intended to give to their employees). So I believe pretty much anything @hitty about McDonald's it was stolen then founded on @ucking over other people.

I just wonder when a company "makes a mistake on purpose" from the history of time I can tell you declaratively companies are pretty much chicken @hit about change and rocking the boat. It's pretty easy to come in afterwards and say "well it was just a stunt" rather than "yeah, we @ucked up" which you never hear.

OMD really can't be a publicity stunt. The movies have brought more attention and publicity to the company and character than any comic stunt ever could. This was an agenda put into place to generate "new" life to the character the way the clone saga intended to, and I'm pretty sure it'll take quite a while for it to die that same painful and slow death.

 

[iloveclones]

Well, in terms of OMD, I think they're pretty upfront with saying that they expected people to be upset (re: stop buying). The coke thing: I'd have to see something from the company admitting that before I'd buy into that.