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RSSPart of a marketer's job is to identify trends in popular culture and hypothesize how these will affect the efforts they're trying to achieve, or impact the mindset of the consumers they're speaking to. In the past I've written about how music and hip-hop culture have impacted marketing and content development, along with skateboarding culture and how it's woven into the fabric of our daily lives, but the next important trend I'm seeing is the continued growth and expansion of comic book culture.
Comic books have been around for many, many years and are a truly American art form. They grew in popularity with the rise of the superhero genre and have exploded in the past 15 years, with mainstream characters such as Batman and Superman re-invented by Hollywood as successful movie franchises, culminating in the huge success of Spiderman and the X-Men franchises.
As the mainstream characters drove the spotlight to shine on the genre once again, we've seen the adoption of more obscure characters like those in Sin City, Hellboy and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, all of which became movies in their own right, some more successful than others. As attention has shifted towards these characters and the audience has grown older, we see a more mature development in the form of graphic novels--fuller, richer and typically darker stories, widely respected by critics and literary aficionados, purchased by 30- to 40-year-old readers. One of the most successful, Watchmen, was at one point featured by Time magazine as "one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present."
This trend has become even more apparent with the success of the TV show "Heroes" on NBC. We see "Heroes" taking the best of serialized shows like "Lost" and combining it with the increased attention towards humanizing superheroes. It's a trend that might be reflective of our need to escape through entertainment--but also to look for the solutions to heart-rending problems. In a world pummeled day in and day out by the likes of terrorism and drug addiction, we want a solution-which, for problems of such magnitude, can be super-human solutions. I don't think anyone feels that these are possible or realistic, but they like to see that a solution can exist because it makes them feel better and allows them a reprise.
"Great," you might say. "What does that mean for me?"
It adds to the discussion of where the audience is going. The New York Times had an article this past weekend about Dark Horse, Marvel and DC Comics. Mainstream audiences are starting to shift their attention towards other formats. They are spending time online, but they are also reading more--especially reading graphic novels.
Entertainment Weekly regularly writes reviews of graphic novels, and more of these characters are being commissioned for movies. If you want to reach your target audience, you need to know what they're doing. Is it inevitable that a brand will begin to drop in product placement within graphic novels, or commission the creation of a graphic novel for its brand, targeting a storyline that would appeal to its audience?
Trend-watching is an enjoyable side project for me and one that I find very applicable to advertising. As I was told long ago, "If you want to be successful in marketing, become a student of popular culture."
Where else do you see this trend taking shape?
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Cory, I was so interested in your original post, which I recieved via e-mail, that I forwarded the story on to a colleague in the graphic novel business. In the interest of full disclosure, he posted the comment and statistics which, because I had fowarded the e-mail to him, posted under my name. No big deal, but my "Google Alerts" just let me know that this had posted under my name and I just don't want to take credit for the research statistics he presented.
But even more interesting is the fact that they are beginning to venture into very diverse kinds of stories, (outside of the typical superhero or fantasy tales which rule the comic stands). Just this summer, Head Press Publishing recevived national attention for it's release of its graphic novel, Eye Witness: Acts of the Spirit...which has helped fuel the development of the genre of Christian based graphic novels.
Here is a link to an interview of it's author/illustrator, Robert James Luedke:
http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?id=25254
You might be correct about this psycho/demo trend, as more people of the early seventies grow up there might be renewed interest in collecting & touching items from their past. However, I have seen recently a few articles saying how the value of comics has decreased a lot since the 80's height. Oh the high/low swings of the 'commicdity markets', it enough to drive a passive investors crazy.
I hope your right about the Comic markets, as I have a good collection, and always enjoy an appreciating asset. It is good to see your analysis of this trend, comics are making big dollars in the movies, and some of the stories are good. However, as a visual artist, I always enjoyed the drawing skills more than the writing.
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