He's So Grim He Makes Me Look Upbeat
Graeme
McMillan (not a permalink) isn't convinced that Tokyopop's upcoming
cable TV ad campaign is going to do much good. Heck, I'm not
convinced it'll do much good either, but I'm still much more optimistic
than
Graeme is. For one thing, unlike Graeme, I don't think TV
advertising for comics has ever been done in exactly the
same way before. Sure, I remember the TV ads for the G.I. Joe comics
(ads which I believe
were successful in driving up sales of
the comics, so it's a strange example for Graeme to be using in support
of his pessimistic position) but those were so long ago I'm not sure
they have much relevance to today's market. Tokyopop isn't
selling single-issue floppies at newsstands or comic specialty
shops. They're selling digest-sized paperbacks in
mass-market stores
such as Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart (as well as at
your finer comic specialty shops).
I agree that publicity won't necessarily translate automatically into
sales, but I also think that publicity needs time to
work. The example Graeme cites of a couple of DC's new "Focus"
titles receiving
mention in
Entertainment Weekly yet still selling
abysmally is a odd
one. For one thing, I'm fairly certain that only one "Focus"
book,
Hard Time, has made
EW's "Must List"
(or been mentioned in any way in
EW), not
both
Hard Time and
Touch as Graeme
suggests. Secondly, the "Must List" recommendation of
Hard
Time was
only a couple of weeks ago (4/23, #761), so there's no way that
publicity could have had any measurable impact on sales yet. The
only
sales
numbers we have for
Hard Time so far are for the
first two issues, which both came out before the mention from
EW. And again, there's the whole apples-vs-oranges
thing --
single issues sold only at comic specialty stores vs. 200-page books
sold, well,
pretty
much everywhere. (In fact, as Tokyopop's Vice President of
Marketing John Powers revealed in an
interview
with Franklin Harris, Tokyopop sells their books at
so many diverse
locations that their ads will refer generically to their books as being sold at
"
Book, Comic, Video
and Music Stores" so as to not slight any retailer or market.)
As for Graeme's concern that money for these ads would have been better
spent trying to attract people unfamiliar with manga rather than people
who may have heard about manga but aren't actually reading any, I think
he addresses his own concern when he writes:
Maybe that’s the point, mind you; to pick up the people who
have heard of manga but don’t know much about it and say “Hey, you know
that manga thing that’s getting some buzz? Well, we make it, this is
what our stuff looks like and here’s where you get it.”
I'm guessing it's probably easier to win over those people who are
already familiar with (and receptive to) your product than it is to
educate people who have never heard of it. (Of course, if the ads
are done well, they could probably make the uninitiated curious as
well.) Further, as
Ed
Cunard points out in his column on this topic, the cable TV
channels Tokyopop plans to run its ads on all have (as Ed puts it) "the
geek demographic that’s already inclined to sequential art
storytelling." (
Franklin
Harris was more diplomatic in his phrasing, referring rather to
"the young, technologically savvy audience that is Tokyopop's target
demographic.")
Finally, in response to Graeme's worry that print media in general
haven't ever really successfully utilized TV advertising I'm just going
to quote Tokyopop's John Powers' answer to a question from
Franklin
Harris:
Q: What was the primary motivation for Tokyopop deciding to
buy television advertising, given that TV ads are a rarity even in the
prose book publishing world and especially considering that this is an
area from which other comics publishers, like DC and Marvel, have
traditionally shied away?
A: We saw an enormous untapped potential audience begging to be reached
through television advertising. Considering how naturally manga lends
itself to animation, we were able to bring pages of these great stories
to life through visually creative graphics that just about leap from
the TV screen. We also found this a great way to "introduce" manga to
those who have never seen it before.
If publishers have traditionally shied away from TV advertising,
perhaps it's their methodology that should be questioned, rather than
the medium.
Of course, we'll all have to wait to see how Tokyopop's ad campaign
actually plays out. For all of Tokyopop's bravado now, this could
still flop spectacularly. The talk of "bring[ing] pages of these
great stories to life through visually creative graphics that just
about leap from the TV screen" could end up being as cheesy as those
comics
on DVD. But for now I'm just enjoying the novelty of a comic
book publisher trying something other than
bringing
back a old character or
relaunching
with a new first issue or
cranking
out umpteen alternate covers or all the other stale old tricks to
increase sales.
