Quick guide: Marketing

Well it's a quick guide, so I didn't expect him to go into too much detail (or any more detail than he already has). I just assumed the discussion would branch out into the nitty gritty details of marketing and not what did happen. But that was my wrong assumption.

And I just want to mention, not that anyone asked, it's not as though I don't think it can or should not be discussed, just that it would be more productive isolated in it's own topic in my opinion.

Okay, so to summarize the opinion of literally everyone here: diversity good, shallow tokenism bad

/thread

Where I live, there has been issues with teachers being harassed and books are being banned from school for being "too woke". Teachers don't want to work in the schools anymore because they don't want to deal with the death threats. I feel like if my work was published in print form, it would probably also be on the banned list for being "too woke". I think in some ways I want to just accept it and say "Yeah I'm woke, go cry about it". I don't think there is anything I could do to appease these people because me just existing is "too political" for some people even if I am not a political person.

I think the discussion of how representation and marketing intersect is an interesting one. It seems like a lot of the frustration around how it's handled stems from how large companies do it. They run the risk of doing it in a way that comes off hollow and superficial, even for the people who benefit from being represented (like the LeFou example mentioned earlier.) In some cases, it's intentionally done to stir up controversy, which I feel like is really disrespectful to marginalized groups who already experience hate just by existing.

But it still works, and that's what matters here.

There's been a really big push to make corporate-produced media more diverse in the past 10 years or so, but no matter how many diverse stories are pumped out in the next few years, it's not going to compare to the decades of stories where certain types of characters were not included for one reason or another. (I don't think any individual stories are to blame here, or that they're even bad for not being diverse, but when there's an overarching pattern where some people are only represented in 'lesser' roles or not at all, that's where I can see people having an issue.)

This mainstream focus on diversity is still seen as fresh, and there's a section of the audience who will be content just knowing that there's a lead character like them for once. Even if they don't like the story, they may continue supporting it because if it's not popular, media makers could decide that "No one wants to read a story with a [insert identity here] character." I'm sure some very savvy marketers know this fear and capitalize on it to generate the most response with minimal effort.

I do agree that only advertising what marginalized identities are in your cast and saying nothing else about your work isn't the most effective way to advertise. In written advertisement, like what's often done on the forums, it matters a little more to give extra details, even if you're responding to a thread that's only asking for "Hey, show me some series with [identity] characters." Marginalized or not, people are going to want to know about the tone, the plot, genre etc.

But heavily advertising them is different.

In visual forms of marketing like commercials, you can get a lot of information without it really having to be said, especially if the thing being advertised is a pre-existing property (ex. In Jurassic Park, you know they're gonna be running from some dinosaurs.)

Most of what I've said so far has been in the context of bigtime corporate media. Two very important differences about Tapas are the creators and the readers. A large portion of both creators and readers here are marginalized in some way. It's less likely that a Tapas creator is going to use diversity as just a quick way to get readers. They're more likely to have diverse stories simply because they want to see more of them. Readers know this and want the same thing, and because of this, adding diversity is less likely to generate conflict here. Tapas creators tend to have a smaller reach anyway, so they're unlikely to start discourse big enough to gain the amount of readers for it to be worth it.

The identities themselves are very important to marginalized people in their daily lives. It affects how they're seen by others, which affects how they get depicted in media, and that creates a feedback loop even if it's not the only factor contributing to why they're discriminated against. So even if the identity itself doesn't influence much, and the story is just advertised as "Hey, this is sci-fi with a black main character," just that alone could be important to draw in a reader who really likes sci-fi, but never got to see someone like them be the protagonist.

In a different world, there would be enough stories for everyone to go around and factors like this would be too vague to hook people, but that's not the world we live in right now.

...I think that's all I had to say. Hopefully, this didn't come off too antagonistic to anyone. I just think it's an interesting topic, and it seemed like everyone was kind of on the same page and just saying it in different ways. So that's it.

Yeah, I added "still seen as fresh" to try to acknowledge the fact that this sort of thing technically has been done before, at least for certain groups.

So.... the thing is.... I'm not.

I've had that blurb since I was in the Action section of the site. I only moved my comic over to the LGBTQ+ section and made my blurbs and ads and things more explicitly highlight that my comic contains queer romance and characters after friends with much larger followings really urged me too. And frustratingly they were right. It did appreciably increase my series' profile.

See, I actually wanted to build an audience based on the objective quality of my comic. I wanted to tell a really fun story with characters you can get invested in and then for the fact that most of the cast are queer and there's romance to be a nice surprise! I thought that the aesthetics of the series evoking other series with similar themes would be enough... but it's not. There are a lot of people out there who really just want a clear answer to "is this about underrepresented people on more than just a token level, yes or no?" and "are the politics of this story ones that are close enough to my own that I won't come across stuff that pisses me off?" ...and I know some people will decry that as shallow behaviour, but honestly I had to suffer through a lot of sci-fi and Fantasy works with casual racism or sexism and weak justification for authoritarianism when I was a teenager, and sometimes you really do want your escapism to not devalue or question your existence or ideals like your real life does. I'm a huge Terry Pratchett fan, but I really can't say friends who don't read the Discworld books with Agnes Nitt in because of the aggressive fat shaming are wrong for doing so.

So I actually would love it if I lived in a world where I could market my work based entirely on my skills, and early on, my marketing leaned a lot more into that. "I'm a national prize winning comics creator! I've been published! Check out my new thing! It's a shounen manga with a twist!" etc. But it just wasn't as effective as saying "listen, I promise you, it gets gay later, okay?" "Look at all the different flags my characters have!" "My comic has an autistic character!" I don't actually like it, but the problem is, it works.

That Lord of the Rings series looks... bad. Personally I saw the trailer and was just like "...nah, this looks tacky and too much like a generic Fantasy Mobile game to evoke the work of Tolkien", and was really surprised by how much people were talking about it... and it was all around the diversity stuff. First Kill is the same; it's a bad show, it's literally just another dime-a-dozen live action paranormal show like you'd see on SyFy or Channel 5 in a non-prime timeslot. These series... actually benefitted by advertising themselves around their representation of marginalised people, because it's really the only thing that stands out about them, and it's a really easy way to get people fired up and talking passionately about something that otherwise is "just another show."

There may be a few savvy people out there who roll their eyes at a series being marketed on diversity, or will outright avoid it if it seems to lean too heavily on the representation angle, assuming it may indicate poor quality elsewhere. I know I did this with Gideon the Ninth, which friends told me to read only talking about the fact it was about lesbians, without mentioning that it's actually a really well written story with great atmosphere, rich worldbuilding and a fantastic unique magic system.... but of course, those friends... all of them actually did read Gideon the Ninth specifically because they heard it was gay. They're not even stupid people or anything; they're adult professionals in their thirties! That's just how audiences are these days. An awful lot of people legitimately will decide to read or watch something based on these factors alone, because there's enough choice now that they can. Plus... most people are not very good at appraising the quality of a piece of media and tend to judge "is it good?" on personal appeal a lot more than they might be willing to admit. I mean, that's presumably why I keep meeting people who think Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie; they all praise how "gritty" and "serious" it is, "Like a war movie!!" and don't seem that bothered by the paper-thin characterisation or flat main character whose personality and motivation sharply change halfway through the movie to make the plot happen! Personal appeal of a strong premise can absolutely beat the crap out of objective writing quality!

I would probably have a bigger readership on Errant if I marketed it more on the queer elements and featured them more heavily in the comic itself, and got to them earlier in the story. I don't really like that, and I wish it wasn't true... but it probably is, and a lot of successful Tapas creators I've asked for advice said the same thing. "Readers don't want to be messed around, they're tired of queerbaiting and vague hints, they just want to know 'is it gay? Y/N' and for there to be proof that it is ASAP." This aligns with how popular series on the platform are structured. A lot of comics and novels here launch right into the catalyst story beat almost immediately and then backfill the setup clumsily with narration; no slow building of atmosphere or setting up the character beforehand, just BAM! HERE'S THE PREMISE!... it drives me nuts, and I hate the idea of writing that way, but that's how people compete in an attention economy.

I understand that one example a rule does not make, but I want to tell a story cuz I think it's relevant. My mother is from a traditional rural Korean family and has a strong distaste for fast food, especially chains like McDonald's. Additionally, she has a very archaic - for lack of better term - music taste mostly comprised of [lazy umbrella term] classical music.
Point is, she doesn't like fast food and doesn't listen to more modern music. Some of you may know where this is going.
Last May McDonald's had a BTS meal release in the US. Nothing terribly special, just some arguably special sauces with chicken nuggets and fries and a generic coke. Yet my mom rushed out of her way to get one and proudly displayed the bag. Just because the representation itself mattered to her.

Reading this thread made me think of a King of the Hill episode - Life in the Fast Lane, Bobby's Saga. For a quick recap, Hank wants his son Bobby to learn the value of a dollar and gets him employed at a racetrack concession stand for the summer. However, the employer turns out to be a bit abusive making Bobby want to quit. This leads to this cycle of Bobby going to his dad for work advice, Hank giving arguably great advice, but Bobby misusing the advice and making things worse for himself.

These quick guides are great, but I often found advice is only useful if you understand it's caveats. For instance from the episode Hank tells Bobby to 'find something no one else wants to do (or can't do) and get really good at it. This is good advice, but only if you understand your own worth, otherwise like Bobby you could easily allow yourself to get into abusive situations.

The diversity point isn't bad advice but I think two unfortunate things happened here:
1) the caveat isn't really explained (the OP goes into the point of tokenism, but not really representation - I think this important because as much as tokenism is a problem, so is using these character traits simply for 'plot')
2) the last thing you leave us with is the point on woke/activist types

The second point has two bits of fallout imo. First, because it's been used for the coveted last sentence portion of a section, it sticks with the reader more so. This gives the impression that the message if that section is to not use diversity as a selling point unless you are want to alienate a larger audience to get in with the 'wokes' - a term many have pointed out already is kinda meaningless and mostly negative nowadays. A sentiment that runs the risk of people jumping to the thought that if someone likes diverse content, they are a woke activist by default. Note, I'm not saying this is what you meant, I'm saying based on the positioning of your statements this could easily be what's taken away.
Second, since the OP mentioned Star Wars and The Rings of Power, I think there is some nuance for this advice regarding new vs old IPs. Granted, despite being a writer on Tapas I consume an ironically low amount of media so I might just be out of the loop. It seems to me that most knee-jerk negative reactions I've seen (also granted there seems to always be the small group that knee-jerks anyway) are from established IPs changing established characters or shoehorning in new ones. With established material doing this can often easily come across as shallow 'baiting' rather than genuine representation. Especially since you run the risk of coming across as disrespecting the source material. Even still, if the characters are done well and with care, no one really minds (I'm thinking Morgan Freeman's character from the Shawshank Redemption for example, and from what I hear, Elliott Page's character transition in Umbrella Academy was done pretty well too).

Okay that was probably too long, have a good day everyone