Quick guide: Marketing

Bearkorps · Aug '22

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

NellieVP318 · Aug '22

I don't usually get into topics like this but I found it interesting. I think the whole issue with this is tokenism, not representation. I know as someone who is black and disabled ( hard of hearing), I know it's hard to find stories that have genuine representation rather than a cash grab. What's unfortunate that some of these genuine representation stories do get tagged into "woke" or just marketed the wrong way.

I'm not a marketing expert or whatever. But I believe that even diverse stories deserve to be more than just 'token characters' for the audience to relate to.

Sorry, I'm not making sense but I just wanted to touch on that.

RobertBMarks · Aug '22

I once came up with a two-part test to see if a character is diversity done properly or tokenism:

Should the race/sexuality/religion/etc. of the character matter in the story?
Does the race/sexuality/religion/etc. of the character matter in the story?

If the answer to both is the same, it is properly done diversity. If they are different, then it is tokenism.

Bearkorps · Aug '22

I definitely agree with you, a bit of poorly rushed wording on my part (ironic given my post). While the OP does go into going beyond tokenism into making fully developed characters I don't think the post goes really into the important of diversity of representation if that makes sense.

And I think that marketing on this point can be a useful and important tool if done in good faith. It was kinda the point of the story about my mother I started with: that the hunger for this exists, even in areas we don't necessarily think about.

Thank you for the reply!

RobertBMarks · Aug '22

Sadly, it wouldn't have made a difference - I've been watching this trend develop for around 14-15 years.

I really wish that I could say that leading with diversity wasn't tapping into a poisoned well outside of places like Tapas. I won't lie - @darthmongoose's information was a surprise (and don't get me wrong - I'm glad that what she said is true). Very clearly there is a community here that responds favourably to diversity as a leading marketing point.

EDIT: I'm going to add that I was WRONG in the case of Tapas, and that makes me VERY happy.

EDIT #2: I just added a revision both to the original post and the entry in my Writing Quick Guides to clarify that the discussion of the poisoned well is in regards to marketing to the general public, not to Tapas.

But, outside of here, the evidence of a poisoned well is mounting:

Disney sequel series Star Wars toys do not sell (http://www.rebelscum.com/story/front/Rebelscumcom_Presents_The_2020_Gentle_Giant_Ltd_QA_186744.asp). Further to this, I am the publisher of a book on Star Wars, and I can confirm that since The Last Jedi, demand for the book had dropped to a lower level (and this demand was steady for years beforehand).
Marvel Stage 4 has underperformed, and there is a downward trend of actual ticket sales for these movies (https://cosmicbook.news/thor-love-thunder-box-office-underperforming-eternals, https://www.fastcompany.com/90694476/why-eternals-underperformed-and-what-it-means-for-marvel, https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/08/04/interest-in-superhero-movies-drops-poll-finds-worrisome-trend-for-disney-amid-marvel-slump/1). Since around Iron Man, a Marvel movie succeeding was just a given, and that is not the case anymore. Spider-Man No Way Home stands as a notable exception, but it notably wasn't marketed based mainly on diversity.
CBS' revived Star Trek performed so poorly that CBS's production partners tried to pull out of their funding contracts (I can't find the coverage at the moment, but I remember reading the articles on it, and it was one of the reasons why Netflix didn't carry Star Trek: Picard). Strange New Worlds may be their first unqualified success, and it's a throwback to the original series, and was marketed as such.

These are the three biggest examples. But when you see this many things with established fan bases whose only overlap at times is general genre that should be guaranteed successes under-perform and see decreasing returns, and the only common thread between them is diversity-based marketing...well, that's a clear indication of a problem with the marketing. One in decline, sure - Star Trek in the early 2000s got pretty mediocre, and it didn't need a poisoned well of marketing to lose an audience. Doctor Who under Chris Chibnall had such a low general standard of writing that I became embarrassed at the thought of showing it to my daughter - no poison well needed for it to lose its audience. But declines in performance across the board? There's too much correlation there.

If I had to venture a theory as to why the well is being poisoned, I think it's just two factors:

Attacks on fan bases. This baffles me - I never could have imagined attacking the people who are most likely to spend money on your product appearing as part of a marketing strategy, but here we are. And the problem isn't just that it happened across multiple properties - it happened across multiple MASSIVE properties, and was pretty much always associated with diversity marketing. So, the public in general saw repeated cases of diversity being pushed in the PR, followed by some fans saying "wait a moment - that's not how that character was written/we remember it/etc.", followed by attacks on those fans for racism/misogyny/etc.
Erasure of past successes. One of the things I've noticed about the modern trend is that the marketing for something like, say, Star Wars or Star Trek has to present what they are doing as the first time this diversity has existed. So, when Star Trek Discovery was first being marketed, Michael Burnham was being presented as the first black lead of a Star Trek show. This was nonsense - the first black lead of a Star Trek show was Avery Brooks as Benjamin Sisko in Deep Space Nine back in the 1990s (this was later revised to "first female black lead"). When the Obi Wan Kenobi show was being marketed, the claim was made that there had been no people of colour in Star Wars prior to the show, which was, again, nonsense.

Now, it should be noted that none of this is diversity's fault - this is the fault of people doing very public PR in what is sometimes likely to be bad faith. But claims of diversity is what it stuck to, and this isn't the first time something like this has happened:

There is a type of fedora called a trilby, which is known for having a thin brim. During the late 2000s and 2010s, this hat became associated with reactionary right-wing men's rights advocates, who tended to wear them while making videos and gathering in conferences and the like. This then associated the fedora as a whole with this sort of advocacy (not the hat's fault).
The Men's Rights Advocacy movement started out as advocacy for father's rights in family courts, where there was (and as far as I know, still is) a bias towards granting custody to mothers based on their sex, rather than their fitness as a parent (and quite a few children suffered as a result of this). This attracted virulent misogynists who very publicly used the label to identify themselves when they attacked women in general. The name "Men's Rights Advocate" became associated with the misogynists, forcing the actual father's rights advocates to abandon the term.

Now, everything I've seen about the public as a whole suggests that they don't care that much about the sex, race, or sexuality of a character so long as that character is well written. I don't remember anybody complaining about Forest Whittaker in Rogue One in the 2010s, or Wesley Snipes as Blade in the 1990s. It's the marketing that people seem to be having a knee-jerk reaction to, and when you look at the attacks on fans combined with the erasure of past successes that has been going on, it's hard to blame people for that.

As I said, I'm glad the well is not poisoned here on Tapas. But, out there, all the indications I'm seeing is that it's a very different story.

DiegoPalacios · Aug '22

While there are folks who are actively looking for representation and may read stuff just because of it, one can stand out more if they ALSO share the story/character hooks like you did.

One can reach more people if they share the storytelling and character hooks too. After all, people like you may not read something JUST because it was gay.....like your case with Gideon the ninth.....

Diversity can be a tertiary or even a secondary hook depending of the focus of your story, but relying solely on it is a can only take a story as far.....it made that Lord of the rings series more visible, i agree with that.......but......are they talking GOOD things about it?....... did it attract a relevant audience?......will people still talk about it when it becomes old news?

Another key variable is the audience you are promoting to.....the emphasis of certain hooks can vary depending on the site and target audience. Also, for you, promoting the diversity elements works because they come from a genuine place and you make solid characters on their own.....if you were to do things in a pandery kind of way, it will undermine what hooked to many of your readers.

I like to compare diversity as salt in a dish, it makes stories richer, but you can rely on it alone in marketing or narrative terms, just like one can't just rely on a dish that is exclusively salt, despite the fact that it makes many dishes tastier.

NellieVP318 · Aug '22

Your story about your mother reminded me when Disney came out with Princess and the Frog. I was excited about Tiana when she first came out. It was groundbreaking at the time because that type of representation was considered huge at the time. This might not be a good example.

I agree that there are areas we don't really think about how important representation is. However, I still find it disappointing that the good diverse stories are being hand waved as just "woke" or whatever reason people think the story is bad just because "X".

NickRowler · Aug '22

Uh, I don't think the poor sales with the toys had to do with "wokeness" but more with an evolving interest in what kids are interest in. Kids were not interested in the films and don't hold as much nostalgia to them vs people my age and older. Disney did very little to try to appeal to kids and just expected that it would because Star Wars appealed to kids in the past. I feel like most of the people going out to watch the sequels were adults and only a small number of those adults would be interested in buying the toys for themselves.

Yet some how the Baby Yoda was the magic ticket. Kids love Baby Yoda and the merch for him sold like crazy. People don't care if the sequel movies were bad, they just want Baby Yoda slapped on everything.

RobertBMarks · Aug '22

And if it was just this in isolation, sure. But, it's NOT just this in isolation. It's happened often enough with enough different franchises to be a general trend. There's only so many columns of smoke you need to see before you call something a forest fire...

darthmongoose · Aug '22

Yes, and I think this is the key point that perhaps bridges the gap between what I've been saying about my experiences, and what @RobertBMarks has been saying about his.

There's a difference between a corporation shoehorning a few weak token gestures of "diversity" into a work that isn't in any way focused around or created by marginalised people, and an independent creator from a marginalised group or dedicated to sensitively depicting under-represented people in genuinely important, pivotal story roles in their work. It's like how you'll see LGBTQIA+ people rolling their eyes at brands making their logos rainbow coloured during Pride Month, while homophobes also get angry about it; it might seem to point at "nobody wants marketing based on diversity", but it's more like "queer people want to be actually supported and protected, not profited off by companies that don't actually do anything but make a token gesture".

This is why Robert is seeing trends going one way so it seems like it isn't working out... while meanwhile at my day job in kids media, I'm developing diverse kids shows with diverse creators, because there's absolutely a ton of demand for diversity in children's books and shows right now.

There's a big audience for diverse content out there, but it has to feel authentic or you'll both piss off people in the "anti-diversity" crowd AND leave the pro-diversity crowd feeling uncomfortable with a weak token gesture or a depiction that's actually insulting or stereotypical, or even feeling like you're capitalising off marginalised people whose own work you should be signal boosting rather than telling their stories for them.

Lefeu in Live Action Beauty and the Beast is a prime example. Homophobes hate that a gay character got put into a movie which never had any canonically confirmed gay characters before, and gay people hated that of all the characters to make gay, they picked an incidental minor villain who's name means "the fool", and who exists to be a simp for the main antagonist, and then made the only hint about it one scene where he briefly dances with a man (ie. something you can erase for the countries that don't like it easily). This isn't a depiction anyone would have wanted, really. If they'd actually had some guts and wanted to go for more than just a token gesture, they should have made Cogsworth and Lumiere a couple or something. Rise of Skywalker is the same. A pair of ladies kiss in the background of one shot and Disney want us to give them a damn medal or some crap even though what everyone I know in the LGBTQ+ community actually wanted was Finn and Poe to be a couple, which would have actually taken some guts and been a big, brave gesture worthy of the praise they wanted.

Ultimately that's the deciding factor to me. People want content that reflects their experiences, or they want genuine support of marginalised people to a level where it can't just be quietly edited out. When somebody makes a fuss that their work is diverse but doesn't follow through, it's going to piss off both the people who hate even just the idea of diversity, AND the people who see a lacklustre attempt that in no way sates their hunger for representation but still an expectation of praise and money for it.

NickRowler · Aug '22

The reason why it is happening is what I just stated

I remember when Hasbro tried to rerelease the original My Little Ponys and most of the people buying them were adults who were nostalgic. Kids preferred the newer toys instead that were tied into the show. Similar when Mattel tries to re-release old Barbies, it's not for the kids. And similar with the new Bratz dolls, which I wonder if most of the people buying them are collectors and people who are nostalgic. And He-Man is similar. Adults who grew up with He-Man of course want new stuff but I feel like He-Man in it's original form would turn off most kids now a days.

And there is such a thing as franchises that just die. I think of stuff like Lamb Chop being reduced to dog toys or Howdy Doody, despite being extremely popular in its day, is super obscure now.

powerplantanimations · Aug '22

One of the sucky things about shoehorning, in Marvel's case, is scheduling conflicts which end up being inevitable.

Fun fact about America Chavez; she was supposed to be a main plot point for Spider-Man: No Way Home. She was never meant to be in Multiverse of Madness. Which makes sense because she felt like a huge after thought in the latter movie. In fact, I really don't think Raimi was aware of her existence when making the movie which was crazy to me.

So now I'm wondering if this is going to be a problem for other films in the future. It's like "Oh shoot, we have this character planned... we REALLY need to introduce them because contract reasons, but they can't show up..... uhhhhhhhhhhh PUT THEM IN THIS FILM QUICK!".

Btw little off-topic, who names their Mexican kid America? And I wanna know if she wore those clothes as a kid because I know for a fact she'll get bullied for that alone. Countries like Mexico and Brazil hate it when you call the United States "America", so having those colors on your back is a double whammy. I don't think the creators thought this character through...

RobertBMarks · Aug '22

What I remember hearing about Phase 4 was that it wasn't supposed to be this much of an unfocused mess. It was supposed to be as focused as Phases 1-3.

Apparently - and this may just be a rumour - Kevin Feige was stepping away from hands-on management due to the increasing workload, and his successor for planning and running Phase 4 and onwards was James Gunn...who then got fired right before the planning work was going to start. So, Feige still had too much work to be involved in planning a coherent Stage 4, and it fell to a bunch of lower producers who were...I guess you could say...not as well organized...

That's what I heard, anyway. It sounds like it makes a lot of sense when it comes to explaining the drastic changes between the three.

(Seriously, if this was 5 years ago, I would have been holding Marvel up as the perfect example of how to do all of this right. They caught lightning in a bottle and figured out how to market it properly for YEARS. And then...well, Phase 4 happened.)

powerplantanimations · Aug '22

I feel like Marvel will bounce back up. This type of stuff was bound to happen. Fegie plans on taking a retreat so he can plan the universe out further. He also has to deal with Sony which must be a pain. I don't think this is as crazy as people make it out to be. After all, his franchise became a success, he just needs to figure out how to control things on a bigger scale, which is a like a new challenge for him.

Take the Sony situation for example. Avi Arad thought Fegie was CRAZY for wanting to do something with the MCU. In fact they didn't buy the Marvel characters for a cheap price back then because, and I quote, "Nobody gives a sh** about them". Now that they see Spider-Man thriving, they want a piece of that pie and Fegie has to force himself to make sure their movies workout like Madame Webb.

I WILL say tho, we'll probably have some casualties along the way before Kevin figures things out. For example; Moon Knight not even being close to what he was in the comics (probably the most inaccurate character in the MCU), She-Hulk (the writers openly admitting they don't know how to write a lawyer drama BEFORE the show releases), the Eternals (Chloe Zhao... that's all), and whatever Taika touches.

I liked that my friend was like "Was he trying to get fired with Thor: Love and Thunder?!?".

I loved Black Widow tho. Black Widow gets too much hate. Natasha, Yelena, Red Guardian, and Iron Maiden were so cute as a family.

RobertBMarks · Aug '22

Honestly, the weirdest thing I saw with Marvel marketing was this thing with the toys about five years ago. I think it was Hasbro who had the license, and they were removing female characters from basically everything. It was BIZARRE. And the justification that I recall was something along the lines of "the kids who play with these are boys, and they won't want to see toys that they can't see themselves in"...which was utter nonsense, and made me think that the people involved either had never met a kid or been one themselves.

(And I'm old enough to remember the Star Wars toy boom that made Lucasfilm what it was back in the 1980s - there was a new toy for every single on-screen character after each costume change. Kenner and Lucasfilm made a fortune - this was a proven strategy.)

powerplantanimations · Aug '22

I thought they have a separate deal with girl toy companies like Barbie with their female characters? I mean, it doesn't make sense to do what you mentioned, but I do wonder if it's like an exclusive deal or something. Disney's weird like that.

RobertBMarks · Aug '22

I do remember something about that for Masters of the Universe and She Ra back in the late 80s...did that happen with Marvel as well?

powerplantanimations · Aug '22

I remember barbies being made for Captain Marvel and Black Widow when their films came out so.... most likely? But what about Marvel Legends? Because I saw figures for characters from those films as well (well Captain Marvel anyway).

RobertBMarks · Aug '22

We are now well past my point of knowing things...and I REALLY need to write this chapter. I'm going to go for a few hours...

powerplantanimations · Aug '22

Lol okay. Good luck m8

Quick guide: Marketing

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