Quick guide: Marketing

[ratscout]

Bruh. I clarified in the same sentence that I thought there was nothing wrong with it. I just think if you want a wider audience, you need to get cleverer with your marketing. If you want a smaller audience, nothing wrong with it.

That's fine. I was just stating that you shouldn't make a blanket statement if you don't have the evidence to back it up. My anecdote is better than yoooours (j/k).

Threads crop up weekly on this site advertising their LGBTQ content. You can actually search it up on the search bar to see how many have been made. There's a lot. Again, nothing wrong with it. It caters to the audience of this site.

But I ask again, why did you assume people where about to call you something-ist?

Does that happen to you often?

grooooooans well, with you making personal attacks and proving my point, I am out. Maybe construct more convincing arguments before going there, buddy. (also, you definitely make it seem like you deliberately misread my post because I was not personally complaining about being called an ist. I was observing people pretty much calling the OP and others on the thread who disagreed with them ists).

[NellieVP318]

While I agree that romance is the selling point of straight romances, it is primarily catered to a straight female audience, not a male audience, so it still is missing out on a wide audience (males). Nobody said there's anything wrong with marketing to those audiences, I just think you will miss out on a bigger audience if you ONLY market to that audience.

I agree that creators miss out on a big audience. I don't believe that marketing for a wide audience works too well. Different audiences tend to like different things from what I know of. It's hard to guess how the audience engage in some materials.

[Freemints30]

If you want stats the majority of tittanic veiwers were teen girls and women. Not cis straight men.
I'm asking a question, "Do you get called that often to jump to that conclusion?"

Cus that's more personal issue, especially when everything was relatively civil.

If alot of POC or Queer people have, that's more something your should work on.

My personal Opinions are People who say "you're too quick to call something an -ist" should not have anything to say about -ists or -isms..

Especially if you are not in that demography. Very Patronizing and you should work on that.

[NickRowler]

There is a pitfall with casting your net too wide. You could make a piece of media that is void of anything people would find off putting or offensive. But you might also get people who find your story to be bland and maybe not very engaging. And I think at one point you need to pick and choose who to target your story to. I think of Disney that tried to play it safe and appeal to everyone and it ended up with everyone just hating them (including the people who worked for them).

I don't see why people would would not be open to an LGBTQ stories seeing how most people, at least in America, are supportive of LGBTQ rights.

[DiegoPalacios]

While one can't please everyone, there are some audiences that are bigger than others. The more specific the niche, the more narrow it will be, but that means that one can focus better on appealing to them. But if the niche is way too small, it won't be profitable if there's not enough people to pay the bills.

What audiences resonate with your story will depend of the kind of story you are making. (and age rating)

Some stories have a solid niche appeal, others can reach a solid mainstream success. Both can be profitable as long as the people involved know what they are doing.

[alexlcuri07]

Um... hey.

So most marketing is not aligned with accurate statistics or what those populations actually want. Kind of like how most RomComs are directed and produced by straight, white, men (like most other media) but heavily marketed towards women.

Culture does, always, reflect -isms and implicit biases are real. When people call out -isms, look for why that is instead of defending them.

The fact that your statistics on the LGBTQ+ community were so grossly inaccurate was... problematic at best.

Marginalized communities are allowed to create their own spaces. If that means marketing their media to others based on the sexuality/race/etc they personally identify with, that's not only their prerogative, it's well needed representation. To take a minority identity that you don't identify with and make that the primary focus of your work/marketing is exploitation.

[ratscout]

Please read the post carefully. I never posted a statistic on this thread. I was simply pointing out that highly grossing romances had to have included a male audience because they were so highly grossing. I certainly never cited a statistic about straight men directing romances? What does that have to do with anything?

I was not defending isms. Do not twist my words. I was saying that people on this thread were quick to resort to that.

Again. Did not post anything about LGBTQ statistics? Please read the post carefully.

Marginalized communities are allowed to create their own spaces. If that means marketing their media to others based on the sexuality/race/etc they personally identify with, that's not only their prerogative, it's well needed representation. To take a minority identity that you don't identify with and make that the primary focus of your work/marketing is exploitation.

I don't have a problem with this? Never said I did? Please read the post carefully. I was talking about marketing. Also, I have always supported people writing about a sex/sexuality/race that they are not apart of, as I think it creates compassion for that sex/sexuality/race. That's like me telling someone they can't write a white person if they're not white. Marketing on that is a different question, I guess. Marketing in general is pretty exploitative.

[alexlcuri07]

Not a fan of being patronized, so since I can read just fine, maybe you should find the correlations in what I said to what you said. Critical thinking is a skill. @ratscout

[LunarScyphozoa]

Read posts carefully yes, but also write posts carefully. Just a reminder

[ratscout]

Okay. Send me the quote where I said I was defending being an ist. I'm not being patronzing, I'm simply stating facts. You guys are the ones going for the worst possible interpretations of what I said. And with that, I am out of this thread for good.

[Freemints30]

Well you were the one who brought it up when literally NO ONE did. No one but you brought up -sit and -ism, excuse alot people for wondering.

[Frappe7]

i think many people misunderstood the original post

the point was that you don't have to be on the nose with your diversity as a marketing strategy because many people will automatically see that as toxic tokenism or relentless pandering and will make some viewers discount the work altogether/losing interest in it. That doesn't mean you can't have diversity in your work, you just have to be smarter about your methods of marketing.

the point was to write diversity meaningfully, but don't rely on it completely as the single thing to draw audiences in.

but apparently, some people require blatant marketing akin to big glowing neon signs in order to notice a certain work.

[aqua03]

Honestly my thoughts on marketing is first: Don't put all your eggs into one basket when writing (Like say, don't focus entirely on diversity at the expensive of an engaging story.) Second: Think smart and play up which aspects you think would resonate the best with which people you are currently selling your stuff to (Like say, market that your story has a diverse cast to people who mention they want that and say.... Market the exciting adventure aspect of your story to people you are hungry for that type of story.) and Third: Don't blame your audience/intended audience if your story fails. No one likes to be blamed or lumped in with a bad group that really had nothing to do with in the first place, it just makes everyone sour and miserable.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[TheLemmaLlama]

Okay, let me try this 'critical thinking' thing you speak of:

Culture does, always, reflect -isms and implicit biases are real. When people call out -isms, look for why that is instead of defending them.

I assume you're not accusing @ratscout of defending -isms in her actual post in this thread, but rather you're saying the sentence "I wish we could have a civil conversation without immediately resorting to calling each other racists/sexists/and other ists" suggests that when she hears people accusing each other of -isms, she assumes the accuser is being oversensitive rather than the accusee actually being guilty of -ism?

The fact that your statistics on the LGBTQ+ community were so grossly inaccurate was... problematic at best.

I assume you were referring to the part where she said "A very small percentage of the population is gay, and you might have trouble marketing it to the other, like, 99% of the population if you are trying to solely sell the show on that."?

I read that as a colloquialism (i.e. "the majority of people aren't gay"), rather than a statement of fact (i.e. "literally 99% of the population isn't gay"). But then again, I'm not gay, so I guess it's easy for me to read it that way

Marginalized communities are allowed to create their own spaces. If that means marketing their media to others based on the sexuality/race/etc they personally identify with, that's not only their prerogative, it's well needed representation.

I can see why @ratscout's post reads like 'marginalized communities aren't allowed to market their media to others based on the sexuality/race/etc they personally identify with', just like I can see why @ratscout felt like people are implicitly accusing each other of -isms in this thread.

To me, she was making a pragmatic argument against diversity marketing (i.e. 'it's not in your best interests to do so'), which is very different from a moral argument against it (i.e. 'it's wrong of you to do so and makes you 'woke' or something'). She might be wrong about diversity marketing not being a pragmatic move, but we should focus on that instead of acting like she's making a moral argument when she's not :]

(And of course, if I'm incorrect about what your points were actually trying to address, I'm happy to be corrected if you want to do that )

(EDIT: Don't worry, your responses are working (in the sense that Tapas notified me) - I think it just doesn't show up in the thread when it's the next comment in the thread for some reason XD I have been bamboozled by it too :'D)

[alexlcuri07]

I appreciate this a lot because I didn't want to explain myself after being told to "read more carefully." But you saw exactly how I came to every point I made!

The only point that I want to come back to (because it is very important) is that I would have to completely disagree with is the notion that people who accuse others of "-ist" and "-isms" are being "too sensitive." This is a long standing way of tone-policing marginalized communities by gaslighting them and invalidating their feelings and experiences. I'm sure that's not what @ratscout may have intended, but that is exactly how it comes off.

We can all agree to have different takes on the other points, and I concede may have been what led to the miscommunications, but that's not a perspective I'm willing to compromise on. @TheLemmaLlama

(Sorry, my responses aren't working, so I have to tag. )

[PapaDom]

Sorry if I just drop here without giving an opinion on the topic OP made, but I just want to share my two cents regarding Titanic since it was mentioned here.

As a straight white man () I did watch the movie. Did I like it? Nah, not really, but I wouldn't call it a bad movie since it didn't feel like I wasted my time watching it. Personally, I wouldn't mind if somebody asked me to watch it with them again.^^

[bloodstained.skies]

I guess some people will get angry but...
I'm glad someone said it clearly. I don't care about your story if some "woke stuff" is the only subject you offer in your books/movies/comics/whatever.

[system]

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