With Spiderman No Way Home becoming one of the biggest openings in the history of cinema, surely it’s time to agree that Marvel is doing something right. As a business, Marvel has been able to develop a fantastic brand value of itself in the market surpassing that of its rival DC comics. Every business has something to learn from Marvel (Disney) so lets take a look at 5 business lessons from Marvel for every business.
Marvel has been consistently working on its brand value even before the 2009 acquisition by Disney. The buying of Disney only pumped in more money for Marvel’s Marketing expense – something which they have used very wisely. The big daddy Disney has increased its advertising expenses by almost 50% ($1.96 billion to $3.18 billion) from 2009 to 2020* and it would be no wonder if the majority of that is going to Marvel Studios.
Marvel proved its business supremacy in the entertainment industry when Spider-Man No Way Home earned $1.37 billion (except China) and the movie went on to become more popular than all-time hits like DC’s Batman trilogy (Christian Bale). This calls us to analyze, what is Marvel doing right as a business and is there anything which other businesses can learn from it.
BUSINESS LESSONS FROM MARVEL
1. LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMER
Surely companies spend millions of dollars on getting ideas for new products. The primary intention behind getting something new in the market is NOT to beat the competition anymore but to be the customer’s favorite brand and Marvel executed it successfully without costing a lot. They listened to their audiences! It’s as simple as that.
Fans have been begging to bring back Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield as Spiderman since Tom Holland made his appearance. For whatever reason, Marvel could not work out a deal with Sony and kept rebooting their Spider-man every time. But when fans started to make a petition for bringing all three of them together, Marvel and Sony had to work out a deal. There are more than 10 petitions on Change.org since 2018 to bring all of them together.
In 2021, Marvel went full throttle on TV shows and brought Wanda-Vision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TFATWS), Loki, and Hawkeye each with 1 season. An episode of TFATWS had a scene where a character Baron Helmut Zemo (played by Daniel Brühl) dances in a club. That scene is for a minute or less in the TV Show but when fans requested for a longer cut of Zemo dancing, Marvel released a a full “One Hour Dancing Zemo” video on YouTube.
While on one hand, we have Marvel who is consistently listening to customers, on the other end of the spectrum we have Warner Brothers owned DC Comics which has been made to shut ears. Fans had been demanding a Zack Snyder cut of Justice League after the abysmal performance of the 2017 movie and it took DC over three years, multiple reshoots, and thousands of petitions to give them Zack Snyder’s Justice League in 2021. Since then fans have been demanding a Snyder-verse but DC is going to reset all its timelines after The Batman and the Flash movie. DC is a brand that has an exceptional product offering – arguably better than Marvel. DC’s characters have more depth than Marvel characters. But WB studios are that evil studio that won’t let DC succeed – as they mentioned in the latest Matrix movie.
Marvel is listening to their customers and giving them exactly what they want, saving a lot of money on brainstorming. As Marketing grows more customer-centric in 2021, listening to the customers through feedback, surveys, and on social media is very important. Something every company should learn from – especially DC.
2. FOCUS ON PRODUCT AS WELL AS THE BRAND
Post-Avengers-Endgame, Marvel Studios is a well-known brand in the entertainment industry. In recent years, they have also been labeled as Marvel Movies like types of cinemas have labels – experimental cinema, art cinema, musicals, etc. All of this states that Marvel has developed its brand very well. But while they developed the brand, they also focused on their products – which is movies and Marvel has worked consistently on each of them. Not a lot of other studios could do that. Universal Pictures would have few movies which can be recalled and so do Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (Bond films) and these studios have developed more movies than Marvel ever could.
An example of a brand getting recognition because of its product is DC whose popular products Batman and Joker have independently been able to gain popularity for DC and an example of products getting a bad name because of the unpopularity of its brand is again, DC. (Products which suffered: Justice League, Superman, Flash, Green Lantern)
It is necessary to understand that both product and brand work in synchronization. A product may be popular because of its brand (Google Pixel) or a brand gets popularity because of its best-selling product (iPhone) and Marvel executed this very well. A reputation to either of these could mean popularity for the other and vice versa. While a product generates revenue for the business, a brand builds and secures it over a long time with its Brand image, Brand recall, and Brand proposition values.
3. CUSTOMER RETENTION
It is not easy to get committed customers for a long time and many factors contribute to it. Companies have been struggling to retain their customers with their subscription models and no one – not even Apple – could make the customers commit for over 10 years but Marvel is doing it like it’s a piece of cake.
Since 2002 (After Spiderman No Way Home, 2002’s Spiderman has become the first film of MCU), Marvel has been able to retain millions of audience and every year with their new product offerings, they had been adding more and more. People in their teenage in 2002 are well over their 40s when No Way Home came out but they have still committed to it. Businesses need to be consistent and innovative in their offerings. Customer retention by repeat purchase is well executed by Marvel.
4. PLAN WELL AND PLAN AHEAD
Since 2008’s Iron Man, Marvel has been dropping hints of its universe and other movies in its post-credit scenes. They used that space of the movie time to wonderfully hype the customers about their upcoming movies. The audience accepted it to the extent that about 80% of people watching a marvel movie in the theatre would stick around till the very end to get that post-credit scene. It is more of a behavior trait now, almost like Pavlov’s conditioning experiment with dogs. Marvel not only planned but planned it well.
A business faces many obstacles every day and planning would mean involving and dealing with countless variables like supply chain, availability, manufacturing, etc. Business planning is something most small-scale businesses never pay attention to – something which would promote them to medium-scale business. All the business plans are with a margin of error and consider full or part of the unforeseen and unavoidable circumstances. The objective to well perform is the primary motivator of driving the plan towards success.
5. FOCUS ON CONTENT
Every Marvel movie had content that led the audience to go loud in theatres. At one part or more, the audience erupted with whistles and cheers – a trend that has been increasing since 2016’s Captain America Civil War. Marvel brings abundant cameos of popular characters at right time in their story which keeps the audience not only engaged but entertained – the ultimate offering of any cinema.
The content of Marvel movies is USP’s (Unique Selling Proposition) of products for others. Having the right product with the right USPs which fulfill the prime need of the customer is crucial for its success. No matter what your product offers, if it does not fulfill your customer needs, then it would struggle with success and to know what the customer want, we go back to the top of this article, Listen to your customers. (DC and WB, are you listening?)
What other things do you think Marvel does right?
* As per data from Statista: • Disney: ad spend in the U.S. 2020 | Statista