Good marketers and retailers understand that consumers are creatures of habit. We develop preferences and behaviors around the stuff we buy; once established, those habits can become pretty hard to break or even alter. That’s why Internet startups burn through millions on growth before even thinking about profit. Get people in the door and forming positive associations about your product, service or store, and the money will eventually take care of itself.
The examples are all around us. Netflix trained us to binge-watch. Starbucks normalized the daily fix of $5 coffee. The New York Times built a million-reader national customer base on folks who can’t let their Wordle streak die.
But the flip side of that is dangerous. Companies or entire industries that prioritize short term, unsustainable gains to win business can end up “training” customers to expect things that can harm long term economic prospects. Digitization of the music business systematically devalued the core product (the album), then taught us that music should be, if not free (thanks Napster), then so cheap you could sell it by the month. A few artists can still make that model work, but ask anyone who remembers a time before the 2000s which version of the business worked better for them.
Comics had their own version of this. In the 2000s, when publishers started collecting story arcs almost immediately after the last issue had shipped, they inadvertently created the “trade-waiter”: readers who would not bother reading the periodicals because learned to expect greater value or convenience in a cheap paperback collection. The problem is, if no one buys the issues, there won’t be a trade. So what first felt like an easy, consumer-friendly innovation to open up new bookstore revenue also introduced risks into the forward-looking business for publishers, creators and readers.
Old ways and new. Back in the 1960s, comics were at the cutting edge of creating consumer habits. Say what you want about Stan Lee’s creative legacy, but as a brand builder, he belongs in the marketing hall of fame. He elevated Marvel Comics from a publisher to a lifestyle brand, creating both loyalty to the “house of ideas” and a sense of identity among readers that paid off month after month, year after year, eventually building the IP created by Jack Kirby and others into a multibillion-dollar treasure trove.
Marvel and the rest of the industry coasted on those innovations for decades. But eventually the habits that he created among Boomer and GenX readers lost their steam when Millennials came along. Manga, kids graphic novels and webtoons outflanked the “legacy industry” with fresher approaches to both content and distribution, leading to what everyone assumed would be a permanent shift. The habits of Wednesday warriors picking up physical single issues at retail felt old and dusty compared to shiny, modern 21st century conveniences.
Once-a-generation reset opportunity. Never mind the past. The post-Millennial generation (call them GenZ or Zoomers, but it’s really the younger edge leading the charge) is rejecting some of the false promises of the digital age and finding joy in precisely the quaint, inefficient, handmade qualities that seemed to be sandbags around the neck of the industry pre-pandemic.
Over the last few years, we’ve seen a bunch of remarkable trends: a shift from massive growth in the book channel to renewed interest in the direct market; a renewed interest (and accompanying sales growth) in periodicals relative to trade books; slower-than-expected growth in digital, certainly compared to what took place in Asia; and less depth in the kids’ and manga market once you get past the big names and big hits.
So far, publishers have responded by giving fans more and better content: strong, continuity-driven stories; fun crossovers; creative adaptations of licensed work and sustained, long-running independent series that reward fans who take the risk on something new.
We’ve even rediscovered the value of the artist as a brand name to sell the books, nearly 35 years after Image Comics made Marvel Comics pay for elevating their art superstars into something bigger than their precious IP.
Consequently, against all odds, today’s industry faces a unique opportunity to shape the habits of a new generation of readers in ways that can lock in some level of stability for years to come. All the bricks are there to build something longer lasting. What we need is the cement: the habits, the values and the permission structure that makes buying comics on the regular an important part of the lives of more than just the hardest-core fans.
Refresh or reinvent? Marketing experts looking to create new consumer habits often start with a pain point in the existing process. These days, the pain point is that the algorithmic, data-driven precision of the customer experience of the 2020s, designed primarily to extract the last penny from every transaction, feels exhausting and soulless.
Luckily, the medium of comics is inherently personal: a private conversation between the reader and the creators. That kind of intimacy is rare these days, and it’s probably one of the reasons that distinctive, expressive art styles like those of Daniel Warren Johnson or Nick Dragotta are breaking through to mainstream readers whose tastes were worn down by “house styles” over the past two decades.
Then there’s hand-selling, another artifact of the bygone age that seemed stubbornly resistant to scale. Even online, direct sales channels like Whatnot and direct-to-consumer platforms like Kickstarter have more pull and more stickiness than ones designed to operate at higher magnitudes.
Retailers have long been told that creating a sense of community around their stores is a survival tactic in the face of an onslaught of competition, but these days it is more than that. It’s an opportunity to grow, not just hold on, by imprinting positive new experiences on customers that will stick around for a long time and be very hard to dislodge.
Cape & Cowl Comics in Oakland, CA.
Tailwinds and headwinds. Even with favorable sociological conditions, success isn’t guaranteed. External factors like inflation and economic uncertainty aren’t helping. It’s hard to get 20-year-olds to buy single issues at $6 a pop, even if they love the vibe of your store.
The industry could also sabotage its own success by looking for quick wins at the expense of long-term customer trust. I’ve seen plans circulating for doing branded product placement inside of (digital) comics, for example: an idea practically guaranteed to generate scorn far in excess of any possible upside, regardless of how much stupid companies are willing to pay for this. And there are other dumb ideas lurking in PowerPoints and pitch decks all over the industry, I’m sure.
This business operates at such narrow margins at every level that it’s easy to understand why any one company would prioritize a short-term gain at the expense of long-term stable growth. We’ve seen it happen before. We can’t afford to let it happen now that fate and demographics have dropped such a promising opportunity in our laps.
For more great Comic Store Week features, including a great feature on the store pictured in this article, click here.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Rob Salkowitz (Bluesky @robsalk) is the author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, a two-time Eisner Award nominee, and a proud longtime contributor to Eisner-nominated ICv2.
Source: ICv2
