Opposites seem to be present in everything in life: good and evil, light and dark, day and night, yin and yang. This phenomenon can be seen throughout all aspects of life, and even in business and marketing.
This duality is especially noticeable when it comes to competing brands. Though these brands may not represent a moral good vs evil dichotomy, they often embody a top dog versus underdog or one versus two dynamics. When most people think of competing brands, they immediately consider brand wars such as Ford vs Chevrolet, Coca-Cola vs Pepsi, Apple vs Microsoft, and more.
Today, however, we will examine the differences in marketing strategies between Marvel Studios and DC Films. Both Marvel and DC comics started roughly around the late 1930s. Early on DC Comics chose to diversify with animated features and TV shows, whereas Marvel took almost 30 years to follow a similar path. Nevertheless, over the last fifteen years, Marvel has successfully perfected the recipe for transforming comic book heroes into bona fide movie stars (IMDB.com, n.d.; Whittleboy615, 2015).
Marvel Studios has emerged as the dominant force in the comic-book-to-feature-film-arena by strategically building its brand. They achieved this by creating diverse opportunities for TV and movie fans as well as customers to engage with Marvel across numerous channels and brands. While superhero animated shows and movies have been around for half a century, Marvel decided to build something bigger by crafting a coherent, overarching story that connects all their current shows and films (Elias, 2018). This innovative strategy put them in a position to be proactive rather than reactive.
In contrast, DC Films entered the cinematic universe game a little late and responded re-actively to Marvel’s marketing strategy. They attempted to sway existing comic-book movie fans with their original characters and films (Kardes, 20201124, p. 71). However, DC Films had more missteps with their marketing strategy than Marvel Studios.
Let’s compare their acquisition of talent and production schedules.
| Marvel | DC | |
|---|---|---|
| Total Movies | 33 | 16 |
| Main Actors # of Movies | 9 | 4 |
| Box Office Revenue | 29.55 B | 6.7 B |
| Years Active | 15 | 10 |
DC Films needs to re-calibrate its marketing strategies to more align with that of Marvel if they want to see the same success. They do not have to do everything the same as Marvel but could do similar things. Three recommendations for DC to change their strategy would be; Build The Brand, Listen, and Promote.
Build The Brand
DC Films needs to work on building the DC brand when it comes to feature films. Due to the failure of past DC movies for the cinematic universe, most fans and customers are now gun-shy about pulling the trigger of investing their money into seeing these films in theaters. Building this brand is going to be a little different than building a brand for a product or service.
DC needs to figure out the overarching story that they want to tell with their cinematic universe. Then they need to treat each feature film as a chapter of that larger story, to have a longer retention with comic book and movie fans.
Listen
One thing that DC Films has not done well in the last decade is listening to its target audience. Perusing comic book forum sites like SuperHeroHype.com you can see how the target audience has less than stellar expectations for DC films even with the upcoming reboot with director James Gunn. DC needs to work on correcting its brand resonance and equity with the target market. By doing so they will create a more loyal relationship with fans as well as create a better brand image (Kardes, 2020-11-24, p. 79; The SuperHeroHype Forums, 2016).
Promote
Let’s talk about the Aquaman sequel, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, due out December 22nd of this year. I knew this movie was in the works and was due to release at some point this year, but the first I saw the trailer was two weeks ago. According to Vulture.com, the first trailer was distributed in early September (Squires, 2023). While trailers are not the only promotion channel by which feature films are advertised, they are the main one.
Since I consider myself somewhat of a movie guru and keep tabs on new films being released, the fact that I did not see the Aquaman 2 trailer unprompted until roughly six weeks before the release is a fallacy.
This is where Screenrant.com even states that DC Films’ failures are not based on what DC wants to do, but on how they market the movies and their public relations visibility. Specifically, Colbert mentions in the Screenrant article that “the studio’s marketing and PR strategy needs to approach the franchise from a position of strength by focusing on supporting their filmmakers and ensuring audience expectations” which would alleviate any miscommunications between DC Films and the target audience (Colbert, 2022).
Doing a better job at building hype by creating a larger story for the brand, listening to their target audiences’ concerns, and promoting movies promptly will assist DC Films in creating a better-received product that will generate more brand loyalty.
Overall I think people prefer Marvel Studios over DC Films because they have succeeded in promoting the overall brand, the individual films, and producing the right amount of hype. With the slow introduction of Iron Man in 2008, Marvel knew that they wanted to create an immersive cinematic universe but needed to test the waters first. Therefore they set the foundation by introducing individual origin stories for their main characters and promoting them with cross-promotions, brand tie-ins, and social media marketing.
Growing up I was interested in comic books, but would not consider myself a hardcore comic book fan. DC comics were my favorite with Superman, Batman, and the Flash. I grew up watching the 1978 Superman movie and the 1989 Batman movie on repeat. Ever since the introduction of Iron Man and the Marvel cinematic universe, my preference has shifted towards Marvel and their treatment of the characters in their films, as opposed to the lackluster attempts made by DC Films.
References
Colbert, S. M. (2022, August 14). DC’s real long term plan problem is because of bad PR management. ScreenRant. https://screenrant.com/wb-dc-plan-problem-pr-marketing-expectations/
Elias, B. (2018, August 27). Marketing superheroes: Marketing strategy lessons from the Marvel v. DC rivalry. CG Life. https://cglife.com/blog/marketing-superheroes-marketing-strategy-lessons-marvel-v-dc-rivalry/
HeartOfTheSunrise. (2017, July 29). Superman fanart. DeviantArt. https://www.deviantart.com/heartofthesunrise/art/Superman-Fanart-695563234
Hughes, M. (2022, December 19). Ranking all 5 Henry Cavill’s Superman DCEU appearances best to worst. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2022/12/16/ranking-all-5-henry-cavills-superman-dceu-appearances-best-to-worst/?sh=33bd5f3c1762
IMDb.com. (n.d.). The Marvel Super Heroes. IMDb. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21376674/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Kardes, F., Cronley, M., Cline, T. (20201124). Consumer Behavior, 2nd Edition. [VitalSource Bookshelf 10.4.1]. Retrieved from vbk://9781305161689
Olin, B. (2023, April 15). Iron man: All 9 Robert Downey Jr.. marvel movies ranked worst to best. Bam Smack Pow. https://bamsmackpow.com/2023/04/14/iron-man-robert-downey-jr-marvel-movies-ranked-worst-to-best/
Squires, B. (2023, October 27). Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom arrives after three rounds of reshoots. Vulture. https://www.vulture.com/article/aquaman-and-the-lost-kingdom-trailer-release-date-cast.html
The SuperHeroHype Forums. (2016, September 17). DCEU audience….who is it? and who should it be?. The SuperHeroHype Forums. https://forums.superherohype.com/threads/dceu-audience-who-is-it-and-who-should-it-be.518789/
Vazquez, J. (2017). Iron-man Licensing art. artstation.com. Retrieved November 22, 2023, from https://www.artstation.com/artwork/vrJLx.
Whittleboy615. (2015, March 23). DC Universe movies and TV shows. IMDb. https://www.imdb.com/list/ls058155108/?st_dt=&mode=detail&page=1&sort=alpha%2Casc
World’s highest-grossing movie franchises as of 2023. Statista. (2023, September 25). https://www.statista.com/statistics/317408/highest-grossing-film-franchises-series/
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