Alpha Centauri
Restricted
Siege doesn't need promotion, it's sold out.
Whether it's good or bad, the promotion obviously worked.
I.T.T: Nobody who grasps economics.
DC aren't losing anything, nor are they above marketing ploys to try boosting sales ahead of competition.
They offered rings with selected issues and most of the issues they offered them with were shit. The only issue that sold well despite the offer was the Blackest Night one.
Most people who don't even read those series' bought the comics for the rings.
On top of that, go look at sales estimates. The month prior, I believe, Booster Gold (One of the eligible titles) was around 21 thousand, dropping and with no rise in sight. As a result, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that those over-ordered copies will ever sell.
As my comic store retailer friend said:
"DC came up with something creative with the ring thing. Something fresh and new. It generated excitement and got mid-to-low selling titles into shops that chose to participate in order to make the collectible rings available. And like I said before, there was no wrong way to handle the rings. For a store to ask that the customer buy the book assigned to the particular ring was not unreasonable. What we did at Acme was give away 1 ring to every customer bringing in two cans of food that we gave to the Greensboro Urban Ministry. Even though we got the rings all at once, we released the rings basically every other weekend and have collected to date well over 1,200lbs of food that went straight to people who needed it. So cool. People have been extremely generous and supportive of this idea. And plenty of people have indeed bought the tie in books that they normally would not have. BUT, bottom line, we have books that we're never gonna sell. And Marvel Comics have one month on the sales charts that is all wonky because of DC's gimmick, which to be fair, was a good gimmick. However the sales charts reflect something that is not based upon the content of the books themselves. The sales results are based upon an incentive beyond what impact is felt by variants.
So, I guess someone over at Marvel had enough though and came up with this promotion which is equally crafty. Its not like they're asking for copies of random DC's they're asking for the specific series that artificially inflated DC's sales numbers. Marvel is offering taking the product that has super-saturated my market and will not sell, and they're giving me a special variant cover featuring a character that people will buy. This shows that Marvel remembers that comic shops, all small businesses in a difficult economy, cannot send back unsold product for full or even partial refunds. Marvel remembers that it doesn't work that way and came up with something to make them look like saviors, win support with shops who can participate (shops that didn't participate in the ring releases or sold the books with the ring may not be able to take advantage of the 50 copy requirement), and stuck it to DC. Hard and publicly. Its escalation, its underhanded, and I LOVE IT! Competition is a good thing. This is totally something I would have come up with from my 'I Didn't Know We Couldn't Do That' Playbook.".
If you don't know the story, don't write the blurb.
If DC did this, someone would have to type your replies for most of you because you'd already be lubing up the pom poms.
One of the reasons wrestling is shit is because there's no competition now. If Marvel and DC continue to push each other then the only people who win are the readers.
I'm interested in whoever will give me great comics. I don't wish bad on Marvel or DC, or any company. I hope they all do well and keep providing me with shit I like to read.
This company loyalty bs is dumb. Get over it.
-AC