What Comic Books Teach Retail About Loyalty

When Disney bought Marvel in 2009 for $4 billion, there were plenty of grumbles to go around. Comic book purists and superfans – the normal denizens of Comic Con – were worried that Marvel superheroes care of the House of Mouse would be too watered down, not violent enough and boring.

Disney watchers, on the other hand, wondered if there really could be all that much juice in owning a comic book empire. At the time the deal went down, there were only two Marvel studio movies on which to hang the acquisition: Iron Man, which was a giant surprise hit, and the Incredible Hulk, which was giant, but not a hit.

The thought on The Street among many investors and analysts: Disney had surely overpaid.

Six years later, comic book fans may still grumble – because if the intervening several years have taught us anything, it is that comic book fans grumble – but the Disney investors are all high-fives, praising Disney CEO Bob Iger’s foresight in predicting the public’s nearly insatiable desire to watch good-looking superhumans in tight spandex outfits blow things up. When Disney bought Marvel, its share was trading for around $26 a pop – as of the writing of this story it was trading for $98.

All of that isn’t Marvel, of course – an international chain of beloved amusement parks, a couple of Pixar movies and Frozen also were big contributors – but Marvel has had undeniable staying power. Since the release of Iron Man in 2008 – Marvel Studios has netted over $10 billion in worldwide box office returns (about $4 billion here in the U.S) – during roughly the same time period. That’s in addition to digital (DVD/BluRay/Streaming) sales and the action figures (and other branded merchandise).

Or the comic books themselves. Marvel controls 44 percent of the published comic book market share in the United States – its nearest competitor is DC (the publisher of Superman and Batman) at 32 percent.

“Marvel fans are some of the most passionate fans in the world,” noted Marvel’s EVP/GM, Interactive & Distribution Peter Phillips. “And we’ve seen that build for the last several years as they are increasingly comfortable moving across channels to access our content. Our challenge as a brand is to make sure our offerings live up to our customers’ passions.”

And it is that desire to continue to live up to their customers’ passions that has pushed Marvel to expand its repertoire and formally codify their loyalty offering for consumers.

Launched at Comic Con with the aid of technology platform Crowdtwist: Marvel Insider. The goal is to take a large and enthused fanbase and turn it into a conversion engine for the entire brand among more regular consumers.

Why Does Marvel Need A Loyalty Program?

Aside from the box office numbers themselves – Marvel doesn’t seem to have all that much trouble attracting interest. The latest trailers for their upcoming film Dr. Strange got 12 million views online within its first 24 hours of release.

So why create a loyalty program when fans have “an intense appetite for everything that we do,” according to Phillips?

Says Phillips, “[Marvel Insider] really helps us bring the breadth of the entire Marvel Universe to them. The program is a way to let fans know that they can do more than just watch the [Luke Cage] show, they can also play the Luke Cage character in our Marvel Puzzle Quest mobile game.”

The new program creates a way for Marvel to reward those fans for doing both. Marvel Insider in some ways resembles a lot of other loyalty programs floating around out there. Sign in online – and from then on Marvel rewards you for the various things you do on their website. Buy a digital comic (or order a print one)? Get a few points. Checkout some digital content – maybe that Dr. Strange trailer? Get a few more points. Post that trailer or Facebook or tweet about it? Points. Play the interactive game – well, you get the point(s).

The points are housed in a bank and can be traded for unique rewards not otherwise available for purchase like special edition digital comics, signed posters and other types of limited issue merchandise.

The Magic Beyond The Structure

What makes Marvel’s loyalty structure clever isn’t what it does – which is a basic points for action loyalty program – so much as it is for who it reaches and how.

Comic fans – as noted by those high click counts on trailers and impassioned articles on Redditt – are already hanging out online and looking for content. Their goal is to find it first, share it and comment on it. Which means Marvel Insider doesn’t have to climb the high mountain various other offerings do – insofar as it doesn’t have to try and motivate a new customer behavior.

“You get rewarded for what you’re already doing. It’s really about fan engagement rather than points for purchase, which is normally what you see with a lot of loyalty programs,” Phillips said.

Because “purchase” alone isn’t what Marvel wants – instead it wants to create an environment where the purchase is simply a background part of the entire experience the Marvel fan is having when hanging out in Marvel’s digital channel.

“Right now is the dawn of a new era that shows how loyalty programs can transcend traditional industries like retail, travel and hospitality, and credit cards. Multichannel programs open new doors for the comics industry,” says Emily Rudin, SVP of Client Success at CrowdTwist, the loyalty and engagement solutions provider Marvel partnered with to develop Marvel Insider.

The key, however, isn’t to try to box the loyalty program in around the buy itself, and around discounting.

“Consumers are smart – and don’t like being hard sold. That might create an additional sale or two – but it doesn’t create the fan community that a brand like Marvel really thrives on,” Phillips noted.

And so instead of designing their program around one thing – buying merchandise – that Marvel certainly wants its fans to do – it opened its program up to the wider world of activities that they’re already doing.

Marvel Insider gives consumers points for watching videos, listening to podcasts, following Marvel social media accounts, and buying Marvel products.

“Members are literally rewarded for doing exactly what they’re doing anyway, and have done for the greater part of the century,” Phillips noted.

Moreover, because the rewards aren’t things users can just buy anyway, the appeal of banking points becomes more around the exclusivity of the reward – which creates further reason for brand engagement.

Marvel Insider has been up and running for about three months – and though they have no hard numbers to release thus far, both Phillips and Rudin noted that the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

But if Marvel can make Insider work – they might have just cracked a mystery more interesting than how a teenager could get superpowers from a spider bite. Instead, they might have learned how to make loyalty an organic part of a multichannel platform – instead of an awkward add-on than confuses customers more than it engages them.

And in a world where everyone is trying to create the best digital experience, that just might be the superest super-power of them all.