How Marvel Became the 'Gold Standard' Super Brand
DC, on the other hand, has created a world that’s a bit more closed off to fans, with the focus often instead on directors more than audience or characters. Look no further than 2021’s “Zack Snyder's Justice League” for evidence: DC released the four-hour "Snyder Cut" of 2017’s “Justice League” on HBO after the director stepped away from the original production in the wake of a family tragedy.
DC has lower online engagement than Marvel, too, according to Kieran Fitzpatrick, founder and chief executive of Spiketrap, a company that uses its AI-powered audience intelligence platform to contextualize online conversations for clients including Sony Corp., Amazon.com Inc.’s Twitch, Verizon Communications Inc. and Warner Bros Games. Conversations around DC are also “more toxic” than conversations around Marvel, according to Spiketrap.
Marvel isn’t just driving value for Disney. The Disney brand is also giving back to Marvel, Fitzpatrick said. A search for Marvel in Spiketrap’s affinity tool reveals that Disney is the term associated with the brand that ranks highest on the affinity index, a measure of how well a given entity is positively correlated to another, calculated based on several factors including frequency and sentiment of related mentions.
And when evaluating the peerless success of the Marvel brand, its visual design prowess should not be overlooked, said Caroline Jerome, partner and chief creative officer at the branding and marketing firm TBGA.
“Brands with excellence offline and online have design as a bridge between those things,” Jerome said. “It’s really important to consider that Marvel originated in a visual form of storytelling, and that’s what’s being leveraged still. That’s what’s resonating with people. That’s what’s building the brand trust.”
The fictional influencer: “A superhero is just another celebrity endorser”
At the heart of the Marvel brand, of course, are its beloved characters, who have served as the inspiration for consumer products as far back as Spider-Man in the early 1960s. And Madison Avenue, recognizing the power of a superhero spokesperson, has been creating its own fictional heroes for branding purposes for more than a century, from the Michelin Man to the Jolly Green Giant to Tony the Tiger.
“A superhero is just another celebrity endorser,” said Jim Spaeth, a co-founder and partner at the brand and media measurement firm Sequent Partners, and a former president of the Advertising Research Foundation. “From a management perspective, fictional characters are less risky than celebrities. They’re not going to be found to be in a scandal. They don’t do anything wrong. They don’t try to renegotiate their contracts.”
Marvel’s roster of superhero endorsers has a proven track record of success at the box office and beyond, which also makes it an ideal partnership for any other brand looking to benefit from its good reputation. Those “Endgame” partner brands likely had no concerns that the movie would flop. Brands that partner with nonfranchise movies, on the other hand, may pay less for the licensing rights but they are also taking bigger risks with their investments. Nothing is as certain as a Marvel hero, and there are more and more of them every year.
“The house is big enough,” as Alice Sylvester, another partner at Sequent Partners and a former chair of the board of the ARF, put it. “There are so many superheroes, and everyone is integrated with one another in some way. Everyone is under this bigger house, so one character’s success begets success for everyone.”
In addition to being less risky, fictional characters from major franchises are also more likely to drive purchasing interest than the actors who play these characters, according to the Morning Consult survey:
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