1. They’re fun to write, produce, entertain your readers with
2. They’re a novelty
3. They can be a great catalog for your offers, or even just your teachings, philosophies, thoughts, content, whatever it is (they don’t even have to sell — the ones I am running in this year’s Email Players issue do not sell anything except for a small plug at the end of each episode)
4. They can be used as premiums/bonuses/gifts
5. People often keep them, show them off, don’t toss them out
6. It’s easily one of the oldest direct marketing formats ever invented (even Gene Schwartz mentions them in his Breakthrough Advertising book, implying they don’t really go out of style as a format)
7. They set you apart from your boring competition who can’t be bothered
8. People enjoy reading them if the art is good — something proven over and over again in the comicbook industry
9. You can turn them into “motion” comicbooks (like I used to watch when I was kid, where they’d take Marvel comics, and film the panels, add voiceovers, etc) and put on YouTube, social media, in your mobile app – which I even still have yet to do, but it’s on the agenda
There are many more reasons.
I’ve been doing them since 2019, and still finding new uses for them.
For example:
I have ownership in a software company (that sells Learnistic, BerserkerMail, SocialLair), a company that teaches how to trade Options (Low Stress Trading), and most recently even a local newspaper (the Oregon Eagle). And those are all potentially ripe for comicbook-style ads, characters, storylines, to reach out into the market like tentacles and grab on to whole new sections of the market.
Technically, we already have a comicbook for the software company.
(Email Players Comicbook #2 I gifted to Email Players subscribers back in January.)
But I’ve already talked to Troy Broussard (majority owner of Low Stress Trading) about him creating a comicbook for that, as he’s been wanting to do something like this for a long time. Plus, we can hire his kids to help produce it in house. I also have a hankering to approach the Oregon Eagle majority owner (Richard Emmons — hi Richard!) about it as well, as the possibilities for using this with mass media are endless, especially as way of creating our own propaganda.
It’s all in the idea stage in my head.
But that gives you a very small taste of how this can work.
All right, on to other things.
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Ben Settle
