If Hulk Expands his Brand, Shouldn't You?

Expanding your brand is important. You can't rely on a single idea to carry you through. Coca-Cola needs Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Caffeine Free, and (of course) Caffeine Free Diet Coke in order to cover all their bases.

Thats why the Hulk expands his brand. Why settle for regular green Hulk when you can also get Red Hulk, Grey Hulk, Smart Hulk, Rampaging Hulk, Future Hulk, etc? And then you have She-Hulk, Red She Hulk, Savage She-Hulk, A-Bomb, ad nauseum.

The Hulk knows that once you identified something that consumers like, its important to build off of that preference. Tweak your brand a little here, a little there and you can ram different variations down the consumers' throats for all eternity.

I mean, you can never have too much of a good thing. Right?

Right?

Variant Cover to "Prelude to Deadpool Corps #1" by Ed McGuinness

... I think I smell "Ecocomics X-Treme" on the horizon...

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Batman and Branding

I think Grant Morrison has been reading up on his ecocomics. I can't prove it, but I do have this scintilla of evidence:

Batman and Robin #5 by Grant Morrison and Philip Tan (2009)

We've seen plenty of doppelgangers trying to steal the mantle of the Bat before. But this time, it looks like the Red Hood and Scarlet are ready to get serious by using some economics! Here, Hood is seen reading an book by an economics Nobel laureate about branding and marketing. "That's all Batman is now--a brand, a logo, an idea gone past its sell-by-date. We're the competition," he says.

If this notion of superheroes as brands sounds familiar, it might be because we've actually written about it before--particularly in our post on superhero franchising, but also in our posts on Spider-Man's failed advertising attempts, superhero decadence, superhero supermodels, superheroes using twitter, and minimizing superhero externalities.

It's nice to see some of these characters (even if they are villainous) discovering the importance of economics. However, I wonder if the Red Hood's plan will work here. I mean the Batman franchise is one of the longest running in the world in the superhero industry. It is generally known and trusted. It would take some major discrediting for a new brand to dominate the market. Add to that the fact that the Bat-franchise is relatively resistant to shocks due to changes in leadership, which is precisely what Hood is trying to exploit.

Tough market, guys. But I like your hustle. I mean, really, what can go wrong?

Oh yeah, that.

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