Has Marvel ever done audience testing?

Their audience is probably to small to justify it. If they pull in random people off the street, they'll get random people who don't want to read comic books anyway.

The kind of 'testing' that both Marvel and DC have done is include a survey form in their comic books which asked questions like 'how many comics do you buy a month?', 'where did you buy this comic?', 'what kind of comics would you like to see more of?' and so forth . Such survey forms appeared in comics during the early '70's. I don't know if this sort of thing has been tried more recently.

If this was true, wouldn't the television industry drop focus groups? (Or have they?) Marketers aren't that stupid, are they? They go to college and stuff, right?

*shrug* There are plenty of really stupid ideas in circulation which are difficult to dislodge because they somehow achieved orthodoxy.

And, in a way, it's taking a pretty good idea (getting feedback on your work to see if you're achieving your goal) and pushing it much further than should be.

The issue boils down to: a) who are you getting your feedback from? Are they a credible source of feedback?

and

b) how critically do you interpret that data?

Media focus group runners (including those in advertising, my industry experience) tend to minimize or ignore those two points. Even if they large part to play because they 'can't be bothered with the details' and never get to any meaningful analysis.

Hal.

I don't wear no Stetson But I'm willing to bet, son That I'm as big a Texan as you are - Robert Earl Keen, 'Amarillo Highway' . Remove the underscore in the address to reply by email. . (This post is intended for a Usenet newsgroup only. Its appearance in any other forum that does not clearly identify it as originally posted to Usenet is therefore a misrepresentation, is done against my wishes, and may indicate other unauthorized distortions of content and/or context. Correctly attributed and/or unedited copies of this post in other forums do not necessarily indicate my willing participation in them.)

So do you think there is no merit in doing my initial suggestion of getting various titles from different eras and seeing which ones people who aren't currently reading comics might enjoy most? This is for all types of demographics of course.

They have not, and the reason they do still use them is because they do, in fact, work a good portion of the time. However, they fail a good portion of the time, as well.

-=hey have not, and the reason they do still use them is because they do, in fact, work a good portion of the time. However, they fail a good portion of the time, as well.

-=[ The BlakGard ]=- 'Somewhere there's danger; somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea is getting cold!'

I don't like the idea of testing stories themselves, but some form of market research might not hurt, if only because I get the impression that decisions at Marvel and other publishers are made because some guy(s) in an authority position is using hunches that often don't work out. This perhaps leads to situations like Marvel repeatedly hurling stuff like The Call of Duty at the marketplace even though there's seemingly no demand for it, or canning the Essential Tomb of Dracula because they figure no one will miss some silly reprint of stuff from the 70's (and then the preorder figures come in. Oops).

I can't imagine how it would help if these people wouldn't be interested in reading a comic book to begin with. In a focus group setting they might be forced to try it, but in real life if they're not even interested in picking one up then there's little point.

But it's comparing different types of storytelling - at least understanding which styles are most attractive to non-fans will allow storytelling techniques to know what might work best. The spoken goal is to attract new readers but it seems no one cares to figure out what it is new readers want from superhero

Marvel did this somehwat recently, and it's posted on their website. But frankly, I'm not believing the numbers they're listing.

-=arvel did this somehwat recently, and it's posted on their website. But frankly, I'm not believing the numbers they're listing.

-=[ The BlakGard ]=- 'Somewhere there's danger; somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea is getting cold!'