marvel comics turnaround - Turnaround Management Association

Marvel Comics Turnaround Team 2
outstanding risk to the long-term viability of the company, we recommend the following courses of
action to improve Marvel’s position:
First, Marvel should focus on a few of the best comic titles and grow them. Marvel’s Comic
Book brain trust (not necessarily the business people) should strive to build demand around a few
selected titles over the next couple of years to increase the likelihood that there will be a market
with pent up demand for a movie version of this comic book. Care should be taken to:
1. Not oversaturate the market, or over-gimmick the offerings lest Marvel alienate their core
reader base again.
2. Eliminate overprints to re-vitalize the collector market.
3. Refrain from distributing these growth titles in retail bookstores to increase their
“exclusive” image. Instead, use the retail bookstore channels to distribute already
established mainstream “character brands” only.
4. Segment the market into children readers and adult readers and cater unique titles to each
segment.
5. Use television shows/cartoons as demand generators once a strong niche market has been
established around a particular character brand. Revenues are small from this but their
primary value is the added exposure and viewer impressions that create interest and buzz.
Second, Marvel should try to maximize its current licensing revenues to squeeze as much cash
out of their current and pipeline deals as possible so that they have enough cash reserves on hand
to weather any future hit droughts. Although Marvel has greatly improved their licensing terms,
they are still suboptimal. Marvel needs to obtain equity participation rights (percent of gross
revenues including home video, DVD, cable, television syndication and video games after
deducting direct costs) because under this situation, a film can perform materially lower in terms
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