For a clear example of how the unexpected can pop into your business, please check out this example of business in action from Astrobase Go! The Astrobase Go! team produce the popular television show, The Venture Brothers, on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. They also do other video ventures. The Venture Brothers is basically a Johnny Quest/Hardy Boys Grown Up and Grown Wrong series where the heroes are constantly failing. That has led to great success after a lot of work from the show’s creator, Jackson Publick (a pseudonym of Christopher McCulloch). Doc Hammer is constantly left out, so major props to him for the hard work he puts into the show as well. At this point, major love to everybody else who works on the show!!!
Back to the marketing angle that you should take away to make yourself profitable…
I am not sure where they came up with this idea but it was pretty brilliant.
They would offer to sell a T-shirt a week to coincide with the release of each new episode of this season’s Venture Brothers. If you preordered all the T-shirts for the series and prepaid, you would get a free shirt. I, as a fan of the series, took advantage of the offer. If you wanted to order one shirt at a time, you could and in fact as of this blog date, you still can. You just won’t get the bonus shirt. I figure Astrobase Go! makes a decent mark-up on the T-shirts, the fans get nice shirts, the series gets extra marketing in the form of people walking around with their characters on their chests. There were some genuine, funny subliminal ads in the episodes such as the one where the Monarch decides he wants to buy a “Rusty Venture” souvenir shirt that suspiciously looks like one of the ones we will be receiving (please correct me people if I am wrong). It truly is a win-win situation for everybody. A profitable, marketing dream.
Except for the dreaded supply line problems.
Astrobase Go! has experienced what a lot of people in the comic book industry, book publishing industry or heck any industry have. They are not getting the shirts shipped to them from their manufacturers. To be fair, the gang at Astrobase Go! have stated that it will take 5 weeks till one receives the shirt. One shirt came out of sequence and that prompted an email reply from me. I am guessing I am not alone since there was a post on Jackson’s blog that was pretty funny.
The shirts come in a white envelope scrunched down and that kind of made me wonder if they were sitting in the bottom of a mail bin somewhere waiting to get out.
The fact that I didn’t get any more shirts for another week prompted another email. I am guessing they got a lot more emails from others as well again. The reply posted on his blog was pretty straightforward – a good business move. Customers will enjoy a good joke the first time they don’t get something but the second time around they expect an answer with some sort of resolution. Apparently there are shipping problems, printing problems and they are being worked on.
Astrobase Go! has learned that when juggling a lot of things at once (and I should know since I burn the candle at both ends myself), it is tough to please people. I would suspect if they go for the shirt a week program for their next season that they will try to nail down a more reasonable supplier.
The takeway from this as a business person is to try to get all your supply lines in place. There will always be problems and delays but you want to try and minimize them. Sometimes if you end up paying a little more for a little better service, everybody will be happy. I should also point out though that comic book, animation fans, fanboy geeks in general are a tough, motley lot to please and sometimes you can’t do much about it.
In this case, I think Astrobase Go! is doing a great job. Go Team Venture!
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