A immersive online event that Warner Bros. tailors for consumers revealed the newest trailer for “The Batman” and brought news that a third “Wonder Women” live-action movies is in the works.
Those are are among tidbits surfacing at the DC FanDome online event Saturday. The “DC” refers to Warner corporate sibling DC Comics.
Here’s a marketer’s review of DC FanDome that aggregates video games, DVDs, licensed merchandise, comic books, VOD streams, movie tickets and TV shows. Audience was certainly large but not announced; the first one a year ago reportedly attracted 22 million in a 24-hour period. The obvious objective is to build consumer loyalty, pulling audiences into characters and various entertainment properties. Merchandise is also on sale such as $25 movie/TV themed tee-shirts.
One new wrinkle is giving a free digital item (non-fungible digital token, or NFT) with signup (I’m still waiting for mine to get emailed to me!). Digital is cheap to make and distribute. So, the NFT can be seen as an inexpensive incentive to lure aficionados who signed up to actually come to the 3 hour; 43-minute online extravaganza Oct 16, 2021.
DC FanDome presented talent (actors, producers, directors and various other content creators) on screen in scripted presentations with plenty of eye-candy for viewers. Viewers see flashy colored backgrounds, entertainment images, video clips and film trailers. The talent spoke with the non-stop enthusiasm that’s a stable of such comic-book conventions (comic-cons).
For example, the star of Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Black Adam” comic book adaptation, Dwayne Johnson, appears on screen telling the DC FanDome audience: “Now we’ve just started the post production process, which is so exciting … the film has without question, some of the biggest action sequences that I have ever been part of.” The Rock (Johnson) promises some “‘holy sh**’ scenes” of action adventure in the movie.
An attraction of such comic-con is Hollywood lifts the curtain with some behind-the-scenes explanations and images, letting aficionados get a deeper dive in characters, images and stories than consumers that simply go to movies.
A pre-event DC FanDome press release said that DC FanDome is multimedia with content on “Twitch, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, giving fans more ways to watch the events unfolding in DC FanDome’s Hall of Heroes. Additionally, DC Kids FanDome will launch the same day with a special kid-friendly experience accessed separately at DCKidsFanDome.com.”
To cover some of the cost, DC FanDome landed two consumer-goods sponsors — Unilever (400 soap, food and household product brands) and Ally bank; Ally sponsors an employment drive called the Milestone Initiative to bring blacks as creative talent to comic books.
Elsewhere, Warners is making a big investment in corporate sibling HBO Max, which is its attempt to take-on Netflix. HBO Max presentations were parts of DC FanDome with “Peacemaker” including exclusive video, limited event series “DMZ;” and returning series “Titans” and “Doom Patrol.”
Because participants have to sign in, DC FanDome is a bonanza as an email list for Warners to market movie tickets, its merchandise and TV shows. There’s a government crackdown on consumer privacy, so mailing lists from third party providers are being diminished. Any consumer database owned by a marketer (Warners in this case) is becoming more valuable.
Independent comic-cons sprang up in the 1960s and mushroomed into events encompassing movies, TV shows and video games by the 1980s. Media companies began mounting their own: Walt Disney Co. launched its D23 fan event in 2009; the “23” refers to 1923 when Walt founded the company. More recently, DC FanDome is 2 years old and even Netflix jumps aboard with its Tudum online fan event in September.
With company-specific events launching in recent years, it’s become competitive. And one company events are, by definition, narrow because they can only showcase one outfit’s wares. However, for Warners and Disney (owner of Marvel comics), there’s plenty of attractive intellectual property (IP) to promote.
Some individual IP lines have strong enough following to support their own events, such as Harry Potter (based on books with a long series of films), Hasbro’s Transformers (also a film series) and “My Little Pony” is the source of sizeable events with attendees.
The end credits roll had so many names of workers that it felt like a movie, and indicates mounting the 3-and-a-half-hour event is ambitious. I would have liked more labeling on screen-names of speakers throughout their presentation, not just at the start. A closed caption option (CC button at lower left) was a nice touch.
DC FanDome is a global streaming producing in English language, but subtitled in 12 languages. Subtitling is an attraction for anyone who wants to learn English.
Usually, the reveals and surprises are nuggets for fanboys, the die-hard followers who revel in comic book minutiae, and not of keen interest to the wider public. However, a more weighty change was dropped by DC Comics that the familiar Superman motto “truth, justice and the American way” was being replaced by “Truth, Justice and a Better Tomorrow.” The company said the change was ““to better reflect the storylines.”
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