NerdBrand Podcast
The NerdBrand Podcast is at the intersection of nerd culture, branding, and advertising. Nerd culture is no longer an isolated subculture; it’s THE culture of the day and makes its way into our daily lives through the entertainment we seek and the technology we rely upon. Listen as we discuss our views on visual design, branding, and advertising for movies, comics and novels, video games, technology, and other nerdy passions.
NerdBrand Podcast
From Sierra Mist to Starry: When Branding Goes Sideways
ABOUT NERDBRAND
NerdBrand is a national branding and advertising agency based in Louisville, KY.
Learn more about NerdBrand.
Hear more of the NerdBrand Podcast.
Welcome to this episode of the NerdBrand Podcast. It is episode number 240-something-something and I have lost track because we are headed toward number 250. And here's the announcement On 250, we're thinking about pivoting the show back to some more relevant nerd stuff, like how the show started, and the reason is is because Nerdbrand began as a podcast, not as an agency, so it was branding in the nerd culture and that was the whole idea way back in 2017. And so back then it was about how did nerd culture things how does movies and television and video games and even wrestling because I had a partner that started the podcast with me at the time how does that relate to how they brand themselves and then market themselves and what does that look like? So, for example, the movie Ragnarok was big at the time and one of the episodes we did was about ragnarok versus bbs, batman versus superman and um. I think we all know how that turned out. I think ragnarok killed it at the box office and batman didn't. Uh, batman's budget was like 500 million to make, probably about 200 million to market, and ragnarok was about a $200 million movie and I think they spent like I don't know $25 million or something really low to market it, which was insane. So the brand reach of Marvel and MCU characters far exceeded DC's at the time and I would say right now that's probably still true, but maybe not. We have a lot of things coming up. I mean, we just had the.
Speaker 1:It makes me hard, it just breaks my heart to say this the new Avengers. Now, I'll be honest with you, I don't know much about the new Avengers. Bucky Barnes is about the only Avenger I can agree with, but the others okay. So you know, the Thunderbolbolts came out and then, shortly after that, spoiled it for everybody that hadn't seen the movie yet, that they were now called the new avengers. Um, kind of a weird marketing play, in my opinion. You would think they would have done that maybe at another event, maybe or something different, but it was literally within a week or so, or less than that, I think, after it came out, maybe even opening night, I think that they did a red carpet and they unveiled what the asterisk meant in the Thunderbolts logo, which was oh yeah, actually they're the new Avengers. So you know, sorry if I didn't give you a spoiler alert here, but honestly it's all over the Internet now and that's the thing, isn't it when we do these things, when we type these talks.
Speaker 1:These trailers are expansive, they're long. Even the teasers are trailers now, and they have. Now they tell you the whole movie. I mean, you just watch the whole movie. If you watch a trailer especially if you're on a streaming network and you're pausing at that moment to try to watch something, you know, when you're trying to do advertising to get people to want to watch your stuff, you want to maybe hold some stuff back. That's not really what happens. I think they show you all the good stuff, so you will watch it and hope the bad stuff isn't as bad as it is. That's not a good strategy, but it kind of seems like that's what they do.
Speaker 1:But in the realm of nerddom, you know, you have Thunderbolts, you have Fantastic Four, you have all these big properties, all this big IP, intellectual property that these studios have, and you have to understand this is money. This is like you going to buy a Coke or you selling your services or you're selling your product. That's what they're doing. This is their product, this is their service, right, right? So, up front, how do we feel about it? Think about that for a minute. Do you feel good about going to the theater, paying that money to go there. I mean, brand recognition is up and everybody knows who Marvel is, they know who the Fantastic Four is. Everybody's kind of aware of what's up, what's going on. Go to the theater to see it. And then there is the problem it's probably not as high or as enthusiastic about those things and doing that as one would assume. So you know, there is a bit of an issue or some things are not in alignment with the sales pitch of what's going on with things and I think that's something that the studios are going to have to work on is you know their brand awareness and recognition of their product when they start to put it out there.
Speaker 1:Dc right now has been a little slower with that. I think they've done a lot of online stuff with you know trailers and they put trailers in theaters. I don't know maybe I'm wrong, I don't watch a lot of broadcast television if they're putting any trailers for Superman out there, but hopefully they will. The other thing is is trademarking man. This is something that has really lit up over the last year that I've seen with businesses, where everybody wants to trademark their stuff. Well, first you got a copyright and you got a trademark. I think it's how it works. I'm not a lawyer. Either way, it's thousands of dollars and it's very expensive.
Speaker 1:And if you kind of have a property like Superman, I think they're in a bit of a fight right now because, as far as United Kingdom and other foreign nations, they have a trademark on Superman so they really can't distribute the movie. They can shoot a movie, they can do all those things, but when it comes to distribution, that is, put it in a theater, put it on a network, that's going to be a problem. So there's a bit of a kerfuffle there that I think James Gunn's going to have to kind of be aware of, and the studios are probably just going to have to settle out of court with whatever the lawsuit shall be. But at the end of the day, that is a big problem because you think about how these studios they make money in the States by distributing a product to the theaters, just like you know you would distribute a product to the store shelf. They have only so many outlets that they have to get and that's the big ticket buck, right there, right, you know they're going to collect most of the revenue that way. However, if they go out and they say, well, we can't go and put the movie in the United Kingdom, we can't put it in China, we can't put it Uh-oh Well, put it Uh-oh Well. There's about a half a billion dollars. It's just not going to be on the table now because they can't put it there. So that's a big revenue problem.
Speaker 1:So making movies is a business. It's not an art, it's a bit of an art, but it is also a business. There's people that got to get paid. There's grips, there's lighting, there's makeup, there's artists, there's people that build sets. There's, you know, production designers. There's people that do scripts. There's, you know, the writers. There is the directors there's more than one. There are camera operators, directors of photography. There's just hundreds of people, hundreds of people involved. I remember a friend of mine shot a film out in eastern Kentucky and there was at least 50 people involved in it, and so, um, and you know, it can all go off the rails with one person, a you know an actor or actress not showing up for the shoot that day, right, so it is a very easy thing to sort of throw off the rails.
Speaker 1:So you have this massive undertaking.
Speaker 1:That's a business.
Speaker 1:And so how do you market that? How do you brand that? Well, you obviously want to do it in a way that is eye catching, gets people's attention and that gets people to want to go to the theater and buy a ticket, because that's where you're going to make your money. Because we really all don't know how this streaming stuff works. We just know that there's all these streaming services, you got Amazon, you got Netflix, you've got Hulu, which is owned by Disney, disney Plus, you got HBO, max, I guess still you know. And at the end of the day, it's like, okay, well, I'm going to go to the here to watch this one and go to here to watch that one. And it's really because the distribution rights and the creation rights are not the same.
Speaker 1:And so there was a story where Kevin Smith actually had a movie where he made Mallrats and he wanted to show it in his theater up in New Jersey and he could not do that, even though it was his film. It was literally. He had the original footage. So he was going to show the original footage, a la Director's Cut, and he could not do it. He got a call from one of the big studios and said, no, we have the distribution rights and you don't have an agreement with us to show it. So he could not show it and so that's the deal there.
Speaker 1:You know there's everybody's got a piece of the pie that they get with regards to this product. So when you start to brand something on the back end, it's important to kind of understand who's at the table on the back end and that's sometimes, unfortunately, going to drive a design by committee which is horrible and often we see, as end users have seen in the theater, it drives a terrible result where the movie is just absolutely atrocious. Talking to you, captain America 4. So a lot of people, they have a lot of different opinions and how they want it to go and how it will benefit them, because they're concerned about well, let's be honest the bottom line. So branding is something that isn't oh, makes you feel good, looks good and makes you have a nice logo, a nice website or all of the things that our agency does. It is a pretty as easy, smart as hard mentality. We have to be thinking about every single thing that we're doing in step in order to ensure to avoid a potential PR disaster, to avoid any sort of hijacking of the marketing or the brand when it's out in the public, which can happen. We've seen that. We've all seen these controversies where the brand comes out with something when it's out in the public, which can happen. We've seen that. We've all seen these controversies where the brand comes out with something and it's like uh-oh.
Speaker 1:One of the favorites that I have is the story of Starry. Starry is a drink. I think it's like a lemon-lime drink. I don't drink it, but it used to be called Sierra Mist and Sierra Mist is called Sierra Mist and Sierra Mist is well, she makes spicy videos on OnlyFans.
Speaker 1:And so the problem started with Pepsi being contacted and told that well, sierra Mist has the rights to her name, she trademarked it, so you can't use it, pepsi. Pepsi went whoa. Well, we're going to sue. It's a Coke, it's our product. I think it was either Pepsi or Coke, but maybe Coke. For those listening, feel free to correct me on Facebook. But anyways, they kind of came back and said no, you're going to have to do something about it. So Starry was born.
Speaker 1:You never want to rebrand yourself because of something like that happening. It is a terrible, terrible thing. So consulting for the brand is paramount to do up front so that we understand the landscape that we're about to embark on, because, by the time we do the logo and everything, we understand that the name is the name and we do not want to deviate from that, because it has a meaning, it has a purpose and Sierra Mist's purpose was obvious and it was no longer aligned with Pepsi products. So, anyways, as you're out there thinking about your brand, thinking about what you want to do with your marketing, keep that story close to heart. Think about Marvel and DC and what you see in the movie theaters and in pop culture, because, coming up on the Nerd Brand Podcast, we're going to talk more about Thunderbolts and our thoughts about that.
Speaker 1:We're going to bring Mitch and Michaela back on and, you know, after that we'll probably have some other discussions in relation to, you know, future entertainment, movies and venues and things coming out that are going to happen this summer, and I think it'll be worth talking about because there are some lessons that we all can learn from that on what not to do and apply that to our own model. So, if you enjoy this episode of the NerdBrand podcast, go to nerdbrandagencycom slash podcast, listen to the latest episodes, scroll down that page, fill out the form, join our newsletter and we'll have some fun stuff to send you. Maybe we'll send you some swag you never know. We're trying to build a following here and we will see you next time and keep your NerdBrand strong.
