Blog Assignment 2

The customer experience I have chosen for this blog entry spans a few decades and starts even before I was born, but bear with me. Now, when you are a comic book fan you can be a huge fan of DC Comics (Batman, Superman) or a big Marvel Comics fan (Spider-Man, Iron Man). Personally, I prefer to read DC Comics but I have to say Marvel provided a much better and more personal experience. It’s a shame that most of their comics during the 80s and 90s were written by badly paid interns and other illiterate scum instead of actual writers, though.  

Still, I have to give credit where credit is due: Marvel from the 60s and all the way to the mid-90s was really good at creating an experience for its fans, and it’s all thanks to one man. This man here:

Stan “The Man” Lee

Stan Lee is the co-creator of Spider-Man, Hulk, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Iron Man and he worked as Editor in Chief of Marvel Comics for many years; but even if he had never written anything he would still be remembered as the best huckster who ever lived.

Stan Lee became Marvel’s living mascot, motivational speaker and spokesman; he excelled at these functions by exploiting some of the Strategic Experiential Modules in ways that are downright genius.

The SEM that I can identify as the pillar of Stan Lee’s contribution to the Marvel brand is Feel. Stan Lee had his own column which appeared in every comic published by Marvel where Stan talked about what projects Marvel was doing at the time, but he didn’t just talk like a salesperson spewing about new products; Stan talked like a man with a mission, like he was part of something greater than just a publishing company and everybody who read the comics was invited.

One of the greatest things Stan Lee ever did for Marvel fans was to make them feel as something more than customers or even fans. In fact, when Stan Lee speaks to Marvel fans he doesn’t even call them that, what he calls them is “True Believers.” He made fans believe they were part of something greater and not just consumers of a product. They were not just Marvel fans; they were card carrying members of The Merry Marvel Marching Society. They actually had honest to God cards saying that. For one dollar you could join the society a get a card, official MMMS documents, a record with Stan Lee’s voice welcoming you to the society, pins, buttons and other stuff.

The most fascinating aspect of this character Stan Lee plays in public is that I can’t recall one single instant where he has broken out of character. Not one! Stan Lee is always smiling, always has a positive attitude and he would always finish his speeches with either one of his two catch phrases “Nuff said!” and “Excelsior!” He still does this today with his twitter account. Here is a good example of Stan Lee being Stan Lee, an interview with Conan O’Brian from 1995.

Another SEM Stan Lee liked to use was Think. Back in the 60s Stan was writing several comics every month and he had a lot of problems keeping his stories straight, which lead to some inconsistencies and plot holes once in a while. For this Stan Lee created the famous Marvel No-Prize. In case a fan… sorry, excuse me. I meant in case a True Believer found a plot hole in one of his comics, he was encouraged not to complain, whine and moan about it but to come up with his own explanation of why that happened. So, for instance, if Spider-Man suddenly forgot he could use his web to make a parachute for himself, a True Believe had to come up with a rational or semi-rational explanation of why Spider-Man suffered from temporal amnesia (maybe Doctor Octopus hit him really hard in the head a few pages back?) The True Believer with the most creative explanation would win a No-Prize, which as the name implies is no prize at all. Well, not unless you count the Stan Lee’s approval of your ability to come up with silly solutions for his bad writing.

The last SEM that relates to Stan Lee’s work is (no pun intended) Relate. One of the things Stan Lee had noticed in the 60s was that not only little kids were reading comics back then, but also high school and college kids and yet there were no heroes they could relate to. Superheroes back then were millionaire playboys, super smart scientists or god-like aliens and suddenly Stan Lee creates this superhero who is just this geeky high school kid called Spider-Man. It sold like hot cakes because it was the superhero they would be if they got bitten by radioactive spiders.

It’s hard to argue with the success Stan had, especially with the kind of loyalty he managed to cultivate in his legion of true believers. There was even a point when they were buying every magazine published by Marvel whether they liked it or not. It didn’t matter if it was any good or not, as long as Marvel published it they would buy it. This led to the creation of the term Marvel Zombie, although I guess they prefer to stick with True Believers.

Well, I guess there is only one way to finish this blog assignment, and this is how: