article about m&m characters on comic book cover

Using Comic Book Style Art in Business Advertising

April 19, 2017
Business, Comic Book Style Illustration

When you think of comics, two comic companies come immediately to mind. The first is Marvel Comics. Since their bankruptcy in the mid 1990s, Marvel emerged by putting a concerted effort into the quality of their materials and revamping their superhero characters. Combining that with today’s special effects technology, they partnered with Disney, Sony and Warner Bros Pictures among others to create some of the block-buster movies we see today. Some of Marvel’s superhero characters are Ironman, Thor, X-Men, Spider Man, The Hulk, and The Avengers.

The second comic giant that comes to mind is DC Comics. They’ve also partnered with Disney, Sony and Warner Bros Pictures to create their block-buster movies from superhero characters like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash and many more coming in the near future.

So, you might be thinking ‘What does superhero movies have to do with business advertising?’ This is a huge trend and that is only going to get bigger over the next several years. Keep reading to find out how you can or maybe should incorporate the growing superhero trend into your business advertising.

Comic Art and Comic Book Conventions

Comic book conventions have grown in popularity over the last 20 years as well. One of the largest is the Comic Con International (also known as SDCC; San Diego Comic Con) which sells out within a few hours, enjoys over 125,000 attendees per day and continues over a 4-day period. Other comic conventions include the New York Comic Con, the Wondercon in Anaheim, California, the Amazing Comic Conventions in Las Vegas, Arizona, Houston, and Hawaii, and the Wizard World Conventions in Las Vegas and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to name just a few.

Hollywood has gotten very involved in the comic conventions because they discovered that the same audience that enjoys comics and comic art also enjoys other entertainment genres like Sci-Fi, Pop Culture, and Fantasy. With their involvement in comic conventions, they reach an enormous number of cross-genre fans all from one location; comic book conventions.

Comic Book Market

According to Marvel and DC Comics in 2012, the total yearly sales in the direct comic book market is $418 million. Add another $162.8 million more for additional regional revenue from the Comic Con International alone. The overall North American Market size, including both print and digital, was estimated to be $870 million in 2013!

Growing Trend

It is evident that comic books, superhero concepts, and comic art continue to grow immensely in popularity. Marvel just announced that they are creating another 21 super hero movies in the coming years so the popularity of comic heroes will also continue to grow to new heights over the coming years as well.

Comics in Business Advertising

So why not take advantage of this huge growing trend by using comic art in your business advertising? Comic books share a basic concept; Heroes and heroines fight villains and monsters. Good versus evil. What a great marketing concept! Your business, products, or services are superior and your employees or contractors are superheroes working for your clients’ or customers’ good.

Marvel Comic Book Art

Marvel offers their enormous library of character assets for licensing but you would have to pay an upfront cost of $150,000 to be able to use their assets on your products or in your business advertising.

Marvel also offers custom comic art illustration integration services like the following businesses they partnered with:

marvel comic book illustration featuring m&m characters — Custom Comic Illustrated Comic Book Edition between Marvel Comics and M&Ms featuring the M&M Characters and Ironman. This book was used in conjunction with the release of Iron Man 3 Blu-Ray and DVD as an exclusive offer at Walmart retail stores.

marvel comic book illustration featuring kiehls stores — Custom Comic Illustrated Comic Book Edition between Marvel Comics and Kiehls Stores featuring Captain America. These were given as a gift-with-purchase at Kiehl’s stores and inserted into the June 2013 issue of the Wall Street Journal. Plus they made a digital version of the comic book available on the Kiehl’s website.

marvel comic book illustration featuring lexus — Custom Comic Illustrated Comic Book Edition between Marvel Comics and Lexus featuring Lexus Vehicles and The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Printed copies of this book were handed out at the Marvel booth during SDCC (San Diego Comic Con)

marvel comic book illustration featuring pirate booty — Custom Comic Illustrated Comic Book Edition between Marvel Comics and Pirate Booty featuring the Pirate’s Booty characters Pirate and Crunchy and The Avengers. This book was offered as a digital comic.

These comic books were printed at a base rate of 2.5 Million copies which would cost between $70,000 to $112,000…again not an option for most small and medium-sized business advertising budgets.

Affordable Custom Comic Art

Obviously you cannot use Marvel’s intellectual properties like Ironman, The Avengers, Captain America, or Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D without licensing it and paying enormous amounts of money.

Although the well-known and established comic art options are just not affordable to small and medium-sized businesses, there is another option; using custom “Marvel-style” comic art and iconic “comic-type” superheroes and characters in your advertising.

Small and medium-size business can use the same superhero concept and expand their reach via promotional materials and product giveaways using custom comic art solutions.

Pricing for the custom comic art illustration depends on a few details. One option that makes the price more affordable is to purchase the “Right to Use” as opposed to purchasing “All Rights” to the copyright of the characters or illustrated comic art.

Marvel comic illustration featuring florida department of citrus — Custom Comic Illustrated Comic Book Edition between Marvel Comics and Florida Department of Citrus featuring The Avengers and FDOC’s Captain Citrus. This book was created as an informative teacher’s guide for distribution in schools.

Generally with custom illustration, the more detail you want in the illustration, the more time it takes to illustrate that detail. So the second factor that affects pricing is the amount of detail you want in the final illustration.

Comic Art in Business Advertising

As you can see from the above comics, the superhero concept can be uniquely applied across many industries, organizations, manufacturers, products and services.

Recently this freelance comic book style illustrator (Malane Newman) was hired to create (with a right-to-use), 4 postcard illustrations for a Construction Company based in San Francisco. The copyright remains with the illustrator, but this client has usage rights to use the artwork on their website and for postcard business advertising for an unlimited time.

These custom comic art illustrations were created to resemble Action Comic covers for Allied Construction Services. The postcards will be sent to their potential clients to advertise some of their services, each postcard is sent monthly to the same list of potential clients over a 4-month campaign.

comic book cover illustration advertising building services — Custom Comic Book Style art use as business postcard advertising introducing Allied Construction Service’s construction design services.

comic book cover illustration advertising water intrusion services — Custom Comic art illustration use as business postcard advertising introducing Allied Construction Service’s waterproofing service.

comic book cover illustration advertising fluid applied roofing services — Custom Comic art illustration use as business postcard advertising introducing Allied Construction Service’s fluid applied roofing service.

comic book cover illustration advertising services on time and on budget — Custom Comic art illustration use as business postcard advertising introducing Allied Construction Service’s construction service.

These postcards will stand out from the barrage of junk mail advertising we each receive every day. They will surely make the potential customer stop and look at these postcards. When receiving a different one each month, they are getting the potential customer familiar with the name Allied Construction. That is the essence of marketing; getting potential customers familiar with your name so that when they need your services, they will gravitate toward the name that is most familiar to them.

These marketing pieces also help to communicate that this business is successful, is “different from the competition”, and provides quality services because they use unique quality visual communications. What makes you different from the competition? This is a marketing strategy that all companies should strive to communicate in their advertising. What better way than with unique visual communications by using comic art in your business advertising?

Call for Estimate
Call (951) 929-3300 or contact freelance illustrator Malane Newman if you’re interested in getting an estimate for your custom illustrated business advertising. You will be surprised at how affordable comic art illustration can be in your business advertising.

Note:
The above same four contracted illustrations are available for use by other construction companies IF they are NOT located within the San Francisco area. The header’s and text can be modified to advertise and brand your construction company and services should you wish to receive an even greater discount in pricing. The illustrations can be printed as sales sheets, flyers, or a variety of postcard sizes (4×6 up to 9×13).

Malane Newman

Malane Newman is a professional illustrator and cartoonist for over 25 years. She is a master with color and eye candy. She has illustrated a variety of consumer products such as games, childrens books, board games, food and product packaging, magazines, greeting cards, and other consumer products. She provides new character design for clients and offers the copyrights at affordable rates. She can match most cartooning styles and works with creative directors on licensed character art (Barbie, Popeye, The Swan Princess).