Marvel's Avengers Endgame: Value
By Isaiah O’Connor
In April of 2019, Marvel Studios released its highly anticipated movie “Avengers: EndGame.” It hit the box office like a nuclear bomb. It broke or shattered over 144 records in 6 days. At the time I am writing this it has a box office gross of over 2.2Billion dollars, it is now the second highest grossing film of all time (Unadjusted for inflation) and could possibly become the number one grossing film of all time.
Now there are many, many reasons for this amazing achievement, and you can find a lot of articles that go into the details of opening days, amount of theaters available, etc. However, I am going to focus on something I have not seen one of these writers talk about. That is the value that Marvel has created as a brand.
Endgame was not created in a vacuum. It is the culmination of 21 previous movies and 11 years of work. While an amazing movie if it was released without the previous buildup It may have done okay, or even bombed at the box office. I saw a video on YouTube about a guy who saw Endgame but never saw a single other Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. While he thought it was okay, he really failed to see what the hype was about. He had no value for the franchise as a whole. He only went because someone else asked him to go.
Marvel conquered the box office by creating value. People value the product they have produced, they value the characters and they value the story. The value they built went back to the first MCU movie, “Iron Man.” There had been many superhero movies before, this was nothing new, however in the end credit scene they did something different. Samuel L. Jackson appears as Nick Fury and drops the line that I will never forget my response to. He said
“I am here to talk to you about the Avenger initiative”
I sat there in my seat stunned. I said out loud something to the extent of “No way, they are not... Really... Are they really?... no way…. Are they doing that? Are we getting an Avengers movie?
That right there, that one line, that one moment created the value they needed to continue. It was a promise of something more than just a single well-done superhero movie. It was a promise of things to come. Over the next 22 movies and 11 years, they build on and delivered on that promise. They created the single most successful cinematic universe of all time.
The reason I valued it, and I believe others as well, was that I knew that each movie was only part of a bigger overall story. While always giving a full story in each movie there was always a feeling of just finishing a chapter in a bigger story. Not just that, but because you got to spend much longer than a single movie with multiple characters, using mostly the same cast, you got a chance to care about them and really want to know how things work out. This value for the characters and for the story is what kept people coming back movie after movie.
How does this apply to your business? It is a very simple concept. People will pay for what they value. So no matter what your business, even if not even a new concept, look for ways to create value. Do something different, combine things that exist but have never been combined before, or even add some sort of personalized touch to your services. As you increase your value you will increase your sales and even be able to increase your pricing.
Value is one of the key elements of business success, and as they say in the book “The Go-Giver” Give more in value than you take in money. If you can do this, then you will be successful.
Another thing that Marvel does well, is to tell a story and this is another business secret that I will be addressing next time.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Entrepreneur,
Isaiah O’Connor CBDO Atheoz.com
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