Fancy flying with Superman? Running alongside the Flash? Or is plotting world domination with Pinky and the Brain more your speed?
Marketers will get just that chance in a new DC Comics insert program managed by RMI Direct Marketing Inc., Danbury, CT.
The program, which started rolling out last month, will reach DC’s 50,000 monthly subscribers who responded to sub offers in comic books. Inserts will be slipped inside the comics’ polybag wrappers.
The profile of a subscriber to DC’s superhero and cartoon titles isn’t as adolescent as one who hasn’t hit his or her local comic shop recently might imagine. Sixty percent of subscribers are between ages 35 and 54; average income is $40,000; 36% are homeowners; and 53% are credit card users.
“This is a unique audience because they’re spending a lot of money on something that’s a non-necessity,” says Laura Smith, an RMI vice president and management division director.
The DC audience, she adds, includes teenagers who have just started reading comics and older fans who have collected – and often subscribed to – the comics for many years. Smith says the publisher will be able to segment by kids, teens and adults.
Smith notes that New York-based DC – a division of Time Warner Entertainment Co.’s Warner Bros. – has never before made an insert program available. Initial participation will be limited to five companies. The program is suggested for collectible, promotional, continuity, stationery and music/video club offers, she says, as well as offers targeting teenagers and Internet users.
DC also will include inserts in the polybags promoting its own ancillary merchandise, such as collectible action figures, pins and statues.
The inserts will reach readers of DC’s “main universe” titles such as “Superman,” “Batman” and “Wonder Woman”; Looney Toons books, including “Animaniacs”; and Cartoon Network comics, such as “Dexter’s Laboratory.” Subscribers of titles under the DC Vertigo imprint that targetadults – such as “Books of Magic” and “The Dreaming” – also will receive the inserts.
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