From re-thinking to re-marketing

Many bands, series, books, etc. are done telling. They close a final chapter and say, “that’s it!”. Strangely many finished stories come back for a second, or even more, round. There are different reasons for a comeback. Let’s compare the following four items according to their marketing principles:

– Movie: X-Men (Comics movie)
– Book: The Dark Tower (Stephen King)
– Serie: Breaking Bad (Netflix)
– Band: Sepultura (Death Metal)

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Reasons for sequels

I feel the main reason for arranging a story to tell more, is the success of the original. For all four examples you can say that it’s standing ground.

The X-Men movie has become the X-Men movies with ease. Even now, after an immense number of movies, the public is keeping interested.

Stephen King was not able to stop writing about The Dark Tower, already a seven-thick-book-series long. He managed to fill (or produce) some gaps between chapters and books. Not by writing more into the future, but by writing more content into the same timeline.

The Breaking Bad story is told, the main character died. In this case they chose to highlight other interesting characters and create a side story on how they became tangled with the Breaking Bad story (Better Call Saul).

For the band Sepultura, some troubles between the Cavalera Brothers urged the band to rethink their concept without head singer Max Cavalera. They found a reasonable replacer, and Max chose to start a new band called Soulfly.

All four examples’ main drive is success, money and famousness, but also perhaps just being happy with the job.

Re-thinking or re-inventing

The phrase ‘follow-up’ tells perhaps not the entire concept. Many tricks are used to prolong concepts.

In case of the X-Men movies, we speak of follow-ups. But still, the story was re-thought and even re-invented. New characters, new plots, even new powers came to the aid of ‘how shall we keep people interested’.

The Sepultura band has an entirely different outcome. After replacing the head singer, the drummer Igor Cavalera broke with the Sepultura Band too. The rights on the songs belong to the band, but it is the two brothers who were the main drive behind the band.
The re-thinking and re-inventing is the new two-headed band ‘The Cavalera Conspiracy’, containing only the two brothers.

The Better Call Saul series are not entirely re-thinking an existing story. The character already existed, with all its flaws and background. Saul was just not highlighted much.
The only problem might be to level the quality of the Breaking Bad series. They cope quit good, bringing another atmosphere without forgetting the main story.

Stephen King loves to write. The Dark Tower is his “Opus Magma”. He commented in one of the expanding books how he just can’t leave the Dark Tower World and its characters in peace.

Anyhow, every concept above needed re-thinking and/or re-inventing.

The less non-original

The original is simply the best, I can’t think of any case in which his is not true. A hype is started and perhaps stretched in time for commercial purpose, but trying to restart the hype does not work.

It might be a job for psychologists, it seems impossible to create sequels that are better than the original. My guess is simply that the ‘new’ is gone, the creation of a completely non-existence is vanished.

Please do give me some examples in the comments below, on which show, book, movie or others managed to create a better second. This one will be interesting for analyzing. When the entertainment business finds an angle on how to not end a story, money is made.

Re-marketing of the given examples

Entertainment is business, and business means marketing is near. Remarketing is a concept mostly used in digital marketing. When you have visited a certain website, you might get banners with publicity about that website. In general, remarketing means the capture of a possible but at the moment lost customer.

The term remarketing used in this blog stands for the marketing of an existing concept into a follow-up. Marketing was used on the existing concept, remarketing is used on the follow up.

For Breaking Bad, a Netflix series, most marketing I noticed was the publicity for Better Call Saul on my Netflix account itself. Netflix highlights possible interesting series for you. Mostly by giving a note of a new arrival, and for sure repeating that note often. Teasers are placed and notifications like ‘trending’ are used. The remarketing system was probably aiming for people who watched Breaking Bad or similar shows.

The X-Men industry is large, they also serve several sides shows and movies and were originally comic books. Perhaps there is no remarketing used in any sequel, but simply more marketing about the X-Men concept in general. In other words, the original marketing can perfectly be repeated with mild adaptions.

The Dark Tower has been communicated in public but not many people will have seen commercials. Books are commonly marketed on forums, exhibitions, reviews and displays. The biggest publicity is mouth-to-mouth.
In the Dark Tower case, these days the original seven-book series is still the one being promoted. The other side stories have been written to please the biggest fans, to let them stay a longer in this fantastic fantasy story.

‘Sepultura the original band is dead’ is a normal view for old time fans. A funny fact is, that most people are finding the Cavalera Conspiracy not on the level as the ‘old Sepultura shit’.
The marketing and remarketing are both bands being booked at festivals at the same time, doing the same world tours. By cooperating and bringing the Sepultura band on the same day as the Cavalera conspiracy, they fill the gap of both bands not being able to fully amuse the fans.

Marketing struggles

There always will be struggles for fans who are not happy with new standards. Marketeers might even search for new fans instead of coping with the old (e.g. Disney Star Wars saga). Anyway, new hypes come from nowhere, and not every hype can be explained. Sequels are felt as milking the cow, certainly for the entertainment business.