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Beau Smith's Guerilla Marketing 101
As part of his grassroots promotion efforts for his upcoming trade paperback from IDW Publishing, The Complete Wynonna Earp, Smith offered to send a postage paid, signed, Wynonna Earp black & white print at no cost to anyone in the world that emailed him with a request. Scoop readers were among those online to whom the offer was extended. ""I thought I'd get requests for maybe 100 at best," the writer and former IDW marketing chief told Scoop. The final count came in at 1,754. Many of the correspondents wrote that they had already pre-ordered The Complete Wynonna Earp trade paperback. Smith said he not only sent a signed Wynonna Earp print to each reader, but he also added a personal hand written note along with some extra prints with each request, as well as sending a personal email to each request thanking them for writing in. Always interested in a guerilla marketing success, Scoop talked with him about his projects, his background in writing and marketing everything from creator-owned indy titles to working for the big guys. Scoop: As well as your writing career, you've had a lot of marketing experience in comics. How did you start out? Beau: Well, it started out in 1986 when I was doin' a one page gag thing in the back of Tim Truman's Scout comic called "Beau LaDuke's Tips For Real Men." Tim and I had based Scout's best friend on me and so we took a page every issue to have a little fun and spout off some of my manly wisdom. It wasn't long after that when Eclipse Comics was lookin' for a new Sales and Marketing guy. At that time I was Sales and Marketing administrator for an Audio/Video chain. I had the background in sales and marketing, I knew comics inside and out, so Tim hooked me up with an interview with Dean Mullaney the publisher at Eclipse Comics. We hit it off and I was there until they went out of business in late 1993-94. Scoop: From Eclipse where did you go? Beau: Towards the end of the Eclipse run I had met Todd McFarlane when he was gettin' ready to bolt from Marvel with his other buddies. We hit it off really well and would spend hours on the phone together talkin' about comics, business, sports and a million other things. Slowly we began to work together on behind the scenes stuff. At Eclipse we did some projects for Todd that no one really knew about and there was a business bond formed. Wasn't long after that I went to work for Todd and helped him start to set up some of the empire he was building. There were only like five of us then. It was a lot of fun and pretty exciting. Without takin' up too much space I can say that there are huge stories that I could tell about those beginning days of Image Comics and the behind the scenes stuff that went on. It's an incredible business book waitin' to be written. I worked for Todd, Image and McFarlane Toys until 2000. It was quite a ride and I don't regret a second of it. Scoop: In the booming hay day of the early Image Comics era, what was the craziest thing that happened in marketing? Beau: Aww, crazy stuff happened every day. I was always waitin' for the straight jacket to be shoved on us. The real crazy part was tryin' to play marketing ringmaster for seven studios that were always fightin' and tusslin' with each other.....a lot like brothers would.....but this was business. Everybody was drunk on foil and chrome covers, except at TMP. Todd and I were on the same page there....none of that with Spawn. Former Publisher Tony Lobito was like a crack head for the Chromium stuff. I swear I think I saw him sniffin' it one day in his office. Tony is a wonderful, sweet guy, but he sure got hooked on the Chrome. Scoop: Do you have to think differently when you're working on marketing and when you're writing a story? Beau: I've always been a writer first. That goes back to high school when I had my first stuff printed. But I must say that the marketing has always been there as well. I have to tip that hat to Stan Lee. I saw what he did with Marvel Comics as a kid. I figured out that he sold what he knew best--himself. If you liked and bought Stan Lee then you would buy and like the company he worked for. He made ya feel like Marvel Comics was the club to belong to. He invited ya into Marvel and wanted ya to stay as a welcomed guest, not an outsider. When you saw Stan Lee, You saw Marvel Comics. It's a beautiful move and at the same time you're being honest. If ya can't like yourself how can ya like anyone else? Scoop: What lead you to come up with the free print giveaway in conjunction with your new Wynonna Earp trade paperback? Beau: At Eclipse Comics we didn't have much of a budget. We had to learn to make the best of what little tools we had. I'm very thankful that I had that situation to learn upon. It was harder then because we didn't have the web/internet and all the tools it provides. Everything was print. Hell, we didn't even have a fax machine then. The phone and Fed-Ex were our life lines as well as the good ol' U.S. Mail. I did the signed print giveaway back when I worked at Eclipse. I did it on the books I wrote - Parts Unknown, The Black Terror, Beau LaDuke, Scout - and it always turned out with some really nice results. I remember during my days at TMP, McFarlane Toys and Image that from time to time, Todd would get on me for not spending enough money. He would put his hand on my shoulder and in his wacky Caddyshack/Homer Simpson voice tell me, "Spend the money, Beau. I've got lots of it." So now that I'm full throttle freelance I've gotta make sure that everything I do sells or is seen by as many eyes as possible. Being freelance means nobody is payin' ya money on a steady basis. To keep The Flying Fist Ranch runnin' I need money. Beer and Chili Cheese Fritos ain't free. Right now there are high school kids makin' more money than me workin' at the local 7-11. I have to be lookin' for work every day. Scoop: How surprised were you by the response? Beau: Yeah, I was. I figured that I'd get maybe 100 requests. After all, it didn't cost the read a cent. All they had to do was email me and I'd send the signed print out. It don't get any easier than that. Even an old dog like me was surprised when the first day brought over 200 requests in my mail box. It just got bigger after that. It's nice to see that you can still get surprised after everything I've seen in this business. Can ya imagine if I were a really big name creator like Mark Millar or Geoff Johns?? The response would have been ultra huge. At 1,754 requests I was pretty shocked. Scoop: How did the people who emailed you react? What did they have to say? Beau: Everyone, and I mean everyone, was so polite and nice. I got requests from long time fans of mine, from folks that had never heard of me and from a lot of women. It was nice to see that Wynonna Earp has a lot fo women readers out there. I'd like to think it's because of my manly, rugged good looks, but even I can only fool myself so far. Most were surprised that this kinda free offer was being made. They couldn't think of anyone else that had ever did it. That made me smile. The ones that had never heard of Wynonna Earp until this offer were super interested in the premise of the story and wanted to know more. The best part is that almost 100% of the readers said that they had ordered, pre-ordered or were gonna order The Complete Wynonna Earp trade paperback. As I said before, if that happens then the book will be an instant sell out success. Scoop: In terms of promoting your own work rather than someone's line of books, is this your most successful effort or would you point to something else? Beau: From an individual "I have no budget" standpoint, yeah. It is the most successful, or at least we'll soon find out when the book comes out in July. In the big picture, no. There were promotions and incentives that I did with Image, Spawn, McFarlane Toys and IDW that were much bigger success stories with huge results. Of course I had a bigger budget and bigger properties to work with there. I'm not slappin' myself on the back and this is not an drunk with ego remark, but I really do believe that on any scale, large or small, I am the best at what I do when it comes to marketing comics from the stand alone reader to the general public. I am blessed in the fact that as a creator I can also use this knowledge to promote my own stuff as well. I pride myself in not only knowing the readers, but being one and listening to them on a daily basis. Publishers too often discount what the readers have to say. That's a huge mistake. Scoop: You've written both creator-owned projects such as Wynonna Earp and company-owned properties like Guy Gardner. What are the upsides and downsides of each? Beau: Upside on creator owned properties is of course creative control. Gettin' to see your sperm of an idea go from seed to finishes project and beyond. Nobody knows your own property better than you. It's wonderful to feel that freedom and see it through. I've experienced that with Wynonna Earp, Parts Unknown, The Black Terror, Primate and others. It's like no other feeling. Downside is usually money and gettin' a publisher to wanna publish it. You have to get them to feel the same passion as you do. They are takin' a big risk. You have to remember that when pitchin' your own stuff. They have to feel that they can make money from it or at least garner more exposure for their company. When a creator owned project does pay off, it pays off big for everyone. Look at stuff like Frank Miller's Sin City and of course, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The upside to company owned projects is that ya get 1. Paid on a regular basis. 2. You get to work on long standing characters that are icons. You get to become a part of comic book history and enjoy all the moments of working on characters that you grew up loving. 3. Exposure. You get so many more eyeballs seeing your work. Depending on your own self marketing talents, it then makes it easier for you to bring those eyeballs to other lesser knwon or your own creator owned work. The downside is that you have to go into it with an open mind. You are not gonna own these characters or the ones you create for them. You are not gonna see money from the toys, TV and movies. (In most cases) and...it's not gonna last forever. The biggest upside to all of this is that you get to write, draw or market comics. If you love em' and have the pasion, then you're gonna be very happy at the end of the day. I've had my share of jobs without creativity. They pay the bills and ya do what ya gotta do, but there is always an empty space in ya that goes hungry. That's a hard feelin' to live with. Scoop: Anything else you'd like to add? Beau: Yeah.....order The Complete Wynonna Earp NOW! I need all the support I can get. Also, I really believe that I have just finished the best writing work of my career. It's called Cobb: Off The Leash. A new comic book coming out from IDW Publishing. It's about a former secret service agent that has run into trouble with the Russian Mafia and a few nasty terrorists. This book is filled with character from the main one-Cobb to the smallest bit player. This isn't The Punisher and it aint' another Xerox of a Tarantino movie. I defy you to read the first issue of Cobb and not wanna come back to find out more about him and these other characters. Just ask Ted Adams and Chris Ryall at IDW. They'll tell ya. The Complete Wynonna Earp collects every story on the monster-hunting descendant of legendary lawman, Wyatt Earp that has been printed. It's over 200 pages and in full color. It carries a cover price of $24.99 and it ships the last week of July from IDW Publishing.
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