The Puffer Pipe: A Comic Book Marketing Project
A daring social media marketing crusade
ENTER the puffer
Blowfish are known for their ability to inflate themselves into a ball-like shape when threatened. This ability earned them the nickname "puffers", which is cute as hell.
But putting aside my genuine love for this adorable Tetraodontidae, I didn't write this article to discuss the magical world of marine life. I wanted to use the Puffer as a visual metaphor to illustrate a solution I crafted for a project that has consumed my professional life for the last couple of years. This essay is an entertaining piece of documentation that carefully goes through the conceptualization, production and development process of an ambitious marketing pipeline I've developed to promote my original comic titles.
I'm proud of what I managed to pull off, and like every professional producer, creator or designer I think it's worth treating it as a portfolio piece and showing it off to fans, friends and business partners alike. To explain how this all ties to the puffer metaphor however, we're going to start with discussing:
THE OPPORTUNITY
Between 2021 and 2022 I signed four publishing deals with two publishers to produce a set of original comic series and graphic novels. Three of these titles were developed in collaboration with my dear friend, and frequent creative partner Elliot Sperl, but the first one to come out was very own my solo series:
I won't spend time talking about the title itself, because you can check it for yourselves by clicking here. So what I will focus on are the challenges I faced with marketing it. Edenfrost was going to be my big public debut as a creator, and I had to make a splash.
By the time I signed these deals, I've already had years of experience writing for multiple mediums; from games to print publications, live on-stage presentations, music videos, TV development projects and more. Hell, I've even optioned shows to studios and networks, but writing was still just a secondary part of my fulltime job, or an occasional side hustle. There's a difference between writing a plot and dialogue for a branded location-based experience, or signing an option deal for an interactive Virtual Reality show that never got a full season green-light, and getting paid to adapt your own IP into a tangible product. When production schedules and release dates are set, you become the brand behind the product and things get real very quickly.
(Edenfrost - Original Trailer by Mad Cave Studios, 2023)
If you know me, then you know that when it comes to my work I never "wing it". When I take on a project, I aim to investigate the opportunities, risks and traps from every possible angle. In this case, I had to study the comic publishing industry inside out. I wanted to understand how its creators navigate the cryptic maze of old-fashioned practices, and identify the problems I'm likely to face along the way. I was a newcomer, and to become a successful creator I had to think long term. Selling a new product is hard, launching an original IP is even harder, and selling an unknown creator to a heavily gate-kept industry is basically mission impossible. But I've literally ventured across the ocean and spent years building up my reputation and skills while hustling for this opportunity, and by Cthulhu's squiddly might, I was gonna give it everything I've got.
THE END PRODUCT
I'll start by spoiling the ending, then unpack the journey that led me there. My 8-months long social media marketing campaign for Edenfrost was already developed and produced long before my publisher launched their official campaign. Edenfrost was just one of many titles on Mad Cave Studios' roster, and since I was a newcomer to this branch of the entertainment industry, I wanted to stand out. From Twitter/X, to Instagram, Linkedin, and more, throughout the campaign my carefully crafted videos and images were dropped daily on every one of my social media accounts. Here's a cute complication that includes just a few of them:
(Edenfrost - Social Media Content Compilation, Amit Tishler 2024 )
I developed an entire pipeline around using Edenfrost's wealth of original assets, along with some licensed ones, and funneling them through a set of malleable content templates I crafted to maximize production efficiency. In addition, the content's visual fidelity was carefully optimized to exceed consumers expectations. I noticed that most creators and publishers produce very basic marketing materials, and release them in fairly low volume compared to their counterparts in television and video games. I wanted my campaign to stand out through higher production values, consistency, diversity and professionalism - so I hit the ground running! Finally, after a bit of experimentation and iteration, I managed to single-handedly achieve my goal. I produced a fancy-ass campaign that felt like it was produced by an entire team, WHILE holding a fairly demanding full-time job as a creative director. Zoinks!
Every social media platform has its quirks. A variety of text limits, aspect ratios and hashtag requirements meant that manually distributing all this content would be insane at best and suicidal at worst. I had to automate this process, and make it easy to optimize towards growth. Luckily, if I've learned anything from working with Youtubers, Tiktokers, and marketing agencies during my PopBase days, it's how to use social media content distribution tools . I adopted a single, reliable platform and used it to create an asynchronous programming schedule that kept the Edenfrost brand blasting anytime, everywhere and all at once.
I'm proud of this pipeline. It worked like clockwork! But content quality and its efficient distribution weren't what make this system valuable. What made it an asset was its reusability. With multiple back-to-back publishing deals I had to create a system that would not only serve Edenfrost, but every original title that followed. Not only that, but it needed to scale! "The Last Wardens", the first original title produced by my collaboration with Elliot Sperl was announced a month before Edenfrost's trade-paperback release. I needed to build something that could serve future titles and be shared with, and easily adopted by my creative partner. Systems are only as good as their infrastructure. Ideally, when the foundation is solid, every use of the system improves on its previous run. So as the new series' release date rew near, I shared my pipeline with Elliot, who put its malleability to the test.
(The Last Wardens - Social Media Content Compilation, Elliot Sperl & Amit Tishler 2024)
As you can see from the complication above, not only did the second run of this pipeline work, but it got better, faster and more efficient thanks to the "collaborative upgrade". Now we get to use this system as our unfair advantage, retooling and expanding its templates for every new project. Like a puffer, this system can quickly inflate to give the impression that there's a lot more juice behind it...but in practice? It's just a couple of people putting in just a few hours a month to create a diverse, consistent and high quality promotional content slate.
Now that you got a taste of the end result, let's go ALL the way back to the beginning so I can walk you through my entire development process, starting with a:
MARKET OVERVIEW
For their main imprint, Mad Cave Studios publish single issues that target the direct market first (i.e. comic book shops), and when all monthlies of a pre-set volume are out, they bind them together into a trade paperback and release them to the mainstream book market (i.e. Barnes & Nobles, Target, Walmart, Libraries, etc). In the indie section of this industry, titles rarely break even from single issue sales alone, so publishers use them to gauge public interest in the title, market it, and recoup some money while they prep for the potentially more profitable book market release. That way when a title's trade paperback finally reaches store shelves, it already has some press, consumer awareness, and a growing fanbase behind it. The idea is that the trade-paperback will eventually close the ROI gap and lead to the title either breaking even or reaching profitability. Now...if you have interest in sales, marketing or economics, you are probably noticing some serious red flags, but reality is what it is. It's an old industry and it's struggling to keep up... but fuck it! Challenge accepted! My job was to do everything I can to increase the product's odds of success, so I did what I always do: I put together a user profile for the average "local comic shop" customer. To do that however, I first had to understand the market's current pain points (because I'm a weirdly obsessive about this stuff).
During my research I managed to identify a few things about this market:
The majority of revenue that keeps traditional publishers afloat come from selling physical copies of their books. In comics, the profitability gaps between digital and physical product sales is no joke. I have many opinions about how poorly the publishing industry's been handling their digital distribution efforts, but that's a story for another time. For now, all you need to know is that at the time of this writing, in this industry digital sales are a struggle and physical sales are king.
Compared to other entertainment products such as video-games and streaming media, the publishing business's profit margins are generally low and there's limited shelf space in stores. This means that retailers have to play it safe by prioritizing titles from bigger mainstream publishers such as Marvel and DC comics, and leaving very little room for the indies.
Due to the low ROI, retailers tend to favor established writers and franchises. Their hunger for risk is limited, and given that comic book shops are usually owned by fans of the medium, the owners' personal biases also play a major part in the titles they choose to offer their customers.
Retailers are exposed to new titles through either retail summits, social media marketing campaigns, personal connections with publishers and distributors, and comic industry publications that allow publishers to promote their inventory (like PreviewsWorld) OR...from customers who hear about a title and ask their local shop to custom-order it for them.
To anyone who worked in industries such as technology, video-games and even network television or streaming, the high-friction nature of this process sounds archaic...and truth be told? It really is. The direct market is in decline and the book market's struggling to understand and adopt new technologies and marketing methodologies. It's a real shitshow at the fuck factory, and it begs the question:
WHO AM I MARKETING TO?
Knowing that digital sales (Globalcomix, Amazon Kindle, Hoopla, etc) and direct-to-consumer methods (Publisher's website, conferences, etc) are not as profitable in this industry, both indie and corporate publishers have to fight for the limited shelf space available in physical stores. To get their books to retailers, publishers rely on distributors such as Diamond, Simon & Schuster and others: companies with the network, relationships and pipelines required for distribution on a national or international scale. It's a clunky system, yes... but it's what everyone's working with, and understanding it is pretty important for navigating this market.
I wanted to produce my own marketing campaign to help my publisher sell the product. So... as a marketer, who IS my target? Am I creating this campaign for retailers, or for consumers? I can't get my product to the vast majority of consumers without retailer support, but distributors, like everyone else, gate-keep their network and prioritize mainstream publishers and big franchises.
Targeting both is not a practical strategy. I had to figure out WHO I have to market to, and only then determine HOW. So I took a take a step back and broke down the publishing pipeline and the core problem as I saw them. Here's a snapshot of my thought process, flow-charted for your enjoyment:
Get it? To gain retailer awareness I needed to raise consumer awareness first. Basically:
If consumers actively order the title from the retailers...I win. I have to get these find individuals interested in ordering my title from their local shops, and the more demand I generate, the more likely it is that stores will order copies of my titles in bulk, instead of custom ordering single copies per interested customer. In addition, the more these retailers see my name, the more familiar they'll be with my work and more likely they they'll be to order my next few titles when they come out. It's a real fuckin' doozy! But at least I picked a direction and could move forward with figuring out my-
MARKETING GOALS
Now that I knew WHO I was marketing to, I had to decide on my campaign's actual goals. They say that a picture's worth a thousand words, so adjusted to inflation maybe it's worth 100,000 words in the year of our lord Cthulhu, 2024... who knows? In any case, here are the goals, listed in chronological order:
Awareness was my main goal because it seemed like the most attainable one. I'm not the product's seller or distributor, so the best I could do is raise brand awareness, which could impact sales and expand my professional portfolio. Speaking of my portfolio, after figuring out my goals, it was time to figure out this campaign's visual identity...but to do that, I had to sharpen my consumer profile first. Now, here's the thing: I like funnels...I'm a funnel guy, OK? So the way I perfected my consumer profile was by funneling it through a these filters:
Due to its subject matter, I defined Edenfrost's broader target demographic as young adults (18-24) and adults (24-30s). In practice however, direct-market consumers are older than book market comic ones, so I just had to design everything to appeal to both demographics as much as I could. The book's genre is historical-fantasy and the story was set in a post-WW1 civil war that bled into Ukrainian territory. With that in mind, a vintage, "old-film reel" style with scratchy recordings of pre-USSR, Ukrainian and Jewish Ukrainian audio segments made sense. One of the songs I chose to insert into my videos was even referenced in the book, as it drove a specific plot point:
If you're curious, here's an example of one of the marketing videos that used this very familiar track.
For creating templates I picked a cloud-based service that offered quality web-based design tools and a whole arsenal of usable, licensed assets. I crafted an organized system of folders, a naming convention and a slew of templates that expanded into easily identifiable "series". As far as materials go, I had to generate very little from scratch! I just used a combination of cropped and cleaned up art assets from the comic itself, a bunch of pre-made Mad Cave marketing materials and the licensed fonts and visual assets offered by my weapon of choice (textures, effects, filters, etc).
Because they're designed for social media content creation, these cloud-based platforms offer stripped down versions of tools from programs like Adobe Photoshop or Premiere. These tools aren't built TV, movie theaters or print publications, but when used wisely, they allow for greater speed, accessibility, organization and most importantly...scalability. The fact that I could easily hand this entire system off to my partner when we had to starts a new campaign for "The Last Wardens" gave us a serious competitive advantage. So now you might be wondering, what were these "templates" like and what were they built for?
THE TEMPLATES
The idea behind these templates was to make it easy to churn out a ton of high quality content by simply swapping a few assets, but the content had to be compelling enough to warrant a watch. Some templates were made to impress, while others aimed to promote specific events such as interviews, signings, etc. Here is the original set:
The biggest bulk of work was in setting up each template from scratch, but once they were ready the iteration process was quick and easy. The templates break down into two groups:
Image based content (Twitter/X, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, etc)
Video-based content (Instagram Reels/Stories, YouTube Shorts, Tiktok, etc).
Each template was built to accommodate a handful of relevant aspect ratios, and shared many of the same assets to save on work and maintain visual consistency. I also improved each template over time by playing with different variables, such as fonts and pre-set animations because it was easy to do on the go. The production pipeline around each template worked something like this:
This entire pipeline is based on 2 primary tools: the production platform (for creating the content) and the distribution platform (for distributing it to a variety of social media platforms). While my production tool of choice included its own distribution setup, I wanted more control and better analytics, so I split the two pipelines. This meant that I had to export each image and video and reupload it to the social media distribution tool for pre-scheduling purposes, but that was a conscious choice. This is not not a must, I am just a bit pedantic when it comes to these things. You could easily use the production tool's distribution settings to make your life easier, but I'm a bit of a control freak. I need surgical precision, damn it! Anyhow, once the assets were exported, I built an entire programming schedule so I could automate the distribution process. After all, I was constantly working and traveling, and I couldn't waste time pushing out every piece of content manually on my phone. Some templates required me to create iterations on the go, but once your pre-programmed content schedule' full, and the iteration process is easy, spinning off new content was quick and frictionless. I could do it on the go and produce new, professional level, high quality materials without breaking a sweat! How delightful!
And this...is what the puffer pipe looks like. A beautifully elegant, efficient, low-cost, scalable production and distribution pipeline that allows even a single person to generate more high quality marketing content than an entire goddamn advertising agency. I didn't even get to talk about how this system is ripe for quick and easy DIGITAL MARKETING LOCALIZATION, but that may be a topic for a separate article.
IN Conclusion
I wanted to document this pipeline's development as a portfolio piece for obvious reasons. I'm a skilled mixed-media generalist that's breaking into new fields, so I have to use whatever unfair advantage I have to keep up with already deeply entrenched competitors. So far...so good!
As a newcomer, I noticed a dangerous lack of innovation and a depressing void of business literacy on both the corporate and creative sides of the publishing industry in general, and the comic book industry in particular. For me this project is just a tiny part of a bigger plan. It's an example of a future-proofing technique that's tied to my philosophy on modern product design, marketing, localization and content distribution. Right now, this system is being used to make me and my partners stand out in fields that show impressive growth, while being plagued by complacency and economic deterioration. But in the near future I will likely offer it as a service, or as part of my job for any company who wishes to implement such a system into their operation and enjoy the benefits of expanding it over time...because why the hell not?
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