OK, Who Wrote This?

Have you actually read the press release for marvel's new please-we-need-more-customers-so-we'll-start-marketing-directly-to-grade-school-kids online venture? Let me quote you some prime passages...

"In this action-packed thrill-ride Marvel brings some of it’s mightiest heroes together to battle enemies too powerful for any one hero to defeat!"

"It’s super heroics, repulsor rays and smashing like no Marvel fan has ever seen before, exclusively from your friendly neighborhood pals at MarvelKids.Com."

"It’s your universe, your favorite heroes and groundbreaking animated fun rolled into the can’t-miss Marvel Adventures Animated Advervideos!"

Does it strike anyone else besides me that this reads a LOT differently than marvel's other press releases? It reads like it's actually aimed at the audience they want showing up on marvelkids.com, doesn't it? Young kids under age 12? It's certainly not stylistically typical of the hyperbole they use when they were promoting "Civil War" or "One More Day" or whatever.

So answer me this, then: how many kids under the age of 12 read press releases? I don't know, but I'm guessing something south of a dozen. Give or take. Wouldn't it make more sense, in writing a press release for this, to target the parents of those kids?

I'm not saying they shouldn't target the under-12 market, but it just seems to me that doing so by issuing a press release to them isn't going to work very well. How about some flashy internet ads that show up on web sites kids visit? Ooo! Or here's a thought: how about an ad on their own web site, instead of a smallish text link crammed between their logo and the "important" news of the new Spider-Man continuity that's been plastered all over every comic book web site for the past few weeks?

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