Hello Reader!

As you may have noticed, the purpose of this blog is to study and discuss the strategic management of Batman TradeMark, which is owned by DC comics, and broadly popularized by Warner Bros.

I am going to try and let you know more about Batman and its values from a branding perspective.
However, I have the hope you will share on this blog any kind of insight you may have on the topic as I would like, myself, to learn more about it. So feel free to comment any of my posts or any of my colleagues' posts.

To introduce our journey, I would like to reset the stage and state what is fairly obvious to some and maybe less to others: Batman's values.

Batman - I am referring to the character here - is a skilled detective and agile fighter, operating almost exclusively at night, with a number of gadgets or vehicles. He is an avenger who wants to protect Gotham's citizens from a tragedy like the one he endured as a child when his parents were murdered in front of him. The strong moral component of his character makes it impossible for him to kill another person. In the day-time, he is a well-known businessman and philantropist.

It is very important to understand this very complex character - one of the most complex in comics' history - because his values have a direct impact on brand management.
Indeed, it is interesting to notice that successive comic books, movies, tv shows, cartoons and video games, although using different approaches to the character and therefore different positioning strategies, remained consistent with these core values that are the importance of justice and morality, the mindset of a detective, a measured use of gadgets and violence.

In other words, Batman products such as movies - to take an example everyone knows - have been able to target very different consumers through the evolution of their different positioning strategies, while being consistent with Batman's values which basically represent the brand's DNA. Indeed, I am sure everyone can agree Christopher Nolan and Tim Burton had different positionings in their respective movies (although one could object such a gap is linked to the decade that went by between their works). One being based on fantastic imagery, the other much more down-to-earth (ergo accessible to a larger and older crowd).

Coca Cola and Apple are maybe the two greatest and most successful examples of consistency over time regarding values. Strategic Brand Management may not be going to reveal its deepest secrets to us but still, we can try and determine whether our favorite superhero deserves to be standing between the famous woman-shaped bottle and the half-eaten apple in the branding hall of fame.