Comic-Con@Home: Hero Collector Talks Pop Culture & E-Commerce
We speak with Chris Thompson, brand manager, Hero Collector – the pop-culture and licensing arm of Eaglemoss - to discuss all things collectible and ecommerce ahead of Comic-Con@Home 2020.
License Global speaks with Chris Thompson, brand manager, Hero Collector – the pop-culture and licensing arm of Eaglemoss - about all things collectible and e-commerce ahead of Comic-Con@Home 2020.
Ben Roberts: What are the major trends you've seen during the pandemic and what was Eaglemoss' strategy to keep front-of-mind with consumers? How is fandom a vital part of licensing and retail?
Chris Thompson: It’s been a really interesting time to be alive and doing what we do. The world has gone through a shared experience – arguably a shared trauma – and we’ve all had to find our own ways of adjusting to this new normal. For a lot of us, the initial adjustment was the transition to working from home and finding out what shape that would take, but from there it became a quest to reach out and stay in touch with people despite the obvious barriers.
For those of us at Hero Collectors it was very much a case of providing distraction or alternative to the doom and gloom that surrounded us. I’m a big believer in being an early adopter, so I felt the best way to respond was to get things moving quickly. That’s why, in late March, we launched our Hero Collector Happy Hour initiative to maintain our communication with fans and provide new insights into their favorite properties. Through a series of coordinated Twitter takeovers, we spoke with people from behind the scenes of “Doctor Who”, “Ghostbusters”, “Harry Potter”, “Star Trek”, and beyond, while maintaining a consistent schedule throughout the first two months or so of lockdown. Alongside all of that, our social media manager, Melisa Kumas, hosted her own weekly tweet-along that covered the entire “Harry Potter” / “Fantastic Beasts” saga via the Hero Collector Twitter account.
Meanwhile, I looked at what other people were doing, to see how and where we could join in and help support their efforts. A lot of people had the same idea as us in terms of providing engaging and distracting content, so there was a flurry of activity going into lockdown, especially (it seemed) amongst the “Doctor Who” community. There were the more official lockdown screenings organized by Emily Cook from Doctor Who Magazine, but there was also a lot being organized by the various fan groups and individuals. I was fortunate to be a guest on Fantom Films’ first Time Space Visualiser virtual event, and we continued to sponsor them with prizes throughout the run. We did the same with Pip Madeley’s annual “Doctor Who” tweet-along, which this year took the form of Patrick Troughton’s The War Games, under the hashtag of #Troughtweet.
Since then other licenses and their communities got involved, so we’ve had the chance to engage with people from various fandoms and parts of the world. One of my favorite collaborations was the recent Day of Honor event, where we joined forces with the folks from "Star Trek Online" and Modiphius Games, along with a whole host of experts and actors from “Star Trek: Discovery”, to host a series of online panels streamed over Twitch. I managed to get a number of the panelists some of our ships before the livestream, so there was a real show-and-tell element to it all. That’s where events like Comic-Con@Home provide an excellent opportunity to come together for a specific time and with a specific set of goals. Taking part in things like this has, I think, put us in a much better position for whatever the future holds.
As a premium collectibles' developer and retailer, how have you seen consumers engage with properties they love through your store?
What started as a traditional partworks company has, as you’ve noted, expanded into a premium collectibles developer and retailer, which is a far cry from what we were, but still a natural extension of it. I think it started with having our own online store to supply back issues and/or replacements for parts of our collections, and that slowly morphed into something more as unique products, bonus issues and special editions were added. Now we’ve expanded on that further to broaden our horizons in the retail/wholesale markets and make Eaglemoss/Hero Collector a visible presence in the global collectibles arena.
On a more intimate scale, we are fortunate to have a dedicated and passionate fanbase for both our licenses and our products in general. They’re always poking around the site, reading our email newsletters and following our social media channels for the next big announcement or reveal. We don’t take that for granted, and we’re always looking for new ways to communicate and connect with them. Making a wider push with our PR has been a lot of fun as well, since that expands our overall reach and brings new people into the fold – plus, it’s just plain cool to see your latest announcement on the front page of The Hollywood Reporter or Nerdist. Outside of that, there’s a few of us who are directly part of, and connected to, the various fan communities we cover, so it’s not unusual to find me or someone else in the Facebook fan group or tweeting along about something from our own personal accounts. I think it’s summed up best by one of our Hero Collector catchphrases … “We’re fans, just like you!”