Fast Friends Forever (Marketing Campaign)

SEGA setting aside substantial amounts of funding for general promotion of the Sonic brand under a unified vision. Good stuff.

I think the success of the movies really revealed the true value of the franchise to Sammy and they're now investing more heavily in the franchise. Frontiers' expanded scope was some early evidence of that.

I hope this results in a higher release frequency for TailsTube. I think it's a good series, but they release so infrequently. I'd love to see them go biweekly or at-least monthly.

There is a potential downside. More investment in the IP makes them more protective of the IP. They could start to strike down fan projects eventually. That's why Nintendo does that. They value their IP very highly and as a result are (overly) protective of it. Hopefully it doesn't come to that.

 

If people can accept Tails Tube as just fun skits with the characters we could possibly release more frequently. Currently people expect heavy lore lifting to be done with each episode which is obviously a finite well. But the reception to the upcoming season will tell us a lot about Tails Tube's future.

 

Tails Tube has largely set itself up as a lore dump thing, rather than just as fun looks at the characters being, you know, normal 'people'. Every episode so far has had some kind of significant lore dump, hasn't it? The more casual nature of the series has been overshadowed from the off, and that's a bit a problem that Tails Tube has created for itself. The first episode focused squarely on debunking/retconning the entire "two worlds" content and teasing a new character that, almost 1.5 years and one major new game later, has yet to have make an actual appearance.

I hope that any future episodes can achieve the balance that's wanted. But I fear that the first impression Tails Tube created may have set itself up for a bit of failure. More frequent (shorter?) episodes that take a lighter approach might be the way to go in order to get people into the right mindset. Just as an example, it would be nice if we could get fortnightly episodes for a couple of months. Call those 4 episodes a season and let people soak that up. Shift the focus from lip-service on the finite well of lore to hear being about spending a bit of time with the characters we know and love.

Anyway, on to the actual subject at hand... This is cool. Nice to see the Sonic series just making itself relevant. I feel like the brand is in a fairly good place right now. Coming off the back of two successful movies, a major new 3D game that sold leagues better than the series' average, two seasons of Prime and all of the upcoming projects that have been announced, SEGA would do well to capitalise on striking whilst the iron is hot.

I do wish that they'd choose now to revitalise the brand's literal image though. No, Sonic doesn't need a full-on redesign or whatever, but the character models are stale AF. Everyone looks so bulbous. And whoever is responsible for creating promotional artwork for games and general use is doing the bare minimum witb regards to posing. The mouths continue to be the only part of the characters faces that are being posed. Sonic's been getting botox injections signs his eyebrows and forehead for almost around 15 years now. If any new Sonic renders are ever eye-catching, then it's for all the wrong reasons. They don't look good. And the brand has come a long way since 2008, but on the surface it looks exactly the same as it did back then. Something's gotta change, surely. It undermines brand initiatives like this. Give people a reason to look at Sonic again.

 

I saw the trailer and the website this morning, and was kind of baffled by it. They seem to be starting a year long marketing campaign for Sonic, but don't actually give specifics on anything. Like why are they putting out an announcement that basically just says "Wait for more announcements?" That tweet by badnik mechanic, assuming it's legit, makes it more confusing. If there's a new season of Tailstube and a new comic strip coming out, and the comic strip is starting tomorrow, then why were neither of those announced?

On the subject of that comic strip, I'm pretty hyped for it. I'm a big comics lover, especially comic strips, so a Sonic comic strip is a match made in heaven for me.

 

Just wouldn't be a Sonic related project without an annoucement annoucing an upcoming annoucement.

 

That's fine with me.

It makes sense. The lore team can only cover so much ground so fast, and retcons have to be done carefully so they don't become inconvenient and hinder future storytelling.

I'd definitely say that Sonic Lore is kind of an expected element in TailsTube, but you could slow-boil the lobster? Each video has a little less lore, a little more hi-jinx, and then someday when a new retcon is ready, it can be brought up unceremoniously.

It can also cover stuff that is pretty set in the series during the Lobster Boiling. Overview of the plots for Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, and Sonic Heroes... those games are old now. Kids might not know about Chaos or The Ark or Neo Metal Sonic. Not all the lore has to be new.

That's my (totally unsolicited... sorry ) two cents. Either way, you all know what you're doing and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next!

I don't work at Sega, and I don't work in marketing, so take this with some salt, but I'd suspect that "additional funding was allocated for the Sonic Brand to launch a marketing campaign", so they made a trailer announcing the campaign. This trailer, IMHO, is geared to appeal so SEGA stock holders and investors... potentially even more so than it is to general consumers like us.

"Look at the strength of the Sonic brand! We got merchandise, we got shows, we got games, we have a huge super-loyal fanbase covering multiple demographics, and we're doubling down on it! We're gonna make good money for the rest of the fiscal year leveraging this brand's re-surging popularity and use this campaign to further bolster it's growth!" Maybe that sounds icky, but it's fine. That's how you get more stuff.

Ultimately, the upcoming comics and TailsTubes are marketing. Same deal for Mania Adventures and Frontiers prologues. They're entertaining and well-produced marketing, but marketing nonetheless.

HONESTLY, form a fan's perspective, I think SEGA spends their marketing budget very well. Nintendo doesn't use their marketing budget to produce cool free animated cartoons and comics. They use it for boring stuff like TV spots.

 

Yeah this was very much a "consume product" thing, but holy they referenced TSR, DLC confirmed!

With regards to Tails Tube, I like the lore stuff, but wouldn't mind it defocusing from that a little. I think there's still a lot of trivia it can cover given the vast expanse of the 30ish years of the series that newcomers just won't be familiar with.

Also looking forward to the webcomic but not expecting too much, and I agree that this is probably a net positive indicator for the health of the IP right now.

 

The comic somehow reminds me of SRB2 and OK K.O at the same time. Can't wait to see next week's comic!

 

I doubt it, given that SEGA has benefitted directly from fan projects carrying the enthusiasm of the franchise forward for so long, as the communication between JPN and Western divisions is now much stronger than what you'd see within Nintendo.

Not to mention some of the Japanese companies outside of SEGA have softened their stances on such projects recently. Square Enix has been contacted by mod developers and given their blessings to projects a number of times, compared to what you saw from them being much more aggressive a decade ago. Nintendo's stances have much more direct ties to their overall protectiveness of resale of their back catalogue (a practice which is problematic for many reasons), but even they don't actually go after fan games as aggressively as people think they do. AM2R, for example, continued for years after the initial 'shut down' with no serious legal repercussions, and the original creator went on to be a pro developer with no issue.

SEGA can and would take actions to stop certain fan projects, but only when they likely have 'major' financial incentives and seemingly promote harm at the same time. They know where their bread and butter come from, and harming the fan scene in any way would be beyond the pale since Sonic's western success is more valuable than their JPN success and the backlash would be 'enormous'.

Even if it were to ever happen, I expect it would be a temporary status quo that would be handled relatively quickly.

The questions of legal issues may come down more to subtle things like how the Jackson music situation was handled, or if they get more protective over unreleased protos or usused assets. That would have the most immediate harm to this community, but we've also never had any evidence of them taking those actions beyond the obvious Michael Jackson scandal (which, again, had 0 impact on our Roms/Protos/Mods)

 

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t really “get” this campaign. It doesn’t seem to have much of a purpose, other than showing off a superficial Sonic “community” that doesn’t really exist. I can count the amount of Sonic-fans I’ve met in real life on one hand (although maybe that’s because I live in Scotland).

The promo video was a tough watch. I cringed hard at the dancers, and I thought the music was awful. It feels “off brand” and trying too hard to be contemporary.

Didn’t work for me, though the comic on the website was pretty fun.

 

The trailer is almost certainly geared to be appealing for SEGA investors. Not fans/consumers like you and I.

Content that comes out as a result of the campaign (comics, TailsTube) will be geared towards fans/consumers.

 

This time, the Amphibia creator, Matt Braly made a comic.

Edit: I think the images glitched out, but was just meant to post the two images were in the replies.

 

Can't Sonic just fly the plane himself?

 

To be fair, on reflection I think you're probably right about this!

I don't think it's necessarily an accurate representation of the fan-base (I'm yet to see Sonic TikTok dancers) but it is what it is.

I'll happily take the extra comics and TailsTube content that come from it.

 

This is bullshit. How can SEGA acknowledge my friendship with Sonic but ignore my friendship with Manic?

 

https://twitter.com/sonic_hedgehog/status/1693657646526841198?s=20

New webcomic is out, this time by none other than TerminalMontage! As a bonus, there's even an animated version in the replies!

https://twitter.com/sonic_hedgehog/status/1693657654177263998?s=20

 

I guess this means that Speedrunner Mario canonically exists in the Sonic universe.

 

Actually explains why he made a sonic video like 2 days ago



Nice timing