My wife and kids went to the store last night and brought home Lucky Charms. Good thing they did too. Now we can read the Justice League at breakfast. This is the type of very good marketing that gets comics out of the comic book shop and into the mainstream. Parents and kids can just love it.

Justice League General Mills Cereal

I picked up Justice League Part 2–Artificial Invasion. There is 4 parts to the story and the story is done really well. DC is doing a really good job introducing the characters to a new audience. There is a 3-panel backstory on Superman and a 3-panel backstory on WonderWoman. Plus they make good use of showing off their power. I am sure there will be some kind of backstory for Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and Batman in the other stories.

The comic is pretty straight forward with a few flashback scenes. The message is a wholesome one for the family. This is particularly inviting for me, being a dad of 4 girls from K-7th grade.

DC does a particularly great job with their marketing. On the back page is the tagline: “Enjoy Reading All 4 Comics Together As A Family!” It would be interesting to know if DC or General Mills came up with this slogan.

The comic book contains a 4-page cover and 24 pages of story. Then you can go on-line and get 4 bonus pages of content. You can find the 4 pages of the 4 part endings here: http://www.biggcerealheroes.com/

I think they missed an opportunity here. They should have a place where they could download the entire 30 page comic book PDF by capturing their email address. That would have been profitable. As it stands now, they just don’t quite know who they are reaching.

Here’s an article on the promotion at Comic Con by General Mills.

Justice League General Mills Comic Book Specs

Here is the specs of the book for those interested saving some costs on your comic.

Cover Size is 7 x 10″ folded in half
Bleed Cover Size would be 7.25 x 10.25
4-page 4c glossy cover
Individual page size 7 x 5
Bleed Size would be 7.25 x 5.25
Saddle-stitched with 2 staple
24-page 4c interior (feels like 50lb matte finish paper-correct me?)

The interior pages are trimmed an extra 1/8″ (.125) on the sides to make the cover stand out. I’ve never done this. They must do this so the inside pages don’t extend past the cover when folded. They’ve definitely done this at the printer stage and not in the layout because the outside panel borders are not even.

If you have any insight on the specs where I’ve gotten them wrong, please correct me. I’m really looking forward to the other issues. I’ll be watching General Mills closely to see what other comic tricks they’ve got up their sleeves in the weeks to come.

Justice League General Mills Cereal of the Future

It seems to me that instead of promoting DC, General Mills could promote themselves by having comics about healthy families reading at the breakfast table together, and pursuing the benefits of eating a healthy breakfast together as a family. Give some valuable information that would tell why General Mills solves a problem that most people have. Breakfast cereal is quick, healthy way to start your day. Spend this 5 minutes of family time together. Lots of positive messages you can market through the “adult cereal” training workouts in Wheaties, or Healthy Diet or Family Togetherness narrative art (comics) in Cheerios.

Instead of selling a lot of boxes over the next month of this promotion, it may actually sell more cereal in the long run over the year.

Actually, that’s exactly what I would do.

If Mark W. Addicks, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer from General Mills or Kendall J. Powell, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer is interested in letting me help you make a comic geared more toward your brand, and to continue decreasing your 884 million dollars spent on advertising dollars in 2011 while increasing effectiveness, I can help you with this. Email me. discipledeep@gmail.com

For the rest of you, go eat some General Mills cereal. Find your favorite. Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Honey Nut Cheerios, Lucky Charms, Trix, Golden Grahams, Reese’s Puffs, Cocoa Puffs.