“The Wagon Wheel”

Marvel’s other businesses prospered as the films gained popularity. Marvel’s success is described as “The Wagon Wheel”.

The hub of the wheel is the intellectual property: Marvel’scharacters, Marvel’sbrand. The spokes on the wheel are how Marvel monetizes the IP and the spokes can be media forms or consumerproduct categories. The rim of the wheel is the synergy between all of those spokes. When Marvel started, it only had two spokes. It had the comic book business, called print media, and the toy business.That’s a very wobbly wheel; two spokes don’t support a wheel very well and that reflects the bankruptcy that Marvel had gone through.When Marvel did X-Men 1, that added a third spoke on the wheel,motion pictures. And of course, motion pictures then led directly to licensing,and then it added video games, which is a very big category. When the motion picture came out Marvel went from two spokes to probably ten spokes and that’s the essence of what happened.Thenit could move into television.It is firmly believed that if people saw films they would buy toys for their kids, they would play video games, go to the amusementparks where Marvel’scharacters were, and all these experiences played into other experiences.The holy grail of entertainmentis owning and controlling own IP to maximize spokes on the wheel.” (Kim et al., 2016)