Purchasing A Step Outside Of Reality

We are about twenty years into a massive revival and growth of fantasy fiction because of films. Marvel Comics, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter - all of these are examples of media that existed first in print, and then exploded in popularity after successful film adaptations.

Star Wars became a Juggernaut from it’s first movie in 1977. They’re an interesting exception because the movie came first, and then came the books, the comics, the games, the television, the miniseries and innumerable other iterations.

What is it that these franchises are really selling?

It’s not books, it’s not tickets, it’s not comics or games or action figures. At the very core, what they’re selling is an experience. Consumers can step outside of their own reality and into another.

Fiction has always been a vehicle to temporarily escape reality. What’s different now is that fiction is jumping from medium to medium; it’s fleshing out an ongoing, continuous universe across all forms of consumable media. Customers of these franchises are purchasing the ability to mentally step out - again and again - into a reality outside their regular experience.

This is now so prevalent that we don’t even bat an eyebrow at it unless somebody starts talking about the opening field of VR technology. The manufactured realities already exist - VR is just a new way to access them.

There is an expression: "The Best Marketing Is A Strong Offer.” These franchises have been growing meteorically because they can offer a ‘better’ step outside of reality. One that is more exciting, more dramatic, and more entrancing than the previous installments. The product customers are consuming is one they often will consume over and over. In fact, the better the story, the more consumption, and the stronger the desire will be for the next installment.

These worlds are their own best marketing piece.

The fact that they are financially successful gives them more resources to grow out the manufactured reality. The manufactured reality becomes better at selling itself. It’s a positive feedback loop.

This process works just as well for ‘reality distortion’ as it does for manufactured reality. Tabloid magazines work like this. Celebrities are the most ‘real’ of the manufactured realities because they exist in the reality that most closely resembles our own.

We the consumer are simply willing to forget the level of curation of the stories, the photos, the media snippets, and the manufactured drama. When we recount the events of our own week, we tend not to recall the hour we spent on the couch reading a magazine. Amazingly, celebrities don’t seem to have hours that are boring to watch either.

Reality Distortion

The celebrity has teams of people to bring them to life. Much the same way Spiderman does. The better the experience of stepping outside of their own life the consumer gets, the bigger the celebrity becomes. The bigger they become, the better they can become at reality distortion.

Again, a positive feedback loop.

The ‘Step out of Reality’ industry is a growth-industry. With the movement towards more interactive media like VR and advanced AI, we can foresee the step out into alternate realities will become further, more frequent, and longer.