Expanding the Marvel universe to welcome the next generation of viewers is worth the investment
The latest Marvel Studios offering, Ms. Marvel, is getting some headlines, but it’s not for how wonderful and original the series is. Ms. Marvel is currently rated at 96% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, but its ratings so far are not so fresh. Ms. Marvel is currently the lowest ranked MCU Disney+ series according to Samba TV. In the first five days, Ms. Marvel reached 775K US households. But on the very bright side, Ms. Marvel has reached the highest number of youths ages 20-24 and a higher rate of viewers from Black, Hispanic, and Asian households.
Ms. Marvel is targeted to a niche but growing audience
For anyone who went to business school and worked in business like myself, you know when you’re compiling an analytics report, you can’t compare different things to each other. You can’t compare organic campaigns to paid campaigns. And you definitely can’t compare seasonal or tent pole events to always on ones. If you’re doing a topline summary of overall results, fine. But if you’re looking for real insights, you’re going to have to look at other metric points. Ms. Marvel cannot be fairly grouped together with shows like Moon Knight, Loki, WandaVision, Hawkeye, and so on. Ms. Marvel’s real value rests in other metrics like younger viewers (check) and ethnically diverse viewers (check).
Business school 101: the target audience for Ms. Marvel is deliberately different from the other MCU shows. It’s so evident that Ms. Marvel is gunning for the next generation of MCU viewers. The colorful and cutesy lens from which we experience Ms. Marvel’s universe is customized for the bottom half of the Gen Z age range. The texts are animated with GIPHY sticker-like graphics in the character’s surroundings, and it’s a huge sign that this show is definitely for the kiddies. I mean, we’re introduced to Kamala Khan as she’s totally failing her driver’s test. And she still has to ask her mom and dad permission to go to a fan event.
Ms. Marvel is turning up the authenticity angle preferred by Gen Z
And on top of the whole youth demographic pandering, Ms. Marvel is doubling and tripling down by focusing on a Muslim-Pakistani family in New Jersey. And they’re not a “religious-light” depiction like we sometimes see with characters who happen to be something other than Christian. We go all the way by following characters to their mosque and to an Eid festival. And more than one character wears a headscarf.
And OMG, the characters have names that are actually what people who are born and raised as Muslim-Pakistani would be named. There are no Westernized nicknames like “Sunny” or “Nikki”. No, their names are Kamala, Aamir, Yasmeen, Kamran, and so on. For anyone who has friends with non-English names, the scene where the teacher mispronounced Kamala’s name was so #%!% real. And this type of bullshit happens regularly especially in the corporate office.
All of these things may appear like barriers to reaching an audience, but not to the audience it’s targeted to. Ms. Marvel is an authentic representation of a typical teen who happens to be a first generation American. She lives and breathes two worlds, or in this case, three worlds simultaneously. This show is not targeted to the typical white boy/fan boy/middle America superhero show fan. This show is for the next generation of superhero fans who gravitated to Black Panther and Shang-Chi. These viewers see nothing strange about seeing a Brown family. These viewers are like this family, have friends like this family, and live lives like this family lives. This show is definitely and defiantly for an audience other than the one that advertisers are always knowingly or subconsciously trying to sell to. So no, it’s not a surprise that the ratings analysis found an uptick in viewers other than the white household.
Ms. Marvel is gunning for the next generation of viewers and consumers
Similar to art house films or indie films that producers know will not be raking in the big super hero/franchise movie dollars, I’m certain the producers of Ms. Marvel knew going in that it would probably not rank as high as the more mainstream offerings like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Moon Knight. I’m more certain that the producers are looking for Ms. Marvel to be the first case study to expand the viewership universe of the new minority-majority of Gen Z.
Gen Z is currently the most racially and ethnically diverse generation. But more importantly for brands and advertisers, their spending power will surpass that of Millennials as soon as 2026. And as this study from Bank of America shows, 9 out of 10 Gen z-ers live in emerging markets with a fifth of this generation living in India. India is not Pakistan, but the combined economic force of the overall Asian and South Asian population is undeniable.
When I performed video trending analysis on social media platforms, almost always the top performing videos were non-English language and from Asian countries. I would have to set the filters to English and the regions for US and Canada in order to find what was trending closer to home. But there is a reason why the BTS Army exists. There is a reason why Bollywood does just fine without Hollywood. There is a reason why companies like Facebook or Meta see dollar signs in Asian countries like India and Indonesia. This graph of the total Facebook users shows that many of the top countries are in the Asian sphere with India being at #1.
Having worked so long in business and within the digital and media advertising realm, it’s all about finding the next generation of consumers. Gen Z has overtaken the Millennials as the largest generational cohort, and now is the time for businesses and brands to pull them into the buyer’s cycle. Ms. Marvel is an investment in this new minority-majority demographic.
So okay, Ms. Marvel’s ratings were the “lowest” so far for a MCU Disney+ series, but Ms. Marvel will not be the last of its kind. Before it’s about diversity and inclusion, it’s all about the bottom line. And the consumer trends are showing that this Gen Z generation which will experience a fivefold increase in its income in 2030 to $33 trillion. This ethnically diverse and socially conscious generation will also possess a quarter of the global income and they will want to consume shows that reflect THEM.
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