Business development with Classic Monsters
Agenda has worked with businesses of all kinds over the years, and although we’ve found some business horror stories, we’ve always tried to turn them into happy endings. Our business development work with Classic Monsters, though, showed us that sometimes, it’s good to keep things horrible…
Classic Monsters set out with lofty ambitions to become the ultimate online horror resource. Wait a minute – can a website whose content comes crawling out of crypts have “lofty” ambitions? Shouldn’t they be dungeonnny ambitions, or perhaps even tomb-like tendencies? Either way, the Classic Monsters team wanted to make their website the best horror site out there, and recruited Agenda to get things running smoothly.
In such a saturated market, where every horror fan and his mad-scientist cousin has set up a fan website, it was essential that Classic Monsters got the basics right so as to stand out. Passion for the subject matter was present in spades – founder Nige Burton has been a horror buff since childhood – so we worked together to channel the team’s expertise in the right direction.
As well as the website itself, which collates information on all the horror movies, stars and crew members, from the earliest recorded horror flicks through to modern classics, we worked to develop the Classic Monsters product range and capitalise on the huge potential audience. A series of books is underway, with the first edition (devoted to Universal’s 1931 Dracula) available as a fully-designed PDF download, an eBook on the Amazon Kindle store, and a luxury hardback edition. By making products available in as many places as possible, Classic Monsters can reach the biggest cross-section of potential fans.
A broad social marketing campaign is also underway, with the site’s Facebook page boasting over 16,000 likes and its Twitter profile generating great interest. The team is also developing a high-end monster magazine, Classic Monsters of the Movies, which will be launching soon.
Said Nige of the project: “Working with Rachel at Agenda has helped us to keep our ideas in order, and has stopped us from running away with the excitement at bringing the Classic Monsters products to market. The sheer scale of the project has made careful planning and organisation a crucial part of the puzzle for us, and it’s been a great experience all round.”
Classic Monsters is a textbook example of a personal passion becoming a profitable way to earn a living, but this isn’t always an easy route, so be warned! All too often, we work with business owners who are too close to the subject matter of their work, and whose passion for their “pet project” can blind them to the business implications of the choices they make. Finding a job you love can make work so much more enjoyable, but you have to remain focused on that work being profitable – nobody wants to be the cliched starving artist.
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