Advertising moves people toward goods; merchandising moves goods toward people.
As soon as you go into merchandising, everyone nods sagely and says, 'Ah, now we know why you are doing it.'
Madonna remains the most visible performer on the planet, as well as one of the wealthiest, but would anyone seriously say that artistic self-development is her primary motivating principle? She is too busy with Kabbalah, fashion merchandising, adoption melodramas, the gym, and ill-starred horseback riding to study art.
The poetry and transgression that was so much of surrealism's anarchic force has been recruited into mainstream culture. It has been made commonplace by television and magazine merchandising, by computer games and Internet visuals, by film and MTV, by the fashion shoot.
I'm going to take over on the Techno Comics so I'm going to be dealing in the children's merchandising type department. But that's just setting it up and having somebody run it.
Relentless improvement of the product and upgrading of consumer tastes are the heart of mass merchandising.
I wanted control over the merchandising, the actual packaging of the product. That was a big factor. The only way for me to exercise control on all those levels was to start my own label.
If you have a business website, make it stickier; redo the merchandising often and try new things until you hit the right homepage... then try and beat that. The most important audience drivers on the Internet are paid search and key word optimization. Concentrate on those. They are very inexpensive compared to banner advertising.
Of course, neither David or myself ever saw a penny from them; it was the early days of merchandising.
I didn't make good money on 'Nightmare' until part three. I eventually got some nice merchandising checks.