2023 Cobra Mothership - Weekly Tracking Week 4

Last Friday, the Cobra Mothership was coming off of a terrible week in terms of the number of new backers.  Then, this week happened.  Here are the numbers:

11/04/23 - 1427 + 0
11/05/23 - 1427 + 0
11/06/23 - 1429 + 2
11/07/23 - 1429 + 0
11/08/23 - 1431 + 2
11/09/23 - 1431 + 0
11/10/23 - 1431 + 0

Ouch, again.  It's another rough, rough week for funding progress.  Not even a backer per day.  There's a month left in the funding window.  We're halfway through.  But, I don't think this is dead, yet.  Only 4 people backing this week is bad.  There are, though some things that could still be done to goose interest.  And I also think there's one big incentive that could lead to 2500 or more backers in the final 24-48 hours.

It's surprising me, though, that Super7 isn't doing much to promote this item.  While I get that $2,000,000 probably doesn't leave a huge budget for marketing, I do wonder why low cost and free options aren't being utilized.  Super7 could easily do a livestream in one of the large Joe Facebook groups where they show off all the features of the ship in close detail.  This would only cost a bit of time and get a large audience of potential customers.  The video could end up on Youtube for posterity.  None of the big social media G.I. Joe accounts have had anything to say about this ship.  And, even some of the big toy accounts on Twitter and Youtube that have 10's of thousands of followers have done nothing since the day this was announced.  I'd argue that the most recent Black Major figures have gotten more reach than the Mothership has.  That seems like a big failure to me.

The one reason while I'm still hopeful lies in the purchasing error that Super7 made.  If you back a Haslab, your credit card isn't charged until the project close date and then, it's charged only if the item funds.  With Super7, if you back it today, you pay today.  (Thanks to Josh Z for pointing this out.)  Then, if it doesn't fund, you get a refund.  This is a bad model.  I suppose it will cut down on declined charges on the day of funding.  But, that seems a small problem.  Especially when compared to forcing people to pay now for an item that may not even fund.  Because of this, though, I do expect we'll see a huge surge in final day backing.  And, that's why I'm still optimistic this funds...even with the numbers right now indicating (screaming, really!) otherwise.