Friday, April 19, 2013

Holding Company Creates "Lotta Value" Comic Book



Loews, an investment holding company, had a problem: boring reports.

Chief Executive Officer Jim Tisch had a solution: a comic book.


Noah Buhayar, for Bloomberg Business Week, writes about Loews' new comic book, "Lotta Value Investment Hunter." It's just been rolled out on April 11th.

One reaction:

Mark Rothwell, an individual investor who looks for stocks he thinks are undervalued for his personal portfolio, may be the kind of person Loews is targeting with the comic. “I’m just sick of reading annual reports,” he says. “You don’t understand what they’re trying to say, or what they’re obscuring.” He thought Lotta was a good refresher on Loews, a stock he once owned but doesn’t now, and says the comic makes him want to trust Tisch’s company more.

How is "Lotta Value Investment Hunter" as art? Art Spiegelman responds:

“You’re really working with a medium that’s as dumb as some people think it is, or really brilliant. But really brilliant requires a real understanding, and this doesn’t display that.” The Loews comic “just looks dead. And the content is about as interesting as reading the ingredients on a processed food label.”

Mary Skafidas, VP for investor and media relations at Loews, says "the company didn’t aspire to produce work at Spiegelman’s level."

The entire story is here.

Lowes site with PDF of comic is here.

Lowes made a full cast recording (with music and effects) of the "Lotta Value Investment Hunter" comic book:





3 comments:

tcg said...

This is beyond lame. The term "co-opt", as in co-opting a daring medium to serve the purposes of pushing readers to invest in an uber-establishment conglomerate, doesn't even apply. This pathetic comic should hearten the Occupy folks, since it displays the tinniest of tin ears on the part of the 1% for what it means to be "cool." Spiegelman was being excessively kind!
Ha-ha, as Nelson might say.

tcg said...

This is beyond lame. The term "co-opt", as in co-opting a daring medium to serve the purposes of pushing readers to invest in an uber-establishment conglomerate, doesn't even apply. This pathetic comic should hearten the Occupy folks, since it displays the tinniest of tin ears on the part of the 1% for what it means to be "cool." Spiegelman was being excessively kind!
Ha-ha, as Nelson might say.

tcg said...

Sorry for double post. Lotte, can you help me?