San Diego Comic-Con: lessons in marketing

Even if you’re not a nerd, you’ve probably heard of San Diego Comic-Con. If you can recall seeing a puzzling July newscast that featured costumed adults, you’ve definitely seen some footage.

Comic-Con used to be about comic books – and it still is, nominally. But in the last decade, it’s boomed from a nerdy convention for comic book readers and gamers to the biggest pop culture expo in the world. Hollywood is king, and studios roll out their flashiest, loudest attractions to dazzle the crowds. It’s such intense sensory overload, in fact, that most of us attendees go into a half-dazed, half-excited trance where we’re highly suggestible.

Knowing this, vendors from movie studios to indie artists to t-shirt stands roll out their best tactics to sell to us. In a sense, the whole show is a fast-track seminar on marketing. To witness:

Promote benefits, not features. Sorry to lead with a cliché, but vendor booths live and die by their grasp of this one. I had one video game guy describe a very boring list of technical features that sounded like “jargon jargon jargon” to me, but another described the parts of his game as I would enjoy it – the cool effects, the characters, the prizes. He made it appetizing; he sold it.

Be viral. Not that The Walking Dead needs more publicity, but they really understand how to promote. While other television shows were offering forgettable trinkets, the Walking Dead set up a classic scene from the show as a photo op tableau: a lead character and her two pet zombies. Of course everyone wanted their photo taken in it, whereupon they posted it to Facebook and emailed it to all of their friends. The word of mouth went way farther than a bookmark or keychain.

Be immersive. This is where Comic-Con excels. Your hotel room key is an ad for a TV show, the elevator doors are decorated with scenes from your favorite movies, and the Hard Rock Café becomes the Syfy Channel café, with dishes based on hit shows. Rather than the marketing being pushed at you, you’re pulled into it. And because it’s fun, there’s less resistance.

Respect your audience. In what’s become an annual tradition, a comic book artist selling me his work has asked condescendingly: “Is this for your boyfriend?” Assuming that women don’t read comic books is not a good way to win readers. Insulting your audience is not a good way to win anything. But the artists who’ve chatted me up or taken a minute to suggest another book I might like, always make a new fan.

Provide value. There is a ton of promotional swag at Comic-Con. The shiny but useless postcards get dumped in the nearest wastebasket, while the more practical gifts, like tiny flashlights or containers of hand sanitizer, are highly coveted and long remembered.

Hire a professional writer. No, really! I picked up a promising comic book by a young artist who had shelled out cash for a slick production team but apparently didn’t think an editor or a writer was important. The book was not only riddled with errors, but the writing was so wooden and full of plot holes that I ended up donating the issue to the freebie table.

It’s easy to see San Diego Comic-Con as a four-day festival of geeks in costume, but in the end it’s very much a business. It’s also a fascinating case study in who grasps the new rules of marketing and who doesn’t – and an example of how throwing money at a marketing campaign isn’t a solution unto itself.