What marketers can learn from Comic-Con

San Diego’s Com­ic-Con Inter­na­tion­al is the moth­er of all con­ven­tions. Fan­girls, com­ic nerds, cos­play­ers in char­ac­ter cos­tumes and the world’s press assem­ble each year for a cel­e­bra­tion of every­thing and any­thing in the fan­ta­sy world. It’s always a smash-hit sell-out. Twit­ter goes crazy. Game of Thrones stars trig­ger hys­te­ria. And the hype and adren­a­line will prompt oth­er busi­ness events hosts to rumi­nate… “Why can’t my event be like that? With queues snaking round block, the only com­plaints are why it takes so long to get into the pan­el dis­cus­sion.”

1. Parade your stars

Com­ic-Con is all about the glit­terati. The big guns. At Com­ic-Con 2016 the cast of the Sui­cide Squad movie held a full pan­el show. We had Mar­got Rob­bie, Will Smith, Oscar win­ner Jared Leto and Cara Delev­ingne strid­ing on stage to rock music. Neu­ro­mancer author William Gib­son was strolling round Com­ic-Con to talk about screen­plays. The Star Trek boys includ­ing Cap­tain Kirk and Com­man­der Data were there, of course. The orig­i­nal cast of Alien turned up, plus a hun­dred more heroes of the com­ic book world. Big names are a big rea­son the pub­lic show up to events. Com­ic-Con is celeb over­load.

2. Go hardcore

No one wants to be bored. And let’s face it, too many busi­ness events are tedious. The rea­sons are many – the pac­ing, the delays – but a major cul­prit is a refusal to tack­le big issues. No such fears at Com­ic-Con. Last year film-mak­er Oliv­er Stone took on all-com­ers to answer ques­tions about his docu-dra­ma Snow­den, por­tray­ing the whistle­blow­er who exposed the Unit­ed States’ pro­gramme of mass sur­veil­lance. The lead actors Joseph Gor­don-Levitt, Shai­lene Wood­ley and Zachary Quin­to engaged in a deep dis­cus­sion with Stone about the bal­ance between secu­ri­ty and an intru­sive and secre­tive state for almost an hour. Rolling Stone mag­a­zine called the dis­cus­sion, “one of the more thought­ful we’ve ever seen here, delv­ing into the very issues that the divi­sive figure’s actions con­tin­ue to draw atten­tion to”. Cut cor­po­rate flim-flam and go deep into trou­bling issues to keep peo­ple gripped.

3. Give exclusives 

Last year’s Com­ic-Con blew audi­ences away with a string of first show­ings. The Won­der Woman trail­er star­ring Gal Gadot was giv­en its pre­mier. Bene­dict Cumberbatch’s sci-fi thriller Dr Strange also gave its first trail­er to Com­ic-Con. Exclu­siv­i­ty mat­ters. Great busi­ness-to-busi­ness events know this and use it to ratch­et up a sense of expec­ta­tion. Sam­sung uses the Mobile World Con­gress to launch its new flag­ship smart­phones. This year’s fail­ure to launch a mod­el was so aber­rant it led the head­lines.

4. Rock the party

No one admits it, but con­fer­ences are a great way to let off steam. The Com­ic-Con set get this 100 per cent. The stu­dios go all-out to top each oth­er. The Inter­na­tion­al Movie Data­base host­ed a yacht par­ty with leg­endary Mall­rats direc­tor Kevin Smith. MTV and Fox held their own glam dos. The met­al band Slay­er played the House of Blues. The Nerdist par­ty had Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er cre­ator Joss Whe­don. Best of all were maybe the cos­play get-togeth­ers such as the Final Fan­ta­sy Gath­er­ing. Can busi­ness­es do any­thing sim­i­lar? Of course. Salesforce’s leg­endary Dream­force con­fer­ence in 2016 hired U2 to head­line its Dream­fest char­i­ty music con­cert. It includ­ed a cock­tail recep­tion and an after-par­ty with MC Ham­mer and will.i.am.

5. Use tech

There’s a lot going on dur­ing Com­ic-Con, so fans nav­i­gate the are­nas using a well-designed smart­phone app. It lists spe­cial guests, pro­vides a map and event details, and works across devices. Plus Com­ic-Con live stream events. Today an app is a com­pul­so­ry ele­ment of any event. It’s not hard to do. Oth­er tech is vital. Google IO con­fer­ence live streams to 530 loca­tions in more than 100 coun­tries. Chief exec­u­tive Sun­dar Pichai reck­ons a mil­lion peo­ple in Chi­na watched his keynote pre­sen­ta­tion in 2016.

6. Mix it up

Do not, repeat do not, attempt to host an event where every sched­uled moment uses the same tem­plate. Com­ic-Con sets the bar high by host­ing umpteen eccen­tric one-offs. Bored with pan­els? Try the X‑Men: Tomb of the Apoc­a­lypse Chal­lenge Room. Enter a vault and solve puz­zles to escape. At the end you unlock Apocalypse’s cof­fin and pull a key from his dead fin­gers. Not into it? How about Dr Who’s Tardis?  Or a Star Wars cos­play flash mob? As Alfred Hitch­cock said, an audi­ence would rather be baf­fled than bored.

7. What not to do 

Get­ting into pan­el dis­cus­sions at Com­ic-Con is a bit of night­mare. It’s not uncom­mon to wait in line for an hour. Get your staffing lev­els right and use a tick­et­ing pol­i­cy for pop­u­lar events or you’ll annoy your del­e­gates. Time and time again trade shows get this wrong.