Leirum Rivas from Dieste: Brands Can Embrace Comic Con Playfulness to Generate Engagement

Leirum Rivas, Copywriter and Emiro Echenagucia, Senior Art Director, both from Dieste, visited the New York Comic Con 2016 to see how brands take advantage of events like this, that draw the attention of hundreds of thousand fans dressed as their favorite Comic, TV series or movie characters. “If brands want to ‘talk’ to their audience they must be willing to have fun. It’s good to embrace that playfulness (in Comic Cons) to generate engagement” they wrote in Provoke Weekly. Rivas and Echenagucia referred to the best practices they witnessed at the event. For instance, Geico took advantage of their character the Gecko, and developed different activations to grab the attention: 3D photo booths, karaoke, pinball, giveaways, and the chance to sing with the Gecko. “They kept people entertained for hours without forcing their sales pitch” they said. AT&T and Canon were also at the Comic Con advertising. The phone company offered a service of phone lockers and battery charging, and also they partnered with Samsung to have VR experiences at their stand. While Canon promoted its’ EOS Rebel T6i model taking epic pictures of the attendees dressed up. For Rivas and Echenagucia, these types of events provide a great opportunity to reach passionate and engaged fans that are primed to become ‘brand fans’. Both made some recommendations: Be useful or/and entertaining; take advantage of the theme and look for ways to become a ‘fan’; bring some experiential activity: VR, movie previews, engaging content-creating devices, anything unexpected; and let fans be part of a story. “Self-expression is the ultimate rule in these events!” they concluded.