Wizard World Goes Social, Gives Fans a Big Kiss. With its recent management dramas now receding in the rearview mirror, Wizard World is taking the wraps off its new show strategy with the announcement of SocialCon™, a new trademarked brand and operating unit to create real-world events around social media celebrities.
Wizard World says the conventions will feature meet-and-greets, live performances, Q&A panels, autographs, photo ops “and more” with many of today’s most-followed social media influencers.
The first SocialCon of 2017 will be held on February 17-18, in conjunction with Wizard World Comic Con Portland at the Oregon Convention Center. Additional SocialCons are scheduled for Cleveland (March 17-19), St. Louis (April 7-9), Philadelphia (June 1-4), Sacramento (June 16-18), Orlando (August 11-13), Chicago (August 24-27), Nashville (Sept. 8-10) and Austin (Nov. 17-19), with smaller Pop-Up SocialCons in various other Wizard World markets.
SocialCon will run as a distinct event in each city with separate admission, programming and show floor, according to Wizard World.
SocialCon will be led by Mike Abrams, founder and CEO of KLiK events, a producer of social media tours and events, who has joined Wizard World as Senior Vice President of Social Media programming. Abrams will be overseeing all of Wizard World’s new social media influencer initiatives.
“This is a natural business extension for Wizard World which will expand its footprint into this vibrant culturally-current and lucrative market segment,” said John D. Maatta, Wizard World President & CEO. “By owning this brand and trademark and working with someone of Mike Abrams’ skill and experience in this area, Wizard World is well positioned to dominate this space.”
The logic behind Wizard World’s strategy is fairly transparent. Online personalities on YouTube, Instagram, musical.ly, Snapchat, Twitter and other platforms are ambitious mostly young entrepreneurs eager to monetize their Internet-fame with Millennials and Gen Z. Wizard World sees growth in the younger demographic that comes to fan conventions with a very different agenda than traditional collectors and old-school nerds. So, Step 1: launch a series of events that combine fan-con goodness with online-celeb hotness. Step 2: ? Step 3: Profit!
In other news, Wizard World also announced that Gene Simmons of KISS will perform club shows and appear at Wizard World events in Cleveland, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Austin. That’s sure to pack them in.
ReedPop Makes with the Makers. Reed Exhibitions also recently announced an effort to formally encompass the nerd-adjacent subculture of Makers into the expanding tent of fan cons by collocating Maker Faire, “a family-friendly festival of innovation, creativity and resourcefulness” with Reed’s well-established C2E2 comics and fan convention April 22-23 at Chicago’s McCormick Place.
Maker Faire is a well-established event for the Maker community, with 192 events in 38 countries worldwide under their belt. The flagship events in San Francisco and New York have brought in nearly 100,000 attendees in recent years, according to the organizers, Maker Media. Interestingly, while C2E2 is run by Reed’s fan-con unit ReedPop, the Maker Faire, mounted in partnership with Make:, is listed under the larger Reed Exhibitions brand, which runs trade shows.
"Reed Exhibitions is excited to partner with Make: to launch a flagship Maker Faire alongside C2E2," said Nancy Walsh, President, Reed Exhibitions North America. "Make: is a respected brand and a leader in the Maker Movement and we believe that this launch will open up many opportunities for the future growth of both events, continuing to bring a one of a kind event weekend to the city of Chicago.
As with Wizard World’s SocialCon, this seems like a natural and organic way to expand fan culture beyond the cosplay and collectors segment. ReedPop shows already feature an exhibit floor heavy on crafty, artisanal merchandise. There are obvious points of intersection between Makers and nerd subcultures like Steampunk, and a genuinely lucrative – if niche – application of Maker-driven 3D printing technology in the creation of custom gaming pieces and collectible figurines. Whether the combination will work together in practice as well as it seems to in theory remains to be seen.
Fan Culture Inside Out. Expect more of this kind of mix-and-match experimentation as events companies try to combine formulas that are successful in one market segment, like fan conventions, with others that attract different audiences, such as food and wine, music festivals, esports, automotive shows and so on.
Next week I’ll be on a panel at InTix in New Orleans, a trade show for the events industry, talking about exactly this issue. This market has been too hot for too long for companies to resist making these kinds of bets. We’ll see whether that gives birth to a new kind of event that extends the boundaries of fandom and expands the audience, or results in shows that try to do too much for too many and misapply the lessons of success.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Rob Salkowitz (@robsalk) is the author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture.
