Citizen Marketers Converge on Comic-Con, Driving Viral Buzz for Chuck, Reaper, Pushing Daisies and Other New Shows

		TODAY'S COMMENTARY by Ed Martin Wednesday, August 1st 2007 Citizen Marketers Converge on Comic-Con, Driving Viral Buzz for Chuck, Reaper, Pushing Daisies and Other New Shows Also check out: Magazine Industry to Redefine Sales Strategies at JackMyers.com. Will Internet-Enabled Fans Replace Entertainment Journalists and Critics? By Ed Martin Ed@Mediavillage.com The power of this new breed of citizen marketers is only going to grow, especially in the entertainment arena. Will Internet-enabled fanboys and fangirls replace entertainment journalists and critics as the conduit of choice for movie and television studios and broadcast and cable networks? It wasn’t all that difficult to come to that conclusion while wandering the aisles and hallways of the massive convention center in San Diego last weekend during Comic-Con. This convention, which began as a modest gathering of comic book fans, writers and artists, has been all but consumed by Hollywood. While there has been some grumbling among comic book fans who feel somewhat eclipsed by the many studios and networks that have descended on their cherished territory, it was my impression that the nerds, geeks and genre-enthusiasts that filled the streets of San Diego were having a grand time being catered to by movie and television giants. During the short walk from my hotel to the convention center on Saturday morning I had t-shirts and posters for the upcoming NBC series Chuck, postcards for the new CW thriller Reaper and bumper-stickers for Showtime’s Dexter thrust at me from every direction. (A plane crisscrossed the city’s airspace all day Friday and Saturday trailing a banner with the same message that was on the stickers: I Love Dexter.) It seemed that everyone around me was carrying something on behalf of one of these shows, or one of the giant Smallville tote bags that were handed out inside the convention center at the Warner Bros. booth. The number of impressions made by such stuff, inside and outside the convention center, was impossible to calculate. So is their collective value. After a couple of hours spent working my way through thousands of comic, movie and television fans to gaze at the millions of products being sold in hundreds of vendor tables, with stops at the very crowded studio and network booths where casts from a number of television shows were autographing all kinds of things for all kinds of fans (many of them in costumes), I wandered upstairs with a friend and sat in one of the hallways near the enormous rooms where programming presentations and panels were offered to thousands of fans, hour after hour, day after day. We happened to be sitting in the hallways where a huge line was forming for an upcoming script read by the cast of Family Guy. (Not every presentation was centered on a science-fiction property. Animated shows such as Family Guy and Futurama were also part of this event.) As we sat and watched the formation of this massive line it became clear that everyone in it was absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to stand around for an hour simply to be in the same room as the voice actors from Family Guy. Surely, they couldn’t wait to whip out their cell phones or get home to their computers and share their joy. I had this same feeling sitting in cavernous rooms with thousands of rabid fans during panels featuring the stars of Sci Fi Channel’s Eureka and Battlestar Galactica. They were there, in part, to let the world know they were there. Ask yourself, even if only one half of these people e-mailed or text-messaged their friends or updated their MySpace or Facebook pages with stories, photos and videos of what they heard or saw in Comic-Con panels, not to mention on the convention floor, how many favorable impressions would be delivered directly to the very people that the networks and studios want to reach? At a minimum the number has to be in the tens of millions. This is a level of super-charged viral marketing that could not even be imagined just a few years ago, and the networks and studios take total advantage of it at Comic-Con in a way that thrills their desired consumers. Where does the new reality of such digitally driven viral marketing leave “traditional” entertainment journalists, whose reach rarely exceeds the circulation of their newspaper or magazine? How can they compete against the combined impact of tens of thousands of eager, digitally empowered fans, their excitement masterfully stoked by networks and studios? An interesting observation: Network, studio and personal publicists now attend Comic-Con to manage their clients’ interaction with the press. (I’m told there were approximately 1400 credentialed journalists on site.) But those same publicity folks carry no weight whatsoever with the masses of “ordinary” people who are responsible for the bulk of the buzz emanating from the Con online, on phones and elsewhere. The fanboys and fangirls would just as soon trample a testy publicist than miss an opportunity to get within twenty feet of Jensen Ackles, Justin Hartley or Tricia Helfer and let all of their MySpace friends know what they are like in person. The power of this new breed of citizen marketers is only going to grow, especially in the entertainment arena. There are other comic book and fantasy conventions during the year, including the fast-growing New York City Comic-Con, which will mark its third birthday in February, and any one of them could explode as another massive marketing resource. All I know is, San Diego is the mother of them all and will likely stay that way, given its close proximity to Hollywood and the ease with which producers and actors can drop in to promote their properties and feel the love. Click To Sound Off If you would prefer not to receive future messages, please click here to unsubscribe.
		This message, including any attachments, may include privileged, confidential and or inside information. Any distribution or use of this communication by anyone other than the intended recipient(s) is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender by replying to this message and then delete it from your system. Myers Publishing LLC, its affiliate companies and employees accept no responsibility for actions taken as a result of this report.