Originally founded in 1970, Comic Con was conceived and hosted by four “comic book geek” friends as a fun event to share their love of comic books (very specific subculture) with like-minded souls. Held at San Diego’s Grant Hotel, and attended by 100 comic book fans (which the organizers thought was a whopping figure at the time), those four founding friends considered the event to be a resounding success – if only they had a crystal ball that could have foretold the event’s very bright future…
Since those seminal days Comic Con has escalated by titanic proportion from a primarily local event to become the most important entertainment industry trade show. In 2012, Comic Con drew 130,000+ attendees hailing from across the globe, and raked in $168 million in revenue, with an estimated $180 million economic impact on the San Diego Metropolitan area.

Comic Con: Entertainment Industry and Pop Culture Barometer

More importantly, Comic Con has come to represent the Pop Culture Cannon, serving as the mainstream entertainment industry’s launching pad for film, TV, popular fiction, graphic novels and of course, comic books (a billion dollar industry unto itself nowadays). Suffice it to say: Comic Con holds the power to make or break entertainment projects and careers.
The success of…

• Superhero and comic book based movies (among the top grossing box office features in recent history, launching a myriad “franchise” film properties)
• Superhero and comic book based popular TV shows (spawning a litany of top rated, critically acclaimed programs)
• The emergence of graphic novels as a respected art form at the intersection of art and literature (with many titles becoming Bestseller, not to mention numerous movie and TV adaptations)
• Comic book’s contemporary status as an excepted main stream entertainment property (comic books are a big, big business)

All owe a debt to Comic Con and the groundwork laid by four friends in 1970 with their fledgling local convention for, of all things, comic book fans.

Forming a Tribe and Taking it Global

So how did this little convention that could, dedicated to a narrow sliver of “fandom” surrounding a subculture well outside the mainstream become a nearly $200 million dollar event that has come to define the mainstream entertainment industry?
In short: Comic Con’s success is a near perfect expression of marketing mastermind Seth Godin’s genius landmark book: Trides.
Godin’s marketing masterpiece, a must-read for all marketing pros and small business owners alike, examines how tapping into a small but ferociously dedicated niche can launch and sustain a successful, lucrative business. Profiling a fist full of organizations and leaders, Tribes isolates and illustrates the elements necessary to create and grow a successful “Tribe.”
And it just so happens Comic Con embodies the core components of Tribe-Building…
A shared interest – A love of comic books
A dedicated leader – Shel Dorf, Richard Alf, Ken Krueger and Mike Towry – four friends with a shared interest in comic book “fandom” invested time and their own money into the original Comic Con “just because” they love comics.
A way to communicate – Rabid collectors influenced local neighborhood comic book shops to network nationally (and sometimes internationally) with other comic book shops to satisfy their collecting passion. And in turn, news of Comic Con spread like a word-of-mouth virus through this network to the comic book fans across the country and eventually beyond US borders.
Acting locally, thinking globally – Originally dubbed the Golden State Comic Convention, the first couple of Comic Cons featured a handful of nationally known keynote guests, but most attendees were from San Diego or Southern California. Ten years later, thanks to better organization and planning, the number of speakers tripled and attendance ballooned to over 5,000, drawing attendees from across the country as well as outside the United States. Fast-forward to today’s 130,000+ attendees in what is truly an international event, now aptly titled: San Diego Comic Con International. Though the founders conceived Comic Con as a local event, they embraced its word-of-mouth fueled growth and paved the way for development into an internationally recognized media happening.

Crossing Over

Comic Con has taken the hard left turn from exclusive nichedom, toward what Godin’s Tribes describes as a rare “lightening in the bottle” moment when a niche (in the words of Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point) “tips,” swelling into a mainstream movement. Apple, Starbucks and some might say Barrack Obama ascendancy to the presidency are examples of dedicated niches that combusted like wild fire, raging far beyond the bounds of their original core followers.

Comic Con, Tribes and Small Business Marketing

So how, you’re rightfully asking yourself, can Comic Con’s meteoric success and the principles of Seth Godin’s Tribes help you with your small business efforts?
Well, here are some ideas you could try…

• Positioning your business at the center of your customers shared interest in a distinct, devoted niche
• Taking up the charge as dedicated leader and rallying your customers around the niche that defines your biz
• Staying in touch with and keeping customers informed with any and all appropriate means at your disposal (your business website, blog, social media pages, email and good ole direct mail ranking among the most effective methods)
• Maintaining local-level direct connections, while keep an open mind toward (or even actively pursuing) reaching beyond those boundaries

Obviously there’s no way to definitively describe how this might look for your business, but it worked for Comic Con and countless others profiled in Seth Godin’s Tribes, so the odds are it could work for your business, too!

What About You?

In your business, are you the leader of a Tribe with dedicated followers in district niche? If not, what would your business look like if you were?
Talkback: we’d love to hear all about!