Comic Con trivia, cat personalities and beyond: Empowering customer engagement

New York Comic Con 2023: 200,000 attendees. Pax West 2023, an event for gamers: 120,000 attendees. These are huge events with deeply engaged audiences, right?

It hasn’t always been that simple, explained Derrick Weiss, senior brand marketing coordinator at ReedPop, the organization behind these mammoth events and many others around the world. “We have been looking for a way to engage fans more digitally,” he said. That was spurred partly by the pandemic, not just because of its impact on live events, but in subtle changes it provoked like a move away from printed programs. “It was a chance to try something new.”

Betting on Komo

“One thing our company does well is plan out really big bets,” said Weiss. “They don’t always work out, but when they do they can have a lot of potential. Komo was one of those big bets.” That’s Komo Technologies, an Australian activations platform geared to customer or fan engagement.

Which Komo features radiated potential? “There’s a Q&A feature,” said Weiss, “and a trivia feature. At Comic Con there are these big panels, like 7,000 people in a room; you get a chance to go up and ask celebrities questions, which is really cool for a lot of people.” Unfortunately, some fans don’t have their questions properly prepared. “Or they ask for a hug which is not appropriate for that time. One of the reasons we liked Komo was that fans could put their question in [the app]; everyone had a chance to look at the questions and upvote the questions most interesting to them.”

It was a more democratic process, Weiss said. “It’s a cool way to give everyone in the room a voice on which questions get asked rather than just the people who manage to run to the front first.”

At New York Comic Con last year, DoorDash, the online food ordering service, sponsored the trivia feature, deployed during the popular cosplay championship. “There’s a time when all the cosplay people are off the stage and the judges are deciding who’s going to win. What do you do with a few thousand people just sitting in a room. They’re all looking at their phones anyway. Give them a chance to participate in something on their phone; win some prizes. It’s also a big win for the sponsor because DoorDash’s logo was right at the top of the screen.”

The significance of the move away from printed programs and the ubiquity of event apps should now be apparent. Komo’s features can be selected from a library of content options and embedded in the branded event app — in other words, Komo is not providing the app, nor is their Komo branding on the features.

But it’s not just for events

Komo has been around for 10 years and boasts an impressive roster of clients including Disney, Toyota and KFC. We asked co-founder Joel Steel whether it’s an offering aimed at the enterprise and at really big events. The first thing he emphasized is that it’s not just for events.

“Our ideal customer profile,” he said, “is very much upper midmarket to enterprise brands. Our pricing model ranges from a $10k entry level option, a 12-month subscription (it’s all subscription-based SaaS), then it goes to $30k, $60k and $100k is the enterprise. Yes, a smaller brand could definitely utilize the platform.”

Steel also emphasized that, Comic Con aside, it’s not just for events. “We’re industry agnostic; events is probably only 15 or 20% of our revenue. Sports, media, broadcast, shopping centers, retail, hospitality, CPG brands — any brand that has consumers at the heart of everything they do.” Komo also isn’t just embedded in apps. It can stream live data, like polling, to a big screen.

We asked Steel to review some non-event use cases. “We were heavily focused on sports and live events pre-COVID, but COVID made us take a step back,” Steel explained. “Consumers in a shopping center, customers at home on the couch watching a broadcast, they’re all consumers, fans. Brands are trying to drive value for that end consumer so that they engage with that brand. The brands want to collect data in a non-intrusive value-adding way, enrich an understanding of the consumer’s preferences and thus provide a more personalized experience.”

Another thing it does is encourage user-generated content, for example, by inviting people to take branded selfies.

The content cards are highly customizable. “We have integrations with Canva, Unsplash, Pexels, Giphy so you can very quickly create a new card.” The cards can live anywhere, not just in apps. Embed codes are available to drop them into web content too.

It’s a path to creating brand advocates and ultimately to driving more revenue. It could also be described as an entertaining, gamified route to collecting zero-party data. The data can be directed back to CRM systems, or clients can use Komo’s own CRM which is built into the platform.

What kind of cat are you?

Has ReedPop looked at Komo features other than Q&A and trivia? “There’s a scratch-and-win card,” said Weiss. “It’s exactly like the scratch-and-win card that you get at the gas station. It gives you the same feeling when you’re scratching and you don’t know what you’re going to win. People have already bought tickets to the show; they’re coming; so the question is, what can we do next to surprise and delight them?” Every day they got a new scratch-and-win card. “They could win discounts at the merch store, they could win tickets to next year’s show, a free month’s membership to Popverse.”

For MCM Comic Con this year, ReedPop tried the personality test in which you choose what type of cat you are. “There’s a detective cat, there were like 10 or 15 different cats with biographies. Hopefully people would go to the merch store and buy some matching cat merch.” The feedback on these various features, delivered at the regular fan feedback panels ReedPop hosts after the show, has been increasingly positive.