I know. Comic-Con was over a month ago, and it’s hardly “news” anymore. But sometimes things just stick with you and you need to write them down to clarify what you experienced. July 22, 2010 will be a date that goes down in infamy as the first San Diego Comic Con that I attended. I went in with the idea of looking at how different businesses market themselves at a convention of this caliber. I thought that Comic-Con would be similar to the other conventions I attended. Boy, was I wrong.

Intense marketing and advertising campaigns were evident before you even through the gates of the convention, and once inside, the onslaught continued. Each attendee was given a reusable tote bag, which they would presumably use to carry all of their treasures that they would find at the various booths and tables. The bags were branded with characters and images from various television shows and comics, including The Big Bang Theory, Chuck, Doctor Who and even Scooby Doo. And if you are envisioning a small, grocery-sized hand bag, wrong. These were full size, monster bags that measured nearly two feet wide and almost 30 inches tall. These were the greatest walking billboards ever. The number of times that the bags would be seen and have the chance to make an impression on each attendee must have been in the tens of thousands. All those marketing impressions came at the cost of a jumbo-sized bag.

Some of the larger vendors like DC Comics and Marvel Comics looked like they had entire movie sets built just to market their products at conventions like this one. These were full scale visual assaults that drew the attendees into the company’s booth, gave them things to look at, and invited guests to watch as long as they wanted to stay there.

DC and Marvel were not the only two companies that stood out with huge displays. Some of the more memorable ones were from Tron Legacy, EA, Activision, WB, Intel, G4, Sony Online, Ubisoft, Ugly Doll, and CBS. It really was a case of sensory overload most of the time. It took two complete walk-through passes of the convention floor before I really got a hold of what was really included. Pepper in some giant Iron Man costumes, add a pinch of advertisements for  Showtime programming on the sides of the shuttle buses that ran to and from the convention center, and top it off with some Lego statues, and you’ve got marketing and branding everywhere.

And the convention was not simply branding other companies. Branding for the convention itself was on the other side of the big bags each person received upon entering, and the San Diego Comic-Con logo was on nearly all the walls, as well as on the backdrop for the stages in every presentation hall and meeting room. If you didn’t know what the San Diego Comic-Con logo looked like before you got to the convention, you sure did afterward. (Some people even claimed to have the image seared into their vision because it was the last thing they saw before they fell asleep at night.)

Overall, not only was this convention a haven for all things comic- and pop culture-related, but it was also a strong showing for the power of targeted marketing. There was no life insurance marketing at the convention, nobody was wondering what new shoes Under Armor is putting out, or even what the horsepower of the new Mustang is going to be. All the attendees cared about is being immersed in the culture of movies, comics, television, and fantasy, and savvy marketers and advertisers knew this and exploited it. Though I felt like there was marketing overload at the convention, the companies there knew that they had to appeal to that specific market and they gave the crowds just what they wanted.