Article by Ridhwaan Patel, Marketing Lecturer at AAA School of Advertising
Comic Con brings together exactly what marketers spend enormous amounts of time trying to curate: attention, passion, participation and community. What events like this get right globally is harnessing the power of participatory communities that create an environment for fan communities to step into a world they care about, express who they are and connect with others who share their interests. These communities do more than just consume the media around them; they are active participants and in turn they become co-creators of content. For marketers, that should be the part worth paying attention to.
Consumers are constantly being asked to watch, click, buy and engage. Simply capturing their attention is no longer enough. The harder task is giving them a reason to stay involved and, more importantly, to feel that they are part of something.
Research supports this shift. A recent Eventbrite study revealed that 95% of the 18-to-35-year-olds surveyed are interested in exploring their online interests through in-person events, and 84% of attendees at interest-based events have formed close friendships through them.
This is particularly relevant in South Africa and across Africa, where global culture is constantly being interpreted through local humour, language, fashion, music and identity. Audiences do not simply consume culture as it is presented to them. They adapt it, remix it and make it their own.
For brands, this changes the starting point for community building. Rather than asking, “How do we get people to engage with our brand?”, the more useful question is, “How can we give people a reason to engage with each other?”
Comic Con answers this through participation. Cosplay, gaming, panels, competitions, creator interactions and fan content all enable attendees to co-create the experience. The event provides the platform, but the audience brings the energy.
This principle can be applied well beyond pop culture. A sports brand can create spaces for amateur athletes to share progress and advice. A financial services brand can build communities around financial education. A technology brand can give users the opportunity to test-drive the tech in real-life situations.
In each case, the brand becomes a facilitator of something people already care about.
This also explains why authenticity is so important. Marketers cannot manufacture belonging simply by adopting the language or visual codes of a culture. They need to understand the people within it, the behaviours that define it and the value they derive from participating.
The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer found that 78% of respondents said a brand which authentically reflects today’s culture is more effective at increasing their trust than one that focuses solely on its products.
For marketers, authenticity therefore has a practical implication. Cultural relevance needs to inform the experience itself, rather than becoming another layer of campaign messaging. A partnership with a community should give its members something enjoyable or meaningful. If the only obvious beneficiary is the brand, the relationship is unlikely to feel genuine.
There is also a lesson in what happens after Comic Con. The event generates photographs, videos, conversations, recommendations and anticipation. The physical experience feeds digital engagement, which in turn helps build momentum for what comes next.
Community is not an activation that can be switched on for a weekend and then abandoned. It requires ongoing reasons to participate.
This also requires marketers to relinquish some control. The strongest communities develop their own language, rituals, creators and conversations. Brands can influence these spaces, but they cannot completely script them. Trying to do so can make an experience feel manufactured, while giving people room to contribute can make it feel alive.
For those entering the advertising and marketing industry, this demands a different kind of creative thinking. It is no longer enough to understand how to develop a campaign or communicate a brand message. Emerging practitioners need to understand culture, communities and human behaviour, and be equipped to design experiences that invite participation rather than simply broadcast to an audience. This is increasingly important in how we prepare the next generation of creative and brand communicators at institutions such as the AAA School of Advertising.
The opportunity is to move beyond designing campaigns that consumers merely see and start designing experiences that they can enter, shape and share. When brands create these opportunities around something consumers genuinely value, attention can become participation, and participation can become belonging. This is a far more meaningful role for marketing than simply competing for attention.
