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Thanks for the suggestions! >Just a few suggestions for PMX to improve next year. Mike, we have
>chatted about some of these ideas earlier at the con  >-- Labor Day weekend may not work as well as we all thought...most
>fans who go to PMX are living locally, not enough from Northern
>California (SF and SJ), simply because most of them already came down
>twice to AX and Comic Con during summer. Plus most fans already spent
>a lot of money and bought the stuffs they wanted. I wonder if the New
>Year is good or not, for example, having an overnight concert to
>celebrate New Year will be cool. Otherwise, may be March or April
>will work better during spring break, since fans will be very hungry
>for a con after a long drought. Looking at Wizard World LA, it hosts
>at March and the con is very successful, it got nearly 25000 people in
>its 2nd year. We're looking to shift the date back a little bit to get a little further from the summer cons. We want word to get out among the students and give everyone a little time to build up their wallets again. We are probably going to move back rather than forward. Jumping too much in the year is too chaotic. >-- Consider to make it 2 1/2 day from Friday night to Sunday night if
>it's still on labor day weekend. Opening and closing ceremonies are
>optional if PMX runs 2 1/2 day. That's the exact format we are looking to do. However, if we don't have an act that will knock your socks off on Friday night, we might just have all of you focus on a packed two days. >-- Focus and promote heavily on the major events and famous guests,
>such as movie premieres, concerts...etc. Getting the world exclusive
>trailers or footages will definitely be a big attraction, but then, I
>know this is hard to get due to the release timing. Moving away from the big cons makes this much easier. We're working on the new guests right now and hope to have the first wave locked up in March. >-- Start talking with music guests and their companies now, lock-in
>their schedules and confirm their appearances. Then starts the
>marketing campaign in about half a year before the con gradually, such
>as promotion and ads in colleges, newspapers, magazines, clubs,
>websites (ex: myspace, this site can be a strong promotional tool to
>attract more music lovers)...etc. The last 2 couple months before the
>con is essential with more heavier marketing. As always, the bigger the names, the harder it is to confirm schedules early. They make money off the big gigs. We're just like a vacation. >-- For anime/manga guests, focusing in character designer or manga
>artist is enough, the amount of attendances at the panels already
>showed their popularities. I think we will move away from the directors. What about voice actors though? And which ones? The ones from the US or Japan? >-- Invites anime seiyuu who can perform concert or singers/bands who
>have sang some anime theme songs, this is very important in order to
>attract more anime fans to the concerts. As I have seen, there's only
>a very small amount of anime fans going to the concerts this year. This is a good idea. Although I think the number of seiyu in this category is very small. >-- Combines the asian cinema and anime video rooms into one room, the
>anime video rooms are mostly empty this year anyway. I think the age of the anime room has passed. We're streamlining the video rooms to focus more on what is extremely hot. >-- Price adjustment for one-day pass may be necessary to attract more
>general fans to come for a few hours, I think $10 per day can attract
>a lot more general fans to come, but then, PMX may lose some revenues. We're shooting for $35 for a full pass and $20 for a one day. To bring people from Japan is just too expensive. Especially if we want bands. > At least, the dealers are happy to see more people coming to the
>dealer's room though. I'd like to increase the attendee to dealer ratio. We're probably going to freeze the hall at a slightly smaller size to make sure they do well. >-- Co-hosts a separate and smaller event with the other shows, just to
>get PMX name out there to more people. For example, works with
>Shrine's Comic & Sci-fi show to co-host a smaller version of PMX
>there, invites 1 or 2 guests, hosts a concert inside, or having anime
>and asian movie premieres. Although that show is not as popular as
>Frank & Son collectible show now in terms of buying stuffs, it can
>attract tons of people going if it invites certain guests or showing
>special stuffs. We've tried to partner with them even when we were still at AX. They didn't want to risk their attendees finding out about alternate shows, even if we were just once a year. We're developing our own brand of event and will be working with several venues to bring Pacific Media to other parts of the year. > I know some of these suggestions may not be good and useful, but I
>think PMX needs to change the convention format next year, running
>fully like an anime con doesn't seem to work well so far, simply
>because PMX focuses quite a lot on live-concerts. PMX has the
>potential to get very huge, once it finds the right formula, it will
>be very successful. I think it's a matter of finding the right formula and building the right audience. Remember, when AX was created, we had to create an anime market to go to it. I think PMX will struggle with this for a few years until music fans start coming out in force. In the meantime, I think that the anime/manga market will keep getting over-represented until the other markets. Mike
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