From Terminus to TV Guide to "Sharknado 2": Comic-Con Remains the Ultimate Marketing Blitz - Ed Martin

San Diego, CA -- T-E-R-M-I-N-U-S. More than any of the many marketing spectacles during the last four days at the 2014 San Diego Comic-Con, it was the sight of those eight letters plastered near the top of a building (The Hilton Gaslamp Hotel) that stopped me in my tracks. Anyone who watches AMC's The Walking Dead would have felt the same way.

Terminus is the mysterious compound filled with cannibals that the main characters of Walking Dead found themselves trapped in at the end of the show's 2013 season after being drawn to those same eight letters positioned near the top of an abandoned factory. The sign on the Hilton Gaslamp was there to draw the curious (much as it did in the show) to a promotion that involved receiving a coveted invite to a Walking Dead-themed barbecue. Make what you will of the cannibal connection.

This was an outstanding example of a marketing campaign at its most simple and most effective, and it stood out in the Gaslamp District of San Diego this weekend, which as always during Comic-Con was pulsing with big, bright, exciting marketing and promotional displays all competing for the attention of the more than 150,000 fantasy and science-fiction fans who descend on the city every year for this influential event. But it wasn't the only promotion that was so simple it soared above most of the rest.

There was a Con-wide campaign in place for the comedy series Community, which was cancelled by NBC just a couple of months ago and quickly picked up for a new season by Yahoo Screen. It consisted, as far as I could determine, of three parts: Free sandwich giveaways at a Subway near the Convention Center to celebrate the saving of the show; signs posted outside every restroom in the Convention Center with the title Community in white on a purple background, and street teams dressed in purple and white walking all around the city holding small signs heralding the salvation of the show. Con-goers could put their faces through an opening in the sign and be photographed with their own cameras.

Speaking of street teams, there was no avoiding one for Syfy's wildly anticipated Sharknado 2, one of the most talked about television properties at the Con. There was also one for Lifetime's supernatural series The Witches of East End; it featured about twenty young men and women dressed in black (like warlocks and witches) and wearing eerie red contacts. Also on the street level were usual pedi-cabs made to look like the title object from HBO's Game of Thrones. There were also pedi-cabs promoting ABC's Once Upon a Time.

Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that a person could not walk more than ten feet in any part of the Gaslamp District during the last four days without being exposed to a marketing message for a television series, a movie, a video game or a technology company of some kind (the latter is definitely on the rise at the Con).

Other standouts included the inside-and-outside transformation of Mary Jane's restaurant in the Hard Rock Hotel into the Ascension Café, which promoted Syfy's upcoming limited series Ascension in every conceivable way, from video screens in booths to specially designed napkins and menus. Every element of the interior evoked the early Sixties, a time period crucial to the show. The haunting exterior stopped foot traffic along Fifth Avenue, especially when dramatically lit at night. (In years past Syfy has transformed Mary Jane's into Café Diem from the series Eureka and the Defiance Café to launch the current series Defiance.)

Over on the massive lawn of the Hilton Bayfront hotel Warner Brothers, which largely dominates the Con with increasingly inventive promotions for its many super-hero and cartoon franchises, built a massive re-creation of the Gotham City skyline to promote its upcoming Fox series Gotham. It was attention-grabbing enough to draw a crowd, but Warner Bros. added a zip line above it, allowing fans to fly over Gotham. Gotham was also promoted on the outside of the local train that periodically ran along the tracks in front of the Convention Center.

Another stunner was the display for Warner Bros. Constantine, a new supernatural thriller set to premiere this fall on NBC. It was a giant image of the striking title character, his hand lit with hell fire,towering in the triangle directly in front of the centrally located Tin Fish restaurant, itself done over as a promotional structure for NBC's hit The Blacklist, The Tin Fish restaurant is located in a plaza directly across from the Convention Center that tens of thousands of people pass through every day of the Con.

Promotional displays inside the Convention Center, some of them interactive, all of them encouraging Con-goers to take photographs, were state of the art. They included a highly detailed re-creation of Norman Bates' taxidermy work room on A&E's Bates Motel, a structure made to resemble Terminus featuring a caged area filled with the title creatures from "The Walking Dead," and a fascinating contraption at the BBC America booth that took photos of fans and printed them out as five different clone versions of themselves (all in the same photo).

As always, the TV Guide yacht, docked just in back of the Convention Center in San Diego Harbor, proved an irresistible stop for hundreds of celebrities before or after their panels, press room obligations and/or autograph sessions. (When I visited the yacht the cast of The CW's upcoming iZOMBIE was on its way out while the cast of TNT's Falling Skies was coming in.) This was the fourth year for this TV Guide attraction, which has been so increasingly popular that it has required a larger yacht every year. (This year's boat had three floors.) Promotional partners on the yacht included Nintendo (previewing its upcoming Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS, premiering in October), Fiji Water, Tito's Vodka, Dylan's Candy Bar, Bai Juice, Sam Adams and Ikea, which provided all of the furnishings.