ZotCon
Tripling the event attendance from the previous year through social media promotion and in-person advertising
Overview
The Problem at Hand
ZotCon, a yearly student-organized anime convention held at the UC Irvine (UCI) campus, was severely downsized in May 2024 due to losing most of its planning team and having a relatively short time to plan the event. This resulted in there being far fewer attendees compared to 2023 and several attendees feeling disappointed at the scale of the event.
With ZotCon 2025 planned to be significantly larger in scale than 2024 and set to be held on March 1, 2025, I was tasked with leading the marketing team for the organization and promoting what the convention has to offer in 2025.
The goals set out for us were to figure out how to get people (primarily UC Irvine students) to know about our organization/event and how to convince them to attend ZotCon 2025.
Background Research
Prior to ZotCon 2025, I talked with several people who heard about and/or attended ZotCon 2024, and I also reviewed comments on ZotCon's Instagram posts that promoted ZotCon 2024. Common critiques were these two points: the event was too small-scaled and the lack of an artist alley (a section of the venue in which vendors and independent artists are able to sell goods) was disappointing. Therefore, I strongly advocated for the logistics team of the organization to organize an artist alley for ZotCon 2025 and planned on making it clear in our marketing that the 2025 event will be significantly larger.
Additionally, after mentioning ZotCon to several people at UCI, I learned that many students did not know about the event but would be interested in attending it. Given that observation and that event is held at the UCI campus itself, I made promoting ZotCon to the UCI student body the highest priority for marketing team.
To prepare for creating social media graphics for ZotCon, I reviewed the Instagram posts from ZotCon 2024, Design at UCI (UCI's UI/UX and digital design club), and popular anime conventions (Anime Expo, Anime Los Angeles, and Anime Impulse). I placed these posts into a mood board to serve as inspiration and to learn effective practices for making promotional posts.
Social Media Graphics
Using Adobe Illustrator, I created assets and social media graphics that promoted ZotCon 2025, such as the event programming, revealing the judges for ZotCon's cosplay contest, sharing applications to get involved with the event, and announcing the return of ZotCon's artist alley. In the social media graphics, I also incorporated drawings of Ari (ZotCon's mascot) made by ZotCon's team of character illustrators. Through the 24 social media graphics that I created prior to the event, I conveyed that ZotCon 2025 was at a far larger scale than the previous year and that the event had a variety of activities for attendees to enjoy.
When creating the social media graphics, I ensured that the text had high contrast with the backgrounds and avoided using complicated fonts to promote readability.
While I first created graphics in a 1080x1080 resolution, I switched to using a 1080x1350 resolution to account for Instagram changing its standard aspect ratio for posts after the first couple ZotCon 2025 posts. I used the extra space to add a header and footer to the graphics to remind people of the event's date, time, and location.
I handed the graphics off to ZotCon's copywriter/social media manager. As ZotCon's Director of Marketing, I also reviewed the captions meant to go along with the social media graphics, decided the order in which the graphics are to be posted, and set deadlines when the graphics are to be posted.
I enjoyed using Adobe Illustrator to create various vector graphics for the social media posts. I repeatedly used a couple of the assets in different posts to create an association between those assets and ZotCon's main points of interest. For example, I used the paintbrush asset for posts related to the artist alley, a bow for posts related to ZotCon's cosplay contest, a game controller for posts related to ZotCon's game room, and a maid headdress for posts related to ZotMaid Cafe (ZotCon's maid cafe).
Stickers
Years ago, a UCI student created a sticker of an anteater in a comedic art style and named it "Petr" (parodying UCI's official mascot, Peter the Anteater). Since then, many students created stickers by drawing various outfits on top of the original Petr design or through creating their own variations of Petr, and collecting these stickers have become part of the UCI student culture.
One of the Petr student artists shared a template of the base Petr design for people to use, and so, to promote ZotCon, me and a couple other members of ZotCon created Petr sticker designs. The design that I made (the top-middle design in the image above) parodies memes that became associated with the UCI student body and a popular local donut shop, Seaside Donuts.
We advertised giving away these stickers at ZotCon 2025 on our social media and handed out a small number of them around campus prior to ZotCon to encourage people to attend. When printing the stickers, I requested the printer to make them kiss-cut and include ZotCon's Instagram handle on them so they can serve as promotional material for the organization.
Promotional Flyers & In-Person Advertising
In addition to social media graphics, I used Adobe Illustrator to design promotional flyers for ZotCon and ZotMaid Cafe that incorporated illustrations of Ari drawn by one of ZotCon's character illustrators. I made sure to include key information such as what the events had to offer; the time, date, and location of the events; and where to purchase tickets.
The first three flyers from the left above were designed to printed on full sheets of paper and displayed together in sign holders when the organization does in-person advertising. The fourth flyer was designed to be printed at a smaller size to be handed out to people and hung on bulletin boards (the third flyer was also printed and handed out in a smaller form, too).
I also had the opportunity to promote ZotCon in-person several times. Highlights included having a table at AniMarketplace (an anime-focused vendor fair in Southern California), a UCI men's volleyball game, and at UCI's Ring Mall (a section on campus that receives a high amount of foot traffic throughout the day). At these tables, we had people draw Ari on a sticky note and place it on a board in exchange for a sticker. It was a fun way to have interaction with potential attendees, and we shared photos of people's drawings on our Instagram stories.
Live2D Model
Since VTubing (livestreaming using an avatar) is popular among the anime fanbase, ZotCon has had a VTuber of its mascot, Ari. Streaming from late 2024 to the middle of 2025 happened on a weekly basis.
Referencing chibi-styled drawings of Ari created by one of ZotCon's character illustrators and VTuber models from Hololive (the most popular VTuber organization) in what fans call the "smol" style, I drew an Ari VTuber model in that "smol" style using Clip Studio Paint. I then rigged that model to be compatible with face tracking software using Live2D Cubism.
While this VTuber model was not used by ZotCon's streamer during the ZotCon 2025 cycle due to hardware limitations on their computer, it is possible that this model will be used during the ZotCon 2026 cycle.
Attendance Numbers Up!
ZotCon 2025 had approximately 500 attendees, which was over triple the number of attendees from ZotCon 2024! Attendees were happy with the event, and they were especially glad that there was an artist alley in 2025. After putting an immense amount of time and effort in promoting the event (and also helping out with the logistical planning of the event), I was happy to see the event have such a positive reception.
If I were to still be part of the marketing team for the organization, one change I would make for ZotCon 2026's marketing is to create more short-form content related to the event with accompanying social media graphics as the thumbnail for them. This is due to an Instagram Reel being one of ZotCon's top posts in terms of user interaction.