Fandom Unpacked

Creating Community IRL: Why Fan Conventions Are a Marketer’s Dream

• Situation • Season 1 • Episode 4

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What happens when passionate fans decide to create the events they've always wanted to attend? Melissa Anelli, CEO and Founder of Mischief Management takes us on her journey from Harry Potter superfan to convention entrepreneur running some of the most beloved fan gatherings in entertainment.

The spark began in 2007 when Anelli and fellow staff members from The Leaky Cauldron (a major Harry Potter fan site) decided they could create better fan events themselves. Their first convention drew 750 attendees, and while creatively successful, it wasn't yet a sustainable business. Their persistence paid off when their second event exploded to 3,500 daily attendees. Today, Mischief Management produces conventions for Broadway lovers, fantasy fans, romance readers, and more.

At the heart of successful fan events is what Anelli calls "unironic enthusiasm" – that special quality where loving something becomes integral to your identity. This authenticity permeates everything from how staff interact with attendees to how venue personnel are trained to treat fans with respect. The goal isn't just entertainment but creating spaces where people can fully express their passion without judgment.

The conversation also explores how brands can meaningfully engage with fan communities without feeling exploitative. The most successful partnerships, like Mean Girls' viral bathroom mirror message at BroadwayCon, come when brands are willing to play and have fun in authentic ways that resonate with the community's spirit.

Ready to experience the magic of fandom for yourself? Whether you're a Broadway enthusiast, fantasy fiction lover, or passionate about any form of entertainment, discover how connecting with fellow fans can transform your relationship with the stories you love.

Recorded Tuesday, December 17th, 2024
Host: Damian Bazadona, CEO & Founder, Situation
Guest:  Melissa Anelli, CEO & Founder, Mischief Management
Producer: Peter Yagecic, Innovation Advisor, Situation

Peter Yagecic:

You're listening to Fandom Unpacked the podcast, an audio version of our regular live stream series where we unpack modern fandom with some of the brightest minds in sports and entertainment. I'm producer Peter Yagecic and in today's episode we'll hear a conversation between our host, Damian Bazzadana, ceo and founder of Situation Group, and Melissa Anelli, ceo and founder of Mischief Management, producer of BroadwayCon. Put on your best Hamilton cosplay and let's dive in with Damian and Melissa.

Damian Bazadona:

All right, thank you, peter. Welcome Melissa. Let's get into it First. It'd be fantastic, take me into. I want to talk a little bit about the origins of your fandom. How did Mischief Management get started? And I know a little bit about the origins of your fandom. How did Mischief Management get started? I know a little bit of the backstory, which I just find fascinating. It would be awesome if you could share with everyone how this spark, your own spark, led to the formation of what you do.

Melissa Anelli:

Sure so Mischief.

Melissa Anelli:

We run events for deep fans, real fans of things.

Melissa Anelli:

We were a bunch of Harry Potter fans back in 2007 who were at a Harry Potter convention and we were all the staff of the Leaky Cauldron, which is this huge Harry Potter fan website back in the day.

Melissa Anelli:

I am sure some people watching this were readers of the site back then and we were all at a convention and as we walked around this convention, we just were brimming with ideas about how we could do it ourselves and by the end of the convention, the whole team was jazzed about putting on our own Harry Potter convention once, just as a thing we do, and we did, and that was in 2009 in Boston and it had about 750 people there and it was, creatively, everything we wanted. We wanted it to be an event run by the people who go to them right, and that happens in a whole lot of ways. It happens in the attitude of the staff, it happens in who you set to moderate panels, it happens in the content itself and it happens a lot in just like the joy of how the event is presented, which becomes obvious to the people going to the event. So that event, creatively, was amazing. Financially absolute disaster Got through it the skin of our teeth and then our second event had 3,500 people per day at it in 2011 in.

Melissa Anelli:

Florida. And that's when we were like, oh, we'll do this one more time because the last movie is coming out and we'll have one more party. And that weekend we realized that, okay, something's right in the sauce here and we have to continue this. And then, a couple of years later, we had the idea for BroadwayCon and that sort of flipped the script on what kind of company we were creating. Since then we've done a Game of Thrones convention, we've worked with A&E Networks on their AlienCon, we now do RomanceCon, which is in Milwaukee every year and celebrates romance readership, and MalikiCon, which was that original Harry Potter event, has blossomed into Enchanticon, which is a fantasy convention. So we really just wanted to create the events that we wanted to go to and we're really dedicated to it.

Damian Bazadona:

So on this webinar, there are a significant number of people who represent fans right, represent brands that have substantial fan bases. What's the secret sauce to it? So all those different things, from Game of Thrones to BroadwayCon, I mean these are different brands all together different categories. What would you say? What are the unifying forces that you feel like that you see across excellence of fandom and how you create your own events that you think people should know?

Melissa Anelli:

There is a certain je ne sais quoi about the type of fandom that makes us go. That fandom is ripe for an event. It's hard to quantify, but all genders enjoying romance novels and being very loud about it and being very proud about it. So when we sort of put out feelers about would this be right? All the markings came back correctly there's an unironic enthusiasm I will call it. That is key and joined in all of our events. When you love something so much, it's a little bit of a part of who you are, sometimes a lot a bit of a part of who you are. I would say a lot of broadway con attendees define themselves by their love of broadway. Um, it's that. It's that joy that lights somebody up that will lead them to want to go to an event and immerse themselves in something all weekend long what are the?

Damian Bazadona:

so I've been to BroadwayCon a bunch of times and I think one of the most. It's just so. It's like a very warm feeling. I remember seeing actually a parent with their child and they just said like, oh my god, they just come to life when they're here talking about their child. It was actually really warm, like it was just a moving experience, just talking to the parent. What are the must-dos or must-not-dos in terms of you, like that fancy term, in terms of engaging with fans? And I ask that again in the context of you know, again, we work across sports, theater, entertainment, you name it, and I think everyone has their own perspective on fandom, of how they engage with fans. But I feel you sit at like the core of it. Uh, you know I'm a giants fan, so I, you know I haven't painted my face blue, but I probably would for the right game. Sure, go into it, talk to me about and when we talked, you talked a little bit authenticity, you talked about the. You know, take us into that world, it'd be helpful.

Melissa Anelli:

Um yeah, um, fans, in my experience, can spot authenticity, you know, a mile away. They can tell if they're just being marketed to as a sort of grab for them or if they're interacting with a brand that really wants and values their input and their love. When we started all this and I'm talking way back when it was just the Leaky Cauldron the attitude towards fans was so different. I remember accidentally overhearing a Warner Brothers executive talking about the Leaky Cauldron in a kind of derogatory way that that was not the way they interacted with me. It was a very different time. In Britain they would call you a sad when you were too invested in something. That is not the case these days, because what happened, especially with Harry Potter, was a huge part of it is that brands started to see that these weren't just baked in absorbers of their content, they weren't a packed in value. If you interacted with them, you got more out of it than you thought. So immediately it was like well, why would we market to fans? They're already fans. But if you, the fans, feel warm and welcome and respected and that is a key part of everything we produce we're never going to produce something where I mean we've turned down working on things that would be seriously against our values, you know, and we couldn't get behind emotionally, so like when you walk into BroadwayCon, every aspect of it has been thought about by people who want to make the experience the best. So part of that, part of that is.

Melissa Anelli:

One thing that people don't see is that we speak to the venue. Every event we've ever done, we have a talk with the venue beforehand. That's common, but in that talk we always make sure to tell them that they are also an extension of us and that treating our fans and our attendees with respect and warmth is a key part of our business with them. So that has always kind of translated. It comes out in literally the way the staff acts as they walk around the convention. You know, nobody's a bother, everybody's a member of this community. Nobody's causing them work, everybody's causing them joy to be able to bring this event to life.

Melissa Anelli:

It's really just a matter of really believing in what you're doing. And where brands are concerned, I would say that you got to get nerdy with them, you got to like. So, for instance, today we just announced BroadwayCon night at A Wonderful World on Broadway. We've been trying to get this going forever, to have Broadway shows due at night where if you are in town for BroadwayCon and you come to the show, you can do a talkback and you get a discount on your ticket. And A Wonderful World has been the first show in all this time to really kind of like jump in and do that with us. So to say like we value this audience and we're going to give you something and interact with you is a huge, huge thing something and interact with you is a huge, a huge thing.

Damian Bazadona:

One thing I've always loved about your events is I do feel like the people, the staff, from the moment they kind of scan your ticket like it's a warm people want the people who work there look like they want to be there.

Damian Bazadona:

I think this is falls off for a lot of live venues. I think some of the workers are like just don't want to be at particular venues and it just crushes the experience. How do you just building off kind of the idea of the experience in terms of the interaction with people? How do you go about creating sort of safe spaces, you know, because cons are often associated as a safe space for fans, but that has to come into the design and how you build it right, because I've seen that person, I've seen this firsthand where I've seen people go oh, those are the diehards, those are the freaks, like we don't need, we already have those folks and meanwhile it's like those are people that fuel many of these brands. But the idea of a safe space, I would imagine, is important and they come in there. I'm assuming that's a significant part to how you think of designing events.

Melissa Anelli:

Absolutely. It's a huge part of it and we've been, you know, not perfect over the years Everybody's always learning how to do it best but it's an enormous part because you can't have something. That's where we say to you come, be the most you've ever been this weekend, but only some of you. So it has to be part of the sauce, and a lot of unseen work goes into that, a lot of checking that we're making sure that all different backgrounds are represented on every, you know, every topic, that we're not just presenting one kind of kind of uh, viewpoint.

Melissa Anelli:

I actually had somebody come up to me, probably kind of one of the most touching things that's happened. Um, it was a black woman, came up to me and said that she doesn't, that she feels she sees more of herself at BroadwayCon than you know on Broadway, that Broadway doesn't look like her, but BroadwayCon looks like her, which was just like. Honestly, one of the highlights of my professional career is to hear that from from an attendee, and it doesn't mean we're perfect on it. It's always things you have to learn. But, um, you, you have to, just you have to think about it in every aspect, from a meetup, every panel, everything that happens. Everybody has thought very, very carefully and it's sort of like a whole company. The whole company is kind of involved. If somebody notices like hey, this is looking pretty one-sided, this panel, we are totally empowered to, like you know, to tell the other it has to be baked into the mission.

Damian Bazadona:

Peter, what do you got?

Peter Yagecic:

Yeah, I have a good question that I think builds on this a little bit and kind of refers to what the fans do at, specifically, broadwaycon. The question was as someone who's attended BroadwayCon in the past, my favorite part is when groups of attendees break into spontaneous sing-alongs. As a partaker of the con, do you incentivize these moments or do you just try to lay the groundwork for them and get out of the way when they happen? So, building off of what you do with the staff, but what about the fans themselves?

Melissa Anelli:

Yeah, it's both. So we definitely try to just lay the groundwork and encourage it when it happens and send our social media out to capture it and share it and show how much we enjoy that. But we've also had, you know, like piano bars and things like that in the marketplace, and we've had little stations where people can come and sing together and then we've also done, like YouTube, dance parties on the main stage. Sometimes the silliest things are the things that resonate the most and just getting a chance to kind of like dance together and connect. All of our events start on the first day with meetups and that sounds like such a silly maybe not silly, it sounds like such a basic thing, but it's so important Because everybody needs to find their people and a lot of people attend alone and so we hear from people all the time.

Melissa Anelli:

I'm coming alone, will I make friends? And it has never been the case that at the end of the event we haven't then heard from them and to say, actually, I now have 10 friends that I met at this event. So we sort of have these events. Whether you are an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan, a Sondheim fan, a LGBTQ member, you know any all kinds of meetups If you're traveling alone, if you are a mom, I don't know. I'm making things up now, but we start building that community early and that kind of like lays the groundwork for the rest.

Peter Yagecic:

So this goes back to kind of the evolution of LeakyCon to Enchanticon. As your events have expanded, how do you ensure that different micro communities feel like they are being served and that the original why isn't being diluted as things evolve?

Melissa Anelli:

Really good question. It's definitely something we think about. One thing we do is we open our programming programming to um to to attendees. We open a call for programming. So do you have something that you would like to bring to this event? And we get hundreds of of uh session panels and session ideas and panel ideas and and um program concepts and we work with with people to bring them in. So a lot of our most exciting content actually comes from our attendees and that is how we get some trends in and get some representation of communities in that we might might not have been on our radar. A lot of that really cool content.

Melissa Anelli:

So one one year um um, I played Hercules Mulligan in the original Hamilton cast who I am. Oak came to us and said I want to do a panel. He wanted to do a panel on racial diversity on Broadway and it was like that is the process. He came to us and said here's the thing that I would like to do and we said, oh, absolutely, let's make it happen. So keeping open and talking to your community, looking at what they're doing all over social, will give you a really good idea of, kind of like, where the community is. But keeping a conversation between you and your attendees will bring so much in that you hadn't even thought of.

Peter Yagecic:

Fandom Unpacked is brought to you by Situation, an award-winning marketing agency built for live entertainment that champions the power of unforgettable shared experiences around the world. We offer full marketing and creative services for experience-based brands in live entertainment, attractions, theater, sports, arts and culture, and more. Check us out at SituationInteractivecom. Now back to our Q&A. Check us out at SituationInteractivecom.

Damian Bazadona:

Now back to our Q&A. One of the lines you said, alyssa, when we had first talked, was something along the spirit of you said, brands want to play in the space. Then play. What do you mean by that? You said, and you gave some examples when you and I were talking from Mean Girls at BroadwayCon or other of like. What do you want to expand on that idea of play and brands in the space?

Melissa Anelli:

Something I. Whenever we talk with partners for brand partnerships, we want them to have the fun that our attendees are having, because not just because that's cool, but because it will make the most lasting impact on people. I remember the Mean Girls example is one the Mean Girls team wrote a message on the mirror in the bathroom saying call this number for the hot goss. I don't remember the exact phrasing and it was so popular that they kept having to up the credits on the voicemail number over the weekend and people to this day remember that because it was such a key. It was like inviting them in, it was in the tone, it was silly, it was fun, actually funny story. The janitor kept taking it off because he thought that it was actually actual graffiti, kept taking it off because he thought that it was actually actual graffiti, and so our creative director, jordan, went down and got lipstick in the right shade and just kept writing it, rewriting it on the mirror the whole weekend. So we encourage people to come and like, really get silly, and you know what? It's not only silly, it's also being just being really thoughtful.

Melissa Anelli:

When we did RomanceCon last year, one of the most talked about brand partnerships was from a small marketing company who made little. We had like 150 authors there doing tables and talking to their audience. They put them together a little goodie bag full of everything they might need for the weekend. It was like Advil and a couple of candies and breath mints and you know little things to kind of take care of their weekend. And we did not stop hearing all weekend about how key, how vital that was. And it was a very small sponsorship. It was even barely any money.

Melissa Anelli:

The a Wonderful World um, sponsorship nobody. Uh, partnership, nobody's. The only people basically where money's being exchanged is like the people buying tickets to Wonderful World. We really wanted this to happen, so we just wanted to make it happen. So it's not always about the most money. It's about finding something cool that will stick in people's head, something my dream list is I just wish somebody would buy the Wi-Fi. They don't understand what a hero they'd be if they could put their name on the Wi-Fi in these places. But we can't make it happen.

Damian Bazadona:

Maybe after this you might.

Melissa Anelli:

Maybe after this Maybe someone's listening to this. You would be a hero, absolute hero.

Damian Bazadona:

We actually worked on that Mean Girls. That was our team that did the Mean Girls campaign and it was so exciting. But I remember the New York Times covered it, I think it was posted. Someone tweeted about it and said the marketing team needs a raise. Now we didn't get that raise, but we felt really good about ourselves at that moment. Peter, make sure you get some of the questions.

Peter Yagecic:

Yeah, we have lots of questions coming in. The first, well, one comment, not a question from Jamie Bartolet, not a question, but wanted to share that over 10 years ago, melissa invited me and my friends to perform the opening number at LeakyCon in Chicago. She made us feel so seen and so special and I still carry that experience with me in my producing career. So you have fans in our audience, thank you.

Damian Bazadona:

That's so cool.

Peter Yagecic:

Here's an actual question from another attendee. Many in the BroadwayCon population are under 18. How does that work? What does that mean? Or does it not have anything special one has to think about in terms of marketing or when they're, I guess, at the convention?

Melissa Anelli:

Yeah. So we have a kind of policy that if you're you know, adults in your life think you can go to this event on your own. We're not going to, you know, get in your way. But if you look a little young, we might ask you know, if there's an eight-year-old wandering around unattended at our events, we're going to ask what's up there. But if you're not, if you don't look like you really need a guardian next to you, we're probably not going to bother you about it too much.

Damian Bazadona:

Yeah, well, I would say I want to talk a little bit about you know, I think about passion and practicality are kind of two forces that are often coming together in fandom, right, and oftentimes passion just totally beats practicality.

Damian Bazadona:

The things we will do for the things that we love are incredible, including the kind of money we spend, and so I want to just talk a little bit about the economics of it and how do you balance, kind of creating these fan experiences with monetizing them right At pretty significant levels, probably in a way that feels authentic, because I'm assuming that's a tricky balance, right, because you have people there, they know they're all in on the passion and they want to feel respected and heard and part of the community. Yet, as an event producer because I've seen budgets that you probably had to deal with the lunch budgets alone you have to make money. The logic, yeah, I've seen, it's crazy. Uh, that's, that's for another, that's for another panel, um, yeah, but but I think, like, just how do you balance that in terms of like, like you want to maximize revenue, which means people spend a lot of money, and how do you do that in a way that keeps the community fresh and without overdoing it?

Melissa Anelli:

It's incredibly hard, I'm not going to lie. Putting on an event in New York, especially BroadwayCon, is super expensive. It's mostly subsid by the whole of business we do so. You know, Brabacon itself is sort of a, is it like? Barely it can't buy price, even every year, and we just are happy with that for now. Obviously we want it to grow and you can't really grow unless you profit. But you know it's a struggle. Of course we have to. We want to keep prices as low as we can, but we want to make sure we take in the most we can to make the event great.

Melissa Anelli:

Um, we've actually lowered the price of the main barbicon ticket quite a bit over the years. The first year it was a 250 ticket and that was just what we felt safe with doing our first you know event in new york. Um, we brought it down to like what normal convention prices are. You know you want to balance, to balance. There is an entrance point for everybody, there's a student ticket, there's an entrance point. You know that's reachable, kind of like what you would pay for a Broadway show, and then it's like you'd be leaving finance on the, you'd be leaving money on the table if you don't offer experiences that people are willing to pay for, and then that money helps fuel the rest of the event. So it's really important. So we're so grateful to the people who support us and by buying those higher ticket levels they make a huge difference in what we're able to do.

Damian Bazadona:

Yeah, well, as we I know, peter, I'm respectful of time I I wanted. I wanted just to sort of end in the lane of sort of the future of fandom and and really the future of and I don't want to because I didn't get into digital stuff. There's a whole bunch of other questions we had here but I want to because we're spending so much time. Your, your lane really is like the in-person, the raw kind of fan experience, which is what unifies a lot of our clients, that in-venue experience. What does the future look like? What do you think in terms of? How does technology impact it? But if you want to go three years down the road, five years down the road, how do you think it'll change it? Or do you think it'll be like? Will technology better connect people while they're there? Will it extend the relationship further? Is it like? I don't know? Does it have? Ai is playing a role in these vague questions, but just how do you think about it?

Melissa Anelli:

I mean, we're very lucky in that what we do is a little bit resistant to the kind of maybe ravages that AI is going to bring to a lot of industries. I also think there was a big push for everything to go hybrid, every event to go hybrid, during COVID. I don't think that's necessarily going to be the case. Obviously, doing more hybrid, doing more things on the internet, is great because it's accessible. There's a difference. There's a difference in coming together and meeting people and it stokes your enthusiasm in a way that is really hard to replace. So actually, I think that all the technology advances will push people more to having specialized go and make sure you go out to the world and meet people who love what you love, because we all spend so much of our time now just sitting in front of our computers that it is even more special to be able to go and touch and feel and talk to people and realize you're not alone in the world. It really does make a huge difference.

Melissa Anelli:

A mark of success for me at every single event I've ever done is about Saturday night, late in the evening or late in the day or whatever time it's ending. That's kind of like day two. I kind of just walk around a little bit and I just take it in, I just watch people. I watch people laughing and connecting, and sometimes we have a concert or something so they're dancing etc. Um, and that is always for me the fuel that keeps, keeps going for the year, because you know you work for a whole year on this one, on this one event. Um, this couple of days that have to go great, um, so I'm I'm actually feeling like these touchstone moments are going to become even more important as our world gets more and more isolated because of technology um, I know, peter, we're at time I just before I sort of my final words, and this is to say melissa and I go, I don't know how many years ago.

Damian Bazadona:

Pretty, we go back pretty far and your, your endurance, uh on on fandom and and I believe what you said before in terms of how people perceive the business of fans, like the hardcore fans and like that perception has changed and you were on it, you were in it before it changed, and then you rode through a pandemic to which we've had multiple calls that were very scary moments in time going what is this all going to look like? And you've held the endurance to carry through, which is remarkably impressive. So I appreciate you taking the time for this, but I have just great admiration for your business and your perspective on all this, so I thank you.

Melissa Anelli:

I appreciate all the help that you've taken, all those calls when things are really scary, Damn it. But I really I appreciate everything you do to keep people asking these questions and having these talks.

Damian Bazadona:

Thank you.

Peter Yagecic:

That's going to do it for this episode of Fandom Unpacked the podcast. If you liked what you heard, please be sure to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Find out how to join us live for an upcoming recording at SituationLivecom slash fan. We'll see you next time, true believers.