March 27, 2017

Meet Jessica Merriman of MomoCon in Midtown

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessica Merriman.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Jessica. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
In 2004, a group of Georgia Tech student and myself wanted to start a fan convention, largely based in anime and video games, so we set to reserving campus space and advertising and MomoCon was born. MomoCon continued as a free-admission event for 7 years, reaching over 10,000 unique attendees on campus (the largest free fan event in North America). In 2012, the event began charging admission, and over the next few years grew from 2 to 4 days, welcomed hundreds of celebrity guests, expanded to include American animation and comics, and blossomed to 30,000 attendees, making it one of the fastest growing fan conventions in the country.

It’s been a struggle sometimes, but always rewarding along the way. We work with a team of 800 volunteers who have become a family, bringing the collective expertise and camaraderie of some really bright minds with a crazy amount of work ethic.

Has it been a smooth road?
Being on a shoe-string budget for the first several years was a challenging thing to overcome. Until 2012, we did not welcome the kind of bigger name voice acting guests that many of our competitors were able to due to budget, so finding, cultivating, and promoting local talent was a very important aspect of our early years that we try to continue even still. Being strategic about spending has been an integral part of the event, including a lot of boots on the ground marketing to supplement social media marketing. Getting in front of our community and being an active part of building fandom in the local area is the most important thing we can do.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
MomoCon is an animation, gaming, and comic convention, specializing in voice acting and animation professional speakers, game free play, tournaments, and companies showcasing new games, and manga and comic authors and writers. We are most known for our game hall, a 190,000 square foot space of open gaming of all types, the second-largest open gaming square footage of any event in the entire US.

My and my co-chair’s personal expertise comes in marketing, we have a targeted social media strategy and (because we can only iterate once a year on the event) we regularly attempt and test new marketing plans as often as possible. We take many efforts to have our brand recognized as a powerful voice in our community year ’round, with events throughout the year in addition to the convention (photoshoots, dances, game days, etc.). Because of this, we were approached by Dragon Con, one of the largest fan focused events in the US, to participate in a strategic partnership. We look forward to what the future brings!

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Atlanta is a MAGNIFICENT city for businesses like mine! The majority of people love entertainment, we have a great density of hotel rooms downtown, and the improvements coming down the pipeline will only improve the city for tourism and events!

Pricing:

Single-day memberships to MomoCon range from $30-45
Weekend memberships are $57 now and will increase in May, all memberships are available at the door

Contact Info: