Comic Con Poland
Comic Con is coming to Poland.
Let's make it native.
Comic Con is entering Poland. The Polish audience is unique - they value different things, expect a different kind of programme, and consume the experience on site in their own way. Getting this local context right is what makes an event feel native rather than just another franchise.
For six years I was the CMO of Pyrkon - Poland's largest fantasy and pop-culture convention. I ran brand, communications, media relations, B2B partnerships and ticket strategy. Here is what we achieved.
01
Context
A brand growing on its own momentum.
Pyrkon is one of Europe's largest fantasy festivals - an annual event in Poznań bringing together fans of fantasy, science fiction, role-playing games, board games, manga and anime. Organized by the "Druga Era" Fantasy Club Association - a non-profit driven by community and volunteers.
When I started, Pyrkon had around 44,000 attendees and a loyal fan community. But it was managed intuitively - no consistent marketing strategy, no defined positioning, no tools that would allow it to grow effectively and attract new audiences. My job was to change that.
Pyrkon. The huge variety of species and their migration.
Pyrkon · YouTube02
Starting point
July 2017. Premium Consulting audit.
My first decision: commission an external marketing communication audit. Premium Consulting found 48 strategic gaps. Five of them defined what was broken.
Generic positioning
"Poland's largest fantasy festival" - true, but not distinguishing. No slogan, no emotional hook. The brand described itself by size, not by experience.
Inconsistent visual identity
Each edition had its own aesthetic, logo, palette. The brand wasn't building recognition year over year - it started from scratch every time.
Untapped tools
Email marketing - non-existent. Remarketing - non-existent. Content marketing - rudimentary. The festival communicated mostly via Facebook in event mode only.
No marketing funnel
Communication ran on the existing fan base. No new-audience acquisition strategy. Each year started from zero acquisition, leaning on loyalty and word-of-mouth.
Price without value justification
A low ticket price, but without a value narrative. The attendee didn't know why they paid that amount. Any price increase would be seen as punishment, not investment.
Remaining audit gaps
The Premium Consulting audit identified 48 areas needing intervention - from micro-typography decisions through SEO to team decision processes. All addressed within the first 18 months.
You got a really bitter pill at the start in the form of that audit, you swallowed it and began a fairly intensive treatment. Literal implementations like yours - I'd like to see more among our clients. You went, as I say, by the book.
03
Methodology
October 2017. Data-driven strategy.
The Pyrkon rebrand wasn't intuitive. It was the outcome of a structured strategic process I commissioned with Premium Consulting - from primary research to creative agency debriefing.
Marketing audit
Premium Consulting identified 48 strategic gaps. Key recommendation: consolidate everything into a complete strategic document.
Survey of 2,000+ attendees
Primary research into needs and brand perception on a sample of 2,000+ surveyed attendees. Hard data foundation for strategic decisions - not intuition.
Perceptual map
Competitive analysis and search for a distinctive brand position versus other fantasy festivals. Picking a spot far from direct competitors.
New positioning + funnel
Creative agency briefing
I personally led the agency selection - picked by resources, talent, and portfolio. Debriefing creative proposals against the strategic brief.
New logo + identity system
With the agency: refined logo, full visual identity system, brand book. First edition under the new strategy.
04
Solutions
Six interventions that moved the brand.
New positioning: "A Fantastic Meeting Place"
We moved from a size-based narrative ("largest") to an experience-based, emotional narrative. Pyrkon stopped being a "festival" - it became a place where people with similar passions can meet, feel at home, create memories.
The line still runs today - still on pyrkon.pl, two years after my departure.
Pyrkon - A Fantastic Meeting Place · claim in motion
Pyrkon · YouTubeVisual identity system
I built a framework where each edition could have its own visual theme while keeping brand recognition. New brand book, consistent comms in social, email, and offline materials.
The attendee knew it was "their festival" regardless of this year's visual treatment.
Missing channels and funnel
Launched email marketing, remarketing and content marketing. The funnel reached new audiences and converted them.
Data shows: online ticket sales +34% (2018 vs 2017), then +86% (2019 vs 2018) - a record of 24,000 tickets sold online in 2019. The festival self-financed before event day for the first time in its history.
Pricing model change
2018: 119 PLN. 2022: 159 PLN. 2023: 269 PLN (+126% during my tenure). Without losing footfall - with footfall growing.
2018 was a transition year: attendance slightly lower than 2017, but revenue grew 20% YoY - proof the rebrand was working before number growth. 2019 was the full-strategy year: attendance +18%, revenue +30% YoY, all sales and brand goals met.
Media reach and partnerships
By 2022 Pyrkon generated 23.7M social media reach and 14M traditional media reach annually. Coverage by: TVN24, TVP Info, Polsat News, Radio ZET, Polskie Radio, Gazeta Wyborcza.
During a single edition: 25 TV pieces, 49 radio pieces, 33 press pieces.
Scaling without losing soul
In 2022 - after the COVID break - Pyrkon drew 55,847 unique attendees and 114,000 entries (3-day festival, many return). In 2023, my last edition as CMO, attendance reached 52,968.
Internationalization: foreign attendees grew from 2,769 (2022) to 5,932 (2023) - +114% YoY. The result of multi-year European brand-building.
05
Retention triangle
Community as product.
Three assets I built from scratch or scaled to the point where they now run Pyrkon by themselves. FB for daily life, Discord for synchronous conversation, PyrCamp for physical gathering.
PyrCamp · 2,200 people
The first official Pyrkon campsite, located at Scout Camp Poznań by Lake Strzeszyńskie. Two zones: Magic Zone (nightlife, bonfires, integration) and Relaxation Zone (quiet rest). Rentable scout tents for first-time campers. Kitchen, sanitation, recreation hall, bonfires.
In 2023 PyrCamp hosted 2,200 people. It's not a "side camping" - it's infrastructure that turns a two-day ticket into a four-day communal experience. A PyrCamp attendee doesn't go back to a hotel - they go back to their group. They return next year - because they return TO PEOPLE, not to a program.
Pyrcord · 14,000 users
Pyrkon's Discord server - called Pyrcord - A Fantastic Meeting Place (the claim is everywhere). 14,000 users. 7 thematic channels (Chat, gaming-general, league-of-legends, overwatch, minecraft, AFK lounge).
Discord is not a "social media channel." It's retention infrastructure. An attendee who stays on Discord after the festival buys next year's ticket without a campaign. Discord is where attendees recruit each other. You can't buy that with media. You have to build it - and I built it.
Pyrkonowicze · 32,000 FB members
Open group where Pyrkon attendees discuss everything that Pyrkon is to them. Cosplay, board games, travel, hotels, thanks, criticism. I respond but don't moderate - because it's not my group, it's THEIRS. I just made sure it existed at a scale where it has gravitational force.
Together with Pyrcord and PyrCamp they form a retention triangle: one channel for daily life (FB), one for synchronous conversation (Discord), one for physical gathering (PyrCamp). Discord, FB and PyrCamp are the mechanisms through which next generations have somewhere to land.
06
Pandemic as pivot
Instead of going silent - we left assets.
March 2020. Pyrkon 2020 is cancelled. First time in 20 years of history. We had two options: take a year off (like most Polish festivals) or do something else. We chose the second.
PyrkONline 2021. 10 days online, partner: Allegro. ~50 talks, concerts, panels. The first major fully-digital fantasy event in Poland.
Digital Fantasy Library. Poland's first open archive of fantasy works - funded by "Kultura w sieci" programme of the National Centre for Culture. Still running today, independently of me and independently of Pyrkon as an event. An asset left to the community permanently.
Return in 2022: 55,847 attendees. A record. We didn't just return. We returned stronger than before the pandemic. With two new assets in the portfolio (PyrkONline as an emergency format and the Library as a permanent asset) and no community fractures.
This is something you only learn by doing: how to manage a festival through a crisis no one in the industry had seen for generations.
07
Mainstream credibility
Fakty TVN, prime time, June 2022.
Material by Jarosław Kostkowski - Pyrkon's return after the pandemic. Link to the piece. A minute and a half in which Pyrkon was the lead story of the evening on Poland's biggest news programme.
This doesn't happen by accident. It happens after years of building relationships with journalists we call by first name, who know that our PR team calls back within 20 minutes, that the material they get is edit-ready, that the guest we propose will speak like a human being and not cause a scene.
Plus: TVN24, TVP3 Poznań, RMF24, Radio Poznań, Newsweek, Głos Wielkopolski, Interia, Geekweek, Bankier ("the largest fantasy festival in this part of Europe"), Filmweb, Lubimyczytac.
Pyrkon stopped being filed under "alternative culture." It moved into mainstream culture.
08
Crisis case study
Newsweek 2019: when community defends the brand.
May 2019. Newsweek publishes Elżbieta Turlej's article "Love in the times of fantasy." Reduces Pyrkon to sexualization, furries and My Little Pony. Attendee images used without consent. Quotes taken out of context.
We had two options: fight the weekly (expensive, long, uncertain, risks dominating conversation for months) - or trust that the brand we'd built would defend itself. I chose the second.
We publicly invoked our "Safe Convention" rule with penalties for harassment, which Pyrkon had in its regulations years before publication. The community did the rest - Lubimyczytac, Bezprawnik, Tomasz Pindel, fandom blogs, Pyrkonowicze group. The avalanche of criticism fell on Newsweek, not on the festival.
"The aforementioned text is a report from this year's Pyrkon Fantasy Festival […] and it caused […] great commotion and outrage in the fantasy fan community."
The festival didn't organize a counter. The community organized it itself. Because we'd previously built the brand so that this community knew the brand stood on their side.
That's what "community-first" means in practice. Not a buzzword. A concrete mechanism that saves the brand when mainstream starts cutting.
09
Results
Growth trajectory.
Attendance · 2010-2023
Annual attendance (unique attendees)
Source: Wikipedia / official organizer data
Ticket price · 2018-2023
Three-day ticket price (regular)
Over my tenure, ticket value rose by 126%. Without losing footfall.
Community
Community growth across all channels
After the rebrand, the community grew across every channel. The foundation was a consistent brand voice and atmosphere; social media campaigns (TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Google) amplified that growth.
The level of engagement we built was a direct response to the brand's distinctive voice and atmosphere - which Pyrkon managed to express very vividly.
10
Strategic goals
Four goals. Four ✓.
The October 2017 strategy defined four explicit goals. Two years after launch (2018 + 2019 editions) all four were met.
01 - Brand image rebuilt on new positioning
02 - 50,000 attendees
52,000 attendees in 2019, the first full-strategy year. Goal exceeded.
03 - Loyalty of existing fans
94% would recommend the festival, 93% plan to return (survey of 1,000+ post-edition).
04 - Acquisition of new audiences
New audiences from other fantasy festivals + 114% growth in foreign attendees through 2023.
11
What others say
Quotes from collaborators and partners.
Jakub is one of the most demanding clients I've worked with - in a positive sense. He knew what he wanted, understood the data, and always looked for solutions, not problems.
Top-level professionalism and engagement. I rarely meet people who combine strategic and operational thinking this well.
Jakub has the rare ability to go deep into a topic and find solutions that actually work - not just on paper.
Working with Jakub and his team was a true breakthrough for us. The results we achieved together exceeded our expectations.
12
Takeaways
What this project teaches.
Pyrkon is proof that brand-building is long-haul work - and its effects are durable. The positioning we created in 2017 still works. The growth we started continues, growing even after my departure (2024: 58,632, 2025: 66,785 attendees).
It shows that you can lead an organization through deep change - new positioning, doubled ticket price, sales digitization, nationwide media reach - without losing soul or disconnecting from community.
And that non-profit marketing requires no less competence than commercial marketing - often more, because you have to deliver results without big-company budgets.
Let's talk about Comic Con Poland.
I'm not writing about a specific role - just putting myself on your radar early. If you end up building a local team, or simply want a sounding board on the Polish market, I'd be glad to help.