Three key cultural shifts and how marketers can respond
Read the full Comic-Con Rewind report: FAN-FUELLED IMPACT
San Diego Comic-Con has evolved far beyond its comic book roots. With over 135,000 attendees, the 2025 edition cemented its role as a powerful stage for cultural storytelling, community-building, and commercial innovation.
At dentsu, we tracked the event closely through the lens of brand relevance, looking at how entertainment IP, fandom, and new creative ecosystems are influencing how people engage with the world, and how brands can show up in more meaningful ways.
Here are three key cultural signals that stood out – and the strategic moves brands should be thinking about next.
1.) Culture is fragmenting. But shared stories still connect.
From George Lucas’s preview of the Museum of Narrative Art to the massive turnout for Demon Slayer and the return of South Park creators to Hall H, this year’s Comic-Con showed that modern mythologies – whether animated, cinematic or satirical – continue to bring people together across generations, geographies, and timelines.
Even as audience behaviours fragment across platforms and devices, iconic IP continues to unite. These stories offer shared reference points in an increasingly personalised media environment.
What brands can do:
- Partner with iconic IP that taps into collective memory and emotional resonance.
- If you’re using humour, make sure you’re in on the joke – self-aware satire builds trust.
- Explore anime as a fast-growing, still-underleveraged space for brand activation.
2.) The creator economy is entering a new era.
Comic-Con has always celebrated creators, from comic book artists to filmmakers. But in 2025, the conversation turned toward new challenges: how creators build sustainable careers, how audiences engage with them across platforms, and what role brands play in supporting the creative ecosystem.
Fan creators are increasingly becoming the connective tissue between IP and communities. And as generative AI reshapes the idea of originality, trust and transparency are becoming just as important as talent.
What brands can do:
- Collaborate with trusted fan creators, especially those embedded in specific fandoms.
- Create opportunities for emerging creators to grow through funding, contests, or co-creation.
- Be clear and intentional about how you’re using AI in any creative work, transparency matters.
3.) Commerce is becoming more emotional and experiential.
Beyond the headline panels and cosplay moments, the Comic-Con show floor told another story – one of merchandise, collecting, digital ownership, and even mystery boxes.
From Netflix’s The Toys That Made Us to platforms like Neon Ichiban enabling fans to buy and personalise digital comics, it’s clear that shopping is no longer just transactional. It’s storytelling. It’s identity. And increasingly, it’s digital.
What brands can do:
- Treat your brand history as IP – consumers value stories as much as products.
- Explore how offline customer rituals could translate into digital experiences.
- Build anticipation through secrecy and staggered reveals – hype doesn’t have to be loud.
Fandom isn’t niche, it’s foundational.
The stories people care about, the creators they follow, and the ways they choose to buy and engage are reshaping the brand landscape.
Comic-Con 2025 didn’t just showcase pop culture. It offered a playbook for how brands can meet audiences where they are: informed, passionate, and paying attention.