ECC 2017

​Emerald City Comicon 2017 — Sasquatch Syndicate in Seattle, WA

Emerald City Comicon 2017 was one of the most exhilarating, humbling, educational, occasionally overwhelming, and ultimately unforgettable experiences we have had as an organization. It was also, in the most affectionate way possible, a beautiful lesson in knowing your lane — and then figuring out how to build a much, much cooler version of your lane for next time.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's set the scene.

March 2nd through the 5th, 2017. The Washington State Convention Center in downtown Seattle — one of the great convention venues in the country, sitting right in the heart of a city that has always had a complicated and deeply personal relationship with the Pacific Northwest's most famous unconfirmed resident. Bigfoot is Seattle lore. Bigfoot is Washington State lore. The sasquatch is practically on the state flag in spirit if not in law, and the moment you mention the subject to anyone who has spent time in the forests west of the Cascades, you get a reaction. Eyes light up. Stories come out. People who would never describe themselves as believers start telling you about the thing their uncle saw in the Cascades in 1987 and never really talked about after.

We knew this. We felt confident that the cultural overlap between a Pacific Northwest Bigfoot research podcast and the Pacific Northwest's largest pop culture convention was real and significant. We were right about that. What we perhaps did not fully anticipate was the sheer, extraordinary, sensory-overloading scale of what Emerald City Comicon actually is.

Ninety-five thousand people. Four days. One convention center. Ninety-five thousand people dressed as every character from every universe ever committed to page, screen, or imagination, moving through multiple floors of exhibits, panels, celebrity signings, gaming halls, and vendor tables with the collective energy of a very friendly, very enthusiastic, extremely costumed tidal wave. Batman walked past our booth. Then three more Batmans. A highly accurate Chewbacca. An entire family dressed as the cast of a cartoon we didn't recognize but deeply respected. A woman in a full Iron Man suit who appeared to have actual hydraulics. It was magnificent and it was a lot and it was happening continuously for four days straight.

Eventbrite
And there, somewhere in the magnificent chaos, was the Sasquatch Syndicate booth. Chuck and the team, representing a nonprofit Bigfoot research podcast, flanked by artists and comic creators and cosplay photographers and merchandise vendors who had, to put it diplomatically, a slightly more immediately legible visual identity than we did.

Here is what we learned: Emerald City Comicon is a universe built around visual storytelling. Comics. Art. Costumes. Characters. Things you can see and recognize in an instant from thirty feet away in a crowd of ten thousand people. The Sasquatch Syndicate — which is genuinely great radio, genuinely great research, and a genuinely incredible community — is, at its core, an audio experience. Walking into ECCC without a comic book, without an artist, without a costumed character, without something that communicates the entire premise in a single glance, is like showing up to a film festival with a podcast. The content is great. The medium doesn't translate in quite the same way.

This is not a complaint. This is a gift. Because now we know exactly what we're building toward.

Because here's the thing about Emerald City Comicon — the people who attended, the ones who stopped at our booth, the ones who heard "Bigfoot podcast" and immediately said "wait, tell me everything" — they were our people. Pacific Northwesterners who grew up with sasquatch as part of the landscape. Cosplayers who thought a Bigfoot costume was an inspired life choice. Kids who wanted to know if Bigfoot was real and parents who didn't want to be the ones to answer. Researchers and enthusiasts and curious skeptics and true believers who found our booth in the middle of ninety-five thousand people and stayed for twenty minutes talking about track morphology and the Olympic Peninsula and what the old-growth forests of Washington State are hiding.

The local lore runs deep in this city. Seattle knows. Washington knows. You don't have to convince anyone here that the wilderness is real, that the forests are vast, that there is more out there than anyone has catalogued. You just have to meet them where they are.

And next time, we are absolutely meeting them where they are.

Here is the plan — and we are putting it in writing because accountability matters. Next time the Sasquatch Syndicate goes to Emerald City Comicon, we are arriving with Bigfoot costumes. Full suits. Multiple team members in character. We are building a booth that looks like the Pacific Northwest wilderness — and yes, we are talking about a volcano. Maybe a miniature Mount St. Helens. Maybe some old-growth signage. Maybe fog machine. We are making the visual identity of this organization impossible to miss from the other side of a convention hall floor, because the content and the community we have built deserve a stage that matches them.

We had an absolute blast. We met incredible people, had conversations we won't forget, and came home with a clarity of vision about what the Sasquatch Syndicate's presence at a pop culture convention can and should look like when we do it right.

ECCC, we'll be back. And next time, you'll see us coming from a lot further away.

To the organizers of Emerald City Comicon — thank you for the invitation and the opportunity. To the ninety-five thousand attendees who filled that convention center with enough creative energy to power the entire city — thank you for reminding us that the audience for wonder is enormous, and that it's right here, in our own backyard.
​
We are already designing the volcano.

​By Chanelle Elaine Chief Marketing Officer, Sasquatch Syndicate Inc.