ComSciCon Houston Branding, Marketing, and Fundraising

ComSciCon Houston 2023 was the largest to take place in the conferences' ten year history, with over three times as many attendees and twice the budget raised thanks to passionate marketing and a dream to make ComSciCon accessible to everyone.

The branding for ComSciConHou 2023 was inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic in that many scientists and science communicators were essential to slowing the spread of COVID-19 - they are one of the unsung heroes of the pandemic. We then considered how scientists and science communicators are superheroes, their powers are informing each other and the public of progress in science. Just like normal superheroes who have to develop their powers over the course of their lives, so do scientists to communicate their science. ComSciCon has a mission to train scientists to communicate, so we ultimately decided on "SciComm as a Superpower" for this year's ComSciCon Houston theme.

The branding was focused on an old style of pop art, with unique primary colors to help our advertising stand out from others around it. As a result, we had the most ComSciCon Houston application submissions ever, with over 140 individuals applying (previously, this number has been in the 40-50's even prior to the pandemic). We also hit and surpassed our fundraising goals in a matter of months, raising over $11,000 for the conference, allowing us to rent out the largest venue in ComSciCon Houston's history.

We continued our branding throughout the conference, painting our speakers as heroes in their field. We also focused on showing how important diversity is in our branding, making sure to be inclusive of everyone interested in science communication. By the end of ComSciCon Houston, we had over twenty tweets just dicussing our incredible our branding was and how it ensured the success of this conference.