Let Fans Chart Their Own Course: What KCON LA 2025 Teaches Brand Communities
At KCON LA 2025, with festival games, photo booths, multiple stages, and artist meet-ups, fans chose exactly how deeply to engage. GTM and community teams can learn a lot from that playbook.
Last weekend, I joined over 125,000 K-pop fans at KCON LA 2025, a three-day celebration of Korean pop culture that took over the Los Angeles Convention Center and Crypto.com Arena. This wasn’t just another music festival. It was an engagement masterclass. Everywhere I turned, fans had the freedom to choose their own adventure. Some went straight to the main stage for the M Countdown concerts. Others spent hours exploring the festival booths. Some quietly collected photo cards while others danced in front of a crowd on the Dance Stage.
The magic wasn’t in one single event. It was in the way KCON layered experiences, letting each attendee craft their own path. As a community builder and GTM strategist, I couldn’t help but think: this is exactly how brand communities should work. Give people agency, create moments of personal connection, and meet them wherever they are on the engagement spectrum.
KCON at a Glance: Why It Matters Beyond K-pop
First held in 2012, KCON has grown into the largest Korean culture convention and music festival in the world. It now attracts tens of thousands of attendees per city and millions more via live streaming. What began as a niche fan gathering has evolved into a global platform for music, culture, and commerce. It’s also a living case study in how to scale engagement without losing the personal, passionate energy that makes a community thrive. For GTM leaders, it’s proof that when you give people the tools, spaces, and freedom to participate, they will turn your brand into something much bigger than you can on your own.
Layered Engagement: Let People Pick Their Own Path
One of the most striking things about KCON LA 2025 was how it catered to every type of fan. If you wanted an intense, high-touch experience, you could book a Meet & Greet, participate in a Hi-Wave send-off, or get your name called out by an idol on the Artist Stage.
If you preferred to observe from the sidelines, you could explore the 358 booths that filled the Festival Grounds, ranging from beauty and fashion to food and lifestyle brands. Some people bounced between the smaller stages, like the X Stage for up-and-coming acts or the Dance Stage. Still others practiced choreography to audition for the Dream Stage, where lucky fans danced with NCT 127, MONSTA X, and HxW.
GTM and community takeaway: Too often, brand communities assume there is one “right” way to engage, usually a default like posting in a forum or attending a webinar. Instead, create multiple layers of participation, from passive content consumption to high-intensity, one-on-one interaction. Let members choose the level that fits their comfort, time, and interest.
Example in practice: A SaaS company could offer quick polls and resource threads for light engagement, monthly product workshops for those ready to invest more time, and small-group strategy calls with product managers for the most engaged members.
Micro-Moments That Feel Massive
KCON understood that even small, well-orchestrated interactions can leave lasting emotional impact.
The Call Me By My Name program turned something as simple as name recognition into a heart-stopping moment, as idols read fans’ names aloud on stage.
Meet & Greets often went beyond a handshake, with some featuring games, special photo ops, or group send-offs that made fans feel personally acknowledged.
On the Dream Stage, the thrill of performing alongside your favorite group elevated fans from spectators to participants.
GTM and community takeaway: Think about the “micro-moments” in your own community. Could you spotlight a member in a newsletter? Give them the mic in a webinar? Invite them to co-create a resource? It doesn’t need to be expensive or elaborate, just meaningful and personal.
Example in practice: A customer success team could surprise members by personally congratulating them in a live webinar when they reach a milestone, or by inviting them to co-host a tutorial on how they use the product.
Multi-Channel Exposure Meets Fan Creativity
The festival didn’t just rely on what organizers created. Fans were active contributors to the experience.
Attendees brought their own fan-made swag, traded stickers, and swapped photo cards, which created a stream of user-generated content that fueled the event’s energy.
Booth activations from brands like Tous Les Jours and K-Story & Comics offered immersive settings perfect for photos and social sharing.
For the first time, KCON streamed live on Prime Video and Twitch, expanding the audience well beyond those who could attend in person.
This year, I joined in for the first time as a UGC creator myself. Before KCON, I designed and printed custom photo cards featuring my favorite idols and brought them to give away to fellow fans. Watching someone’s face light up when I handed them a card was pure joy. It also gave me a deeper appreciation for the creative energy fans pour into these spaces. I wasn’t just attending anymore. I was contributing.
GTM and community takeaway: Communities thrive when you encourage co-creation and showcase it. Whether it’s a member-created template, a case study, or a how-to video, amplify it across multiple channels. And don’t limit participation to those who can attend physically. Digital access can dramatically widen your reach.
The Engagement Flywheel in Action
KCON’s design fuels a loop of participation:
Organizers create experiences worth sharing.
Fans capture and share those moments online.
That content inspires others to join in, either this year or next.
The new participants add their own creativity back into the system.
GTM and community takeaway: You can create a similar flywheel in your own brand community. Focus on designing shareable moments, spotlighting member contributions, and making participation visible. The more people see themselves reflected in the community, the more they’ll want to engage.
A Festival-Fair Ethos That Works for Business Communities
KCON’s theme this year, Klover’s Club Fair, embraced a school-club-style spirit. Instead of forcing attendees down a single track, the event was more like a fairground where you could wander from one experience to another.
This format has powerful implications for brand communities. Imagine an online “festival” where members could drop into different tracks, one focused on product deep-dives, another on career development, another on creative projects, without needing to commit to a single long session.
GTM and community takeaway: When you think about programming, imagine it like a fair, not a lecture hall. Offer diverse entry points and let members self-select their path. Variety drives discovery, and discovery fuels deeper engagement.
What Didn’t Work (and What Brands Can Learn)
For all the magic of the event, KCON LA 2025 had its friction points, and those moments spread just as fast online as the positive ones.
Ticketing frustration: In the lead-up to the event, social media was full of complaints about high prices, confusing package tiers, and difficulty securing seats. Some fans reported glitches during the sale that left them empty-handed, while resale prices skyrocketed.
Overcrowding in certain areas: Popular booths and stages sometimes drew more attendees than they could handle, leading to long waits and blocked walkways.
Clarity gaps in scheduling: With multiple stages and overlapping events, it was easy for attendees to miss something they wanted to see, especially if they weren’t familiar with how to navigate the app or maps.
GTM and community takeaway: Friction in core operational areas like access, wayfinding, or pricing can overshadow even the best engagement programming. Great communities require as much investment in infrastructure and clarity as they do in creative experiences. Before launching new initiatives, test the journey from your member’s perspective, identify potential pain points, and resolve them early.
Designing for Belonging
KCON LA 2025 was more than a celebration of music and culture. It was a living example of how communities can be designed to invite participation at every level. From layered engagement options to intimate, personal moments, from member-driven creativity to a structure that encouraged exploration, it showed how powerful it can be when people have agency over their experience.
The missteps—ticketing challenges, overcrowding, and communication gaps—were reminders that engagement magic can be dulled if operational basics aren’t in place. For GTM leaders and community builders, the lesson is to balance creativity with flawless execution.
Try this in your own community:
Audit your engagement layers and add at least one low-effort and one high-touch option.
Identify one micro-moment you can personalize for members this month.
Create a space or challenge for member-generated content and promote it.
Map out an “engagement flywheel” for your community and look for where it breaks.
When you get both creativity and execution right, you don’t just attract participants. You create belonging. And belonging is what turns a crowd into a community.