Talking Armageddon: Manning Madman with Andrew Cozens - Marketing Coordinator, Madman NZ

Talking Armageddon: Manning Madman with Andrew Cozens - Marketing Coordinator, Madman NZ

With just hours to go till the 20th Armageddon Festival, Andrew Cozens - Marketing Coordinator, Madman NZ discusses the festival from their stand.


What’s the best part of being at Armageddon? 

Being primarily a distributor we’re one part removed from the end consumer. At Armageddon we get to deal with them directly and they’re amazing! We love how passionate they are about the content and the amount of effort some people put into cosplaying their favourite character. Sometimes they know more about a particular show than we do!

What’s the one item that you always sell really well – and why do you think that is? 
Well the most recent new releases always sell well but it’s our Studio Ghibli artbooks that are consistently at the top of the best-selling list at the end of each convention. I think when people can physically see these beautifully illustrated hardcover books, leaf through the pages… it’s a much easier decision than just being a sku on a page. They are also really hard to find outside of Armageddon so people have limited opportunities to buy them.

What does Armageddon mean to you? A joyful celebration of all things pop-culture… one big family of like-minded individuals.

What’s been your favourite moment at all of the Armageddons you have attended? From a business perspective.. when two sisters spent thousands of dollars between them at our booth in Wellington a few years back.. not sure it was entirely healthy but we’ve never seen anyone so keen for anime! My personal favourite moment was over ten years ago when I was just a punter. Getting to meet Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom) when I was such a massive Harry Potter fan at the time was pretty awesome. Still have that autograph in my room somewhere.

What’s the one thing at Armageddon this year that you have that you think is the coolest item? 
In the last year we’ve branched out into official figurines for some of our most popular anime shows.. but if I had to choose one item it would have to be the limited edition “Collected Works of Hayao Miyazaki” on blu-ray. We released it back in April but ran out super quick. There has been one more production run of the bluray boxset for Christmas so this is your last chance to grab it. Every single Hayao Miyazaki film on blu-ray including his early shorts, collectable postcards and a 32 page essay.. all housed in a beautiful hardcover box.

What’s been your favourite costume from the event? Probably a few years back at one of the Hamilton conventions – someone had made their own Catbus! That was so cool, we all wanted to take a turn inside it. Big cuddly Totoro’s always go down well too.

What do you want to see at this year’s 20th Anniversary Armageddon? Everything we’ve seen at past Armageddon’s – but bigger! It would be awesome to beat the attendance record again. Last year was just crazy. Because we’re working every day we don’t get much of a chance to see everything that’s going on.. it would be nice to see some cosplay come past our booth that blows us away – like the Catbus or the Rocket Guardians of The Galaxy cosplay we saw at Hamilton this year. If I do get time away from the booth I’d love to get some playtime with the new Uncharted game,  Fallout 4 or Star Wars Battlefront.