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Marketing Trends
How the Museum of Illusions Creates Viral Marketing
00:53:27
How do you market the experience of walking through rooms of illusion that flip reality on its head?
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- [00:00]
A
Okay, I have to go there. This is crazy. What is this video? It's so small, yet she's also tall. How is this person hanging upside down in this place that traditionally I'm used to looking at that you can't hang upside down in?
- [00:18]
B
Today we've got Andy Levy joining the show. He's the chief marketing officer at Museum of Illusions.
- [00:22]
A
We are a visual medium. Print doesn't really do the job. It's got to be motion to display everyone's emotions. And I say it's a FOMO experience because you want to stop scrolling when you see our content, because you want to envision yourself, your family, your friends going through the museum.
- [00:40]
B
I think the emotional connection piece is a big one that gets lost. But if I was a B2B marketer, right now I'd be thinking, I don't think I need experiential, or why is it important to have experiential marketing? Even in a SaaS product, people say.
- [00:52]
A
Oh, well, experiential is not the same as product marketing. I disagree. When you're marketing experiential, you are marketing the product, and the product is the experience. Whatever your product is, the experience doesn't have to be the physical experience, but the experience has to be something that you carry with you.
- [01:12]
B
That's something that I see missing a lot. And I see some very cool B2B companies that they're really bringing the emotions into their marketing, and they're just doing things that are very memorable. It brings an emotion. It puts me as the hero in this story. I can see myself in this. It's funny. It's actually making me laugh. I don't hate logging in here because it just has something that's different. And I remember it.
- [01:34]
A
Anyone can come in and shoot a video, but what are you going to do that will leave the viewer to be like, okay, this is a scroll stopper. I want to go see this place. Or, I love these two brands. I can't believe these people are working together.
- [01:51]
B
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Marketing Trends Podcast. This is your Host, Stephanie Postols, CEO and founder of Mission.org and relevant and Andy. Welcome to the show.
- [02:01]
A
Thanks for having me.
- [02:02]
B
Yeah, I'm very excited to have you. I know we're going to be going deep on a system that you've built up from the ground up, and it's something that a lot of marketers struggle with, which is experiential scalable systems. When it comes to experiential experiences, that sounds kind of funny, but before that, I would actually like you to describe Museum of Illusions for anyone who's not familiar.
- [02:23]
A
Yeah, I mean, we invite people to reimagine reality. So we straddle between education and Entertainment. We've got 70 locations worldwide, anywhere from 8,000 square feet to 13,000 square feet. And when you walk into one of our museums, there are 80 different types of exhibits that are interactive. Some are analog, some are digital, some are posters on the wall. We've got reverse rooms, which is reality turned upside down. So it makes for great photo ops. Building illusions, which that's part of how we localize content as well as we take iconic buildings and the existing locations and make you climb on them and make a great photo op of it. So, you know, I've been with Museum of Illusions for about a year now and you know, I always say we're the biggest brand you've never heard of. You know, we're 70 locations, like I said, worldwide, and we're growing rapidly. And, you know, it's my job to really make it a mainstream brand and really scale it and deploy it and make sure we're consistent across the board.
- [03:31]
B
Amazing. So we're going to get into, you know, the brand that no one's heard of. But I do want to go through quickly your background because I was looking at your LinkedIn and we talked about this a bit. But I mean, you started, I think, in like the finance space and then you jumped into a lot of experiential companies. I mean, I know Cirque du Soleil is one of them. I saw you were supporting Nickelodeon, like so many different experiential event style companies. And so I would just love to hear about what drew you into this space.
- [03:59]
A
Yeah, I worked in finance and investment banking at the beginning of my career because it was, quote unquote, the thing to do when you got out of college. I just didn't enjoy it. I was bored by it. And it was one of those things where had I stayed with it, I'd probably be much wealthier and also miserable. But the catalyst for my change in paths and direction is I'll never forget, it was one Friday night I was working on an analysis for my boss and my younger brother, I think emailed me. This might have been before text or texting me, whatever. And he's like, hey, what are you up to this weekend? I was like, oh, I've got a report I've got to present Monday morning. And my brother was going to college in Las Vegas. And he was like, oh, I'm going to a party with Randy Gerber and George Clooney and Cindy Crawford at this new bar that's opening up. And I was just like, well, this sucks. Why am I doing this? And so kind of from that moment on, you know, I made it a mission to get to Las Vegas because I really enjoyed the entertainment scene there. And so I ended up moving to Las Vegas, went back to school and got my hotel and restaurant degree, or my master's in hotel and restaurant management. Worked my way up in the restaurant and nightlife scene, turned 30, got old, got married, which is like retirement age, and then nightlife world, and then had the opportunity to work for Cirque du Soleil for six years. So three years in Vegas, three years in Montreal. Had the opportunity to move to Dubai and launch a Cirque style show in Dubai, and did that for three years and then moved to LA and worked on a concept called Two Bit Circus, which was an experiential VR arcade, our version of escape rooms called story rooms, and then worked in the field for the past couple of years and joined Museum of Delusions last year. And so for me, there's just something about these emotional experiences. Like every experiential thing is, you know, emotional. Whether it's a surprise and delight, whether you're going with, you know, your spouse, your partner, your date, whether you bring your kids or grandparents or whatever, I, I love the emotional response that people take from it because you'll always remember that event, you know, and that thing you went to. And so for Cirque, obviously, you know, was emotional product. And then, as you know, I've gotten older and, you know, I had kids and my kids have gotten older. Like, they're, they're my beta testers. At the end of the day, they're my barometers. And they're the ones that I'm like, okay, if this works for them, who else will it work for? And so, you know, we spend a lot of our time, we travel a lot, and we spend a lot of our time checking out all these different types of experiences and seeing like, okay, what makes this tick? What can I take from it, you know, in my job, or what can I apply to it, you know, for Museum of Illusions, and how can we either do a better job, how can we make it work, and how can we invite more people to experience this type of thing?
- [07:09]
B
Yeah, amazing. And I know for anyone listening right now who is in the B2B space, and they're wondering like, is this conversation going to be relevant to Me? Yes. In a little bit, I am going to be diving into with Andy, like, the pieces that you can steal from this playbook that are very relevant to Enterprise and B2B. But first I want to circle back to. You mentioned that Museum of Illusions is the brand no one's heard of. And I want, like, I think you said, the biggest brand that no one's heard of. And I want to hear more about that.
- [07:39]
A
Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things, like, you know, personally, it drives me nuts. I mean, I'm based in Scottsdale, Arizona. We have one a mile down the road from our office. And so when I tell people, like, where I work, they're like, oh, what's up? This, I've never heard of it. It's like, it's right down the street there.
- [07:59]
B
You drive by it.
- [08:00]
A
Yeah. You drive by a giant billboard with it. And so I think the challenge of it all is like we're, we're faced with multiple in your face things, whether it's social, whether it's advertising, whether it's all these things. And, you know, so for me, you know, this is a great experience. It's fun. It's fun to bring your kids. We have a partnership with stem.org, so there's an educational component. So it's not just one of those, like, hey, spend money, entertain your kids for 90 minutes. And there's no value in it. There is an educational component of it. We, you know, all of our exhibits are backed by science, math, all sorts of other elements. So we carry weight. And I think that's, you know, part of the challenge in this role is how do we make sure that we capture your attention, we get you to come, we get you to come back. And more and more people are aware of us. And, you know, to the B2B part, there's B2B aspects of our business as well. So, yeah, I mean, it's definitely a challenge. It's a fun place. But, yeah, it's not without challenges.
- [09:07]
B
Yeah. So what are some of the things that you're working on right now that you think are helping the most with this awareness challenge and making sure that people do know who you are and especially that you are, I mean, global. Right. You're in a lot of different areas. So how are you making this, you know, increasing awareness?
- [09:25]
A
Yeah, I mean, so it's, it's figuring out the playbook, as you mentioned, you know, and, you know, there's not just one universal playbook because we're in so many countries because we're in so many different markets, you know, in the US Every city, it's like its own country, depending on where it is. So it's coming with, you know, a master plan and adapting it so, you know, the base is for new markets because we're expanding rapidly. You know, we go in, we partner with a local tourist board just to get introduced to all the right people. We partner with, you know, the local commerce team as well, the commerce group as well. And then we usually hire a local PR agency as well, because we need boots on the ground. We have employees in each venue, but they're operational. We don't have marketing managers in each venue. We're just not big enough to do that. And so we rely heavily on local PR to really introduce us to the people that are the connectors. Not just the media and influencers, but the people behind the scenes or the society types. So really trying to understand the market, what makes it tick, what's been successful from other similar attractions, what's. What's failed and where we can adapt. And so, you know, we are also, you know, a visual medium, you know, like print, you know, it doesn't really do the job. It's got to be motion to, you know, display everyone's emotions. And, you know, I say it's a FOMO experience because you want to stop scrolling when you see our content, because you want to envision yourself, your family, your friends, whomever going through the museum. And so we invest a lot in content. We invest a lot in really digital ads, TikTok, Meta, those types of platforms to get you to stop scrolling and be like, okay, I have to go there. This is crazy. What is this video? Or what is this photo? How is this person hanging upside down in this place that traditionally I'm used to looking at that you can't hang upside down in? It's a complex playbook, multilayer and knowing when to pull certain levers at certain times. We have themes throughout the year. We have LTOs and promotions we do throughout the year. And then certain museums will undergo refreshes every couple of years. And we reinvigorate with new content and new rooms and new experiences as well.
- [11:58]
B
That's amazing. It sounds like a lot going on, I'm assuming. I mean, it's really smart having those local partners where you can really understand what's happening in the city and getting guidance. Is there ever a time where you rolled out a playbook in one city and then you did a similar one and it just flopped because you had missing pieces or you didn't really understand what was happening in the culture of a city. Maybe it's like SF versus Austin. Any stories around that?
- [12:22]
A
They're always different. You know, we're, you know, we're in Las Vegas and Las Vegas is a completely different market than Santa Monica that's, that's opening up in October that I've worked in before. You know, Las Vegas, your tourist base is churning every 48 to 72 hours. Now you also have macroeconomic conditions where the same tourists that you counted on last year are not coming in. So how do you, you know, but our targets don't change, right? So how do you get that same amount of people coming in, you know, despite those challenges? Or, you know, we're in certain locations where there's not a high amount of foot traffic, so how do we make ourselves a destination? Or in other locations where there's a ton of foot traffic, so how do we get people to stop, you know, what they're doing, you know, in that foot traffic avenue and come to us? So it's, it's always a challenge. And like I said, every market is different and they're nuanced. There are certain times of year, there's certain weather conditions, seasonality, things are different. We're about to open in Australia in Q4 as well. And so that presents itself with kind of opposite challenges as well. We're looking to open in December and January and that's summer and it's Christmas and it's school break there. And so it's like figuring out all these different levers that you're like, wow, Christmas, school break. How do we deal with this? How do we provide a gift giving message? How do we provide a summer break message? How do we create awareness? And so it's really trying to figure all that out. Prioritize and then, you know, test and iterate to see, okay, what's sticking, what's working, you know, where do we invest, where do we pull back and what does it mean?
- [14:13]
B
It seems like you need a massive amount of data to be able to see all these data points together. I mean, you're mentioning weather and school and like, you know what people are excited about right now and like Las Vegas maybe is a one time thing when someone comes versus Santa Monica, you hope to bring someone back consistently.
- [14:32]
A
Yeah.
- [14:32]
B
How much of this is partnering with these local partners, let's just say the PR companies, and how much is it just going and scraping mass amounts of data at a local level and trying to converge it in a way that actually helps influence these plans.
- [14:46]
A
That's a great question. It's the bajillion dollar question. It's just a combination of all that. And like I said, it's not a 50, 50 split. In certain markets you just may know these are the ebbs and flows no matter what. We're trying to scrape as much data as possible because that tells us what the trends look like, that tells us directionally where we're going. We've got dashboards through our data analy team who do an awesome job and they pull it all into power bi. So we know, hey, yesterday we sold X amount of tickets in Austin and it was 75 degrees. But in Detroit there was a snowstorm and we only sold negative X tickets. And we've looked at some of those things and we've seen. It's funny because you generally try to hypothesize like okay, cool, when it's a blizzard no one wants to come out. But we've seen that in certain markets the weather actually doesn't deter people from coming out. And then we've seen in certain markets where it's hot, people need to go somewhere that's cool and so they want to spend time with us. Obviously when it's a fall break or a school break or a three day weekend and you got nothing to do with your kids, you're going to come visit us. So we plan accordingly for those types of things. That's the fun thing, that's the challenging thing, is there is a mountain of data and really sifting through to figure out what's meaningful, what's measurable and what we can do with it. I mean, yeah, it's, it's a never ending Rubik's cube of problem solving.
- [16:26]
B
Yeah, definitely sounds like it. Are there, I mean earlier you mentioned the PR strategy working with different PR companies at local levels. Are there any other channels that surprised you when it came to how effective they were in different local cities?
- [16:41]
A
It's a good question as well. The one that doesn't surprise me. Obviously influencers, like the local influencer guys are our bread and butter. I would say those perform both as organic and then we'll usually do brand deals with them so they become ad units. Surprisingly in bigger level markets like out of home, like radio, like broadcast radio is highly effective. You know, that's something that I'm not a huge fan. I need everything to be trackable. But we know in certain markets where, you know, like in la, a San Francisco, you know, even in New York where there's kind of public transit and a lot of traffic. You generally see a lift from broadcast and you can correlate it, you know, depending on what you're offering or what you're doing. Like you see a lift two to three weeks later and every time.
- [17:34]
B
I have not heard that lately. So that's a good hot take. Radio can work.
- [17:38]
A
It's very like, like, I hate to say like radio is antiquated because like our radio partners will kill me. But it's, it's not the media that you expect it, you know, like you're not going to invest, right, because there's just not a one for one roi. But you start to see that lift in website traffic, you see the lift in ticket sales, you know, some brand health. We've seen a lift in awareness. So I guess it's a hot take. But I would say that's the one that surprises me the most. Really?
- [18:08]
B
Yeah. That's very good intel right there of things to explore that maybe others are looking away from right now.
- [18:14]
A
I mean, it's expensive. I mean, you know, it's not, you know, you can't dump 100 bucks into radio where you can a meta or Google and see X amount of return. But it really depends on what your product is, what your experience is.
- [18:27]
B
Mm. So I mean we've talked quite a bit on this show about, you know, the new search era with LLMs and ChatGPT and they are getting better now when it comes to local recommendations. I know back in the day you would search, you know, maybe oil change near me or experiences for kids near me and it just, you know, had a very hard time. Even if I did put in Austin, Texas, it wasn't up to date. Now they're getting pretty good and I can see a future where that is where a lot of people are trying to find experiences. When your kids are off school on the weekends, how are you thinking about this as part of your discoverability strategy with your customers finding you at a.
- [19:05]
A
Very local level Regardless of LLMs, that is part of our strategy is we have to be in the things to do. It's got to be things to do, dot, dot, whatever, date night with your kids, whatever. So from an SEO component that's been a big thing for us. When we go out and work with influencers, we're always trying to fit them into pillars, whether it's date night, family, you know, things like that. And then the LL and the other thing too that we see a lot is especially on Google and I know I'm kind Of like dancing around the LLM side. But follow me here. Google has their things to do product and so we, we were one of the first through our agency to be an organic partner listing rather than an OTA for the things to do platform where you just buy a ticket through that product. That's been highly effective for us and really a great metric of discovery when it comes to LLM. That's something we're looking at pretty much every day of how we're going through a website refresh. So how do we build the website using the proper schema data? So it's we are a location, we're a place, we have X. These are the things to do. How do we plant that within the bones of the website rather than us having to write 3,000 articles to get boosted up through SEO? Not to say that we wouldn't do that, but yeah. And we face challenges as well because there's certain things that get aggregated amongst the LLMs, whether it's through Gemini or ChatGPT or the other ones where there's certain things like museum pass. And if you have a museum pass, you get in for free. Well, yes, we have museum in our title, but we don't offer free tickets. And so we've had cases where we're trying to figure out, okay, people are coming here thinking they can get in for free. How do we address this? And it goes back to really the bones of the website and making sure that, you know, the structured data and the schema is complete and it, it whatever is being aggregated amongst this stuff, you know, we either move out of it or there's a clear message that we're not a part of that.
- [21:20]
B
Yep. Yeah. I had a recent guest on Mike Walrath. He's the CEO of a company called Yext. I don't know if you've heard of them.
- [21:28]
A
Very familiar. Yep.
- [21:29]
B
Okay. Yeah. So he was showing me, I think it's a new product they have of really how to show up at a local level, like what it takes to be geo optimized. And we used Anthropologie as the brand that he let me pick live. Like pick a brand that we should look at and you can see it at every retail location. What's preventing them from showing up in geo searches and ranking high. And I'm like, just the amount of data that you can get now to see how do I make sure, you know, my museum of illusions show up? It's wild.
- [21:57]
A
So we select. We just onboarded a competitor to Yext.
- [22:02]
B
Dun Dun Dun.
- [22:05]
A
But we went through the same process and how to optimize where you're missing listings. And you think of these things and you're like, okay, I need to be listed on Google, I need to be listed on Bing. But then there are other sorts of sites that you have no idea that you're like, okay, cool, how much traffic does this bring? But it all adds up. And all these scraping tools and things like that are super important. Another big thing for us as part of both LLM discovery and SEO is reviews. Reviews are a huge factor, especially from a Google perspective. You know, when it comes to things to do, you want to be on, you know, your maps pages, you want to show that this is a positive experience and not just the amount of reviews or your quality score, but the velocity of reviews. You know, you could have a 4.8, there could be an exhibit that's down, and all of a sudden like you have a velocity of 50 reviews that come in that give you three out of five stars and it's like, okay, that's a factor. Those are the most recent reviews. What are we doing to deal with that or challenge that? And through this yext rival that we look at, there's the also the ability to pull in all that data and then set up filters as well for keywords for reviews to be like, hey, how price, we're going to change the prices. How price sensitive are people? And so you can get all the reviews that say, hey, this, you know, this was too expensive or hey, this was great value for money. So not only going back to the data, not only are you getting the hard data of what you're seeing in terms of performance, but you're also getting the anecdotal data of what people are saying. And then we ultimately have the choice of what are we going to do about this? Do we need to counter this? Is this something that we have to address or is it something that we don't? So all of those things, you know, like I said, it's a giant Rubik's cube, you know, operating, you know, a business, any type of business, but especially a location based one. It's a living, breathing entity. And when you have customers who, you know, come in and have an emotional experience about it and you know, they, they have opinions, you know, and they have opinions at different heights of those emotions. And so trying to sift through that and understand like, is this relevant or not, that's just another piece of the puzzle.
- [24:31]
B
Yep. So earlier I promised that we would shift it to the B2B marketing space and think about how can they take pieces of this and apply it in their own playbook or how can we, like, translate this to their world? And so I would love to just brainstorm that. I mean, I think the emotional connection piece is a big one that gets lost, but I would just love to hear from you, like, how do you take what you're doing and bring it into a B2B marketer's world?
- [24:57]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it really depends from, you know, the B2B perspective, what you truly are marketing. You know, if you're Talking like a B2B conference, like, there is the experience of the conference, right? Is it a good conference? Like, what are you offering the consumer, you know, for your conference? What's different than any other conference, you know, is it just in a hotel ballroom with rubber chicken, or are you doing something over and above that? They're going to be like, I have to go to that event because they had X, they had great speakers. The bar is raised for all of these types of, I'll say B2B conferences, but we could talk about B2B products as well. But for conferences, the bar is raised, right? And so what's the differentiator for the participant? Sure, they can see the guest speakers, but could they see them on a podcast? Can they see them on the person's LinkedIn feed or TikTok feed or whatever? So what are they going to get that's over and above? What are the takeaways they're going to be able to take back with them and what's going to hook them to come back to that conference in a year or two years? From the product side, you know, I think about, you know, we use a lot of SaaS products and B2B products. And I think about, from my perspective as a, as a B2C marketer, I always want to challenge my B2B vendors as, okay, these are the things I need for my business. I'm not asking these things from you because I'm special or particular, but these are things that are also going to help you attract other clients in the business. If I'm asking for this, it's because there's an industry knowledge that comes with it, there's experience that comes with it, or there's a consumer need that we're not able to fulfill. And so, you know, my hope is you'll put the development time into this product so then you can turn around and sell it to someone else. You know, let us do the investing. So you can also become bigger and better as well. So I think that's kind of, you know, things that you can take away from. The B2B side is, you know, hear your client out and understand, like, when they're being challenging or difficult or asking for things, think about, okay, cool, how can we package this and also sell this to someone else?
- [27:23]
B
Okay, so if I was a B2B marketer, right now I'd be thinking, that sounds like customer success or that sounds like product requests, versus I'd still be pushing back on you of push. I don't think I need experiential. I don't think I need an experiential process in my SaaS, in my software that I'm selling. So that's the one I kind of want to dig on is like, how can we shift our mindset to be like, how do we make experiences magical? Or why is it important to have experiential marketing even in a SaaS product?
- [27:56]
A
It's a tough question. It's a tough one. I've heard this before, and people say, oh, well, experiential is not the same as product marketing. And I disagree. When you're marketing experiential, you are marketing the product, and that's the product of the. The product is the experience. And so I would flip it back on you to say, whatever your product is the experience. It doesn't have to be the physical experience, but the experience of whether it's onboarding or the relationship you have with your CSM or the relationship you have with your sales team or the customer service team. It has to be something that you carry with you. Otherwise it's ubiquitous. You're no different than any off the shelf, you know, SAS program or me calling the help desk, you know, for an airline, like. And so I think that's where there are elements that you know can be taken from experience, and I think it will. Obviously, there's expenses to that, but, like, it sets your service and your SaaS above the bar. So, you know, maybe it's not, hey, you're a SaaS program and you sell, I don't know, widgets to, you know, XYZ company. Okay, cool. You can't do, you know, a physical takeover of a space because you either don't have the budget or it doesn't make sense. But I think, you know, from the hospitality side, from the experiential side, there's a reason you keep going back to these experiences. There's a reason you keep going back to these restaurants, right? The reason why people go to McDonald's or people go to Chili's is they know it, it's familiar. There's a certain bar that they expect when they go there. And so I would say from the B2B side, when someone purchases your software or your product, they should know that it's Product X. And every time I purchase Product X or I use Product X, this is the experience that I get from it.
- [30:02]
B
Yeah, I think the. What you said earlier too, around, like, what's the emotional connection, that's something that I see missing a lot. And I see some very cool B2B companies. There's a couple, like, cybersecurity companies that I'm watching that they're really bringing the emotions into their marketing and they're just doing things that are very memorable. And, and I think that's also a very helpful piece in this space is like, how do you bring emotions even into something that might be CRM? And how do you make it, like you said, where you open up and you're like, ah, like, it brings an emotion. It puts me as the hero in this story. I can see myself in this. It's funny. It's actually making me laugh. I don't hate logging in here because it just has something that's different and I remember it.
- [30:42]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think too, like, you know, there's certain B2B products that you have to use because there's a crisis or something's wrong or something's broken. And so you're coming in already frustrated. And so I think to your point, you have the opportunity to make the customer the hero if they're able to solve this situation. Rather than you logging into a CRM program every single time and you're pulling your hair out like, all right, it's going to take me three hours to map out this campaign. You know, this sucks. Rather than like, okay, cool, here's what I did. Here's how I can look like I'm the hero. Here's how I can demonstrate it to my board or my bosses, et cetera. And it's, you know, a smooth and simple process. Or, you know, hey, I have a. I have a very weird ask that's not with within the out of box process. How can you help me get there? You know, I think those are the things that really help, you know, over and above.
- [31:39]
B
Yep, yep, I agree. So if everything is going right in your world, what do you want to be known for in marketing circles? Like, how do you want people to be looking at the work that you're doing at Museum of Illusions. And you know, what has happened over the next five years?
- [31:54]
A
Another good question. I mean, for me, you know, over the past couple of years, I set out for my goal to be, when you're opening one of these experiential places, LBE attractions, etc, I want to be the person that you call, you know, I, I've done enough of these over the past five years and you know, we're growing rapidly and, and so I know, you know, we have a lot more under our, you know, in the pipeline and under our belt. And so I want, you know, in marketing circles, people to be like, okay, that's the experiential guy. Like, you know, whatever he touches, you know, for the most part works and it's a success. And you know, how do we, how do we replicate that? And again, like every, every market's different. So you're not going to hit it out of the park every single time you're going to open and sometimes you're going to stumble and learn from it. But, you know, I want people to see our content and go, wow, I have to go there with my fill in the blank, you know, family member. But yeah, I mean, I love this space. I think it's a fun space. I think the world is, you know, a crazy place these days and people need to go and experience, you know, joy and, you know, you know, take a 90 minute break from their day to day and, you know, challenge themselves in terms of, you know, their minds and just have a good time and be able to, you know, connect in the following week. Say to whomever, like, hey, remember when we went to that place? That was cool. Or hey, remember when you hung upside down in the subway? That was really cool. So, yeah, I mean, success for me is obviously the brand success and future growth, but also like, you know, I want us to be the North Star barometer when it comes to experiential.
- [33:42]
B
I love that. Okay, so if someone were to call you right now, what would you tell them? Don't do this. Like lessons that you personally learned. Yeah, just areas where you're like, that didn't work. This was. And it doesn't have to be at Museum of Illusions. It can be other places. You can keep it anonymous. But I'd love to hear some war stories of just things that didn't go well and you would advise someone to not try it that way.
- [34:02]
A
Oh, I got a lot of scars. A lot of scars.
- [34:05]
B
As we all do. They're all good and helpful.
- [34:08]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think it's really important, I would say the things to do rather than don't do is understand the location, understand your audience, understand cultural sensitivities. You know, and that can be anything from, you know, religion, depending on the region you're at, minorities to language, all of that stuff. Really understand that. Because the worst thing that you can do is come in, especially from an experiential point of view, is be this like mall store of this giant box that just comes in, that's monolithic, it has no soul. And you cut the ribbon and then you leave and you expect people to show up. Like I said earlier, these are living, breathing organisms and they require to be fed, cared for, nurtured. And you have to remember that we're not opening a store that sells towels. And even a store that sells towels probably is also a living, breathing organism. So I would say really understand the culture, the market, who are you talking to? And if that doesn't work out of the gate, you have to pivot quickly and you have to be ready to pivot quickly. One of my favorite quotes is the Mike Tyson quote, Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. I think go into every project planning on being punched in the face multiple times. Other don'ts, I would say don't micromanage. You've got to put the right people in place and trust them. They're going to succeed and they're going to fail. And you have to trust them to, you know, learn from those things and move on from those things and how they adapt. If they make the same mistakes, you know, two and three times, that's an issue. But you know, everyone's going to make mistakes, everyone's going to learn from them. Never underestimate time. You'll never have the time that you need. So always build in way more time than you think. Because whatever you're doing, you know, the deadline or launch date or whatever is going to hit you in the face tomorrow and you're never going to be ready. So just, you know, buffer out, you know, as much time as you can. And I guess, you know, this is a do rather than a don't, is always, always make time for yourself and block out calendar time for you to actually do stuff. You know, certain companies, certain businesses, you get sucked into meeting culture where you, you know, you're in meetings, you know, 12 hours of your 12 hour day or whatever your day is, and then you have to get all the work done. You know, for me, like, I travel a lot, so it's, it's a, it's difficult when you're traveling and on the road and either missing meetings or missing emails or whatever, and you have to catch up. So really carving out time to make sure that you can have an hour or two to just chisel away at things and make sure you push it to the finish line. I think that's really important.
- [37:05]
B
Okay. I love all those. Yeah. Especially the, the not micromanaging piece is like, because you're in all these local markets. I could see, you know, you coming in and hearing from a team, you know, I'll just say in a different country or even a different city, what they think could work best. And then you're like, well, that doesn't resonate with me. I would never come to that. And actually having to, you know, trust them and be like, okay, let's try, you know, let's try that here. Even though I would never, you know, think that would work anywhere else.
- [37:34]
A
So, I mean, we'll try anything once. That's, that's the thing, you know, we'll try anything once. If it doesn't work, then it doesn't work. But, you know, we do listen to our local teams because there are boots on the ground. They're the ones who are dealing, you know, they're, they're going to battle every day, you know, dealing with, you know, fun customers, challenging customers, market conditions, you know, weather and all that stuff. And so, yeah, we have to listen to them. And it's extremely important. You know, we can't, we can't just brush them off. You know, their, their experience and their input is, is really important for us and relevant.
- [38:09]
B
Yeah. So I want to shift, of course, into the AI conversation. This is something I feel like now every interview I'm talking about this because it's very fascinating hearing how different marketing leaders are leveraging this within their companies. And so for you, how are you implementing AI? Is it in content creation or media buying, or are you creating agents? Especially with all the data and I'm sure the operations that goes on behind the scene, like what things are you either doing now that are actually really working or that you're thinking about pulling into your mix?
- [38:39]
A
Yeah, I mean, where do we start? Right? It's, it's, it's all over the place. Like, you know, personally, I use AI a lot to just, you know, sometimes it's agents just to, like, clear my schedule and help me, you know, plan my day to day when it comes to, you know, writing certain things. You know, I'll Throw stuff in just to make sure that like I hit all the right beats and then I adapt it myself. I don't copy paste, you know, straight from the platform, from the media buying perspective. You know, listen, we were like everyone else on all the same platforms and we use all the algorithmically thing, you know, things like the PMaxes and you know, the advantages and all that stuff that uses AI. A lot of that stuff you do have to look at, you know, and understand like, okay, why is it optimizing in this platform or why is it optimizing ON Android When 99% of our audience is on a iPhone? And so I think there are elements to it where that they're extremely powerful, but there's still elements where you need oversight. We are doing a lot of not AI generated content, but content that we're filtering through platforms that can then use AI to iterate. So one of those is, as we talked about is Celtra. So that's one where you, you build templates and once those templates are built, you know, it creates every single toolkit you can need. So you build one, you know, image and you've got all of your assets deployed for every single type of banner, ad, website placement, Instagram ad, TikTok ad, et cetera. And then you want to deploy that at scale and you're going to Brazil and you want it to be in Brazilian Portuguese. You just switch it and it's changes it, you know, and so that's cool. You know, it's, it's really cool. You know, it frees up our creative team to actually do way more creative stuff rather than kind of doing the blocking tackling of creating 75 different assets of the same creative. And so that for us is something that we're really doubling down on and starting to play around with. And it just makes it easier to be like, okay, cool, you know, we're doing a 20% offer. I'm going to switch it to $5 and see let's a B test how it performs. And so I don't need a creative to go in and do that. We can just go in and use the approved template and switch it and then it populates it all from there. And so those are the things for us that I think they're going to become everyday tools in the next couple months. Not even I say near future, but near future is next couple months. I think the thing that I'm challenged with, that I'm trying to understand is going to the data part of AI. I've seen A few software systems that will take our ticketing data and pretty much give me a comprehensive analytical report of everything that's going on in our business with color commentary. Not just like, hey, here's a table. Really understanding what the smell test is on that, like, is it accurate? Is it right? Is it feeding me the right data? You know, how do we test that? And then I also see for the kids who are coming out of college and just starting their careers, like, going back to my financing, that was what I did. I analyzed data comprehensively, 80 hours a week. I don't think that job's going to exist anymore in the next six months to a year. I think that's all going to be AI handled. And so what I'm trying to understand is, okay, if my junior level analyst is now replaced by a series of bots or a software system that's delivering this stuff to me, then what happens to that person and how do we bridge that gap so they can understand that knowledge and have them either challenge the AI or work on devices that can, you know, we can, you know, implement strategies and then also come to me and be like, hey, this is what, you know, the data is showing us. This is the trend, this is the path. Here's what we recommend. Because I do think especially, you know, in the LBE world, because like I said, there's an emotional component, you do need someone to interpret that data that is not just a bot.
- [43:12]
B
Yeah. I also think, I mean, along with being able to merge a bunch of unstructured data and data sources that are definitely surrounding your world, I also would like for a tool to be able to show you should incorporate this data because there's just going to be only more and more data created in all of these markets all over the world. And so how do you have something that's also predictive of. Oh, but it looks like these three new data sources are popping up, or this is happening over in Reddit, or there's a new Facebook group for moms. Like, how does it start identifying helpful sources of data and bring it in.
- [43:44]
A
And then how does it score it as well? Right? Because like, I think those are the things, the hard coded data. Right? That's easy in the sense of, like, aggregating. But, like, how do you determine a score of like, you're saying, like Facebook moms group, you know, like, that's a powerful segment, but how do you score it and how do you apply it towards, you know, a museum of illusions versus a, you know, vitamin brand? You know, like they're two different things. So how do you, you know, how do we set the scoring for that? How do we adapt it? And so, yeah, I mean, we're on an unknown frontier here and it's very exciting, but it's also like intimidating not by the AI because like that doesn't scare me, but just the possibilities of what we can discover, uncover, and kind of the speed to market of how fast can we get to these conclusions and make changes or adapt. That really fascinates me at the moment.
- [44:45]
B
All right, so we are going to be shifting now to the lightning round. One of my favorite parts of the episode where I send a question your way and then you have a minute or less to answer whatever comes top of mind for you. Are you ready?
- [44:58]
A
Okay. All right, let's do it.
- [45:00]
B
All right, first, what's an experiential campaign that you saw recently that you were like, oh, I wish I did that.
- [45:06]
A
I have two, I think everyone, if you ask everyone, they would say probably the Louis Vuitton wrap building in Manhattan. I mean that's iconic. It's real estate. Like it's a billboard. It's just everything, right? You can't miss it. But I think the other one that was super subtle actually one of my friends agencies did. It was the movie Smile came out I think two years ago and they planted the actors in the background of sports events, just smiling creepily and some people got it. Obviously there was PR behind it to push it, but I thought that was so well done because, you know, it was minimal cost, high impact and people are like, what is this? And I just really enjoyed the virality of it. Of course everyone wants their thing to go viral, but I really enjoyed how that took off.
- [46:04]
B
Yeah, that's good. I have not seen that movie so I have to check that out.
- [46:07]
A
I'm too scared to watch it.
- [46:10]
B
Oh, is it a scary movie? I'm definitely not watching it.
- [46:12]
A
It's a horror movie.
- [46:13]
B
I don't watch those.
- [46:14]
A
Yeah, okay. Yeah, I guess it's a demon that possesses people and it causes them to smile and people are like, what's wrong? Yeah.
- [46:22]
B
Wow. Interesting. Interesting concept. Okay, who's a marketer that you follow that you think more people should know about?
- [46:30]
A
I've got to give a shout out to my team first and foremost because they're awesome. I have an awesome marketing team. But I think one of the people that I is just like an up and comer who is on the verge of great things is a guy by the name of Bryce Betts. He worked for Cirque du Soleil. Now he works for Las Vegas Tourism, lbcba. Makes amazing content. He's head of social there. Makes amazing content. But the way he does the case studies and explaining and the tutorials of why they're doing what they're doing and the metrics behind it, it's just very well done. And you can tell. I don't know how old he is, but, you know, young guy, you can just tell. Like, the dude gets it super sharp and put together and just, you know, a bright start in the making. Like, hand him anything and he'll make it look beautiful and get the. The digital results that you need.
- [47:26]
B
Yeah, well, I'd have to look him up, maybe bring him on. Sounds like a good one.
- [47:29]
A
He's awesome. Good, good.
- [47:31]
B
What is one thing that you believe about marketing that you. That some people disagree with you on?
- [47:35]
A
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if people, like, agree with it or disagree with it, but I think as a marketer looking at, you know, employment or looking for your job, one, you have to be passionate about it, but you also have to ask yourself too, like, okay, cool, it's a paycheck, but can I wake up every day and be passionate about marketing? X? You know, because I think it's. I think it's hard to market something that you don't believe in. I think it's hard to market a product that, you know, your reviews are crap and people don't like, quite frankly. Like, I take it personally when we get bad reviews and, like, it just like, it's like, you know, needles and pins to my heart. And I shouldn't take it personally, but I care. So I think. I know not everyone has the opportunity to choose where they get to work and the path, but I would say make sure that you're passionate about whatever you're marketing, because if you're not, it's just not enjoyable for anybody.
- [48:36]
B
Yep. Yep. Okay. What is one illusion that went viral in one of the museums that was maybe unexpected or like, a surprise that this exhibit went viral?
- [48:48]
A
All of our exhibits have the ability to go viral. It really depends on how the video is made, how the photograph is taken, all that stuff. But we have one that was in our New York location that's gone viral two or three times now. It's a video of people sitting in one of our reverse rooms. They're not doing anything fancy. It's not, like, anything revolutionary, and it's just the juxtaposition of it. And I think on Instagram, it has 40 million views on TikTok, it's gotten like 16 million views. And it's just a video of people sitting there upside down. And it's the typical marketer thing. You can put all your money and effort into either hiring an influencer or coming up with this cool production crew and filming something unique. And then it just lands and it gets like 5,000 views and then you have these people just sitting there getting 40 million views.
- [49:43]
B
And that was UGC.
- [49:45]
A
Yeah, yeah, of course.
- [49:48]
B
Yeah.
- [49:48]
A
You know, we had a gentleman when I worked at Two Bit Circus. He would never tell us when he was coming in. He was a regular. And every video that he posted would get 5 million plus views. And like, we never had an agreement with him. You know, we. We invited him in, said, hey, we'll buy you drinks, we'll take care of you, whatever. Nope, he came in and every video he did, I was like, all right, just gotta roll the dice on this one.
- [50:12]
B
Yeah, okay, that's cool. Yeah, it is interesting thinking about the UGC strategy of how to attract people in. And they all probably have different motives of.
- [50:22]
A
Yes.
- [50:22]
B
You know, so figuring out what drives you to want to come in and is it a partnership deal or are you just trying to get more views because of how you're monetizing? And it seems like a tricky space to play in, figuring out what would make them happy.
- [50:34]
A
We get endless DMs, you know, for, for people requesting. And we do go through, you know, an evaluation process of, you know, how we select with people, because it's. It's really important to make sure that, you know, you're not just letting someone in and filming and then all of a sudden they want to be a collaborator and like, you're, you're damaging what they're doing. And so, you know, for us, you know, it's great exposure, but for us to, you know, post on our feed, or for us to work with you, or for us wanting to use it as an ad unit, it's gotta be something that's, wow, you know, we worked. We've got a video that, that's taken off recently, and we've worked with this woman. She's an acrobat and she's gone through multiple museums and it's just gravity defying and really cool. Those are the types of things for us that we love. It's just like, anyone can come in and shoot a video, but, like, what are you going to do that's like over and above or what's your POV that would match with Ours that will leave the viewer to be like, okay, this is a scroll stopper. I want to go see this place. Or, I love these two brands. I can't believe these people are working together.
- [51:43]
B
Yep, yep. And that just shows the finding people who have that extra experiential piece to them. It's like you're not just doing a video, but you're an acrobat or you're doing this. It's like looking for that in everything you do.
- [51:55]
A
Yeah, exactly. What's going to get people to stop scrolling and be like, like, oh, I've never seen that before.
- [52:02]
B
Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Okay, last question. If you are not a cmo, what job would you like to try for a year?
- [52:08]
A
I'd love to be a general manager of a sports team. I love sports. I love the data analytics behind performance and stats. Being a gm, it's kind of like being a day trader in the stock market. You're betting on futures, you know, except instead of stocks, it's actual human beings. And you can have a quarterback or a pitcher or a, A goalie that you know is great, but all of a sudden, like, they woke up on the wrong side of the bed and they had a bad day or you know, like, hey, here's someone that could be up and coming, you know, that you need to add to your team. Like, I love, I love all of that and managing people and I'm a huge sports fan. So yeah, I would definitely want that job for a day. I'd probably only have it for a day, depending on who the fan base is.
- [52:59]
B
Yeah, that is a very interesting space. Well, Andy, this has been awesome. Thank you for coming on Marketing Trends. Where can people learn more about you and what you're up to at Museum of Illusions?
- [53:08]
A
Yeah, you can follow me on LinkedIn, Andy Levy, or you can follow Museum of Illusions in the useumofillusionsusa and you can see all our fun videos and all the new openings we have.
- [53:21]
B
All right, amazing. Thank you so much.
- [53:23]
A
Thank you.