Marc Simons

[MUSIC] >> Hi, I'm Charlie Moucher, founder of the Future of Storytelling. And I'm delighted to have you with me for today's false podcast. Full service agency, Giants Spoon, has changed the game of experiential marketing. Their impressive work has garnered them a ton of recognition including fast companies, most innovative companies in 2020, and Adweek's breakthrough creative agency of the year in 2021. The firm is best known for their 2018 Westworld activation, produced for HBO at South by Southwest, that broadcasts into the fictional town of Sweetwater. They built a 90,000 square foot detailed recreation of the Western town, with 66 actors, 440 pages of scripts, and an almost limitless array of user journeys. The pop-up was wildly successful, earning 1.9 billion media impressions, and becoming the most talked about experiential activation of the year. For this episode, I'm honored to sit down with Mark Simons, Giants Spoon co-founder, to chat about the secret sauce behind their success. Some of which is no doubt Mark himself. He was named Adweek's experiential executor of the year in 2019, and a media all-star in 2020. Please join me in extending a warm welcome to Mark Simons. Mark, welcome to the Future Storytelling podcast. So happy to have you with us today. Thank you. Appreciate it. God be here. So I'd love for you to tell us a little bit about Giants Spoon, and specifically the whole experiential focus for the agency and how that came about. Sure. Giants Spoon. We are about a 150 person full-service agency. We do everything. Experiential is one of the big tools in the toolkit. But when we first started, we were actually more of a, like, strategy and ideas company. And that's still very much what we are today. But strategy and ideas quickly became, okay, let's actually execute those ideas. And a lot of the ideas that we were coming up with were different. They pushed brands into different spaces and then broke new ground and figured out ways to connect with consumers in different ways. Experiential was sort of a place that was ripe to reinvent. A lot of the ideas we were coming up with started to gravitate towards. How can we get someone to really interact with and engage and understand this brand? What kind of story can we tell them about the brand? How can we get them to really touch, feel, use all their senses to connect here? And we kind of happened upon experiential. It wasn't like we set out from day one, or we're going to build an experiential agency. It was like, this is the Petri dish. What comes from it? We don't know yet, but like, let's see where it takes us. And experiential was one of those places that bloomed very early. What led to that? There are a lot of agencies out there that aren't didn't become known for doing some of the world's best experiential work. Like you guys, how did that happen to grow out of the Petri dish? It comes from how we started as this strategy and ideas company, where we were trying to figure out just better ways to connect. And when you look at like what the world of advertising is typically used to connect with consumers, it's very one way. There's a lot of like, we're going to put out a billboard. It's going to say our message. Here's the TV spot. This is our message. It's a lot of that. As the world was moving towards more two way, where people could sort of engage with brands on their terms and at their choice. And we said, okay, we're out here to stir things up a bit. What's a place where it's been done a certain way before? And what are we going to do that gives consumers something that's a little bit beyond just like here try our product? And that's where it was like, okay, it's just another space where we can just take another look at it and say, maybe we do it differently. Maybe we go a little bit further. Maybe there's a way to do this that is more memorable, more engaging, going to have a deeper impact. And that's been, when you look at the full service side of the business, we create content, we run social channels for brands, we make ads, we do all those things, but we always go a little bit further with it to make it so that we think we're tapping into something that a consumer actually wants and we're doing something that is memorable. And experientials, it's sort of one way that it happened, but I think there's also more. And there's places where we haven't we haven't done it yet. New things will pop up. The universe is the thing. How are we going to bring brands into there that's going to feel different? We're always looking at what the future is going to have in store for for us and brands. One of the things that really resonates for me and what you just said was that you were very much coming at it from their customer perspective, right? What do they want? What's going to make them want to invest their valuable time and attention? And what's going to make it memorable for them? Those are all really big insights that sadly not every company prioritizes. It takes a longer view on things too that you're building a brand. You're not just necessarily selling a product. Brand love, brand loyalty. Those are actually more valuable at the end of the day because it's long term brand value. You need to focus on the brand and you tell a story of the brand and you need people to understand the brand and love the brand in order to do that. So you're out there trying to create these kinds of memorable experiences for customers. What's an example of perhaps your most successful immersive experience that Giant Spoon has done? I think this might be true because when I type in Giant Spoon into Google, the auto suggest is Westworld right after that. It might be this one. It was an incredible thing. So we created the town of sweet water from Westworld at South by Southwest back in, this was 2018. So a couple of years ago, it was essentially a theme park village that we created. It was 90,000 square feet, so a couple of acres. We hired 60 salon actors. We crafted 400 or 500 pages of script for them to act out. And it was essentially like literally building Westworld. Like what that show is about, season one of what it was, where it was this luxury destination that people could go to and act out all their fantasies and could go pretend to be cowboys. And it was a free world that you could explore. So we built out. We actually had found sort of a ghost town that someone had like it was sort of his side hobby that he was building this thing out. And he was renting it out for like weddings and birthday parties. So we found it. There was actually two of them outside of Austin, but we picked this one and called them up and said, "Hey, this is this is the idea that we want to do. We want to take over your your village you've built out." And we want to essentially create a bit of like a reenactment scene where people can go through and explore this village. And it was like, "Okay, great. I do have a wedding schedule for that weekend." And we said, "Okay, well, we can buy out the wedding if the if they're willing to listen to an offer." So we actually, that's a little secret, but we did buy out a wedding ticket to get our ability to get in there. And we paid the handsomely for it. So that I'm sure they had a great wedding. As we're speccing it out, there are some buildings that exist there, but we were like, "But if we really want this to look like sweet water, we got to sort of redo it a little bit, create some new structures, paint everything, break it all down, and then figure it, build it back up." Probably eight or nine months of work from like, go to to live date. There was risk involved for sure. We didn't know if people would actually come to this thing. And when we got to, when we got to Texas, and we were ready to open the doors, the demand was just, it was intense in instant. Lines lined up, tickets sold out. It was just, it was incredible to sort of see it. And people would board the bus, and then we'd let them out when they get onto the, when we get to the site and saying, "Here you go. Go. We gave them some token so they could exchange that for some beers or things that we were giving out at the park. But people could just sort of wander and explore." And as people were sort of like, wandering and exploring, they would, they would see things playing out around them. So we'd hire these actors, and they were acting out storylines. Just the same way that it happens in Westworld, where the hosts, as they call them, are doing their storylines, and they invite you into the story. They invite you in to participate, to help them, you know, help, help someone find something that they lost, or look for somebody that they lost. Whatever it might be, like, we had a whole bunch of different storylines that people could participate in. And they would just get sucked into this world. And we actually gave them a cowboy hat as part of the experience. Like they're, they're walking around proudly with this new cowboy hat that they've, that they've gotten from their experience. That also became a bit of a like marker that people were looking at. As you were walking around the rest of South by Southwest that weekend or that week, people saw that, the cowboy hat, and then they'd be like, "Oh, did you go to the experience?" And then people would tell them about the experience. And like it created its own sort of like thing that people were just talking about. And it did what we needed it to do. So first of all, just congratulations on it. I've heard that it was really one of the most epic immersive experiences ever made as a marketing tool. And so I think it really goes down as a legendary example of immersive marketing. So let me ask you, since you work with many brands. Is it become easier? to get companies to want to invest in this type of experiential marketing. It still takes someone who's willing to take the risk. We now have a track record, so that's good. But it's still something where to lay it all out for somebody and say, "This is what it's going to be. Trust us." Still, still is a bit of an obstacle for people to get over. I think we all know that there's this growing interest in experiential storytelling. So if you look at success of things like punch drunk, you know, sleep no more, or Meow Wolf, you know, there's so many examples out there. Even Burning Man, I think, is a great example of this. And I remember reading somewhere that 74% of Americans now value experiences more than things. So this is part of a larger shift in our culture from people wanting to collect stuff or buy things to feel good about themselves, to people wanting to share experiences that they've had. Share them socially. I'm always curious to get other people's insights into, you know, why are we hungry for these types of things? We've identified this idea of sharing. So there's a little like FOMO, you know, you want to share it because somebody else, you know, look what I got to do. You didn't get to do it. Totally. I think that there's a lot of interest in investing in memories. The people are aware that that an experience that's so powerful and transformative and perhaps shared with friends or loved ones is something that you'll never forget. And therefore is more valuable than a pair of jeans that's going to wear out or yeah, 1000% agree with all that. That's definitely been a driver behind why these things have been working for us. These devices that are in our pockets certainly have something to do with it. And the social media that sort of is behind it all as well where people are sharing those experiences and they want to share those experiences. There was that thing that is what we're leaning into. Creating that FOMO, creating, you know, creating those opportunities for people to share what they've been doing. Certainly. It's part of what was successful about 29 rooms and all those pop-up experiences. But I also agree with the other point that like, there's also this experience economy thing that's driving it as well. People value experiences more than they do things. Gen Z is spending X number of dollars more on vacations than the generation before them. Those sort of data points are certainly like they're part of it and we're leaning into that as well. Why? I don't know. That I don't think I've been able to really spend enough time thinking about either. Like what is it about the experience economy and why people want to do those things that what is it about now and now and here that we're leaning into that. But it's definitely, I mean, that's absolutely a part of what's what we're leaning into. Let's driving this. And I like this this part of our conversation that sort of differentiates between the versions of experiences that are really to create social images for sharing versus the ones that are about creating transformative memories. In these more meaningful ones, there's story and there are emotions and there's something that's maybe shared with other people that you did it with that make it more just much more powerful. It's a layer deeper for sure. We've definitely built in those moments for those photos to be taken. We know we're doing there. We know that's one reason. But the idea that someone sort of like lost themselves in the world that we had built is what we're trying to do. If they walk in the door and they think one thing about this brand and they leave through the exit and they think something completely different and they're we've created an experience that they're going to remember for the rest of their lives, then we've done something really special. That's that's always been what we've been we've been trying to do is create sort of a perception changing experience that creates that memory for somebody. You've mentioned entertainment properties so far. I know HBO and Westworld and Game of Thrones are examples of immersive experiences you've created. What other types of companies have you worked with for these type of experiences? We've worked with underarmor. We've worked with Diagio, specifically the Johnny Walker brand for that one just as an example. We created a sampling experience. Back to what I was talking about earlier, the client needs a sampling experience. They just want something different. They want something that's going to be a little bit more impactful, a little bit more memorable. We created Walker and Sun's Grocer, which is actually like when you go to the story of Johnny Walker and dig into it, it started as that. We created this sort of from a different era Grocer that you could walk into and explore this sort of sort of, you know, feels like a general store from a different time and everything's been doubt to be for Johnny Walker. It is a sampling experience on steroids that is just more memorable, more impactful. Training the staffs to talk about the story of Johnny Walker and how it came to be Walker and Sun's that the company behind it. Like that crafting it a little bit differently and being able to tell more of a story, taking a sampling opportunity and just going to a completely next level with it. But when you're working with non-intertainment brands in a space, you have to think of like what is the story that we're going to tell here? What is that narrative that someone's going to walk through and experience? And how does it relate back to the brand? Because you got to tell the story of the brand alongside the story you want them to walk through as well. A little bit more of a challenge for sure, but it's fun because it's sort of like in that space you can create your own narratives in a lot of cases for those brands. Let me ask you about some of the other innovative ways that you've helped brands tell stories. Are there other unique forms or experimental ideas that you've been able to realize? Outside of experiential, we love to sort of take a page from any other world that might be crafting content and say like what how can we use a content structure whatever it might be, podcasting as an example. And how can we tell the story of a brand through through podcasts? So one cool example. We created a fictional podcast series for GE a couple of years ago that actually went to number one on iTunes. It was called the message and it was sort of a sci-fi story that we were telling. Harkens back to a different time too because GE, actually if you remember, did GE radio theater back in, I don't even know, with the 50s or 60s and it was like hosted by Ronald Reagan. It was a thing that they did where they were telling stories on radio. So this idea that GE podcast theater could be a thing was sort of the genesis of it. So we created I think it was eight, maybe 10 episodes and it was a fictional story where scientists were exploring the signal that they were getting from space and something weird was happening whenever somebody would actually listen to this message that was being being down. A couple days later after they listened to it, they would mysteriously die. And everyone was like, what is this happening? Whenever somebody listens to this string of sounds that's coming from space, people perish. What is that? So it was sort of this like follow along with the narrator as she's exploring and talking to scientists and figuring out what is this thing? What is it that makes a tech? And we figured out a way to like weave the brand of GE into that because the scientists were all from general electric GE using GE, technology, GE scientists, they're able to like get to the bottom of what what this is and I won't spoil for anybody. But you should listen to it because it is a good well crafted story that people tuned in every week when we launched the episodes and it went to number one. So I have to believe it like it did the thing that we wanted it to do. It told a compelling story that people wanted to listen to. It broke new ground. It showed that brands can have a role to play in this. You just have to do it right. You have to do it in a way that still is subtle but gets the message across that is able to have that impact. And since then we've done a number of different podcasts for different brands. Some more fiction ones, more interview style where the brand is a sponsor but that we weave them into the story. We're able to figure out what kind of role they can plan it. And it's hundreds of minutes of content that someone's listening to. So you're also getting the value of someone listening to something for hundreds of minutes is valuable for the brand. Even if the brand is only showing up here and there in very subtle ways, you suck them in to a world. And then once you suck them in and they're into the story and they want to hear more, you can give them the messages that you want them to hear about the brand. So what do you see as the trend here? Do you think that more and more companies are going to be the source of great storytelling and original media? Yes. Yeah. And that's what we're trying to do. We want more brands to be publishers. We want more brands to be storytellers, more brands to be content creators. These brands have great stories to tell. They have great products to sell. So when we're out, then we're saying we can get your message across and we can do it in a way where it feels like you're going to get a deeper level of engagement from that target. But yeah, we certainly see the future where it's such a fragmented world of advertising that we live in today that to cut through, you can create your own content, create your own stories, tell your own stories and own your audience in that process too. When your audience is looking for you, to you for more of that than you've got them. And you can sort of craft the sales message into it, but tell the story first. Tell me a little bit about that Netflix launch that you did recently for Stranger Things. - Yeah, so this was Stranger Things season four. The client wanted a big moment. I mean, it's Stranger Things. It's one of their biggest franchise. They want everyone to be talking about this one and launches. So, and they wanted it to be something I could be global too. This is, you know, it's content that's available all around the world. So we had this idea to take the upside down and get it into all of these different big sort of prominent look up and see it kind of moments where they were just like, you can't avoid it. It's so big. It's so disruptive. What can we do? So we opened up riffs across the world. The biggest one and the marquee one was this one that we did at the Empire State Building. It was massive. I mean, it was hundreds of stories, 100 plus stories tall. The idea was we're going to create this sort of like traffic stopping. And I think literally it did stop traffic. And we had to make sure that it wasn't clogging traffic, but people pulled over on fifth. I haven't knew to look up and see this thing. But this massive projection that we animated that showed a rift opening on the side of the Empire State Building did it for a couple of hours one night and just made so much noise about this. It's projections and projection mapping. Those are, they've certainly been around. People have seen that thing. They haven't seen it on the side of the Empire State Building. One of those iconic buildings in the world at such a scale where millions of people in the city alone could look up and see this. But then, you know, we made sure that we captured all the content that we could from this thing that we were doing. Drones, helicopters, everyone sort of flying to make sure they were capturing it from different angles. And then showing how like the rift was opening across the world. It wasn't just the Empire State Building. So we're working with Netflix to create that piece of content that then rolled out that showed that it was coming out. It was cool. That was a big one, literally a very big one. Amazing. And that was happening simultaneously in other cities around the world. Yeah. So Netflix had local partners, different markets, taking the idea that we had, let's open up rifts across the world and say, all right, what does this look like in Madrid? What does it look like in Buenos Aires? What is it like? And working with them would sort of like sink it all together so it was all happening around the same time. And I told that bigger story. I guess I'm also just wanted to come back to the type of clients and some insights that you might have for people who are on the client side. And they're contemplating doing this kind of work. Like, what advice would you give for the person, the CMO, who's experiential curious? [LAUGHS] Yeah. Yeah, it's a tricky thing to you. Because in our world, CMOs tend to be in the job for a couple of years. So they have to make sure, like, in the moment that they're in the job, that they're showing growth for the company that they're working for. And they have to balance that with a bit of, like, long-term thinking that the next CMO, that might come in after them, or whoever, and the brand that's going to live on beyond this, that they are thinking about that as well. So that's a hard thing, because it's not something that we can necessarily even help them with. Whenever we're starting an engagement with a client, they've indicated that they're interested in doing this. We certainly-- we start with why, just like anything else. Like, why do you want to do this? What is the reason here? And if it's like they want to tell the story of this brand, they are easy story to tell. How do we just do it differently? If we can really help them, like, ground it strategically first, then from there, we can come up with tons of ideas. We really need that Y figured out before we do anything. Then after that, it's really letting us do what we're good at. We're good at creating these experiences. We pay attention to all these little details that we know people pick up on. So it's not like getting out of our way, but letting us be the experts that we know how to be on this. We've done this a number of times now, too, that we know where the traps are, where the pitfalls are. So we can help navigate that. But really letting us be able to guide them through that. Pretty important for us to be able to do that for clients. How much of the storytelling that you do ends up being across media, in multiple media these days. Or does it often be like, we're going to do this one thing? It all tends to touch multiple media types, whether it is an experiential activation that we might do for NHB or a Netflix, someone like that. We're doing the thing, but then we're also making sure that there are those moments where we tell people, open up your app at this point in the experience, use it to see this augmented reality dragon that we created for Game of Thrones. We sort of play around with the different touch points to help tell that story, but it's integrated into one narrative that we're telling. It's going to be different for every single one of them, though. Each idea is going to have its own set of like, what's the best way for this to come to life? It might be very straightforward, where we just want you to just sit here, and we're going to tell you the story and nothing else. And that might be powerful enough, and we figured out a way for that to happen. But using multiple media touch points is, I think it's more vital, because it sort of like gets you out into exploring it in a different way, which can be more impactful. Where do you think the world of brand marketing is headed? What changes are taking place that you're noticing? I do think that brands are starting to understand this, like brand as publisher idea. They're starting to double down on it. They're seeing the value, and they're also seeing the value in, quote unquote, owning that audience. Like, that's their audience then, where they don't have to buy their way into that audience. They've already created that. The simplest example is social. We have a social expertise, where the social agency has a record for a number of different brands. It's a space where a brand who's creating good enough content that people will follow them on social. There are a lot of brands in the world that are creating content for social. So how do you just make sure that you got to keep investing? You got to keep going into that. But there's so much more value that can come out of it, because then you own that audience. You're able to tell a story whenever you want. Tell a brand message whenever you want. Some things going on sale, you've got an audience that you can speak to. Anything we haven't talked about, Mark, that we should, that in terms of giant spoon insights from years of doing this, things that would be great to share with a general storytelling audience, we did a little bit of internal work ourselves, trying to figure out this is very recent. What is our reason for being? And why are we doing all this and digging and poking at it? And that idea that we're trying to create more memorable brands. I mean, it's psychology 101 stuff. But look at the relationship that I have with my wife. And the perception I have of her and the relationship that we have is built on the memories that we've built together. The years that we've been together, all the cool things we've done together, the trips we've gone on, the ups, the downs, everything. All of that builds up to what, in my head, right now, I feel about her and what the relationship means to me. It's hard to then go say, "Oh, well, that's actually the same thing between people and brands." It's the culmination, though, of all of those little touch points and experiences and memories that are built between me and Nike. And the childhood memories of putting on my first pair of Nike's and maybe seeing an athlete that was wearing Nike's. And then this and then that. And then it's the culmination of all those things built up, all those memories that create today what my relationship is with Nike, my perception of Nike as a brand. And they did that work. I'm almost 40. They've done 40 years of work building up what this brand means to me. That's a long sort of view. And it takes cycles of marketers to come and go at the brand to keep building towards it and keep building and keep building to what that brand is. And the value that they've created for that brand is apparent. It's probably trillions of dollars worth of value in that brand. But I think what we're trying to do as an agency is we're saying, we can help you get there. We can keep thinking of those moments and those touch points and think of holistically from the ads that need to be created and will be created and they will be memorable, too. All the way through to the experience in the store that we can help you with to make that more memorable. Because it's going to be the culmination of all of those memories that decades from now people are going to remember. And that's where the value creation really is. Along the way, we'll make sure we sell shoes or whatever the thing is we're selling for you. That'll definitely be a part of the mix. But to sort of be short-sighted as well as long-term in how you're building. Because if you do one without the other, the other will suffer. Sharing that is like how we've been thinking about it to get to this point where we're putting a stake in the ground. This is what the world needs from an advertising agency point of view. of you, agencies that are looking towards this. Well, that seems like a great place for us to wrap up this conversation. Mark, thank you so much for making the time. And it's a real pleasure and honor to have you here with us today on the FOSS podcast. Thank you again, really appreciate it. It was a good conversation. Really, really enjoyed it. Thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING] My sincere thanks to Mark Simon's for joining me on today's show. To learn more about Giant Spoon, you can find a link to their website in this episode's description. My warm gratitude to all of you who listen to our show. If you enjoyed the podcast and want more FOSSed in your life, please leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts and sign up for our free monthly newsletter at fost.org. The future of storytelling podcast is produced by a Melt your Media in collaboration with our talented production partner, Charts and Leisure. I hope we'll see you again soon for another deep dive into the world of storytelling. Until then, please be safe. Stay strong and story on. [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]