In this episode of Skip the Queue, we’re joined by another Andy. Andy Zimmerman is the CEO of Journey, the global design and innovation agency responsible for some of the most recognisable multidimensional experiences. Andy is joining us to talk about how Journey creates those experiences, how the agency handles the continual change in guest expectations and how it approaches projects for its different clients across LBE or theme park operators, major consumer brands or entertainment companies.
Andy Povey is joined by Andy Zimmerman, CEO of Journey, the global design and innovation agency behind some of the world's most innovative immersive experiences. Andy shares how Journey blends storytelling, technology, and multidisciplinary creativity to transform everything from theme parks and observation decks to healthcare and live entertainment. They discuss the shift from digital to real-world experiences, the importance of designing every touchpoint in the guest journey, and why the most memorable moments often happen before the main event even begins.
Topics Discussed
Show references:
Andy Zimmerman, CEO of Journey
Skip the Queue is brought to you by Merac. We provide attractions with the tools and expertise to create world-class digital interactions. Very simply, we're here to rehumanise commerce. Your host is Andy Povey.
If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website SkiptheQueue.fm.
If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on LinkedIn.
Credits:
Written by Emily Burrows (Plaster)
Edited by Steve Folland
Produced by Emily Burrows and Sami Entwistle (Plaster)
Intro: Right off the Vegas strip is the future of entertainment in a way only science fiction could predict.
Andy Zimmerman: What I wanted to do is acquire a set of agencies and founders that believed in that idea that now we move away from screens to real life.
Andy Povey: Hello and welcome to Skip the Q, the podcast for people working in and with visitor attractions, brought to you by Merac. I'm your host, Andy Povey, and in this episode of Skip the Queue, we talk about another Andy. Andy Zimmerman is the CEO of Journey, the global design and innovation agency responsible for some of the most recognisable multi dimensional experiences in the world.
Andy Zimmerman: How do we turn almost any experience, you know, chemotherapy, to going to a live concert? How do you enhance that and create this sort of multi dimensional next generation experience?
Andy Povey: And he's joining us to talk about how Journey creates those experiences.
Andy Zimmerman: Don't take anything for granted. Like the queue. The queue can be the experience.
Andy Povey: How the agency handles the continual change in guest expectations.
Andy Zimmerman: Saying, can we turn every part of the experience into something that wows and engages the guests?
Andy Povey: And how it approaches projects for its different clients. Across location based entertainment or theme park operators, major consumer brands or entertainment companies.
Andy Zimmerman: I've got everything from architects to gamers, interior designers, film and TV and amusement park ride designers all in the same company. There's alchemy potential here where by putting all these different disciplines together, we sort of can create new things that otherwise wouldn't have been thought of or created in this way. My background is really out of the consulting and technology services space, having spent a chunk of time with PwC and Accenture, but also being involved in startups, spent some time with Idealab, which was one of the first incubator venture capital firms in the world. But most recently and more relevant, I, for eight years was the CEO of Frog Design, where we did a lot of work in terms of guest experience, a lot of work with Disney in particular.
Andy Zimmerman: And then most recently, I formed a company called Journey. We're into our fifth year. Probably your listeners are most familiar with Scruffy Dog, which is one of our studios.
Andy Povey: Yeah.
Andy Zimmerman: But we also do work in areas like we did the interior design of the sphere. We did a reimagination of the Empire State Building observation deck. We did the lighting and animation and staging of Stranger Things on Broadway and in the West End. But we also reimagined the chemotherapy experience in an outpatient hospital like Sloan Kettering or St Jude's so it's tough to say, well, what do we, what do all these things have in common? They're all journeys that people are experiencing. And we like to think that we're kind of on the leading edge of reimagining what the next generation experience is going to be, regardless of the industry or sector.
Andy Povey: You mentioned working in a chemotherapy journey. I'm intrigued. Tell me more about that.
Andy Zimmerman: I'd like to mention it only because people. People associate what we do with entertainment, with hospitality and so forth. And therefore, you know, what's that have to do with healthcare? And actually, it's a very interesting storey. We did the design of the JetBlue terminal at JFK, which 20 years ago was the first terminal which utilised iPads where you could order food and so forth and as part of the passenger experience. And in an interview, one of my lead directors was talking about the whole idea of designing experience was to reduce passenger anxiety. Someone at Sloan Kettering Hospital read that article, called us up and said, we want you to do the same thing for chemotherapy patients. We want to reduce the anxiety that they experience when they come into a hospital to have their chemotherapy treatment.
Andy Zimmerman: At first, you know, that's a little jarring. You're saying, well, that's quite a different cup of tea than an airport or a Broadway show. But really, we always start with the storey. What is the storey? So this is a new build. So we kind of had a greenfield like opportunity to reimagine chemotherapy visits. And what we said is we wanted to change the storey from a clinical experience to the next chapter in someone's life. So you're not coming to a clinic to be examined or to be tested. You're coming to a place which represents, you know, turning the page, next chapter of your life with that kind of inspiration. That's how we start. Everything we design is with a storey.
Andy Zimmerman: Then you begin to design, okay, what does that, what, how do you manifest that? And so at that Sloan Kettering Clinic, which, you know, has received all kinds of awards and really redefined chemotherapy treatment, what happens is you come in, you have a wearable, you register. You don't sit in a waiting room staring at 50 other patients waiting to get chemotherapy treatments. You can go learn a language, you can go play a game, you can go meditate, you can go into an entertainment room. There are different spaces where you can be. And then we'll find you and take you to your room for your treatment. When it's time, it completely changes the experience because, you know, 50 people staring at each other, all knowing what they're about to go through. This is not.
Andy Zimmerman: And the caregivers with them, you know, family, friends, it actually, you couldn't come up with a more stressful and frankly horrifying, you know, prelude to something you're doing. You know, it's almost like being on death row and you've got 50 people, you know, on death row with you. So in that sense, we kind of like to say, you know, we don't see that much of a difference between a hospital or the sphere or a airport terminal. You have guests, you have individuals and they're having experiences. And how do you enhance and reinforce them? And by doing so, hopefully commercially, you know, in many cases you get more traffic, you get more upsell, you know, more revenue. I mean, that's, that obviously, you know, is what pays the bills.
Andy Povey: Pays the bills.
Andy Zimmerman: But, you know, that's sort of philosophically what Journey is about. It's. Everything is a journey. And what's the story behind that journey and that sort of drives our design of that experience.
Andy Povey: I love it. You've got, you haven't got an opening for middle aged men in West London, have you? I love the story.
Andy Zimmerman: It's a cool. No, I mean, look, we're a company for, like I said, we're only five years, but we've done nine acquisitions. I've got everything from architects to filmmakers to gamers to interior Designers, Film TV Virtual Production people and amusement park ride designers all in the same company and in some cases physically together. Hopefully soon all will be physically together. And for me, the whole sort of philosophy of the company was there's alchemy potential here where by putting all these different disciplines together, we sort of can create new things that otherwise wouldn't have been, you know, thought of or created in this way. It is a lot of fun because ironically, I am not a designer. You know, I'm practically colorblind. Okay, okay.
Andy Zimmerman: It's very strange, you know, that I happen to be running a company that is full of some of the most talented designers, storytellers in the world. And I just, you know, I'm always grateful to, you know, that they tolerate me, let's say that I can hang into.
Andy Povey: What a fantastic environment you've created. Andy, I'm really jealous you mentioned Acquisitions. Most recently is Dimension Studio and Scruffy Dog here in the uk. What are these adding to the offering from Journey?
Andy Zimmerman: Well, you know, quite different additions, I'd say in the case of Dimension, they're in the virtual production world for film and TV Animation and some live. They'll do some live shows like an Avatar show with bts, the Korean Band and Coldplay, things like that. Mainly film and TV virtual production. However, the technology that we're using these days for that is really Geni driven. We happen to be using Nano Banana, Google's text to video product. And in many cases you can create experiences, video experiences that then can be the precursor for what you design in real life. So that technology, capability and dimension is very interesting to us. And then just the fact that they do major films and, and tv.
Andy Zimmerman: And part of thesis of our company is let's take ip, let's take a, a television show like Stranger Things. In this case we didn't do the virtual production, but let's do the virtual production of the TV series. Then is it, is there a live opportunity? Okay, say maybe a Broadway show. Well then we'll actually design the Broadway show Stranger Things for which we won a Tony Award and Olivier Award. Okay, and how about a ride at Netflix House? Okay, now we can design that ride. And suppose there's some media around that ride, some video and so forth. We can do that. What about a Stranger Things restaurant as part of Netflix House? I'm not saying this is, I'm just. This isn't happening, but this is an example theorising reality.
Andy Zimmerman: Yeah, we can do that. So we kind of, in some ways, and I say this very carefully because I feel like I'm stepping into the sort of among the gods here, but in some ways I kind of jokingly say we're the Imagineers for everyone else. And I say that with the utmost respect and having worked with Disney and Imagineers for years, I mean, I only wish we could say that we are like the Imagineers, but that is a little bit of the aspiration of being able to work in all these different modalities and dimensions and in many cases even with the same ip, but manifested in different ways. So that's sort of the, so dimension is the film and TV part. Scruffy Dog obviously is the amusement park ride and exhibition part.
Andy Zimmerman: That's that dimension, even to the point not only of design, but we actually fabricate. You know, we have a factory in Birmingham and UK where we actually make things. So it's another dimension that we bring to the table. And in addition to interior design, media, live shows and so forth.
Andy Povey: And an incredibly diverse offering, we've got hospitals to theme parks, you work in crews, you're doing tv, you're doing Broadway. What is the single thread that goes through all of that joins it all together.
Andy Zimmerman: I think there's several threads for us. I mean, one, as I said, it starts with the storey. And that's sort of something we lean into pretty heavily. If we don't have the storey and obviously, and we don't have the client buying into that storey, that's where we have to start. Then I think another way we look at it is we kind of deliberately, in many cases populate our team with. With people from the different studios. So about a third of our work, maybe 40%, involves two or more of our studios. Because that's sort of the idea of why put these. Why put these different studios together?
Andy Povey: Bring everybody together in the same club.
Andy Zimmerman: Yeah. And, you know, out of that you do get some insights and you get some ideas that you otherwise wouldn't get. The other thing that we do is we start very wide and then. And then. And then narrow in. So, for example, you know, we. We do a lot of work in terms of. We kind of have an approach where we say, let's do stakeholder interviews, we do a little bit of a market scan and then we do a lot of ideation. So we will come up with 20 to 30 concepts. And then at that point we begin to get a feeling from the client and their reaction to it and the interaction with them is that's how the storey starts to emerge.
Andy Zimmerman: And then we have the storey and now we start saying, okay, what is the experience? So it's a. It's definitely because I come from a traditional consulting background. Accenture, PwC, both great firms, please don't get me wrong. But I mean, we're kind of like. We're not consultants. We don't think in a linear way. We kind of expand and then narrow to the storey sort of approach. We like to say we go from thought to thing. And a couple ways we're different from a consulting firm. Traditional consulting firm is this approach I just described. And then the other thing is that we. We build them. Yeah. It's not a PowerPoint. It's a. It's a thing that you can ride. It's the thing that you can walk through.
Andy Zimmerman: It's the thing you can sit at. So we go from thought to thing.
Andy Povey: So obviously Journey's quite a new company, but you've been doing this in this kind of space for a while. Before Journey, how are you seeing guest expectations change in what people are demanding?
Andy Zimmerman: Well, you know, my first round of creative services was with. With websites and mobile, and it was While I was at Accenture, where I was one of the partners who started up Accenture Interactive, which is now Accenture Song, which is one of the largest, you know, creative services agencies in the world. Those were the years of web, of Internet and creating engaging, entertaining, learning type of experiences through these, the Internet and the PC. By the time I started running Frog, you know, the smartphone was introduced and a lot of the energy at Frog at that time was built around mobile apps and mobile experiences and how mobility enhanced experiences. So for example, one of the projects we did that, you know, is fairly well known was the magic band experience at Disney World.
Andy Zimmerman: So we worked with the Imagineers to craft that entire experience. And you know, it's just taking advantage of mobile technology. Then you started to have social, which kind of took over everything. And so when I decided to leave Frog a startup Journey, thesis of Journey was that there's a post social world which will move back to in real life. Now at the time, you know, social was taking off and depending on how you measure it and what part of social you're looking at is still is ramping quite nicely. But there are parts of social that actually have kind of levelled off. I'm not saying social will ever go away, but I'm just saying it is tapping out. You look like things like dating apps and so forth. You know, there's a lot of statistics.
Andy Zimmerman: It's actually, you know, usage is going down and so forth. So, you know, that was my thesis, that was almost six years ago. And so what I wanted to do is buy, acquire a set of agencies and founders that believed in that idea that now we move away from screens to real life. And I think that's what's happening in real life. There are some statistics showing that in terms of, you know, live concerts and other kinds of experiences. And you know, it's still, it's very much technology enabled. I mean, you know, it's not like it's not technology, but it's enabling experiences in real life. Anything from the ABBA Voyage show, you know, in London to the Sphere, you know, in Vegas. I mean, and I think we're just getting started.
Andy Zimmerman: I mean, I think what I find interesting is unlike some new sort of ideas or technologies, the innovators and I, I would point to Sphere and above Voyage being two of them, they're hugely commercially successful. So it's not like you have to fail a number of times and then somebody comes up with something that, you know, these things And I think what it shows is the thirst of humans for real life experiences. So that's sort of thesis of Journey is how do we turn almost any experience, as I mentioned, you know, chemotherapy to going shopping, to going to a live concert. I mean, how do you enhance that and create this sort of multidimensional next generation experience?
Andy Povey: No, it's really interesting. I agree with you completely on that desire for the real life experience and I think some of it is actually driven by Covid. Yeah, and we go from that point where you weren't allowed to do anything. Now the attractions industry exists almost as antidote to screens, but the technology still needs to be there. So you've got a bunch of different teams within Journey. Is there a standard approach to creating these experiences or do the teams work in different ways? Do people from Scruffy Dog have a different approach to the rest of the more digital enabled teams?
Andy Zimmerman: To some extent our approaches are dictated a bit by the industry that we're serving because you know, there's sort of ways of doing business in the amusement park ride business versus say film and tv. However, I would say because we tend to be brought in because the client wants to do something different. We're probably not the cheapest design firm in the world and yeah, it's type of thing if they're like, I want to do the sphere, I want to do the Empire State Building or I want to do Sloan Kettering, I want to change something.
Andy Zimmerman: So what happens then is the, we use the approach I described previously which is this sort of, you know, stakeholder interviews, market scan ideation, getting to a storey and you know, which is a little bit different I'd say than conventional sort of rfp that kind of pretty much, you know, dictates your approach and process. I mean, interestingly what we're finding because now, I mean, as you said earlier, I mean Journey is not like a well known company or anything. Obviously we're only four or five years old and we're small, you know, like 400 plus people. But we are beginning to make a name for ourselves. Absolutely are bumping into us. And I've had situations where clients have come to me and said, I really love what you're doing, I don't have a project to use you.
Andy Zimmerman: But I just, you know, I, I how can we engage? And that's when I say, look, you know, just give us eight weeks and we're going to come back to you. I mean it's kind of phenomenal. I mean for a major, one of the largest museums in the world. We had that conversation. You know, we love multi dimensional design. This is amazing. We want to enhance our guest experience. But like I don't have a specific project for you. Eight weeks later we came back with 30 concepts and everything from a lighting activation that would change the landscape of one of the major cities in the world to a annual ball, costume ball that would be tied in.
Andy Zimmerman: I don't, I can't really say who the client is, but tied into the, the city and the geography that it's part of and everything in uniforms, different uniforms for the people, you know, the employees, I mean, you name it. And the reaction to CEO was I want to do all of these.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah. I want them all and I want them next week.
Andy Zimmerman: Yeah, so. And I mean, you know, she's, she's relatively serious about it and they happen to be a museum and actually is pretty well endowed and so on. So. But it is that sort of thing with us. I think in many respects what, where we benefit and can benefit the client the most is with a very open ended brief. But it's not like we spend a year studying something. We just need weeks and then we get to, you know, from a thought to a thing and then let's design it.
Andy Povey: YAnd that's got to be really difficult working in the sort of traditional procurement RFP model where I assume you just can't.
Andy Zimmerman: No, I mean, no one, it's funny in that sense. No one ever sent out an RFP asking companies to do what I just described.
Andy Povey: You know, it's just. Absolutely.
Andy Zimmerman: And I don't want to be misleading here. I mean, absolutely. We get traditional RFPs saying I want a restaurant, I want a ride, I want a section of an amusement park, I want virtual production for TV show. I mean, you know, those come into us all the time. I think what we're finding is, you know, kind of a little bit exciting and different is we're getting more and more people that say, you know what, just tell me what I should want.
Andy Povey: From what I'm aware of Journey products, you address every element of the guest experience. So it's from the wow to how do you get in? Where's the entrance? What's the wayfinding, what's the food and beverage like? Why is it important to bring all of that together?
Andy Zimmerman: I think, I think it helps ensure a more integrated and sort of universal experience. I think also there that for some clients there's a little bit of the idea of one throat to choke. You know, like you don't have to bring all these different disparate businesses or studios together. That's what we do. But I would say, like, I'd say roughly half the time, half of the work, whether you measure it in hours or revenue that we do is specific to one of our disciplines.
Andy Zimmerman: So you know, it might be to design a restaurant and yes, there might be a little bit of lighting, maybe even media involved but a lot of times it's just, you know, we just want a high end, leading edge restaurant or we just want virtual production for a film and you know, we're not going to use any of your other services. So that's like 50% of what we do. And then 50% is where the reason they're coming to us is because we do have these various skills that are knitted together.
Andy Zimmerman: And you know, I'm a little prejudiced, but I would say that when I and my investor went out to look at studios to acquire some of whom I already knew and I knew the founders, friends of mine, I think what they have in common is they're not the largest, I mean I put Scruffy Dog in this category and others, they're not the largest firm in the business but they're kind of known for doing the sort of leading edge work. And so, you know, if you, if that's the case and then you take the creative talent from each of these studios and now you start bumping them into each other at the water cooler, you know, magic's going to happen and I think increasingly clients see that.
Andy Zimmerman: It's, it's funny, one of my guys probably shouldn't even tell this storey, but he, were presenting to a new client who was thinking of using us and in going through some of our credentials and case studies, we're talking about the sphere, since obviously that's a very well known. And the client asked my colleague, he said, knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently in designing the sphere? And he said, I would have been part of the journey, that's what I would have done differently. Which I'm like, kudos, you know, I thought that's a great line, man, I'm going to use that one. But no, it's interesting because we could have brought to bear some things that, like some of the, you know, actual fabrication and some of the sculptures and stuff that make part of it.
Andy Zimmerman: So yeah, I think that's sort of, by the way, the other thing which is just as important is our employees, they, you know, we do like any company, you know, we do surveys of our employees from time to time and something I think the statistics, like 80% of the employees say that they believe their career has been enhanced by becoming part of Journey. And you know, it kind of makes sense, right, because just getting exposed to all this different types of talent and getting to work with them and so forth. So, you know, we have very high retention, I mean, much higher than any place I've been, you know, before. Like, I don't know, say 10% attrition, which in creative services is incredibly low. And the employees believe that their careers are being enhanced by being part of Journey.
Andy Zimmerman: And I think so that really gets me happy because, you know, as you say, when we get to the age that we're at, you know, paying it forward is maybe part of what I think about and, and giving younger people an opportunity to grow in a way that is kind of unique. It's pretty cool.
Andy Povey: Not necessarily a Journey project, but what projects have you seen where you think they've done a really good job of bringing it all together?
Andy Zimmerman: Well, one that kind of inspired me in a way early on to think about Journey was actually the magic band experience at Disney World. Yeah, you know, my former company, Frog, was involved in the design with the Imagineers. And you know, went through the whole, you know, customer journey, guest journey, and obviously it served a lot of different purposes. You know, getting rid of queues, you know, so people didn't stand in line even from going through, you know, ticketing and entering the park to the rides themselves. They increasing revenue per head because of ease of purchase of things, merchandise and everything, with the band creating memories, with being able to do gold, silver, platinum picture portfolios and so forth and so on. And by almost every measure, whether economic or otherwise, was a rip roaring success.
Andy Zimmerman: The thing that really struck me though was this, in practically trying to figure out, okay, how do we get the bands to the people? You know, we talked about different couple approaches and what we didn't want to do is, you know, they get to the park and now they're waiting in a long line to get the band.
Andy Povey: To get a band. Yeah, it just destroys the experience.
Andy Zimmerman: And so not because of any brilliant, like, I don't know, creative sort of thinking, but just from facilitating it, we came up with the idea well, let's send it to them ahead of time, let's mail them, the bands. Well, then as we started thinking about that, then you're like, well, like, you don't want to put it in an envelope. They open up and these bands drop out. You know, I mean, maybe we can turn that into an experience. And so, you know, we with the Imagineers, you know, created a box which has some Disney characters on it. And then you open up the box and each of the bands is in a placeholder and it has the name of the person who's banded because you get to pick out colour and, and brand.
Andy Zimmerman: You know, you can get a character and stuff like that. And so what's happening is you sign up, you're going to Disney, and then this package arrives in the mail and then you open it up and it has a band, these bands with people's names underneath. You know, as you probably know, Disney is very well known for, you know, a huge amount of customer research, no matter what. So, of course, a year or so into the MagicBand implementation, they did some market research. And I don't think I'm saying anything out of school because obviously, you know, smartphones came in and, you know, things have changed dramatically. But do you know that one of the most magical moments of the MagicBand experience, based on surveys, is getting that box in the mail.
Andy Zimmerman: Turns out that it's a ceremony, right? And it's a celebration. So what happens is the parents are like, hey, kids. They get. You're like your 11 year olds, they come home. Guess what arrived today? There's the box. You open the box and the kids go crazy.
Andy Povey: The magic starts from that point.
Andy Zimmerman: The magic starts at that point. And what it opened up for me is just this idea of when does the journey begin and end? Right. And to have the most magical moment in a trip to Disney World to occur before you even get there. It just, it just opened up my. I don't know, I just started thinking about the customer journey in a different way and that, you know, it is multi dimensional and, you know, you think, well, we want to make the ride better at the park. How about we just make this beautiful box that arrives in the mail?
Andy Povey: Absolutely.
Andy Zimmerman: You know, I see that in the work we do and I think we're pretty good at just sort of saying, can we turn every part of the experience into something that wows and engages the guest.
Andy Povey: Andy, that resonates so closely with some things that I'm really passionate about. I have a reputation for ranting about poor purchasing processes for tickets online. Because that is part of the process. It's part of my journey. And if you frustrate me at that point, then my whole feeling about that day out is tainted by the frustration that I have from not getting it right at the front.
Andy Zimmerman: Well, one. I mean, if I can give you one other example.
Andy Povey: Please do. Yeah.
Andy Zimmerman: Like to use is the Empire State Building.
Andy Povey: Yep.
Andy Zimmerman: Which most people, when I bring it up, they kind of shrug their shoulders because they haven't been to the top of the Empire State Building for years, Decades. That was true for me. And what happened is, you know, the experience was not great. Basically, people stood in line sometimes for an hour. They. You go up to the. To the deck, you know, it's cloudy, whatever. And so, you know, I would say from a customer experience point of view, you know, low scores. So with COVID they shut down and the owner asked us, along with a couple other firms, to take a look at how do we enhance the experience. And so our idea was, once again, it goes back to storey is not a storey about a view.
Andy Zimmerman: It's a story about a building in a city. And just that simple twist changes a lot of different things. And part of, by the way, part of the idea of it's not a storey about abuse, because there's, by this time there's two or three other views being created. So not just be the view. So at any rate, that sort of storey drove the design. And so what happens now when you go to the Empire State Building? If you're in New York, I would definitely encourage you. There's no line. You just go in, you get, you have your ticket and then you start going through different floors and elevators, getting on your way to the top, to the observation deck.
Andy Zimmerman: And during that journey, you do things like, you see, you can sit with the construction workers as they're on girders, like 40ft above.
Andy Povey: The image of.
Andy Zimmerman: Yeah, yeah. And understand the storey of how the building was only built in a year, in one year during the Depression. The. There's another place where you can see. It's a pop culture museum where you see all the ways in which the Empire State Building is manifested in pop culture. Things like Sleepless in Seattle and, you know, numerous movies and et cetera. There's another place which is kind of tongue in cheek, where you have viewfinders like you would have on the observation deck, the little binocular type things. But this is inside and you look in and it's pointing in a direction. It shows you what that corner you're looking at in New York City look like in 1934 and what was going on.
Andy Zimmerman: And then there's a floor where King Kong is outside the window and he's flailing at swatting way planes and he puts his physical hand into the building to grab you. Okay, but I mean it's not an active hand. It's obviously like a sculpture. You can sit inside the hand. Okay, so it's a Feyre moment. So we go, we design this. You know, it's. It opens up before. Previously with TripAdvisor. Who does best tourist attractions surveys every summer. The Empire State Building didn't even make the top 50. For the last three years, it's been rated the number one tourist attraction in the world.
Andy Povey: I mean, I agree with you completely, Andy. I was in New York probably three, four years ago and is. It's a total transformation.
Andy Zimmerman: Okay, so you've been there. Now here's another interesting statistic. The most Instagram moment. And I don't know honestly how the owner, you know, marketing people can glean this, but the most Instagram moment in the Empire State Building tour is the sitting in the hand of King Kong. It's not the view. Now do you know where that Instagram moment occurs? It occurs on the second floor of the Empire State Building. You talk about completely flipping the model. No, and I love to tell that Storey, because I'm just saying it's kind of like the box arriving, you know, the magic band box arriving at the house being one of the magical moments of the experience. And I tell, I don't have to tell these people because these people are much more creative than me, my people.
Andy Zimmerman: But it's like, just don't take anything for granted. Like the queue. The cue can be the experience. And maybe the highlight of the experience could be the cue, you know, not the view, you know, at the so. And I just think that certainly that's the way we try to think about things creatively.
Andy Povey: I love that approach. Just turn it on its head, change it around and challenge those norms. I pick up or I understand that you're a big fan of Joe Pine. So am I. I love the experience economy and his latest idea is about us changing to the transformation economy. So people are after those sort of immersive is a massively overused word in our industry, isn't it? But after those sort of life changing experiences almost with their friends and family, if you've got to choose Just one thing that would enable that transformation. What would it be?
Andy Zimmerman: Well, I'm definitely a follower of Joe. In fact, we had our first client conference in New York a few months ago and he was our keynote speaker. Because to be honest with you, obviously what Joe is evangelising, I mean we're like, yeah, absolutely. But I guess the insight, I mean there are so many insights that he has both with experience economy now, transformation economy, but the one that I'm really was intrigued by just based on, you know, his talk and then I spent some time with Joe afterwards is his point that how brands can create experiences that make money for them, that the idea is you don't have to spend money to get eyeballs. There are ways you can get eyeballs and make money on it.
Andy Zimmerman: And I'm beginning to see a couple business models like that where, you know, don't buy a 30 second spot next to the Super Bowl. No, no, it was lost and is incredibly expensive. And, and by the way, how, what does it really do for your brand? You know, in a lot of cases. But there's all kinds of experiences that you can create that are branded experiences which not only are going to be more authentic and more engaging and all kinds of other things, you could actually turn them into money making experiences. And that was the thing I took away from Joe's talk and you know, have been using it a little bit with some consumer brands, you know, that we're talking,.
Andy Povey: We're talking to people at the top end of their game and the top end of the industry, I mean journey the things that you're delivering. And a lot of our listeners don't necessarily have the budgets to deliver another sphere or an Empire state building. What would be your advice to someone who's looking at running their own business and looking at a new project? What things do they need to take into account?
Andy Zimmerman: Well, I think these days I certainly think in real life immersive experiences is a very hot area. So in that sense, if that's the space you want to be in, there's a lot of money pouring into it, there's a lot of funds being raised, you know, to do shows and so forth. So that's a good thing if you're an entrepreneur. It's not, it's not like the AI bubble level. But I'll tell you know, immersive is pretty hot. I mean, I can't tell you how many people that I'm bumping into, whether they're in Hollywood or London or whatever, you know, oh, I'm raising a fund, you know, I'm raising a hundred million dollar fund or half a billion dollar fund to invest in experiences wonderful for Journey. I, I'm like fantastic, go for it.
Andy Zimmerman: I do think that as an entrepreneur, I think that the area that could be really interesting is in with social influencers. So unlike Mr. Beast, obviously is the Beast. Okay, so, but all I'm saying is there's like, there's a, there's tens of thousands of Mr. Beasts out there who you know, have been very good in creating followings, but they're not necessarily going to be equipped to create, you know, immersive experiences around their Persona, around their brand and so forth. They're also going to be, they're the bigger people, including us. We're guilty of it. You know, we're kind of working with the established players, whether it's a Disney or MSG or you know, or Sloan Kettering Hospital. I think we should start spending more time with the influencers because I think Mr.
Andy Zimmerman: Beast is just the beginning of. There are going to be a lot of them. But if I were an entrepreneur right now and I'm interested in real life immersive experiences, I would try to figure out a way to connect that to the social media phenomenon and influencer phenomenon because I think it's going to be a little bit underserved by, you know, even people like us, you know, because we have clients that want to spend a fair amount of money like redoing the Empire State Building, you know, so, or the next sphere. But I think there could be a huge market for it. And, and I think also just by its very nature it could get very viral. So you do one installation and successful before you know it, you can have 20 or 30 of them.
Andy Zimmerman: I don't know about the long term viability because, you know, I, I think some of these influence, you know, jury's still out on sustainability of their brand, but I, I just see that as a big growth area and one that lends itself to like an entrepreneur as opposed to, you know, a bigger company.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah, completely. I mean your comment about sustainability and longevity and I don't know that really matters at the moment, does it? Things are just moving so quickly.
Andy Zimmerman: Yeah, five, you know, you can make a lot of money in five years or 10, you know, just depending, you know, on sort of the capital required to build and so forth. But part, I mean this probably is top of mind because a very good Friend of mine just took a big role with Mr. Beast and I was with her last week and I, you know, I obviously I know who he is and, but you know, understanding everything that he's doing and his ambition, you're like, okay, I mean, this is. Once again, I don't want to insult my Disney friends because I love Disney, but I mean, this is like, you know, the Walt. This guy could be like Walt Disney, you know, Mr. Beast.
Andy Povey: Yeah, yeah.
Andy Zimmerman: I don't know what the limit is in terms of, you know, what he can do. So that to me is a really interesting spot for entrepreneurs, no?
Andy Povey: Very much so. And remember when Walt started all of this, it wasn't a big organisation back then. No, it's growing into it.
Andy Zimmerman: I understand. I haven't seen it yet, but one of the Imagineers senior guy told me that I gotta see. There's a documentary about the making of Disneyland, I think. I don't know if it's on Netflix or which channel, but I really want to see it. But he said it's, I think it's like a six part series and it's about the fact that, you know, like Walt was like taking mortgages out against his house. I mean, you know, like most of these things, this was not like a done deal. This was not like, oh, yeah, Disneyland. That makes a lot of sense. We go. It was, it was a bet the farm, you know, entrepreneurial call, which obviously incredible legacy.
Andy Povey: Yeah, very much so. On that note, Andy, thank you. I really thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much. Great.
Andy Zimmerman: Thank you so much.
Andy Povey: Well, thank you, Andy. I loved hearing about the journey approach to everything and really look forward to catching up with you in person on your next London trip. Today's episode was brought to you by a big team who all love the world of attractions. The recordings have been put together for us and edited by Steve Follin. Thank you, Steve. Production and scripting was all done to Sami Entwistle and Emily Burrows from Plaster. Wenalyn Dionaldo back at Merac HQ has been putting this together with all of the socials. So thank you all for your support. Thank you for listening. We hope you found this week's episode as interesting as I did. If you enjoyed what we've had to say, please like and share the podcast on your preferred platform.
It helps other people find us which all contributes to better, more interesting episodes in the future. That's it. I've been your host, Andy Povey, thank you for listening. Goodbye for now.