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Speaker 1: Seven o two Masterclass.
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Speaker 2: Master Class for today is on the experience economy. We're joined in studio by Greg Whilsh, the CEO of G and G Productions, the Goose Bumps Company. And if you are like, what is the experience economy? Listen, many people, including myself, have jumped on seeing the value in experiences versus material items.
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Speaker 1: I've shared with all of you.
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Speaker 2: How my I'm tackling this forty before forty I do need to update my list and tell you all the interesting experiences I've had that I've ticked off. I have a month left to get as many more as possible. So for me, this is quite exciting. Your calls on audible one, double A three, seven oh two and the WhatsApp line Oh seven two, seven oh two and seven oh two, Greg, welcome, thank you for coming through.
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Speaker 3: Thank you REALI I must say, just master class, does it does make it feel daunting?
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Speaker 1: Oh?
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Speaker 2: I can tell you all of us come here your heights, not masters, but we're going to leave as masters of being curious in the subject, and then we're going to get out and just get on that road to get all of that information.
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Speaker 1: So what is the experience economy?
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Speaker 3: So I think if we're try and to sell it simply, it's this notion of valuing memories over materials. I think if we look back through the Industrial Revolution, the seventies, eighties, nineties, life was about amassing things assets, a home, a car. And what we're finding now is that people are spending more on moments that move them than on stuff, stuff that lives on a shelf or can live in a ledger or you can say that you own. And if we look at it from a brand's perspective, I think in the past brands it was about stamping your authority. If you think about where marketing has come from, you would have logos and billboards, you would have product placements, and if we think about events, it would be how many fly banners can we stick in a row, you know, down the fen to make sure that everybody sees that our brand is here. And I think the experience economy changes that it's more about how we can make people feel, and that people are looking for feel and emotion more so than things to buy, things to have and to be told by some brand.
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Speaker 2: And I also think just in terms of if you look at the influencer space, the way you'll get people to talk about your brand without you talking about them. They no longer want, you know, the brand at Stanley Cup they no longer want because our covers are filled with them. But if you can offer them this life changing experience, then it becomes completely memorable. And I've seen hints of it at certain events where they really are getting quite experimental with what is the mark we're going to leave people with Because you want them, that's something you can never take away from them. But that mug or maybe sending them a bottle of gin, it's going to go. You're gonna move on with your life.
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Speaker 3: And I think the goal the goalpost keeps moving. I think if we're sat here ten years ago, if you've done a branded Stanley Cup, you would have been a market innovator and a you know, a sort of marketing genius.
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Speaker 4: And now that's all been done.
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Speaker 3: And I think you talk about the influencer economy, that's a whole economy on its own that's also moved on. There's there's there's a requirement for people looking for much more, looking for more death more meaning more authenticity, Bring me an experience that makes sense, find out you know if we're talking about events. Why am I here in the first place? And then as a marketer and as a brand, how can I tap into their reason for being there, not just give a gift or you know. So it's definitely shifting, and I think the point is it shifts quickly, and marketing accelerates an exponential rate these days, and we've got to we've got to keep up every second. We were talking about influences six or seven years.
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Speaker 2: Ago, we were not even though people were being influential, and now we've learned to monetize it. It still goes back to the fact that also word of mouth is extremely powerful. Okay, I want to touch on some of your experience. I mean you've been behind some very iconic experiential events. Rage Festival, I mean back in our day, it was just metric holiday and you'd go and just create a hot mess and ruin people's holidays.
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Speaker 1: Thereby a bill, we were.
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Speaker 2: Creating a hot mess, and then it sort of became formalized and there were tags and all of these things you've done, Umoya, and then of course the one that everybody spoke about and I'm so sad I didn't make it, The Marble festival. But my team went and bragged to me when I was like thanks that I wasn't able to go, but they had such a ball. But talk to me about what your approach is generally to these kind of events and how you find the balance between dealing with the stakeholders that have a say and getting them on board of the creative madness, because I also have the creative madness, and you have to get the stakeholders on board and trust the vision.
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Speaker 3: So I think it starts with us as a business, with G and G the Goosebumps Company. You said it, and I think we really try and focus on doing four things really well. We start by creating incredible event brands from the ground up, so we don't necessarily work on briefs from brands. We create our own branded properties, whether they're festivals or one off events, and we try to build really strong brands around those. Then we try to make sure that we're dreaming and delivering unforgettable goosebumps because.
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Speaker 4: It starts with us.
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Speaker 3: We can't push a brand to participate in a certain way if we're not leading by example, so delivering unforgettable goosebumps, and I'm sure we'll get into how we do that, but that sits at the fiber of everything that we do. And then this whole idea of the death of sponsorship and building extraordinary brand partnerships where there's a partnership between the brand and the event, there's a partnership between the event and the fans that come, and by working cleverly together, we create a partnership between the fans and the brands as well. And I think when we start that way, and if we start talking about, for example, the Luxurious Marble Circus, by us first creating an environment that was so fantastical, so whimsical, so out of the ordinarius as we call it, we created our own dictionarium of words because we felt that normal words sidmply wouldn't do. And by us creating something completely out of this world one, I think brands were impressed and they were really quite blown away by the sure level of creativity and ideation and magic and wonder that hadn't rarely been done in South Africa before we see it thanks to social media all across the world, these amazing things that happened, but you know, rarely do events have the budget in South Africa with the size of our events and the ticket prices we charged to compete or do something even close. So we really set out to completely change the landscape and do something unbelievable. And as we got into the process with each brand, we were just really trying to inspire them to dream outside the box that perhaps they'd taken to events sponsorships before and come in a way that was completely out of the ordinarily whimsical magical, and we actually as a result, had to do a lot of the thinking with them. You know, one of the most amazing partnerships has been invested because they're the title partner, but if you walked around that festival, you did not feel invested.
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Speaker 4: In your face.
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Speaker 3: They were perhaps in a way almost coaching us as we were coaching them, because they were saying, well, actually, could you take our logo off that please?
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Speaker 2: And I love when brands are comfortable to do that because they're starting to understand that the value is not just seeing your logo there. The impact is great enough you will get that ROI that you are looking for, not like that feeling which all of us have of like, oh my gosh, YouTube is forcing me to watch ads.
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Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, like that thing where you are.
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Speaker 2: Immediately turned off when you see hashtag ad or whatever the case may be. I'm curious with something that you said that it's no longer sponsorships, it's brand partnerships.
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Speaker 1: Talk to me about what that.
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Speaker 2: Means, especially considering where we are at the moment as an economy. We know the marketing budget is the first place to get cut, meaning the eventing, the television, even radio, all of these industries are highly impacted, meaning you have to you have less, but clients will always want more then more, and what the partnership part looks like.
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Speaker 3: So I think the first thing is to say how do we approach partnerships, And it's to guide our brand and partners when they start the conversation in a meeting where there's an interest to let's use the word sponsor one of our events, and the question starts with how many phones can we sell? How many packages can we sign up? Already the conversation to start it completely on the wrong footing. So it's about trying to guide brands and say, you never hear Apple start their conversation with our phone has a thirty six megapixel camera.
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Speaker 4: They never start there.
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Speaker 3: They start with telling you how you're going to feel and how this product will make you feel. If you want to go and read about the specifications and features, you can go and read it. And we try and take the same mindset to event partnerships. So there's a fee to play, obviously, you know, we need significant event sponsorship fees for us to produce an event like the Luxurious Marble Circus in the first place, to get brands to have the creativity of mind to want to go and dig into budgets, like you say, budgets that often get cut and invest that money. It's up to us to come up with very clear and clever ways for them to integrate and partner. And some little examples, you know, if I think again back to the Luxurious Marble Circus, we built two beautiful lounges. So we wanted a Marble space and we wanted a Saint space. So the Marble space is called the Grand Dining Room and the Saint space is called the Royal Lounge. And some of our brand partners on the one side is Mowah, Tennessee, and on the other side is Don Julio and Johnny Walker, and traditionally those brands may have come to events and built a beautiful activation stand where consumers could come and taste product and product to lips and you know, all these types of buzzwords that we hear, and we said, why don't you become our partners in the grand dining room in the royal lounge. Now, the benefit to them is they didn't have to pay for that. So we built with multimillion round budgets, these gorgeous dining environments and set them up at our cost, and we said, your pay to play is your sponsorship fee, which we that's a separate contractual item that's got a basket and a portfoli rights. But as a value add you can have the space with us. You just pay for your branding touches, which, by the way, will do for you because we want your branding to feel like it was manufactured at the same time as this entire line.
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Speaker 2: Which is always the best way, so that it's totally there's not that level of inconsistency. And because your ticket pricing is so high, you've set a level you Also, brands can also kill your vibe in the sense that they're sending logos where you're like guys the resolution is a little bit low, and I love that you did it in.
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Speaker 4: That way totally.
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Speaker 3: So I think allowing brands to integrate into spaces that are already existing has been a great way one to demonstrate real tangible value back to brands. You might be paying three million or five million rand or a significant amount of money to participate, but you're getting to an inverted commas own along with the event. An event that is costing that amount. An event is space that is costing that same amount of money, where typically bans will have a fee to play, they'll pay their SPONSORIP fee and then everything else is up to them. They must come and either builder stand or they must come and deploy branding. And often that's where it goes wrong because it's toolkit, which is again my least favorite buzzword. When a brand says, we'll send you our items from toolkit, fridgers, bar counters, fans, traps, gauzebos, fly banners, and the answer at all of our events, not just the luxurious marble circus, is no, you have to come and participate in a way that suits the environment, adds value to the people who are coming, because then you're gonna win. We're going to win, and the fans coming to the event are going to win as well.
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Speaker 2: And I see the aspect of the amount of education that you need to do along the lines of teaching clients who usually are your marketing department and then your C suites kind of need to sign off because the finance department looks at these millions and is like.
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Speaker 1: This is a one day event.
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Speaker 2: You know, it's not like a thirteen week sponsorship of a big television show where it's them. So your team, that team needs to justify why this value is there. And it's a whole process of the educating in terms then of just where you're saying the partnership part being the one aspect, how are you getting the public to be on board of the vision because let's use again the Marble Festival to say, what was the most expensive ticket? I can't record, was like three thousand rand or something?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, last year there were five thousand, and this year they're all the way up to eight thousand rund for the most expensive one.
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Speaker 2: Yes, So now how do you get people on board when already people complained about I don't know it was Chris Brown's ticket or something, and They're like, ah, guys, we can't even afford to be standing. But obviously you operating in a different world. How do you get that communication going, especially for the people listening. There are many promoters out there, there are many people trying to hustle bring internationals into the country, and you guys were sold out, so it's not even like you were struggling. I think by the time we had an interview with your partners that came through to have a discussion, it was like almost sold out, and I was like, I feel like we're always talking about how poor we are, but people were making a means to have fort those tickets.
00:14:36
Speaker 3: So again, you know, I think not leading with products and features international artists are a double edged sword for a festival. If you're a promoter like I have huge respect for big concerts of more than fifty years of incredible shows in South Africa, their product is the artist. Yep, our product is not the artist. So we're critically aware that we could probably sell more tickets in the short term if we went and dropped a big name on our lineup, or a big name for Saturday, one for Sunday, but then the problem becomes next year everybody doesn't want to buy the tickets until they find out who's playing. And the issue there is that the time that artist plays might be fifty minutes out of an eleven hour experience. I want to sell you the eleven hour experience. I want to tell you using mystery, intrigue, fantasy, scarcity stories. And you know, we've got some wonderful partners, both in the Marble group and in Grid worldwide, our design partners who have also taught me a lot about marketing and design, because great design, thinking about design as a creative asset, investing in it, investing in stories, investing in video production content, investing in some influences to an extent, and rarely immersing them into the story of what we're going to do and making great content with them. Where this year already well over fifty percent sold out our lounges, The expensive tickets are just about gone. There's a few left for Sunday, the tables, all of that was sold before we said one feature about the event. Wow, nothing, not an artist, not what the food men you would be.
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Speaker 4: Nothing.
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Speaker 3: And only in fact, yesterday did we announced we don't call it our artists. We call it our magnificent acts because it's artists. We talk about the trapeze access the circus because we're very careful to not go. And the lineup is because that if you're asking who's playing at the luxurious Marble Circus, you've already misunderstood what we're trying to present you.
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Speaker 2: That is so well said, because I love the fact that you're saying that is not the product. That is just an ad on. It's the slushy at the movies. It's the topcorn at the movies. And I love that you have reached a point where people are so on board of the concept. It gives it the longevity that it requires. And even the fact that you don't make the artists the most important thing, because what you run the risk of with that is people only attracting the people who support those artists coming to the event, as opposed to having people interested in the entire experience. And the artists just so happened to be there because we know how it goes.
00:17:25
Speaker 1: Oh, I wouldn't take tickets for that show, and so they don't go.
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Speaker 2: I am curious just in terms of where you look to for inspiration for these type of experiences, and I wonder if in that you allow yourself to go into your childlike self being a fellow creative. I always tell my team, which is your set designers and all of those, my av and tech guy. I just tell them the crazy things in my head and then they have to come back and tell me, Okay, it's happening in this country.
00:18:01
Speaker 1: And but it's a difficult thing.
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Speaker 2: And I don't know if you experienced the same thing of holding yourself back from being too creative. Because we understand the realities of the logistics, the costs and all of those things.
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Speaker 1: But how do you.
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Speaker 2: Get yourself keep yourself inspired. How do you decide where to pull back? How do you decide to say, let's go wild, it's all or nothing.
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Speaker 3: I think it's also different strokes for different events. You know, the Luxurious Marble Circus budget is fifteen times more than one of our least expensive productions. So I think what's happened there is budget has followed good ideas.
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Speaker 4: So it's your point.
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Speaker 3: Getting extraordinarily creative and coming up with the wildest, most fantastical ideas led us to being able to charge a higher ticket price and most importantly to onboard brands in a significant way this festival, even though those ticket prices in the South African context might see Mega in one thousand round for a playground in the field, if you can call it general access ticket from four thousand round upwards for a lounge seat. You might think, well, we've got a huge budget to work with. The ticket revenue is under forty percent of our total revenue for the event, and there's a little bit in the middle of you know, merchandise, seeing and bar revenues and so on, and north of fifty percent of our revenues coming from brands. And it was the great ideas. And I can't take all the credit myself. Many of the ideas of mine. I do dream. I don't.
00:19:39
Speaker 4: I don't go into a dark room and take drugs. But somewhere along.
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Speaker 2: The things I saw in your artwork, I'm like I said to the team, somebody on this team is taking some to I.
00:19:49
Speaker 3: Do think there are some people on the in the creative departments at Grid that I do question how they get so creative and if it's assisted.
00:19:58
Speaker 4: But there are I.
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Speaker 3: Think, you know, the the Incredible brand was designed by Grid and they went down a rabbit hole that gave that gave way to us being able to come with crazy event ideas, because once we had this totally fantastical brand, then we could start thinking about ideas. One of the new ideas with this series called the La Volta, we are building a stage.
00:20:19
Speaker 4: It's a music.
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Speaker 2: I'm going to make you pause that thought because I want to give you a chance to explain it properly.
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Speaker 1: We need to go to the news when we come back.
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Speaker 2: We continue and get your questions in odible one double A three or seven oh two in the WhatsApp line oh seven two seven oh two one seven o.
00:20:33
Speaker 1: Two seven two.
00:20:35
Speaker 2: Masterclass twenty two minutes to three o'clock. We continue with our masterclass for today on the experience economy, and we are in conversation with Greg Walsh, CEO of Ging Productions.
00:20:49
Speaker 1: The Goosebumps Company.
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Speaker 2: We take your calls with your questions on od double one double a three oh seven oh two and the WhatsApp line oh seven two seven oh two one seven oh two. Greg, we were chatting about the inspiration for your creativity and how you how you don't limit yourself and I think creativity is the solve for so many problems in our country, and I know, many people might not see themselves as creators because they're sitting in an accounting office or they're in a law firm. But if we think about it, creativity is required for finding solutions regularly. If anything, creativity helps with the dealing with Okay, we don't have enough money, the ground does not level, but this is what we can do. So talk to us again about what you do to expand is a travel is it.
00:21:50
Speaker 1: Taking some creative support?
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Speaker 2: You can actually make that a line item on your budget, creative support supplem But what is it and what can we all learn from your process?
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Speaker 3: Creativity is the fundamental bone of anything, and you know, I think at the most basic level, we've had a problem this year. Travis Scott was announced on the same date that we were planning to announce. We were going to announce our festival. Two or three days after the date that Travis Scott got announced.
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Speaker 4: We stopped. We went if we.
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Speaker 2: Don't oh as in you saw the Travis Scott announcement and then you said.
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Speaker 3: Pause, pause, So you know, we had booked two and a half weeks of set up in a week of load out at ground and Malderestroex.
00:22:34
Speaker 4: Yes, we went hold on pause.
00:22:36
Speaker 3: If we don't have to compete with this, I think it's a slightly different audience in many respects, but there's certainly crossover. If we don't have to compete with us, why would we So we went to the venue and said, look, we've booked the two and a half weeks before.
00:22:48
Speaker 4: Can we move a week earlier? They said, sure, But the.
00:22:51
Speaker 3: Weekend before that there's another there's two weddings, there's then a market down on the Wednesday. So you talk about creativity, We're having to now creatively work out logistics about how do we do overnight double shift load ins of variousness, How can we load in certain elements before the weddings that won't impact the backdrop of their all important photographs. So there's been a lot of creativity on that side. So creativity is the backbone. But I think my big piece of advice for anyone organizing an event or an experience, or even wanting to market a product is And to be honest, I've been doing event for twenty three years and I genuinely believe I've only learned this in the last two years. Don't start with what is the event going to all be? Like, don't start with we're going to have two stages, We're going to have this venue. Start at the very beginning, and the very beginning is what is your story, What is going to make this different? What is your blue ocean strategy? Why would people come to your event rather than something else? And if you talk about blue ocean strategy. There was a wonderful case study done on Circu to Sole which entered the markets and then I think eighties, early nineteen nineties in the US, and they came up against two of the most established, more than one hundred year old circus brands in the world, and Circus that got to a point where it was about how much can we stuff in the circus to compete?
00:24:14
Speaker 2: So the wild animal, the acrobatics, then you have the I nearly said the court jester, but yes, basically so I'm doing the magician.
00:24:25
Speaker 4: Yes, And what.
00:24:26
Speaker 3: They what they got to was cirk to say, I looked at this, and luckily they looked at it and said, we're going to do a circus and try and compete.
00:24:31
Speaker 4: Right, what do they do?
00:24:32
Speaker 3: Let's do more because the problem was circus was becoming unaffordable for families of four or five that were going less often as a result, and the circuses were costing more than ever because they were so big on so many things at the same time. In order to be competitive, circus Sile looked at the whole thing and said, let's make a circus for adults. Will exclude the kids. If it's only two people, maybe they can come three or four times a year. Let's take away three arenas. At the same time, that circus had got to the point where there was wild animals at the same time as jugglers, at the same time as trapeze. And they looked and they said, through whatever research they did, people love clowns and trapeze the backflip acrobatics the most.
00:25:10
Speaker 4: And they went all in on that.
00:25:11
Speaker 3: They got rid of celebrity performers, they got rid of animals, animals with the most expensive and becoming the most controversial element in circus. And they went all in on those two items, and by doing that they turned over more money in twenty years than those two biggest American started circus family backed one hundred and something year old businesses are done together in over one hundred And that was just taking a step backward, sir, Not what's the industry doing what's the norm. Let's stop and go. And sometimes research doesn't give you everything you want to know either, because people sometimes give you the answer based on a bias about things they've already seen.
00:25:50
Speaker 2: You talk about, and you're like your focus groups, it will never be one hundred percent accurate.
00:25:56
Speaker 3: Yes, sometimes you have to work at what people aren't saying they want. And that that was what really was like a blossoming flower for me with the Luxurious Marble Circus was when Grid presented this brand for the first time and I looked at it and I thought, you know, we wanted a festival with the Marble group, GNG Goosebumps, who wanted all these things. Investig is our title partner all there, to be honest, my initial name for it was boutique. And they came back with this Where's Anderson inspired world, the Luxurious Marble Circus with delight and decadence and dance and pantomime and whimsy and fantasmic. That suddenly went, ah, this is a totally new genre. We're no longer trying to do what everybody else is doing. We've gone and looked at luxury because luxury is often quite restrained and stiff colored and you know, not too noisy, and festival can often feel which is fun, can often feel quite cheap. So how do we do high fun, high luxury and how do we own that? And in presenting high fun high luxury with this crazy branded idea, out came the magic the sounding board to now go what about that idea? Oh my god, what if we had stought walkers and mimes and this and that? What if we built a trampoline into a stage where artists could do backflips? What if we put a tightrope walker up in the stage. What if we did projection mapping instead of LED screens? And suddenly all these things kind of came bundling out on the back of good narrative. So, you know, this idea of investing their creative first is my advice before rushing to what are all the products and features of your experience.
00:27:36
Speaker 1: Going to be?
00:27:37
Speaker 2: In terms of if you were to categorize experiences and I'll just use mine. When I was looking at what are the type of experiences I want to do as my mini bucket list, right.
00:27:48
Speaker 3: So I looked, I'm on my I'm on my just the other side of forty list, you're on your almost forty Yes, I have.
00:27:54
Speaker 1: Less than a month ago. I'm practically there already.
00:27:57
Speaker 2: But I categorized it as some giving back experiences where it is priceless, the feeling of knowing you change somebody's life. Then they are the adrenaline junkie wild you could die, the feeling of I'm almost gonna die, experiences of jumping out of a gondola in the middle of Switzerland between Swiss Alps and getting to the bottom and you can just hear the sound.
00:28:23
Speaker 1: Of cows as you're about to touch the water.
00:28:26
Speaker 2: Then you've got the once in a lifetime experiences that you do it once and you would never need to do it again. A number of categories. How do you decide in all of the different things, which are the type of experiences that you want to choose from. So for everybody who's like, I love this concept of experience economy, let me think about how to incorporate it into what I'm doing. What are the experiences?
00:28:55
Speaker 1: I mean?
00:28:56
Speaker 2: You also get the ones that are not adrenaline junkie, but they are usually preserved for the elite, but now they're accessible, So maybe you can own a Ferrari, but you can go and get on a Ferrari on a track for a day. How do you decide and how do you do? You sort of jump into the human brain and what tickles us.
00:29:18
Speaker 3: So as a business, we want to give people unforgettable goosebump moments that transcend time.
00:29:24
Speaker 4: That's our purpose, that's why we get up.
00:29:27
Speaker 3: So you know we might be doing you know, next month, six of September and Durban, we've got an amazing event with a Shimser called Shims and Friends. It's one night, it's an incredible night out. How do we deliver unforgettable goosebumps there? Well, the you know, we've dialed down many things that something like the Marble Circus might have. The food is just what you need and fairly simple. The bathrooms are available, adequate, spotless, entrance is quick and easy. Where's all the investment gone?
00:29:55
Speaker 4: Stage? Because that experience for us is.
00:29:59
Speaker 3: Probably not once a lifetime, but we want to give you a night out that you'll never forget so you come back every single year. So that's how we thought about that event. The luxurious Marble Circus is a whole different genre on its own, and I'm glad you spoke about wanting to give back, because this is something I don't want to say it's new in our business, but at the scale we're doing it, it's new. The Luxurious Marble Circus story is about leaving a legacy beyond luxury, and what we're finding is this was something that was inspired by investing it. It was part and parcel of the negotiation with us. They're big on philanthropy and they said, the only way we sponsor your festival is if you do if you guys do something in the purpose world.
00:30:42
Speaker 2: And I'm so happy to hear that because I'm all about that, because you can't walk into a space and completely ignore the realities that are being faced. And I outside of the fact that is there are benefits to you know CSI or CSR, benefits to businesses. You can tell when businesses are doing it to tick boxes, and you can tell when they really are doing it totally.
00:31:09
Speaker 3: And I hope that the communications only really starting now. Last year we invested over eight hundred thousand rand into our leaving a legacy beyond luxury. We supported the Wrong House, we supported Hollinnati, we supported the National School of Arts, both with financial investment and the performers that got to perform. We did a lot in the recycling into such sustainability space, but I don't want to say we were ticking a box. We're doing our best with a very short time frame and a brief from investing our passionate enabler who said you got to do it. We've now had the time to assess what we did and say what do we rarely want to do here? And this idea of leaving a legacy beyond luxury is now spreading its tentacles, like the roots of a tree, into every last little piece of our festival. And I think it changes the game even on the commercials of the festival, because we're now making sure we raise funds from every stakeholder involved, whether they sort of know it or not, but in a way that feels natural. So us our brand partners have to contribute. It's not a request, it's a requirement. But they're funding ideas that we've got, so like we've got a collaboration with Sea Land to take the fence wrap panels we can't use because some sponsors change this change this year, so those are going to get thrown away, don't throw them away. It's turned them into bags.
00:32:23
Speaker 1: There we go.
00:32:24
Speaker 3: But now and then it's sell those bags and use the proceeds to invest into some of our legacy initiatives. The bags are expensive as one hundred and fifty four thousand round minimum order quantity to make the bags. One of our brand partners stepped up and said, we'll fund that. So now cost of sells zero. We sell those bags for three hundred thousand round. That goes into our pot. So we've got a pot that we're raising. And then our fans that are coming to the circus. Our rebellions are extravaganres. All the fancy words we call them, are going to just do it by association. When you purchase our beautiful recycled cups to have a drink in, there'll be a story on the back of that cup, and five round from that cup that you paid fifteen rand for ten round is what it cost us to get it. Five rand we've added on top, so eighty thousand ruand will most likely get raised from cups tur and a half percent of all drinks five rand off every meal. So our guests are getting involved in legacy, so they will feel a part of it. And they will see it and feel it wherever they go. Recycling and sustainability, we are going to upcycle as much of the trash as we can. We're turning Don Julio bottles into gorgeous lamps, the most beautiful lamps you've ever seen. With addition numbers. The National School of our students are involved in engineering firm and PE of all places is helping us manufacture the internals for those lamps. And what I'm finding is making this part of the fabric of who we are and what this festival stands for and what our brand partners stand for. I think will change the game in terms of why people want to buy tickets for the event. So that's not the reason to do it, but I think it's an incredible byproduct that will just happen.
00:34:00
Speaker 2: Indeed, we need to take a break. When we come back, we continue your questions. Oh seven two, seven oh two and seven oh two the WhatsApp line and you can call us a double one double a three oh seven oh.
00:34:09
Speaker 1: Two two masterclass.
00:34:12
Speaker 2: As we close off our masterclass on the Experience Economy with Greg Walsh, COO of Ging Productions, the Goosebumps Company. OH double one double a three oh seven oh two and the WhatsApp line oh seven two seven oh two one seven oh two. Greg, in terms of what you think we are missing from experiences in the country.
00:34:39
Speaker 1: What could you shame that regard?
00:34:40
Speaker 2: There's a message which is saying all these experiences are well and good, but they're not They're just accessible to such a small part of the population. How could we make experience something that's more accessible, So not necessarily at an event level, it could even maybe be in schools. Would you have any thoughts about that? Because I genuinely think we meet ourselves, We get closer to knowing who we are with different experiences that we have in life. Whether they scare you, whether they excite you, you come out another version of yourself.
00:35:20
Speaker 3: So I think that it's a great point. You know, experiences cost a lot of money, especially if they're good ones. So you know what stands behind well between us and incredible experiences in South Africa. One, I suppose some good ideas, but two money, So with the absence of money, it's very hard for anybody to have great experiences. The idea that, you know, how do we get more people these types of experiences? I think this is where brands have an incredible opportunity to show up and to drive change, because ultimately, big business, if they really want to invest it, can find big money. And experiences of this level take big money to make. And where brands have the opportunity. You know, you say, well, a brand could invest all their money on some fantastic consumer facing activation for the people who could already afford it. Wonderful, great, there will be a certain achievement in doing that. Can brands take an environment that is more affordable and completely elevated, They surecan as well. And I think some brands have done some amazing things. You know, we conceptualized for BMW eight years ago already the BMWM festival. Those tickets were one hundred and eighty rand for a festival that was costing tens of millions of brands. And I think the fact that the brand was co funding it allowed people who otherwise probably couldn't afford to go to an experience of that quality the opportunity to do something really extraordinary. So I think there's a place for brands to play here to bring those experiences to people. You know, on a small scale, we do bring them to schools, just to Three weeks.
00:37:00
Speaker 4: Ago was Mandela Day.
00:37:01
Speaker 3: Yes, we took an amazing experience to the children of Sparrows School just near park Town North. We had a show for them. We brought little fields of the Luxurious Marble Circus. Again, we do what we can. But you know we're gonna say, relatively speaking, I like to think of myself as a big business, but we're a small business, truth be told, and with a limit to what we can do. So I think big business has a great opportunity to win by making experiences like this more accessible.
00:37:27
Speaker 2: Greg Welsh, thank you so so much for your time. We do have to wrap it up because we are.
00:37:32
Speaker 3: Yes, one thing you have to allow me your fortieth is coming. Yes, we have an amazing experience called the Golden Ticket Area the Luxurious Marble Circus. You cannot buy the tickets for your birthday? Can I please give you a golden ticket for you and a friend to come?
00:37:45
Speaker 1: What I say? No, No, I would not. I accept and we need to go to a break. Thank you so much. Greg,
Speaker 1: Seven o two Masterclass.
00:00:02
Speaker 2: Master Class for today is on the experience economy. We're joined in studio by Greg Whilsh, the CEO of G and G Productions, the Goose Bumps Company. And if you are like, what is the experience economy? Listen, many people, including myself, have jumped on seeing the value in experiences versus material items.
00:00:25
Speaker 1: I've shared with all of you.
00:00:27
Speaker 2: How my I'm tackling this forty before forty I do need to update my list and tell you all the interesting experiences I've had that I've ticked off. I have a month left to get as many more as possible. So for me, this is quite exciting. Your calls on audible one, double A three, seven oh two and the WhatsApp line Oh seven two, seven oh two and seven oh two, Greg, welcome, thank you for coming through.
00:00:50
Speaker 3: Thank you REALI I must say, just master class, does it does make it feel daunting?
00:00:56
Speaker 1: Oh?
00:00:58
Speaker 2: I can tell you all of us come here your heights, not masters, but we're going to leave as masters of being curious in the subject, and then we're going to get out and just get on that road to get all of that information.
00:01:11
Speaker 1: So what is the experience economy?
00:01:16
Speaker 3: So I think if we're try and to sell it simply, it's this notion of valuing memories over materials. I think if we look back through the Industrial Revolution, the seventies, eighties, nineties, life was about amassing things assets, a home, a car. And what we're finding now is that people are spending more on moments that move them than on stuff, stuff that lives on a shelf or can live in a ledger or you can say that you own. And if we look at it from a brand's perspective, I think in the past brands it was about stamping your authority. If you think about where marketing has come from, you would have logos and billboards, you would have product placements, and if we think about events, it would be how many fly banners can we stick in a row, you know, down the fen to make sure that everybody sees that our brand is here. And I think the experience economy changes that it's more about how we can make people feel, and that people are looking for feel and emotion more so than things to buy, things to have and to be told by some brand.
00:02:19
Speaker 2: And I also think just in terms of if you look at the influencer space, the way you'll get people to talk about your brand without you talking about them. They no longer want, you know, the brand at Stanley Cup they no longer want because our covers are filled with them. But if you can offer them this life changing experience, then it becomes completely memorable. And I've seen hints of it at certain events where they really are getting quite experimental with what is the mark we're going to leave people with Because you want them, that's something you can never take away from them. But that mug or maybe sending them a bottle of gin, it's going to go. You're gonna move on with your life.
00:03:01
Speaker 3: And I think the goal the goalpost keeps moving. I think if we're sat here ten years ago, if you've done a branded Stanley Cup, you would have been a market innovator and a you know, a sort of marketing genius.
00:03:12
Speaker 4: And now that's all been done.
00:03:14
Speaker 3: And I think you talk about the influencer economy, that's a whole economy on its own that's also moved on. There's there's there's a requirement for people looking for much more, looking for more death more meaning more authenticity, Bring me an experience that makes sense, find out you know if we're talking about events. Why am I here in the first place? And then as a marketer and as a brand, how can I tap into their reason for being there, not just give a gift or you know. So it's definitely shifting, and I think the point is it shifts quickly, and marketing accelerates an exponential rate these days, and we've got to we've got to keep up every second. We were talking about influences six or seven years.
00:03:53
Speaker 2: Ago, we were not even though people were being influential, and now we've learned to monetize it. It still goes back to the fact that also word of mouth is extremely powerful. Okay, I want to touch on some of your experience. I mean you've been behind some very iconic experiential events. Rage Festival, I mean back in our day, it was just metric holiday and you'd go and just create a hot mess and ruin people's holidays.
00:04:22
Speaker 1: Thereby a bill, we were.
00:04:27
Speaker 2: Creating a hot mess, and then it sort of became formalized and there were tags and all of these things you've done, Umoya, and then of course the one that everybody spoke about and I'm so sad I didn't make it, The Marble festival. But my team went and bragged to me when I was like thanks that I wasn't able to go, but they had such a ball. But talk to me about what your approach is generally to these kind of events and how you find the balance between dealing with the stakeholders that have a say and getting them on board of the creative madness, because I also have the creative madness, and you have to get the stakeholders on board and trust the vision.
00:05:10
Speaker 3: So I think it starts with us as a business, with G and G the Goosebumps Company. You said it, and I think we really try and focus on doing four things really well. We start by creating incredible event brands from the ground up, so we don't necessarily work on briefs from brands. We create our own branded properties, whether they're festivals or one off events, and we try to build really strong brands around those. Then we try to make sure that we're dreaming and delivering unforgettable goosebumps because.
00:05:36
Speaker 4: It starts with us.
00:05:37
Speaker 3: We can't push a brand to participate in a certain way if we're not leading by example, so delivering unforgettable goosebumps, and I'm sure we'll get into how we do that, but that sits at the fiber of everything that we do. And then this whole idea of the death of sponsorship and building extraordinary brand partnerships where there's a partnership between the brand and the event, there's a partnership between the event and the fans that come, and by working cleverly together, we create a partnership between the fans and the brands as well. And I think when we start that way, and if we start talking about, for example, the Luxurious Marble Circus, by us first creating an environment that was so fantastical, so whimsical, so out of the ordinarius as we call it, we created our own dictionarium of words because we felt that normal words sidmply wouldn't do. And by us creating something completely out of this world one, I think brands were impressed and they were really quite blown away by the sure level of creativity and ideation and magic and wonder that hadn't rarely been done in South Africa before we see it thanks to social media all across the world, these amazing things that happened, but you know, rarely do events have the budget in South Africa with the size of our events and the ticket prices we charged to compete or do something even close. So we really set out to completely change the landscape and do something unbelievable. And as we got into the process with each brand, we were just really trying to inspire them to dream outside the box that perhaps they'd taken to events sponsorships before and come in a way that was completely out of the ordinarily whimsical magical, and we actually as a result, had to do a lot of the thinking with them. You know, one of the most amazing partnerships has been invested because they're the title partner, but if you walked around that festival, you did not feel invested.
00:07:40
Speaker 4: In your face.
00:07:42
Speaker 3: They were perhaps in a way almost coaching us as we were coaching them, because they were saying, well, actually, could you take our logo off that please?
00:07:51
Speaker 2: And I love when brands are comfortable to do that because they're starting to understand that the value is not just seeing your logo there. The impact is great enough you will get that ROI that you are looking for, not like that feeling which all of us have of like, oh my gosh, YouTube is forcing me to watch ads.
00:08:11
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, like that thing where you are.
00:08:14
Speaker 2: Immediately turned off when you see hashtag ad or whatever the case may be. I'm curious with something that you said that it's no longer sponsorships, it's brand partnerships.
00:08:25
Speaker 1: Talk to me about what that.
00:08:27
Speaker 2: Means, especially considering where we are at the moment as an economy. We know the marketing budget is the first place to get cut, meaning the eventing, the television, even radio, all of these industries are highly impacted, meaning you have to you have less, but clients will always want more then more, and what the partnership part looks like.
00:08:55
Speaker 3: So I think the first thing is to say how do we approach partnerships, And it's to guide our brand and partners when they start the conversation in a meeting where there's an interest to let's use the word sponsor one of our events, and the question starts with how many phones can we sell? How many packages can we sign up? Already the conversation to start it completely on the wrong footing. So it's about trying to guide brands and say, you never hear Apple start their conversation with our phone has a thirty six megapixel camera.
00:09:24
Speaker 4: They never start there.
00:09:25
Speaker 3: They start with telling you how you're going to feel and how this product will make you feel. If you want to go and read about the specifications and features, you can go and read it. And we try and take the same mindset to event partnerships. So there's a fee to play, obviously, you know, we need significant event sponsorship fees for us to produce an event like the Luxurious Marble Circus in the first place, to get brands to have the creativity of mind to want to go and dig into budgets, like you say, budgets that often get cut and invest that money. It's up to us to come up with very clear and clever ways for them to integrate and partner. And some little examples, you know, if I think again back to the Luxurious Marble Circus, we built two beautiful lounges. So we wanted a Marble space and we wanted a Saint space. So the Marble space is called the Grand Dining Room and the Saint space is called the Royal Lounge. And some of our brand partners on the one side is Mowah, Tennessee, and on the other side is Don Julio and Johnny Walker, and traditionally those brands may have come to events and built a beautiful activation stand where consumers could come and taste product and product to lips and you know, all these types of buzzwords that we hear, and we said, why don't you become our partners in the grand dining room in the royal lounge. Now, the benefit to them is they didn't have to pay for that. So we built with multimillion round budgets, these gorgeous dining environments and set them up at our cost, and we said, your pay to play is your sponsorship fee, which we that's a separate contractual item that's got a basket and a portfoli rights. But as a value add you can have the space with us. You just pay for your branding touches, which, by the way, will do for you because we want your branding to feel like it was manufactured at the same time as this entire line.
00:11:12
Speaker 2: Which is always the best way, so that it's totally there's not that level of inconsistency. And because your ticket pricing is so high, you've set a level you Also, brands can also kill your vibe in the sense that they're sending logos where you're like guys the resolution is a little bit low, and I love that you did it in.
00:11:33
Speaker 4: That way totally.
00:11:34
Speaker 3: So I think allowing brands to integrate into spaces that are already existing has been a great way one to demonstrate real tangible value back to brands. You might be paying three million or five million rand or a significant amount of money to participate, but you're getting to an inverted commas own along with the event. An event that is costing that amount. An event is space that is costing that same amount of money, where typically bans will have a fee to play, they'll pay their SPONSORIP fee and then everything else is up to them. They must come and either builder stand or they must come and deploy branding. And often that's where it goes wrong because it's toolkit, which is again my least favorite buzzword. When a brand says, we'll send you our items from toolkit, fridgers, bar counters, fans, traps, gauzebos, fly banners, and the answer at all of our events, not just the luxurious marble circus, is no, you have to come and participate in a way that suits the environment, adds value to the people who are coming, because then you're gonna win. We're going to win, and the fans coming to the event are going to win as well.
00:12:39
Speaker 2: And I see the aspect of the amount of education that you need to do along the lines of teaching clients who usually are your marketing department and then your C suites kind of need to sign off because the finance department looks at these millions and is like.
00:13:00
Speaker 1: This is a one day event.
00:13:02
Speaker 2: You know, it's not like a thirteen week sponsorship of a big television show where it's them. So your team, that team needs to justify why this value is there. And it's a whole process of the educating in terms then of just where you're saying the partnership part being the one aspect, how are you getting the public to be on board of the vision because let's use again the Marble Festival to say, what was the most expensive ticket? I can't record, was like three thousand rand or something?
00:13:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, last year there were five thousand, and this year they're all the way up to eight thousand rund for the most expensive one.
00:13:46
Speaker 2: Yes, So now how do you get people on board when already people complained about I don't know it was Chris Brown's ticket or something, and They're like, ah, guys, we can't even afford to be standing. But obviously you operating in a different world. How do you get that communication going, especially for the people listening. There are many promoters out there, there are many people trying to hustle bring internationals into the country, and you guys were sold out, so it's not even like you were struggling. I think by the time we had an interview with your partners that came through to have a discussion, it was like almost sold out, and I was like, I feel like we're always talking about how poor we are, but people were making a means to have fort those tickets.
00:14:36
Speaker 3: So again, you know, I think not leading with products and features international artists are a double edged sword for a festival. If you're a promoter like I have huge respect for big concerts of more than fifty years of incredible shows in South Africa, their product is the artist. Yep, our product is not the artist. So we're critically aware that we could probably sell more tickets in the short term if we went and dropped a big name on our lineup, or a big name for Saturday, one for Sunday, but then the problem becomes next year everybody doesn't want to buy the tickets until they find out who's playing. And the issue there is that the time that artist plays might be fifty minutes out of an eleven hour experience. I want to sell you the eleven hour experience. I want to tell you using mystery, intrigue, fantasy, scarcity stories. And you know, we've got some wonderful partners, both in the Marble group and in Grid worldwide, our design partners who have also taught me a lot about marketing and design, because great design, thinking about design as a creative asset, investing in it, investing in stories, investing in video production content, investing in some influences to an extent, and rarely immersing them into the story of what we're going to do and making great content with them. Where this year already well over fifty percent sold out our lounges, The expensive tickets are just about gone. There's a few left for Sunday, the tables, all of that was sold before we said one feature about the event. Wow, nothing, not an artist, not what the food men you would be.
00:16:16
Speaker 4: Nothing.
00:16:17
Speaker 3: And only in fact, yesterday did we announced we don't call it our artists. We call it our magnificent acts because it's artists. We talk about the trapeze access the circus because we're very careful to not go. And the lineup is because that if you're asking who's playing at the luxurious Marble Circus, you've already misunderstood what we're trying to present you.
00:16:39
Speaker 2: That is so well said, because I love the fact that you're saying that is not the product. That is just an ad on. It's the slushy at the movies. It's the topcorn at the movies. And I love that you have reached a point where people are so on board of the concept. It gives it the longevity that it requires. And even the fact that you don't make the artists the most important thing, because what you run the risk of with that is people only attracting the people who support those artists coming to the event, as opposed to having people interested in the entire experience. And the artists just so happened to be there because we know how it goes.
00:17:25
Speaker 1: Oh, I wouldn't take tickets for that show, and so they don't go.
00:17:29
Speaker 2: I am curious just in terms of where you look to for inspiration for these type of experiences, and I wonder if in that you allow yourself to go into your childlike self being a fellow creative. I always tell my team, which is your set designers and all of those, my av and tech guy. I just tell them the crazy things in my head and then they have to come back and tell me, Okay, it's happening in this country.
00:18:01
Speaker 1: And but it's a difficult thing.
00:18:04
Speaker 2: And I don't know if you experienced the same thing of holding yourself back from being too creative. Because we understand the realities of the logistics, the costs and all of those things.
00:18:16
Speaker 1: But how do you.
00:18:20
Speaker 2: Get yourself keep yourself inspired. How do you decide where to pull back? How do you decide to say, let's go wild, it's all or nothing.
00:18:31
Speaker 3: I think it's also different strokes for different events. You know, the Luxurious Marble Circus budget is fifteen times more than one of our least expensive productions. So I think what's happened there is budget has followed good ideas.
00:18:46
Speaker 4: So it's your point.
00:18:48
Speaker 3: Getting extraordinarily creative and coming up with the wildest, most fantastical ideas led us to being able to charge a higher ticket price and most importantly to onboard brands in a significant way this festival, even though those ticket prices in the South African context might see Mega in one thousand round for a playground in the field, if you can call it general access ticket from four thousand round upwards for a lounge seat. You might think, well, we've got a huge budget to work with. The ticket revenue is under forty percent of our total revenue for the event, and there's a little bit in the middle of you know, merchandise, seeing and bar revenues and so on, and north of fifty percent of our revenues coming from brands. And it was the great ideas. And I can't take all the credit myself. Many of the ideas of mine. I do dream. I don't.
00:19:39
Speaker 4: I don't go into a dark room and take drugs. But somewhere along.
00:19:43
Speaker 2: The things I saw in your artwork, I'm like I said to the team, somebody on this team is taking some to I.
00:19:49
Speaker 3: Do think there are some people on the in the creative departments at Grid that I do question how they get so creative and if it's assisted.
00:19:58
Speaker 4: But there are I.
00:19:59
Speaker 3: Think, you know, the the Incredible brand was designed by Grid and they went down a rabbit hole that gave that gave way to us being able to come with crazy event ideas, because once we had this totally fantastical brand, then we could start thinking about ideas. One of the new ideas with this series called the La Volta, we are building a stage.
00:20:19
Speaker 4: It's a music.
00:20:20
Speaker 2: I'm going to make you pause that thought because I want to give you a chance to explain it properly.
00:20:25
Speaker 1: We need to go to the news when we come back.
00:20:26
Speaker 2: We continue and get your questions in odible one double A three or seven oh two in the WhatsApp line oh seven two seven oh two one seven o.
00:20:33
Speaker 1: Two seven two.
00:20:35
Speaker 2: Masterclass twenty two minutes to three o'clock. We continue with our masterclass for today on the experience economy, and we are in conversation with Greg Walsh, CEO of Ging Productions.
00:20:49
Speaker 1: The Goosebumps Company.
00:20:50
Speaker 2: We take your calls with your questions on od double one double a three oh seven oh two and the WhatsApp line oh seven two seven oh two one seven oh two. Greg, we were chatting about the inspiration for your creativity and how you how you don't limit yourself and I think creativity is the solve for so many problems in our country, and I know, many people might not see themselves as creators because they're sitting in an accounting office or they're in a law firm. But if we think about it, creativity is required for finding solutions regularly. If anything, creativity helps with the dealing with Okay, we don't have enough money, the ground does not level, but this is what we can do. So talk to us again about what you do to expand is a travel is it.
00:21:50
Speaker 1: Taking some creative support?
00:21:53
Speaker 2: You can actually make that a line item on your budget, creative support supplem But what is it and what can we all learn from your process?
00:22:05
Speaker 3: Creativity is the fundamental bone of anything, and you know, I think at the most basic level, we've had a problem this year. Travis Scott was announced on the same date that we were planning to announce. We were going to announce our festival. Two or three days after the date that Travis Scott got announced.
00:22:22
Speaker 4: We stopped. We went if we.
00:22:24
Speaker 2: Don't oh as in you saw the Travis Scott announcement and then you said.
00:22:27
Speaker 3: Pause, pause, So you know, we had booked two and a half weeks of set up in a week of load out at ground and Malderestroex.
00:22:34
Speaker 4: Yes, we went hold on pause.
00:22:36
Speaker 3: If we don't have to compete with this, I think it's a slightly different audience in many respects, but there's certainly crossover. If we don't have to compete with us, why would we So we went to the venue and said, look, we've booked the two and a half weeks before.
00:22:48
Speaker 4: Can we move a week earlier? They said, sure, But the.
00:22:51
Speaker 3: Weekend before that there's another there's two weddings, there's then a market down on the Wednesday. So you talk about creativity, We're having to now creatively work out logistics about how do we do overnight double shift load ins of variousness, How can we load in certain elements before the weddings that won't impact the backdrop of their all important photographs. So there's been a lot of creativity on that side. So creativity is the backbone. But I think my big piece of advice for anyone organizing an event or an experience, or even wanting to market a product is And to be honest, I've been doing event for twenty three years and I genuinely believe I've only learned this in the last two years. Don't start with what is the event going to all be? Like, don't start with we're going to have two stages, We're going to have this venue. Start at the very beginning, and the very beginning is what is your story, What is going to make this different? What is your blue ocean strategy? Why would people come to your event rather than something else? And if you talk about blue ocean strategy. There was a wonderful case study done on Circu to Sole which entered the markets and then I think eighties, early nineteen nineties in the US, and they came up against two of the most established, more than one hundred year old circus brands in the world, and Circus that got to a point where it was about how much can we stuff in the circus to compete?
00:24:14
Speaker 2: So the wild animal, the acrobatics, then you have the I nearly said the court jester, but yes, basically so I'm doing the magician.
00:24:25
Speaker 4: Yes, And what.
00:24:26
Speaker 3: They what they got to was cirk to say, I looked at this, and luckily they looked at it and said, we're going to do a circus and try and compete.
00:24:31
Speaker 4: Right, what do they do?
00:24:32
Speaker 3: Let's do more because the problem was circus was becoming unaffordable for families of four or five that were going less often as a result, and the circuses were costing more than ever because they were so big on so many things at the same time. In order to be competitive, circus Sile looked at the whole thing and said, let's make a circus for adults. Will exclude the kids. If it's only two people, maybe they can come three or four times a year. Let's take away three arenas. At the same time, that circus had got to the point where there was wild animals at the same time as jugglers, at the same time as trapeze. And they looked and they said, through whatever research they did, people love clowns and trapeze the backflip acrobatics the most.
00:25:10
Speaker 4: And they went all in on that.
00:25:11
Speaker 3: They got rid of celebrity performers, they got rid of animals, animals with the most expensive and becoming the most controversial element in circus. And they went all in on those two items, and by doing that they turned over more money in twenty years than those two biggest American started circus family backed one hundred and something year old businesses are done together in over one hundred And that was just taking a step backward, sir, Not what's the industry doing what's the norm. Let's stop and go. And sometimes research doesn't give you everything you want to know either, because people sometimes give you the answer based on a bias about things they've already seen.
00:25:50
Speaker 2: You talk about, and you're like your focus groups, it will never be one hundred percent accurate.
00:25:56
Speaker 3: Yes, sometimes you have to work at what people aren't saying they want. And that that was what really was like a blossoming flower for me with the Luxurious Marble Circus was when Grid presented this brand for the first time and I looked at it and I thought, you know, we wanted a festival with the Marble group, GNG Goosebumps, who wanted all these things. Investig is our title partner all there, to be honest, my initial name for it was boutique. And they came back with this Where's Anderson inspired world, the Luxurious Marble Circus with delight and decadence and dance and pantomime and whimsy and fantasmic. That suddenly went, ah, this is a totally new genre. We're no longer trying to do what everybody else is doing. We've gone and looked at luxury because luxury is often quite restrained and stiff colored and you know, not too noisy, and festival can often feel which is fun, can often feel quite cheap. So how do we do high fun, high luxury and how do we own that? And in presenting high fun high luxury with this crazy branded idea, out came the magic the sounding board to now go what about that idea? Oh my god, what if we had stought walkers and mimes and this and that? What if we built a trampoline into a stage where artists could do backflips? What if we put a tightrope walker up in the stage. What if we did projection mapping instead of LED screens? And suddenly all these things kind of came bundling out on the back of good narrative. So, you know, this idea of investing their creative first is my advice before rushing to what are all the products and features of your experience.
00:27:36
Speaker 1: Going to be?
00:27:37
Speaker 2: In terms of if you were to categorize experiences and I'll just use mine. When I was looking at what are the type of experiences I want to do as my mini bucket list, right.
00:27:48
Speaker 3: So I looked, I'm on my I'm on my just the other side of forty list, you're on your almost forty Yes, I have.
00:27:54
Speaker 1: Less than a month ago. I'm practically there already.
00:27:57
Speaker 2: But I categorized it as some giving back experiences where it is priceless, the feeling of knowing you change somebody's life. Then they are the adrenaline junkie wild you could die, the feeling of I'm almost gonna die, experiences of jumping out of a gondola in the middle of Switzerland between Swiss Alps and getting to the bottom and you can just hear the sound.
00:28:23
Speaker 1: Of cows as you're about to touch the water.
00:28:26
Speaker 2: Then you've got the once in a lifetime experiences that you do it once and you would never need to do it again. A number of categories. How do you decide in all of the different things, which are the type of experiences that you want to choose from. So for everybody who's like, I love this concept of experience economy, let me think about how to incorporate it into what I'm doing. What are the experiences?
00:28:55
Speaker 1: I mean?
00:28:56
Speaker 2: You also get the ones that are not adrenaline junkie, but they are usually preserved for the elite, but now they're accessible, So maybe you can own a Ferrari, but you can go and get on a Ferrari on a track for a day. How do you decide and how do you do? You sort of jump into the human brain and what tickles us.
00:29:18
Speaker 3: So as a business, we want to give people unforgettable goosebump moments that transcend time.
00:29:24
Speaker 4: That's our purpose, that's why we get up.
00:29:27
Speaker 3: So you know we might be doing you know, next month, six of September and Durban, we've got an amazing event with a Shimser called Shims and Friends. It's one night, it's an incredible night out. How do we deliver unforgettable goosebumps there? Well, the you know, we've dialed down many things that something like the Marble Circus might have. The food is just what you need and fairly simple. The bathrooms are available, adequate, spotless, entrance is quick and easy. Where's all the investment gone?
00:29:55
Speaker 4: Stage? Because that experience for us is.
00:29:59
Speaker 3: Probably not once a lifetime, but we want to give you a night out that you'll never forget so you come back every single year. So that's how we thought about that event. The luxurious Marble Circus is a whole different genre on its own, and I'm glad you spoke about wanting to give back, because this is something I don't want to say it's new in our business, but at the scale we're doing it, it's new. The Luxurious Marble Circus story is about leaving a legacy beyond luxury, and what we're finding is this was something that was inspired by investing it. It was part and parcel of the negotiation with us. They're big on philanthropy and they said, the only way we sponsor your festival is if you do if you guys do something in the purpose world.
00:30:42
Speaker 2: And I'm so happy to hear that because I'm all about that, because you can't walk into a space and completely ignore the realities that are being faced. And I outside of the fact that is there are benefits to you know CSI or CSR, benefits to businesses. You can tell when businesses are doing it to tick boxes, and you can tell when they really are doing it totally.
00:31:09
Speaker 3: And I hope that the communications only really starting now. Last year we invested over eight hundred thousand rand into our leaving a legacy beyond luxury. We supported the Wrong House, we supported Hollinnati, we supported the National School of Arts, both with financial investment and the performers that got to perform. We did a lot in the recycling into such sustainability space, but I don't want to say we were ticking a box. We're doing our best with a very short time frame and a brief from investing our passionate enabler who said you got to do it. We've now had the time to assess what we did and say what do we rarely want to do here? And this idea of leaving a legacy beyond luxury is now spreading its tentacles, like the roots of a tree, into every last little piece of our festival. And I think it changes the game even on the commercials of the festival, because we're now making sure we raise funds from every stakeholder involved, whether they sort of know it or not, but in a way that feels natural. So us our brand partners have to contribute. It's not a request, it's a requirement. But they're funding ideas that we've got, so like we've got a collaboration with Sea Land to take the fence wrap panels we can't use because some sponsors change this change this year, so those are going to get thrown away, don't throw them away. It's turned them into bags.
00:32:23
Speaker 1: There we go.
00:32:24
Speaker 3: But now and then it's sell those bags and use the proceeds to invest into some of our legacy initiatives. The bags are expensive as one hundred and fifty four thousand round minimum order quantity to make the bags. One of our brand partners stepped up and said, we'll fund that. So now cost of sells zero. We sell those bags for three hundred thousand round. That goes into our pot. So we've got a pot that we're raising. And then our fans that are coming to the circus. Our rebellions are extravaganres. All the fancy words we call them, are going to just do it by association. When you purchase our beautiful recycled cups to have a drink in, there'll be a story on the back of that cup, and five round from that cup that you paid fifteen rand for ten round is what it cost us to get it. Five rand we've added on top, so eighty thousand ruand will most likely get raised from cups tur and a half percent of all drinks five rand off every meal. So our guests are getting involved in legacy, so they will feel a part of it. And they will see it and feel it wherever they go. Recycling and sustainability, we are going to upcycle as much of the trash as we can. We're turning Don Julio bottles into gorgeous lamps, the most beautiful lamps you've ever seen. With addition numbers. The National School of our students are involved in engineering firm and PE of all places is helping us manufacture the internals for those lamps. And what I'm finding is making this part of the fabric of who we are and what this festival stands for and what our brand partners stand for. I think will change the game in terms of why people want to buy tickets for the event. So that's not the reason to do it, but I think it's an incredible byproduct that will just happen.
00:34:00
Speaker 2: Indeed, we need to take a break. When we come back, we continue your questions. Oh seven two, seven oh two and seven oh two the WhatsApp line and you can call us a double one double a three oh seven oh.
00:34:09
Speaker 1: Two two masterclass.
00:34:12
Speaker 2: As we close off our masterclass on the Experience Economy with Greg Walsh, COO of Ging Productions, the Goosebumps Company. OH double one double a three oh seven oh two and the WhatsApp line oh seven two seven oh two one seven oh two. Greg, in terms of what you think we are missing from experiences in the country.
00:34:39
Speaker 1: What could you shame that regard?
00:34:40
Speaker 2: There's a message which is saying all these experiences are well and good, but they're not They're just accessible to such a small part of the population. How could we make experience something that's more accessible, So not necessarily at an event level, it could even maybe be in schools. Would you have any thoughts about that? Because I genuinely think we meet ourselves, We get closer to knowing who we are with different experiences that we have in life. Whether they scare you, whether they excite you, you come out another version of yourself.
00:35:20
Speaker 3: So I think that it's a great point. You know, experiences cost a lot of money, especially if they're good ones. So you know what stands behind well between us and incredible experiences in South Africa. One, I suppose some good ideas, but two money, So with the absence of money, it's very hard for anybody to have great experiences. The idea that, you know, how do we get more people these types of experiences? I think this is where brands have an incredible opportunity to show up and to drive change, because ultimately, big business, if they really want to invest it, can find big money. And experiences of this level take big money to make. And where brands have the opportunity. You know, you say, well, a brand could invest all their money on some fantastic consumer facing activation for the people who could already afford it. Wonderful, great, there will be a certain achievement in doing that. Can brands take an environment that is more affordable and completely elevated, They surecan as well. And I think some brands have done some amazing things. You know, we conceptualized for BMW eight years ago already the BMWM festival. Those tickets were one hundred and eighty rand for a festival that was costing tens of millions of brands. And I think the fact that the brand was co funding it allowed people who otherwise probably couldn't afford to go to an experience of that quality the opportunity to do something really extraordinary. So I think there's a place for brands to play here to bring those experiences to people. You know, on a small scale, we do bring them to schools, just to Three weeks.
00:37:00
Speaker 4: Ago was Mandela Day.
00:37:01
Speaker 3: Yes, we took an amazing experience to the children of Sparrows School just near park Town North. We had a show for them. We brought little fields of the Luxurious Marble Circus. Again, we do what we can. But you know we're gonna say, relatively speaking, I like to think of myself as a big business, but we're a small business, truth be told, and with a limit to what we can do. So I think big business has a great opportunity to win by making experiences like this more accessible.
00:37:27
Speaker 2: Greg Welsh, thank you so so much for your time. We do have to wrap it up because we are.
00:37:32
Speaker 3: Yes, one thing you have to allow me your fortieth is coming. Yes, we have an amazing experience called the Golden Ticket Area the Luxurious Marble Circus. You cannot buy the tickets for your birthday? Can I please give you a golden ticket for you and a friend to come?
00:37:45
Speaker 1: What I say? No, No, I would not. I accept and we need to go to a break. Thank you so much. Greg,
