Themed Attraction Retail Branding

There is a quote from Joe Boxer that states "The brand is the amusement park, the product is the souvenir".

Brand marketing is the driving force to get the product out to the audience or bring the masses to the product at the point of purchase sales with consistency and repetition. This article explores the growing importance of place and the brand experience in creating brand loyalty with an emphasis on the newer generations that demand "more stimulus and less nonsense.” The object to designing themed branded experiences is to capture a moment in time to "create a guest experience where the"brand becomes a truth" for the guest" - YAMA MOTO-MOSS. No matter what the story is. All of it is about the guest and their memory of the experience and what it means to them. This understanding can enable visualization in the design for future guest experiences too.

It is important to distinguish between corporate identity, brand identity, and brand image and a brand experience. Clarity promotes power. It enhances understanding and removes doubt. It transcends clutter and confusion. “brand clarity” is getting down to the essence of what your company represents. Corporate identity is concerned with the visual aspects of a company's presence. Brands do have to maintain a modern look to reassure consumers. The visual identity needs to change over time. But the key to successfully creating a new look is “evolution, not revolution”. If the intention is to substantially improve the standing of the brand, then corporate identity changes can be accompanied by widespread changes to organizational culture, quality, and service standards. If done well, and if consumers experience a great new or improved brand, then the changes will, over the longer term, have a positive effect on brand image as well. Corporate branding and identity development are one of the most important investments a company can make. A brand is a proprietary visual, emotional, and cultural image surrounding a company or its products.

Brand identity is the total proposition that a company makes to consumers. The brand is one of the most comprehensive and valuable elements of a company. It is the driving force behind your business and should be continually influenced by your company. Transported by an outstanding corporate design, an integrated brand identity system enables companies and their products to project their level of quality, reliability and value in the market in an influential way. Putting this idea into action is brand strategy. Everyone knows the fact that brand promotion is the ultimate goal of every company. While the brand strategy defines the message and mission of the brand, which may be a company, product or service, and how it should be perceived, the brand identity translates the strategic vision into a consistent image. As a tangible concept that can be accessed through the brand name, corporate identity, and the verbal positioning, the brand can be viewed as a product, a personality, a set of values, and a position. It occupies in people's minds. Brand identity is everything the company wants the brand to be seen as.

Brand image what the consumer perceptions is about the brand overall. Companies have to work hard on the consumer experience to make sure that what customers see and think is what they want them to. Branding is the process of creating and spreading the brand name. It can be applied to the entire corporate identity as well as to individual product and services. When the whole equals more than the sum of its parts, is when you can harness the collective knowledge and skills of two valuable groups, design and marketing, and achieve success greater than if they had been working individually.

Effective utilization of design, is a powerful tool for connecting the customer/user with products or services. It has now become imperative, and success simply won’t occur unless fusion with the right marketing strategy and program occurs with awesome design. In many organizations, these resource groups still work apart, missing opportunities to successfully work together. Design and marketing both have expertise in understanding customers/users. These perspectives are unique, yet equally important, and can provide breakthrough results when integrated as a team deciphering trends and creating concepts.

Consumer interaction has many forms in today's economy and is shifted by trends. That is why future-thinking industries and brand corporations are paying close attention to the overall brand experience they offer customers and the trends that are occurring in the industry of design. While many firms are just venturing into the experience strategy and design realm. What we are talking about is the purchasing and leisure experience that combines our need for social gathering in the traditional market place and the drive of pleasure seeking. The commercial elements of this experience are composed of corporate retail, food and attractions that stimulate the senses.

Another trend in themed retail is "Gamification". It is the use of game design, techniques and mechanics to increase user engagement and to drive action, is gaining fast momentum in the retail industry based upon the new generations of technology and user interphase. The growth in this sector has reached around $100 million, and is expected to reach around $3 billion by 2016, according to M2 Research. It's kinda like the movie Minority Report where you interact with the retail environment and it recognizes You by a key devise. I had designed a prototype hand held devise to be presented to Simon Malls.

A good entertainment retail project is definitely not just about the decorating of a retail space. It is resolidifying the story experience. In the past, they used to plaster the wall with surface graphic treatments and call it a themed environment. Today's shoppers are much more sophisticated. They are looking for a "total immersed experience" and something that is authentic to the story they love or brand that makes them look hot! The graphics and theme we create today in a mall is much more three-dimensional and interactive utilizing 4D experiences. It has to engage the shoppers and increase the length of stay.

From the movies to the theme parks, being constant in the way the branding is applied in repetition and consistent in the promise to the customer is the "better bang for the buck" for all in the long run. Here, it is said, "the brand is the promise". But now the brand has to be "truth" and meaningful as people are spending more on shared experiences. To be in the story line of themed environs mentally and physically is why my nephews and nieces wanted to be on the ride or hug Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny and wear Dr. Seuss hats for the "meaningful memory" of the experience! The price of "that" moment is worth it to see their faces light up! It is kind of like peoples reactions to the decorated windows in NY City at Christmas. Brand marketers know this and want the payoff of the "take home" through point of purchase sales in the branded souvenir. We as experiential designers are to work along side them and figure out how to create the world that this takes place in.

At the International Association of Amusement parks and Attractions (IAAPA) , I attended a forum on "future concepts in themed experiences" given by the Themed Entertainment Association. MTV brand marketing directors were giving the analysis of the teen consumers given to them by cultural analysis groups. The statistics were nothing less than staggering! Each generation of teens has their own trends and the brand marketers follow these shifts in supply and demand and improvise creatively to match the theme or cultural "identity swing". Each generation are yesterdays - tomorrow's consumers and, they have a vast impact on the designs of tomorrow's destinations. The last two, Gen-X and Gen-Y, have more of a comfort level than ever before with technology.

Home computers were just a portal of what's to come. Brand marketers know this and have to market commercially for the "point of purchase" in retail destinations. And they are all ready studying the next generation to "surf " future product design, functions and retail strategies. That’s where designers come in to meet the strategists who explain the sale approach. By getting the concept storyline down, the designer is enabled to create based on the product and accessories that go with it.

These retail locations are in theme parks, museums, malls, zoo's, theaters, hotel resort destinations, and restaurants. I was a part of this at Looney Tunes Expo at Six Flags in Atlanta Ga., I was a part of a super cool team where we won first place in the "Red Hot Gold Awards" at IAAPA in Dallas, Texas 1998. It was premiered in the Nov 1998 issue of Visual Merchandising and Store Design magazine (VMSD) for interior themed retail designing and point of purchase. Places like New York’s Time Square, Downtown Disney, Universals City Walks are just the beginning of the emerging future brand environs that convey the brand experience. These retail environments provide the branded "take home." In these places you will find totally awesome mega - themed entertainment retail environments where architecture and themeing meets brand, meets point of purchase. While attending the Shop East- convention in New York which is a hub of Visual merchandising and point of purchase displays and in the Chicago retail convention, I can catch a glimpse of the trend shifts in the brand retail designing.

Have you seen Las Vegas lately? Forget the slots and check out the shows, scenic architectural, themeing, that’s hit over the last 10 years! The teams of designers break the barriers of time, space and reality (with the proper funding you can do anything) concepts that take you to time travel and world travel in a nutshell as Epcot does. Casino's and restaurants have been taking a love-dive into this world of family entertainment theme design hands over feet!! It is a Mecca of themed hotel casinos, restaurants, and retail venues that has perfected the art-form of keeping the consumer in the casinos with visual stimulus that can overwhelm and displace time! Storyline venues there are a must see and attract visitors to their casinos to keep the patron in as long as possible.

This is accomplished by adverting the use of windows in the main areas so as to displace time and overwhelming the guests with a fantasy world. But not all unique architecture is on the interior of the facility A great example is called Fashion Show. It is a giant hotspot with it's floating facade of LCD lighting is a "cloud" of projected advertisements ( the architect was a genius!). Fremont street is a giant canopy lighting show. Paris Las Vegas, New York/New York, Venetian-Venice Italy, Bellagio Hotel /Casino just for the water show and Treasure Island's exterior pirate ship adventure show are still awesome! And new hospitality meca's are arriving on a growing basis in Las Vegas.

These exiting and new ways of constantly renovating and building the next newest best "thing" is also a must in that highly competitive atmosphere. And they are willing to put out extreme funding to do so. Also check out VMSD and eyewire.com for further referencing on the retail approach to designing. Powerful insights and knowledge of the industry are displayed monthly. Branding can be fun when you have the "real thing" in your hands! It has to be the TURBOMAN action figure with the moving arms and legs! It has to have the boomerang shooter and the rock & roar jetpack! It has to have the voice activator that shouts, "It’s turbo time"! (Batteries not included). And people do want to be in the branded experience like being in the movie. This adventure allows us to slip away and escape reality to be a part of something when we were kids! You don’t want to be on just any journey! But, to be onward to "the second star to the right and keep on till morning" adventure"!

While I was at that same IAAPA convention, I met up with a group of designers in a discussion on "Theme park branding with retail take home souvenir’s". Being a designer, I HAD to be in on the discussion. There I met Tony Baxter V.P. of Walt Disney Imagineering who pointed out that "no one wants to ride just any ride on space or dinosaurs. They want to ride the Star Wars ride at MGM Studios or be in the Exxon pavilion at EPCOT." Being fair here, one could also say the same about the Jurassic Park ride at Universal as it is a brand ride too. Another example is the relationship of the Grinch and Cat In The Hat movie with Dr. Seuss’ Landing at Islands of Adventure (IOA), The Haunted Mansion movie with the ride (WDW), The Twilight Z one Tower of Terror and The Muppets 4D Experience at Disney's MGM Studios. This is the reason that amusement / thrill parks have been turning to theme brand experiences in their rides. For example, Six Flags parks gives story and the thrill in the "action adventure" of the super hero themed coaster rides "Batman - The Ride" and "Superman The Ultimate Escape Coaster "too As well as WB presents the T.V. animated shows with Six Flags Thrill/Amusement Parks.

Although iron rides are not dark rides or kiddie rides, they are similar to other coasters in the "feel" of the ride and how the adventure begins in the "dark ride" atmosphere of the station and Q. Just like “The Incredible Hulk Coaster" was at Universal’s "Super Hero Island" at IOA. Yes! Now at theme parks, you can go watch the movie and come fly like a super hero! Here theme parks keep the promise made by the brand in the experience. )One example is Transformer Attraction ride at universal Studios from movie screen magic to a thrill ride. Another example of an extensive interactive brand experience is the Winnie the Pooh ride at Tokyo Disney Seas. The cost was as much as a casino in Las Vegas. Winnie the Pooh has been one of the top brand "point of purchase" for Disney. Pirates of the Caribbean has the movies to back it up being inspired, Disney Imagineers redesigned the darkride utilizing the movie characters as Capt Jack Sparrow... I am sure that DC.Comics and Marvel Comics will still do the same integration of Movie Magic to thrill/Darkride to Retail integrations as well as other movies as they all connect the dots now to the consumer experience. Disney paved the way for the branded end of the ride experience. The Disney retail experience is just as intense as the rides they are representing.

I had a privileged recent visit to Disney Global Retail Store Development in Orlando. There I met with Director Tim Johnson. As I was listening to what they are doing and how they do it, I noticed that they do not miss anything! They have thought of everything. And their attentiveness is to very last detail! The Disney retail experience is just as intense as the rides they are representing. That's why I appreciate them so much. Disney retail have some of the most entertaining spaces world wide from Tokyo to Times Square and now in China.

"Retail as theater"

I’ve had the privilege and fun to work in the same use of branding the attraction rides to retail with the branded experience on location in Six Flags parks involving super heroes like Superman and Batman. These designs were on the Q-line entry portals and coaster stations along with elements of the streetscapes, gaming and themed retail, concessions facades, stunt show spectaculars and gaming areas as branded experiences all over the U.S. and Madrid Spain at Warner Brother's Movie World.

The challenge of the designer of the themed experience involved in branding within movies, theme parks, retail, or other venues like museums is to meet or set the standards of visual imagery that best conveys the storyline with the highest degree of impact for sales. The blurrrring of the lines of fantasy and reality enables us to bring the customer into the themed environment visually, and completely immerses them in the experience through the story of the branded adventure, i.e. "seeing is believing."

This is accomplished through the use of designing architecture, media, graphics and technology packed with computer or traditional interactive theme elements to build brand loyalty that encourages repeat visitation, and connect into the heart of the consumer. For example, interactivity with characters or cultural icons can identify the customer to be one with the brand. This creates the atmosphere in feeling like you’re apart of the storyline as if on a dark ride with all of the "bell’s and whistles" thus, suspending the disbelief.

Best regards,

Matthew L. McCoy
Experiential Designer