Spotlight: Corey Romberg, Director of Guest Engagement at The Florida Aquarium

You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. Conversations on how nonprofit attractions are increasing attendance and sharing their missions through marketing. Your hosts are Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of Attend Media. Jenny, today we got a spotlight episode. Corey Romberg, he’s the director of guest engagement at the Florida Aquarium. Yeah, I’m really excited about this conversation. One of my favorite things to talk about as a marketer is events at cultural attractions and Corey is going to talk to us all about events. The Florida Aquarium is doing some really cool things, but it’s not just introducing new events, but it’s Corey’s really going to dive into how they’re bringing storytelling into that guest experience and engagement, how you know, sight, sound, taste, touch, all these elements, how important they are to planning out an event and he’s got some really cool things to share. And I think when you listen to what he talks about, you’re going to be like, oh, yeah, I get why he’s from Disney. Yeah, I like what they’re doing in terms of getting their guest survey and kind of how they’re implementing that data point. Why measure it if you’re not going to manage it? So I think he brought up some good ideas on how to actually execute on some of the ideas that the guests are trying to tell you. Yeah, definitely. All right, let’s get into it. All right, Corey, thanks for making the time to be here. Yeah, thanks for having me really excited to be on. All right, so tell us your journey. How did you get into the cultural attraction space? More specifically, how did you land at the Florida Aquarium? Yeah, so my journey’s kind of been all over the place, which is really helpful for a job that really is kind of all over the place in terms of the different departments that I oversee and things I do. But started actually out in the theme park world, working at Disney, worked in attractions there, and then had an opportunity to go into education at a zoo, the Phoenix Zoo in Arizona was my first zoo. From there, you know, spent the better part of the next five plus years working at various zoos in the Florida, worked at a few zoos here at Wish Gardens in Tampa, zoo Tampa, central Florida Zoo, doing all sorts of things from education to public relations, and really fell in love with the zoo and aquarium world and the cultural attraction space had the opportunity then to go back to Disney, first working with the animals, how to things, and then kind of more into the attractions and the guest engagement and guest experience side. And then when an opportunity came for this brand new position that was created at Florida Aquarium of Director and guest engagement, it really was the perfect fit to kind of take the experience I’ve gained in the more theme park attraction guest experience space along with the experience that I had in the Hashenahad for zoos and aquariums and really think about what does guest engagement and entertainment and events and all those things look like in the cultural attraction space, how do we mend the entertainment side with the educational side? Danny, he’s hired. What a resume. That’s so awesome. So this is a new role at the Florida Aquarium that you’ve stepped into. Tell us what that day looks like. And I’m sure that it’s bringing in a lot of the history that you’ve talked about from your past experiences, too. Yeah, for sure. It was decided that they really, the aquarium really wanted somebody who could really come in with a strategic and creative lens to think about how do we storytelling at the aquarium? How do we use these different elements of events of our entertainment team, basically everything that the guests might engage with that the goes are coming for a scheduled education program like a school group. These are just your average families and visitors coming to the aquarium for the day. How are they getting our story? How do we use those kind of storytelling and guest engagement lens to to immerse people and to really get them to understand what we’re doing is the aquarium. And so that kind of brought under other departments that were it lived in different places before. So our events, the two main teams that are under me are events and entertainment. The entertainment used to live under our education learning team events used to live under our marketing team. It was a side to kind of bring them together under one roof in my department to really think about those two touch points really being the things that we’re most able to bring our story to our guests with. And so I have two people under me are events manager and our entertainment supervisor. And then we also have a team of right now eight entertainers under our entertainment supervisor. Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, that’s, that’s awesome. So they basically created a new department for you to oversee. I like that. Yeah, you know, the great thing is it really my day can be so very just, you know, in the typical day, you know, I could go from how planning a drone show to working with a group with live animal training group about maybe a new live animal show where we might do to planning our holiday event to doing an audition for a new singer to designing a new character or puppy, really varies. And I love that. I get to oversee so much all within the same overall strategic lens of how do we immerse our guests in storytelling. All right. So singing auditions on Tuesday, live animal training on Wednesday. All right. Got it. Got it. Okay. Not a bad job. All right. So I’m going to pull a thread. You mentioned there. Talk about storytelling. What is that? What does that mean? How does that? What is this idea of storytelling? How does that trickle down to actually what you guys are doing inside your four walls? Yeah, for sure. I have a big believer that that storytelling is the way that people best absorb information. And everyone uses storytelling, whether you’re a cultural attraction, a theme park, a movie, a business, you know, everyone needs to tell the story of their organization and get people to want to come and be a part of it. And so, you know, we take that very importantly here. And when it comes to engagement and why why does storytelling fall under engagement and why do we, you know, think a lot of, I think cultural attractions and think about engagement is what are we telling our guests? And they really think of it more as almost a, just the words that we share with our guests. But I see engagement in and we realize the query. I’m seeing engagement is more multi-sensory. It’s not just what are we telling them, but what are we showing them? What are they hearing? What are they feeling? What are they seeing throughout? It’s really this looking at all different elements from the music of the aquarium to the theming of the exhibits to what our characters look like and do and really kind of just again this multi-sensory approach to really immerse our guests in our stories so that they feel that they can connect with our stories in a way that again, we’re thinking of everything. It’s not just a matter of what are the messages we’re physically sharing with them. All right, give me an example. You mentioned music. I love music. Give me an example of like how music storytelling works within the Florida aquarium? Yeah, you know, so that’s something we are doing right now really kind of taking a much more critical look at curating the soundtrack for the aquarium. And as someone who is a storyteller at heart really, I think about my some of my favorite stories are movies. And the importance of music in a movie to tell the story. I think everyone knows, you know, how if you watch a movie clip, you know, you’re famous scene from a movie without music, how different that scene feels or if you play very different music than from what the scene, you know, if you play jaws with, you know, happy go lucky music, how different that would be. And so that really we’re kind of taking that approach for the aquarium, thinking about what is the move we want to set for each of our exhibit galleries? What is that? Is there some sort of place making what to do if you’re supposed to be in the Indo-Pacific waters? How does music tell the story of the cultures of those, you know, Indo-Pacific regions? If you’re in the Florida wetlands, you know, what does that sound like? Really kind of thinking about a combination of natural sounds, but also just the musical score that can help set the mood and whether it’s again a kind of quirky vibe or a adventure vibe, you know, really especially out front of the aquarium, we’re kind of trying to set the stage. We used to kind of just have just a random collection of pop songs playing and it really kind of distracted from the story. We want our music to be additive, not distracted. We wanted to be able to start setting the stage for the adventure. You’re going to have this inspirational adventure learning about conservation and scenes animals. So being able to have music, a musical score that fits that mood of adventure and just really kind of looking at each place of the aquarium, thinking about that and again going back to that structure of a movie, thinking about how a movie typically opens with this big, bombastic score, Star Wars, you think about that score that it opens with. And so we wanted to really have again this really uplifting, bombastic score as you first enter and start your adventure. And then also in the ex the last gallery you would exit through thinking about that kind of closing credits music more inspirational. Now you’re leaving the aquarium. What are you going to go do to make the oceans a better place in a world a better place? How does the music help tell that story? So we’re really excited about being able to look at that and even as we do theme special events for Halloween, for the holidays, how does the music help accentuate that particular story we’re telling? Like the visit, the actual experience that the your visitors, your guests are going to go through, you’re thinking of it in the lens of a movie. At least on the soundtrack side, right? That’s really cool. I think that’s a great takeaway for our audience. Yeah, I think definitely the soundtrack side is one thing, but again, we are lucky in that we are able, being an aquarium that’s indoors mostly, very similar to a museum versus a zoo or a garden which is much more outdoors and it tends to have a lot more kind of choose your own adventure. We really, the way our flow goes and kind of curate that experience for our guests in terms of how they move and flow through. So it allows us to really kind of tell, have more linear storytelling like you might see in a movie and really think about that throughout the music is just one example of that. Well, what else? I mean, what other elements make up, you mentioned Halloween. Like do you do theme events and how do you make it Halloweeny? Yeah, Halloween is one that we were trying to really bring some of that to life. We call it guppy wean and it’s a way to kind of have fun play on words but really bring in a younger audience. There’s a lot of things in central Florida for Halloween that are a bit more for teens or adults. And so we like to kind of go on the more kid-friendly side of Halloween. But something we’re really excited about is a brand new event that we debuted this year called “Yuletides” and it’s our coastal holiday celebration. So really again in the terms of thinking back into again storytelling immersion, we in the past we have always done what was called snow days and it was this very kind of wintery big snow type thing. And y’all in Tampa, right? Tampa, Florida? And we’re in Tampa so yeah, we all take snow. We need seven degrees in December in Tampa. Exactly. You know, it’s it’s it’s hard to fully immerse in in the snow whereas we thought, you know, what can we what would be authentic to us in our brand? Look, can we truly immerse our guests in? And that’s the coast. We are literally right on the water on the intercoastal Tampa water. So that allowed us to think, well, we can share the story of not animals from the North Pole, but or the Arctic, but animals that are found in coastlines all around the world, which is what guests can see at our aquarium. We can share these great coastal holiday traditions from boat parades to, you know, food and beverage that’s that’s more on the coastal twist and really again authentically immerse our guests in something that’s very different and hopefully is a sense of pride, you know, I know, you know, Ryan, you’re a native Florentian, you know, we have a lot of Florentians or native or not native who to them Christmas is not snow and pine trees. It’s palm trees and the beach and sand. So let’s do sand sculptures. Yeah, for sure, but you know, we’ll have sand sculptures instead of ice sculptures. We have a tree, our traditional tree in the lobby is not a tree. It’s a lighthouse and that is kind of made to look like a tree. So we’re really kind of thinking all throughout about how we can really immerse our guests in something that’s authentic to us, but also is different in marketplace and will give, again, those Florentians as a pride of, yeah, this is what the holidays mean to me living in Florida or other coastal environments, but even our visitors who are probably coming from the North and are surrounded by your typical traditional Christmas type things anyway and see plenty of snow anyway. This is something new for them to experience them coming to Florida anyway. Let’s give them a Florida Christmas and that’s what we’re trying to do with this event and really trying to, as we go through the event, you know, there’s four keys that we identified as the four keys to a great holiday event, really any event, but especially for the holidays and that’s the decor, the food and beverage, hands-on experiences, and entertainment. And so we really made sure that we hit an all four of those things and that all four of those things give a unique vibe and have some sort of coastal marine life twist that really helps sell our event and differentiate it. Jenny, you just wrote a creative brief for us here. This is like marketing gold. This is something that, I mean, first of all, I think when we work with clients to plan holiday events, it’s like our favorite thing to do, right? Who doesn’t love planning the holiday and marketing plan, but I love what you talk about the four kind of elements to make this up because in marketing, it can be so much more than just, hey, we have one overarching event, right? Our message to our audience can be about whether it’s that hands-on experience you’re talking about, the food and beverage program, right? These are all the little things that people are looking forward to identify that this is a different event, something a little bit more unique, right? Like I can get something different with the Florida Aquarium than I can with maybe something else in the market, right? So I love that you’re thinking through planning your events this way, and then I think that’s something that can, you know, so easily be pulled through the marketing in terms of how we share with potential guests and drive more people in, so that’s really cool that you’re doing that. Yeah, I think it goes back to that. We talked about earlier that we really see engage in as multi-sensory, and I think thinking about those four elements, the decor is obviously what you see, the food and beverage, what you taste, the hands-on activities, is that really tactile, something for people to do and then entertainment kind of hitting on what you hear from the music side, but even just what you see visually as well. It’s got shrimp, doing shrimp? We do, we’ve got some shrimp, we’ve got some, we’re doing ceviche, clam chowder, so really kind of trying to think about some of these holiday, you know, our coastal favorites from different coastlines, I just floored up at New England, and all around the world, but kind of taking classic holiday foods and putting a coastal twist on it, so yeah, lots of seafood. You’re listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. Conversations on how non-profit attractions are increasing attendance and sharing their mission through marketing. Your hosts are Ryan Dick and Jenny Williams of Attend Media. Attend media is a media planning and buying agency, specializing in zoos, aquariums, gardens and museums. For more information, please visit attend.media. Now back to Ryan and Jenny. All right, Query, so let’s talk about characters. I know that you guys are working on developing some characters. Just go from there. Yeah, we have a couple of costume characters, or mascots, a turtle and a penguin. We’re currently developing a third character, Axeloddle, which are very popular right now, so we’re very happy to introduce that. We’re also trying to bring on some new puppets, and we have a musical live musical performances from our troop of singers called AquaTunes. We do story time with our characters, so really, again, that’s where storytelling really comes to life, and it’s the most literal sense is through our characters and our ability to build empathy for animals, especially in younger audiences, through these characters, and through, again, different modes of storytelling that have different levels of interaction, be it the literal oral storytelling, through telling stories with a reading from a book, or how our characters share stories, puppets, again, musical storytelling through our live musical performances, and really seeing this as a way, again, younger audiences, we know that they need, they need to have empathy for animals before they’re going to care about them, before they’re going to grow up to care about these animals. And we don’t want to make a difference, and that’s what we’re trying to do with every guest is try to turn them into conservation heroes, so with our younger guests, it’s really what we call critical anthropomorphism. The idea of anthropomorphism, which again is seeing human traits in animals, in the zoo and aquarium world that can kind of be a bit of an iffy subject, because we don’t want to make assumptions about animals and their feelings. We know that animals don’t necessarily feel things exactly the same way as humans do, or so we try to be careful around that, but I don’t think it’s a scary word. I think it’s a really important word because we know, and researchers showed us, that kids, they will, are more likely to connect with something that looks more human, that they can connect with, that, you know, a sea turtle, like we have, that walks on two feet, it has a smile and eyelashes, and it’s not exactly, and I’m a time will be correct, but it’s something the kids really connect with, and they love this tango or sea turtle. And so, through building that connection, empathy through our characters that might have more anthropomorphism than we see in, you know, the true life animals in the exhibits, that starts to build that connection in these young kids, and they see these characters, and then they want to go learn more about the real animals, and grow up to them care about them. Again, axlottles, the big one, a lot of people know about this animal from anthropomorphized versions of this character, in cartoons and video games, and, but then they’re so excited to come to the aquarium and see our real axlottles, so that, that kind of connection empathy that we try to build using that critical anthropomorphism, hard word, and our characters. Danny, we’re selling fun, right? Yeah, and Corey, you mentioned that you guys had done some surveys too, and kind of found out really what your audience is saying is they’re coming for fun, right? So can you talk a little bit about what you learned through some of this? Yeah, so we use the more a group for our surveys, and we get a pretty good response, great, about 5%, which I know is, doesn’t sound like a lot, but from, you know, looking at some other benchmarks, that is a good amount, and we get, you know, based on average, about 730 individual survey responses a month. So that gives us a pretty good amount of data to go by, and it’s a great thing about capturing that is we do mostly online sales advanced ticketing, so we have their email address, and we can then, you know, send them those surveys after their visit, and that helps us with that response rate. But really, again, it’s about the, both the qualitative and the quantitative, you know, from a quantitative side, we use Net Promoter Score, and we like to track that, and see where we’re at with that. But I think for me, especially in my role, in what we do in guest engagement, it’s really about being a truly consumer-centric organization, and practicing adaptive management. So it’s about really managing those surveys, and not just getting the data just to have it, but really looking at trends in a month or a month in some of that, that kind of hard numbers, but also especially in the, those more qualitative surveys, like the comments, really seeing what are some of the key trends that come up frequently with our guests, or even if it’s not a trend, even if it’s one particular thing, but it’s a really great piece of feedback they have, we really want to make sure we’re acting on it and we’re being adaptive to that. So I put together, when I started monthly, we called it, the guest engagement meetings, and their inter-departmental, including our, you know, everyone from our marketing to membership, to guest services, learning, animal care, all different departments all come together, and we go over those survey results, we identify those key trends, and then we talk together about how are we going to address them, and really because most of the time solutions are not just one department, they’re inter-departmental. So it’s really about making sure that everyone feels ownership of the survey results, and it’s not just our business innovation team that is our, that directly intakes that data, that owns it, everyone has ownership of it by making sure we’re meeting, we’re talking, and we’re actually acting upon these trends. You know, example that we would, we see a lot of surveys, you know, we would say that, because not enough seating in the query, and where they get to a certain part of the query, and they wish there was more seating, because it’s like halfway through, and they realize, oh, I just love that, another half the query month to go, and that led us to, as we were designing, a new tide pool touch tank area on our second level, which really is kind of the halfway point of the journey. We made sure that we then transform this area to not just a touch tank, but to have an area around that has a food and beverage cart, as well as some benches and tables that can act as this whole kind of immersive break area with plenty of seating. So we’re, guests can take that break before they continue on the rest of their journey. And that’s just one example of the ways we’re able to really look at those trends in the surveys and make sure we’re listening to our consumers. Why measure if you’re not going to manage it, right, Corey? And I like the take that you guys are having it, making it company-wide. Everybody’s going to have a stake in something like seating and building out this little food and beverage break area. That’s really makes sense. Is this something that is unique to you guys? Like, is that something you initiated or some other organizations are doing this kind of stuff or talking to me about getting guests survey data back and actually implementing it? Yeah, I mean, well, I hope it’s not unique to us because I think every organization should be doing something like this. But certainly, I think at this level, this was something that I haven’t, in any case, I’ve been in my career, I haven’t seen it done at this level that we do at the aquarium that we really have such a dedication to what it means to be consumer-centric and not just as a buzz word, but they were actually working on it that we have these meetings that people are aware of the surveys. The great thing is even by the time I get to these meetings and start reading off some of the previous month’s surveys, a lot of people have already read them. So it’s not just like they’re doing it because it’s a meeting, a lot of people, you don’t have the initiative to go through to look at what’s being said in that. And again, we put it into our priorities for FY25. We’re going to practice adaptive management. And that comes through managing that feedback. So yes, it’s, again, something I would highly recommend every organization do. And hopefully, we know every organization doesn’t at some point, but again, it’s a matter of the difference between your commitment to, we’re just going to do surveys because we have to versus we do surveys because it’s getting that guest feedback is critical and central to how we run this organization. It’s like a culture thing. It’s kind of mushy to describe, but if everybody’s buying into it now it becomes a thing. It’s like you’re elevating or prioritizing guest engagement and more specifically these guest surveys and these comments to high on the list. Once again, mushy way to describe it, but it is cool that everybody else is reading it and like, okay, come into the meeting kind of prepared. Yeah. All right, Quarry. So, you know, we always hit in these podcasts with our famous last question here, but it’s a, you, I mean, especially from someone like he’s been in this space of working with some of you different attractions, but, you know, what’s one thing that you think cultural attractions should be doing more of, especially in relation to marketing? Yeah, it’s a great question. And I think, Ryan, I think you said earlier, it’s selling fun. I think that’s what we need to remember, especially I think cultural attractions. There is this sense of, you know, some of you sometimes higher purpose or we are mission driven organizations and that’s great to be a mission driven organization. But sometimes you’re not just selling your mission. If you’re thinking about marketing to the general public, you know, yeah, you might have some people that are very focused and devoted to your mission, you know, probably some of your members and that’s great. But how do you attract new audiences? A lot of the time it’s by selling the fun, it’s by selling connection and time with family. That is something we see, especially in the zoom in aquarium where I can speak to, you know, we do lots of surveying and we have trends committed at looking at these trends. And year over year ever since I’ve been involved in the industry, the number one reason why people or surveys are showing us the number one reason why people visit zoos and aquariums is time with family and friends. It’s to have fun, it’s entertainment. It’s not to necessarily to see animals. It’s not to learn. I mean, for some it is and that tends to happen naturally. Obviously when you come, you’re going to see animals, you’re going to learn, but it’s not the number one reason why people are coming. So that should necessarily be the number one thing we’re marketing. We really should be marketing what those fun experiences that connection, you know, and that we’re still kind of in this post-pandemic world, where we know how much people seek human connection with their family and friends or with just others in general. And so being able to be a place where people can come connect over a common interest they have, whether that’s art, gardens, animals, you know, the different things in our cultural attractions make cater to. That’s that’s that’s the connection point. But then what are you doing to make it if all you’re doing, you know, at a zoo or aquarium is walking around and seeing animals, if all you’re doing in a garden is walking around and seeing plants, if all you’re doing in a museum is walking around and seeing statues or art or whatever it might be, that’s not really connecting. You’re not really then you could do that on your own. So what is it that what are those things that we can do as organizations and how can we market that to make sure this is a place where I can feel that mission, I, but we’re doing things together, we’re immersed in some, we’re escaping into some immersive world and we’re connecting, we’re doing and we’re having fun together as a family, with friends. Yeah, so place you want to go with other people and not just by yourself. Yeah, which is great for driving in more people, right? For sure. We did an episode with Tim Moro from the San Antonio Zoo and like you, Corey, he has a theme park background and I’m going to steal, well, he said it on the podcast, so I think I can steal it, but I think I’m going to give you permission to steal it. I’ll talk to Tim about it. But anyway, he talked about his organization as an iceberg and the part above water is the fun, the family, the events, right? But once we get them through the doors, we’re going to show them the rest of the iceberg, which you don’t see. And he had a saying, saying, I can’t believe you guys do that here. I didn’t know you did that here. So getting through the door, then we can educate them, then we can convert them into believing in supporting our mission, but we got to get them in first is that top of that iceberg with people, what people are going to see. Yeah, definitely. And we see that a lot as well as why we look at things like, we’re really kind of in the event space. We really made sure I was replanting this, you’ll tides event, are there going to be things from the food and beverage, the decor that we can really market to adults, to those, it’s a big market of young adults that don’t have kids. We know we do a great job of attracting those families with kids or grandparents taken there, their kids, but how do we attract those college students looking for something fun to do on a weekend or again, those young adults who in that transition period before they start families or maybe who are never going to start families, we want all those audiences and so thinking about what can we do with adult only events after hours, maybe something date night around Valentine’s Day or bringing in some, some chefs to really create a really unique food and beverage experience. We do a charcootery event around charque day that’s all about building your own charque, hootery board. So it kind of hopefully brings in the foodies and then surprise we’re going to teach you about charque. So yeah, it’s all about bringing in those audiences, may again, not necessarily using the animals to bring them in if we can use the food and beverage or a drone show is another thing. That’s why we’re talking with that. What can we do potentially in just something that will bring out anyone and then surprise them and be able to then show them all the cool things we’re doing for conservation and how amazing our animals are and then get them to be more connected to the cultural part, more connected to our mission after we bring them in for that fun or that thing that really attracts them and and again, I’m glad you brought up Tim having that theme park background that you interviewed myself having that theme park background really because I’ve been in both these worlds, I can tell you that there’s not a big difference in a Disney, a universal theme park versus a zoo aquarium museum. We’re all trying to sell fun. We’re all trying to sell connection with family and friends. We’re all trying to immerse people in some sort of theme and I think we can all learn from each other. That’s why it’s great. There are organizations out there like IAPA who really bring together the theme park world and the zoo and aquarium and museum and cultural space because that idea of just being an attraction of being a place where families and friends can have fun together, can cross over and we can market very similar ways to a theme park as a cultural attraction. Awesome. Corey, thanks for joining us. Pleasure to be here. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Marketing Attractions podcast. If you have a suggestion for a topic or would like to be a guest on the show, please visit our website at MarketingAttractionsPodcast.com. Thanks for watching.