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. David Rosenberg, he’s the Executive Vice President
of Growth and Experience at SSA Ventures.
Yeah, excited to talk to David today. He’s definitely has the credentials to be on this
podcast. He’s been in the industry for quite some time. I think many of our listeners
might actually know him from the time that he’s been at Monterey Bay Aquarium. And
more recently has joined SSA Ventures, part of SSA Group, of course. And we’re going
to talk to him today about really how to create a seamless visitor experience for your guests
and how can you stay connected with them from the time you first start marketing to them
to you after their visit, how they become a member and a donor, and how to maybe skip
over some of those pinch points that many might fall into when thinking through this
experience.
Yeah. And David, it was a previous chair at IAPA, so he kind of talks about networking,
kind of how you can elevate your career to your job a little bit better. And then I like
what kind of how we end this episode where he talks about Gen Z. So stick around for that
one. Alright, let’s get into the show. Alright, David, thanks for joining us today.
Yeah, thank you. I’m excited to be here. Awesome. So give us your journey. How did you get
in the space? I mean, you’re at Monterey Bay forever and now you’re at SSA. How did
you end up here?
Well, right. I’m going to take you way back and then I’ll tie that into how I ended up
in SSA. And so I, you know, I think about my, my, my, my childhood and, and think about
the first memories in childhood and for me, it was going to attractions. I was six, seven
years old in my, every summer, my parents would load myself and my two brothers into a car.
We drive from Scottsdale, Arizona to San Diego and we would spend a week in a head clearing
out of San Diego. One day was at San Diego Zoo. And I have a great memory of Chester
the Bear. We go by and the bear would wave at the carts as they went by at the zoo. The next
day we go to a sea world, San Diego. And I was always inspired that I wanted to be a trainer
when I grew up and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and do with, I’m, I’m remanemles. And,
um, and then we would go to Disneyland. And that would be kind of wrapped up. We go to Disneyland
and go, my mother loved, it’s a small, relatively clapped along the way. We have to go on a two
or three times, which, oh my gosh, I don’t know how we did that. But, but that was my childhood
in these memories, really kind of catapult me as I was going through high school and college
to want to make sure that I was in the attractions industry. And, and, and, and, and I got that
opportunity. My first job in a college in the summer between my freshman sophomore year,
I was a lifeguard at Typhoon Lagoon at Walt Disney World on their, uh, college program.
And that really opened my eyes to the world of attractions each year. Every summer I went
back there after in, in terms of ships and then eventually into, um, a professional position
with Walt Disney World. After that, got recruited to high hotels corporation where I was in
a hotel executive for almost 11 years and then landed the Monoray Day quorum about 17 years
ago. So you can see how that ties back to that childhood dream that, that, uh, that, what
I was, what I was seven, always going through attractions, getting this, um, be part of all
those different sides. So a couple of years ago, as I was in Monoray and, uh, just loving
every day of what we did at the Bono Ray Bay quorum, um, I was paying very close attention to
SSA as well. And SSA is a partner in Monoray, um, operates our food and beverage and merchandise
and has done so for, for, for, for a very long time. But SSA was growing throughout the
attractions industry in, um, the United States and beyond. And it was very noticeable and
something that I wanted to be part of. Uh, we, I’ve always been focused because of my background
on what a visor experience she looked like, what it is today. How do we always exceed expectations
in the visitor and what is tomorrow look like? And by joining a company like SSA, that is
focused on that. And quite frankly, the growth of SSA depends on understanding what that
future of those experiences and building on it. That was really exciting to me and that
really led my journey to, to join SSA adventures. I mean, it’s, it’s the attraction space, you
know, it says like, that’s better than a funeral home or something like that. So I, I love bringing
it back to your childhood. It, it is a fun space to work in. So, um, it’s kind of an easy
question to ask or to answer. Uh, it’s, it, right. I, and, and my kids think that all I do is
play every day and ride roller coasters and it’s partly my fault because I shield them pictures
of, um, the ride roller coasters, but, uh, clearly it’s just a very dynamic industry with,
and, and yes, it is definitely a lot more exciting than running a funeral. It’s the best way
to make your kids proud. Um, but, uh, so it tells a little bit from Monterey to SSA group,
really what is the day and the life of David Rosenberg look like today compared to what
it maybe was before? Yeah. Well, I, I think a little bit, let me, let me tell you a little
bit more about what SSA ventures is while we formed it and how that informs what my daily
life is. Um, as the, the idea with ventures was to fill in the void in the guest experience
that, um, that, that, that was just that that were voids out there in the attraction that
we either serve or in other attractions. And so as an example, um, SSA has always been
very big in the food and beverage and merchandise and ticketing space within an attraction.
And we know that’s a very big part of the visitor experience, but it’s a lot more than that.
You can think about a visitor experience. It starts from the time that somebody is thinking
about going to an attraction to the first interaction they have when they get there, how it all ties
together and then trying to stay connected, um, well thereafter. And so SSA ventures was formed to
fill those voids and, and, um, and really come up with innovative solutions that carry an attraction
of a visitor experience forward. And so what is my daily, what, how does my daily role of time
is just that it’s, um, it’s working with the, the, the, the various companies that make up our
ventures platform. Um, we, we, we, we have quite a few companies that we interact with that we
their own or we, um, or we worked very closely with. And it’s working closely with those companies
being strategic about understanding what the future brings and helping to build those companies to
support that future. And likewise, working within the institutions that we operate within and
helping them to fill in those voids. And so I really focus my time working with those institutions
and also just building a future and making sure that we’re always staying ahead of the curve.
And David, you guys are like, the SSA group is, is huge within the zoo community within the museums.
Some of our audience are, are running gardens like maybe you can give them the 30,000 feet view. Like
you guys would handle food and beverage. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, so definitely there’s all the different
parts and we say the kind of the, the revenue generating parts of a, of an attraction is probably
where we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re most powerful in. And that’s, uh, our core SSA areas of, um,
will operate food and beverage. Um, we take over the entire food beverage operations of, of an
organization and, um, bringing our expertise, bringing our chefs and we, we, we operate that, um,
it within the attractions that we support, um, same within the merchandise space and then as well
as, um, even ticketing. And ticketing is really exciting because ticketing is a lot of it. It’s not just
how do you sell a ticket, but it’s what, how people expect to purchase a ticket or how do people
want to engage with that facility because it’s that, that’s kind of, when you buy a ticket, you’re really
buying a license to have a good experience for the day. And, um, and that’s how we look at it. And so
we operate in each of those spaces. Now beyond that, we, with our dentures company, um, SSA Ventures,
it’s everything else now that, uh, around those areas. So for example, we have a company called
Behavior Essentials, which is, it, it, it, it’s part of the recruitment of an organization that we
support and it helps to understand who you’re hiring and where people are hot, get, or, how to
hire people to really make an impact across an organization. So that’s like one area. We have
attractions, I, oh, which is our platform. And that’s, uh, attractions, I, oh, is, is, is an app that,
again, ties in the ticketing to the visitor maps that, that people are using while they’re visiting,
to how do we push people through an attraction in different ways that’s really a maximizer experience
to then staying connected. That’s a track, and I, oh, we have Cynthia. We have a lot of other companies
that all tie in there and can see how when you bring for this really powerful platform of technology,
expertise and management, we really are able to step in and help an organization, not
to increase their visitor experience, but really figure out how to make the most revenue
within their attraction as well.
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.
So speaking of visitor experience, like before we hit record, you had this like nice little phrase
called seamless experience, were you trying to marry marketing and that visitor experience?
Could you speak to that a little bit?
Absolutely. I, one of the key parts, I always say is to make sure there’s no pinch points
along the visitor journey. And what does a visitor journey look like? Well, I’m sitting home last
night and we’re actually planning our summer vacation six months out. And so my family is
sitting around and we’re looking for where should we go? What is the experience going to be like
for whatever we take? And so I always kind of, I like to say it’s almost like a sandwich, right? So the
first bun is, hey, I’m going to, or the outside bun is, where am I going to go? What’s the experience
going to be like? How am I going to get there? All the plan that goes into that. Now once I’m there,
you got that meat in between that the seamless visitor experience that ties in with that. So now I
set my expectation based on the marketing that I saw ahead of time. I buy my ticket or I buy my
journey there. When I get there, it needs to be smooth all the way through because we don’t want
pinch points along the way or that really derails that experience. And so I have this great visitor
experience that ties me all the way through. And the time I buy my ticket to how I arrive,
how if I’m my way through until afterwards? And then that other bun is how do I stay connected?
And so if I had that great experience, I really want to stay connected. Of course, I want to stay
connected because that builds loyalty. That builds my, I can team a learn about organization. I’m going
to talk about it more because I’m stay connected. And in a nonprofit world, if I stay connected,
most likely I’m going to want to become a member and hopefully a donor in the long run.
And so not having pinch points allows people to smoothly go along that transition that pathway
all the way through. If you have a pinch point, if you get there and you get lost and you don’t see
everything that you want to see or you had a hard time buying your ticket or even after you left,
there was no opportunity to stay connected, then that whole desert journey, that whole sandwich falls
apart. It’s kind of like when you bite into a sandwich, if you don’t have the toothpick that goes
through, it all squirts out the back. That’s not a good thing, right? Because that all of them is
too many times. Yeah. I do that all the time too. It’s awful. But if I have that toothpick that
carries all the way through and I leave that toothpick in there, then that sandwich comes through
and it’s a seamless bite. And that’s kind of how I think of the desert experiences. We really want
to create no pinch points, no opportunity to derail. And we’re going to be very successful. I’m carrying
that personal all the way through to the tail end of the journey. Yeah. I like what you’re saying
there because Jenny and I were kind of at that very beginning of the customer journey and we were
rarely see the tail of the meat and the bottom bun of the sandwich, if you will. And Jenny,
I think what he’s kind of talking about to kind of translate it over into some of the language
that we might use is, you know, he’s six months out from planning that family vacation. Well,
at that point, when that consumer is ready, that window is open for them to go start that planning
process, that’s where we would use very kind of impactful media to kind of help build that
excitement, build that for lack of a better term brand. And so, David, when I say impactful media,
I’m talking about things like television commercials, online video or billboard, something that’s
visual, something that builds that excitement. But as you and your family get a little bit closer
to that vacation time, it’s like, now we actually have to go make a buying decision. And that’s where
Jenny, we would use a media like what we call opportunistic. So maybe this is a search ad or a
little Facebook ad, every targeting from three months ago, when you first visited that website,
saying, Hey, now is the time to purchase that ticket. But once again, David, we don’t see the,
I mean, that’s the top of the bun. We don’t see the meat in the bottom of the bun as much as we’d like
to. So do you have any ideas on like what maybe pinch points would be after the visit? Like,
how do we, any I’d thoughts on like how to keep that that visitor like engaged and maybe move them
over to a member or maybe even better like a donor? Yeah, absolutely. And it’s, I, well, I was
joke with with our sales people are marketing staff that they sell the dream and then we service the
dream and and and while it’s a fun statement, that’s that is the reality, right? If you if you sell
a dream or you sell a vacation, you better be darn sure you’re going to meet the expectation that
you’ve set because you’re setting an expectation for your marketing. And not only should you
meet that, but you want to exceed it. And when you exceed it, then you really have true success. And so
it it that is always our goal. And that’s how we want to stay that you know carry that through to the
tail end. We see the expectation people then are enamored or are engaged with what our facility stands
for our operations stand for. And then they want to stay connected. They want to hear more
marketing from us. They want to hear what the latest is is happening. And likewise, how they can
support us going to the future. So that’s one key point. The second is when we exceed expectations,
then it almost sounds cliche when we say, Hey, people are best marketing’s word of mouth. But the
reality is word of mouth is huge, right? Social media, everything that people do. People post social
media when you exceed their expectations. People post social media and when you exceed expectations,
not only that, but they’re the ones putting their own words out there about how you did that. And
that’s helping marketing in ways that you can never dream of. And so that is always going to be a
key part of how we want to make sure that we keep people engaged there after we exceed their
expectations. And the third thing that comes to mind too is just align with people’s values.
When people really make decisions based on the values that they have their emotions,
aligning with empathy, I talk a lot about empathy when I talk with people because when you build
empathy in people, then they build loyalty when you build loyalty, of course, that’s that translates
into some of our best marketing and some of our best connections moving forward. And so
anything we can do to build empathy throughout the dessert journey is always key as well.
And some of that ties into some stuff we just talked about about no pinch points along the way,
creating a really solid dessert experience. And we build these pathways,
the state connected and get people to be our marketing champions in the future.
Yeah, I love that. We always say it’s better to have somebody else be out there being your champion
than you telling everyone how great you are right. So the word of mouthpiece is huge for marketing.
That’s like, how can we pull some of that into our marketing approach? What we’re saying to try
to reach new customers as well too. But you’ve got to give that great experience to be able to get
that great word of mouth going around about you too. I have a quick fun story related to that. We
SSA, one of our properties is called Long MacManner. It’s a, I guess the best description is
like a Safari Park with very high-end suites that are around this beautiful Savannah,
the Texas Hill Country. We have rhinos and giraffes and some other animals. And one of the rooms
actually sits on top of the giraffe barn. So when a visitor checks in, they go into their suite and
they’re looking out at the giraffes in their barn, especially at night, the giraffes are walking around.
And it’s just, what a great opportunity to see something like that and some of that people have
never seen before. And so this is a relatively new experience. This has only been around for
the, the, we opened our doors less than two years ago. And the first, one of the first couples that went
and stayed in the giraffe suite posted a 10-second video on TikTok about how this completely
exceeded their expectations. And it was a little more lines of, oh my gosh, and they were seeing
something like this. This is amazing. This exceeded my expectations. It went on TikTok. It went viral.
It had over 10 million hits. And that dress week was booked out for, for almost two years solid day after
that. And so it’s, and I know everybody always says, hey, I want to get something to go viral on TikTok.
I know that’s not, there’s no big epiphany here. But what went viral is the fact that we exceeded
the expectations of that visitor and probably to kick that watch at something like this. And everybody
wanted to be part of something like that. So that, I always thought that’s a great example.
Okay, so I love, like, going back to this point here, we talked about like television,
bringing that impactful media, right? And, you know, your Disney background makes me think of this,
like every time you see a Disney commercial, it’s the little kid with the mom and dad holding
Mickey’s hands, watching the fireworks. But we all know that never, ever, ever happens. There’s 10,000
other people trying to hold Mickey’s hands at the same time, right? But you see somebody’s real
experience on a 10-second video on TikTok, that is just so much more authentic, so much more believable.
And it says, okay, I can actually have that same experience where the draft is coming up and it’s
super cool. I don’t know, it just, that totally makes sense. I, things are dropping the TikTok things.
We’re big believers in that, just because of that authenticity. It’s real, you know?
It’s real, right? And people can see themselves in the feet of, you know,
or that the person that they’re seeing on TikTok. So when they, when people can lie with their values
and then why do that behavior? They can actually see themselves there. That’s what they want to do.
That’s what they want to be part of and what a powerful marketing opportunity.
Well, I mean, that’s the marketing and guest experience right there. It’s a guest experience that
you guys can continue to deliver. So we really don’t need all that much marketing besides that 10-second
video on TikTok to say, hey, this is incredible. Come join us. Yeah, all right. All right. Well,
let’s switch gears a little bit because we can’t let you out of here without talking about your
I app experience. You’re a previous chair there. And one of the things that I was hoping you could
share with us is this idea of like networking. You know, you’re the vice president of marketing,
you know, in our audience. There’s a VP of marketing at a guard in or is use somewhere. You know, maybe
what are some takeaways that you could share with them, like how networking and showing up for
these type of conferences or big events can help like further their career help them get a little
bit smarter on how to do their job and ultimately sell more tickets for their for their attraction.
Yeah, absolutely. It’s it it I tell you a little bit about my my market, my networking journey and
then how that I think could tie into what how people think of networking. I as I say with my my
career, I was executive in the hotel industry for quite a while before returning to attractions.
And it was really important to me my first year at Monterey Bay Aquarium and back in the
attractions world that I had a strong network outside of the aquarium because that network was who
I call on if I had questions, who do I if I wanted to build something if I a lot of my decisions
were based on the network that I that I interact with and that network didn’t exist for me when I
came back into the attractions world. So in my case, I found associations, do some aquariums,
A.D.A. and I at the the International Association of Immuse and Parks and Attractions.
I at the was really exciting to me because it was it represented people from literally all over
the world and all parts of the attractions industry. And so in my mind, it was like wow, if I can
network within an organization like this, then then the roles of my oyster, I can really I can I can
I can build a huge network. And so step into that association started attending all the different
events that the association offered and quickly found opportunities to join various committees
within the association. And then the network quickly grows as soon as you join a committee, you have
15 people that you’re around on a regular basis and you’re having conversations with them that
whatever that can be stands for. In my case, I wanted to become it make sure I was part of the leadership
of those committees. So I ended up sharing various committees within IAPA. Over time as I’m sharing
these various committees got offered invited to join the board of directors board directors as a global
board and it’s election process. And I be joined that that board of directors. And then over time
I was actually elected to become chairman of the entire association and chairman of the board. And
so you can see how just starting from the idea of hey, I want to be part of this association because
it’s going to offer network and working working within and building networks that build network that
build upon each other ultimately getting the opportunity to chairman organization like that built
a network like I can never dream of. So today I’m connected literally to people all over the world.
And whether it’s on the government side or leading a major attractions or just every discipline
and that really ties well into now the job that I’m doing today because I am calling on
my colleagues, my friends and not only to share my knowledge but for them to share their
knowledge with me. And we all work together to really quite frankly further our industry. And
whether that’s what I do or that’s in the marketing world where network is just so valuable.
It’s building that network being delivered about building a network that’s really key.
And last thing I have on that is I think there’s also two I always say there’s two types of
contacts. There’s the deliberate contact where it’s somebody that I’m like hey if I know this
person then I’m going to get into this attraction from the marketing perspective where if I know
if I have a very specific contact that I’m trying to make that’s a very deliberate that’s a very
quantifiable contact. And then there’s the non-clinifiable which is hey if I build a network
and I build that hey I’m actually part of that network and I have my own reputation within that
network thing good things are going to come to those that are part of that network as well as myself.
And that’s that’s a non-tangible but those are the networks that we all call upon each other and
we all together rise and tie as rise all boats and we all work together to do such.
Yeah I love that. Well you’ve clearly had some amazing experiences along your career
17 years right at Monterite Bay and now we’ve read SSA Ventures. So the question that we always like
to kind of end with is really David based on all of his experience I think you’re the best
probably one of the best ones to answer this question but you know what do you think non-profit
cultural attraction should really be doing more of specifically to marketing kind of moving forward
what they should be thinking of next. Yeah that’s that’s a great question. It’s something that I’ve
been passionate about and I’m passionate just from my the experience I’ve seen around the global
attraction industry is the more that we align with the changing values of our visitors
than the more success that we have and and that really clearly ties into to marketing in particular
when you’re aligning with the values of the visitors then the marketing success tends to
to go up. I love the example I used earlier about Disney and how that aligns with the values of
family that’s their plan or vacation and thinking about wow we have this great family time great
experience time together and we can see ourselves doing that. A couple of years ago I was really
trying to get an understanding as to what would grow in membership within an organization
and a non-profit organization in particular because membership was such a key part that it meant
that we were successful in the visit we marketed successfully that people want to stay connected to
us and we actually did a survey of a couple thousand member families within various organizations
and said what is the primary benefit of being a member? Why do people want to be members? Why do
they want to be marketed to? What is it that that makes them want to be connected? And this was
exactly what I’m talking about with this generational shift so people aged 35 and older the generation
that I represent they were really adamant that hey I wanted to be I want to be a member because
it’s a lot of the the monetary tangibles of pre-imission priority access. I want to come to member
only advance member only events and there’s lots of great discounts that come with it so it was very
somewhat monetarily driven but then when you found out when you looked at the same question across the Gen Z
people the families that are now starting to come to our attraction so ones that are actually taking
over as being the majority that are visiting their answer was very different it was yes we want
the free admission that comes with membership but we want to do something that we want that shows
that we support the organization we want to belong to the organization we want to support
conservation because that’s in alignment with our values and we want to make a positive impact
and that was so telling to me that the up-and-coming generation was all about alignment with their values
that that was driving their decisions versus other generations and we need to be really conscious of
that and understand what this generation has and there’s going to be a generation behind them that
probably have different values or different expectations but we need to understand
what the changing expectations are how do we build empathy how do we align with the values of
the people that we’re marketing to and when we do that that’s in my opinion that’s the biggest
success that we can have in our in our marketing and understanding those changing shifts those
generation shifts is just so critical and so that is always my my my favorite thing to talk about
and I think that’s something that really allows us to all be successful in the future.
Awesome David thank you so much for the time. Thank you this was fantastic conversations and I
appreciate you and like thank you. 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.
