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Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.

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Show references:

https://www.wbstudiotour.co.uk/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoff-spooner-079b6a15/

Transcription:

Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip The Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world. 

In today's episode, I speak with Geoff Spooner, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Warner Bros. Studio Tour - The Making of Harry Potter. 

We discuss the tour's phenomenal success, and yeah, you guessed it, the motivation for launching with pre-booking only. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip The Queue.

Kelly Molson: Geoff, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I'm excited to talk about you. We've got lots to get through today. But as ever, I start with my icebreaker questions.

Geoff Spooner: Okay.

Kelly Molson: So first one for you. Are you a believer in having a very regimented morning routine? Are you a 4:00am start kind of guy?

Geoff Spooner: I can't think why anyone would want to start at 4:00 AM. I can't think of anything worse than that. I am fairly regimented because I have children and I think that necessitates that in order to actually get them out of the house at a certain time which I've done a lot more of during lockdowns. And my wife just broken her foot, unfortunately, so-

Kelly Molson: Oh, God.

Geoff Spooner: Having to do a lot of that, and appreciating all that she does normally. I think routine is good, but you know, you read it in these things and they say, "Tell us about your daily routine." And they're like, "Oh, I wake up at 2:00am and I go for a swim," and you think, "Oh, you're absolutely mental."

Kelly Molson: No, you don't! You're a crazy fool if you do that.

Geoff Spooner: Absolutely mad. Why would you do that?

Kelly Molson: It's the middle of the night. I'm totally with you on that. I just don't get it, and I think it's part of that really horrible hustle culture that we have at the moment where every waking minute you should be pushing yourself and pushing yourself, and actually you should be getting up earlier for your morning routine as well. No, it's not for me. We've got dogs, so again, I have a very regimented set routine.

Geoff Spooner: Same thing, same thing.

Kelly Molson: But it definitely doesn't start at four o'clock in the morning.

Geoff Spooner: Kids are just more expensive versions of dogs, really, aren't they?

Kelly Molson: Yeah. Probably less messy as well.

Geoff Spooner: Yeah. Well, I don't know. I don't know.

Kelly Molson: Okay. All right. Next one. If you could bring back any fashion trend from your youth, what would it be?

Geoff Spooner: Well, I'm a child of the '80s, so I certainly wouldn't recommend bringing anything back. The stuff that my mum used to make us wear, I just think is... It's harrowing images in my head when I see it, so yeah. I think my wife would disagree with you, but I try to sort of block the '80s out of my memory, really.

Kelly Molson: See, I'm a big nostalgia person and the '80s is my era as well. That's where I grew up, so I have a real fondness for it. Not so much the fashion. It wasn't cool, was it?

Geoff Spooner: No, it wasn't. It's not one we look back on and go, "I looked damn good then."

Kelly Molson: Actually, I don't think there's any year that I look back on and think that-

Geoff Spooner: I look at what my 10 year old wear and I think, "Look what I had to wear when I was 10. Oh my God."

Kelly Molson: So, can you tell me your unpopular opinion? Something that you believe to be true, but almost nobody else agrees with you on.

Geoff Spooner: Probably a bit controversial for the company that I work in, but my preference really is I think that film trailers are too long.

Kelly Molson: Oh.

Geoff Spooner: I don't know. I think less is more, less is more. There's a point where you're telling a bit too much of the story, and I think I want to be surprised when I go to the cinema, and I love going to the cinema. So that would be my probably quite unpopular opinion.

Kelly Molson: Well, no. I'm with you on that. I love a trailer, so I get really excited at the cinema when the trailers come on, because I think, "This is a great buildup." But yeah, you're right. Sometimes you think, "Have I just watched all of the best bits from that film? Probably."

Geoff Spooner: It's tricky.

Kelly Molson: Well, let's see what our listeners think, whether that's controversial or not. I'm sure they'll let me know. Thank you for answering those silly questions.

Geoff Spooner: No worries.

Kelly Molson: I want to start with your background, because you've got a really impressive career in the travel and leisure industry. You've worked at Warwick Castle, LEGOLAND Windsor, London Eye. Can you tell us a little bit about it? Was it always a sector that you were really passionate about and wanted to work in?

Geoff Spooner: No, not really. I look at my kids today. My daughter's headmaster, she's only 10, asked if I'd do a careers talk for her school, and I thought, "Gosh, isn't that fantastic?" No one ever used to tell you these things. You'd do your certificate of achievement and things like that at school, and you'd do your test and they'd say you'd have some completely random job that you never even thought you'd be interested in.

Geoff Spooner: So I don't think I had a massive career plan when I was a child, but once I went into university and things like that, I was really interested in animals. So I thought I would end up working with that really, because I have a Zoology degree.

Kelly Molson: Wow.

Geoff Spooner: So I'd be like Newt Scamander from the Fantastic Beasts. That was before my time. So I was working in a zoo, at Chessington, actually, in their zoo team there. I used to do that during the holidays, and while I was doing my degree and I thought... I tell you what. Working in a zoo is such fun. It is really, really great fun.

Kelly Molson: Aw, I bet.

Geoff Spooner: And I loved that so much. Randomly one year I ended up, rather than being in the zoo, ended up going to work in guest services at the park, which is... In a theme park, guest services can be quite a fun place to work as well, for lots of different reasons, and I really enjoyed doing that. Then I worked in admissions with the admissions team as well, just the year that I was graduating. That was 2000, and Tussauds, who owned Chessington at the time, had just opened the London Eye.

Geoff Spooner: I think probably, looking at all the parks and then looking at... It's essentially a Ferris wheel. What can go wrong? Then we opened the London Eye and found out, what could go wrong? So then there was a lot of emphasis on, "Okay, we've got to get this back quickly, because so many people want to come and experience it." So I ended up joining them as the front of house visitor service manager with the team there, putting together a team. They didn't have a visitor service team at the time, randomly. Just let anyone go behind the information desk and give out-

Kelly Molson: Wow.

Geoff Spooner: Give out any old random sort of information, which sounds absolutely crazy now, but that's kind of the way it was. So I had lots of fun with that, working there for five years, and then I moved to manage admissions and that was a massively, massively... I mean, still is a massively popular attraction. But you know, having 12,000 pre-booked visitors and 12,000 people on the day coming to the attraction is, if you've been... I'm sure probably everyone who's listening has been to the London Eye. That is a tiny little footprint of an attraction. But when we were duty director or duty manager and you're walking around that attraction, you're easily doing 7,000 meters, or 7k, on your Fitbit or whatever it was.

Geoff Spooner: So yeah, that was really good fun. Then not a lot was happening, really, at Tussauds, and I'd thought I'd really enjoyed the London Eye, and I was sort of looking at, "What else should I do? Maybe I should go and work in a different industry," and maybe looked at ticketing, that sort of thing.

Geoff Spooner: An opportunity came to go and join National Express, which is a very different industry to visitor attractions. Travel has many more challenges, mainly because lots of people arrive at you very angry for [crosstalk 00:07:51] no fault of anything that you've done, particularly, because their plane's been seven hours later or something like that, and then they're amazed that at 2:00 in the morning, you haven't got a coach that's going to wherever it is they live. So that was a really different experience. Worked with their teams there, worked all of their airport sites. You know, very, very busy, and a really, really demanding kind of job. I think the thing you find there is that when you work at an airport, there's nothing worse than going to an airport every day and not going on holiday.

Kelly Molson: Oh, gosh! Yeah, that must be really soul-destroying.

Geoff Spooner: So I did that for about five years, and then I was really missing visitor attractions, though, and so wanted to get back into that. An opportunity came up at LEGOLAND, and I joined there as Operations Director, and had lots of fun working there. LEGO's a great brand, LEGOLAND's a great brand, and it's a really fun attraction. During my time, we were really lucky. We put in things like the Star Wars Miniland that they had. We were sort of fine-tuning the Atlantis Submarine ride and the sea life that went with that.

Geoff Spooner: Everyone thought we were absolutely mad, because we decided to open an open air outdoor water park in DUPLO Valley, and we just ended up opening it on the summer when there was the biggest heat wave ever. So from April till about September, it was one of those ones where it was like 80 degrees every day, and we looked like complete geniuses after that, to be honest.

Kelly Molson: Perfectly timed.

Geoff Spooner: Yeah, it was good. But sort of halfway through that, unexpectedly, really, the role at Warwick came up, to be GM for that, and it's just such a fantastic attraction. It's so beautiful and an incredible place to work. I thought, "Well, I'll give that a go." I was allowed to go and do that, and so we moved up to Warwick, where we still live, and I had a lot of fun there putting in lots of different combination offerings and things like that. Literally very happy doing all of that, but got a call asking if I'd be interested about coming over to Warner Bros. Probably the only other attraction that I would have considered doing.

Geoff Spooner: Yeah, so then I came over to work with a really amazing team here, and a really equally special kind of brand, with Harry Potter and the filmmaking and everything that goes along with that.

Kelly Molson: I mean, it is, isn't it? It is a hugely iconic brand. It must've been a really tough decision, because Warwick Castle, like you say, it is, again, iconic, and absolutely incredibly beautiful. All of the attraction places that you've worked at, actually, have a really huge draw for people, for very, very different reasons. So with the Making of Harry Potter tour, have you been there from the start? Were you there when it first opened?

Geoff Spooner: No. So I joined in 2016, and the tour opened in 2012. And you know, if you walk around our building, there's lots of pictures of the opening and William and Kate attending, and Jo, and all of that, and there's a lot of our team actually here today who were here in 2012 for the opening, or were here while we were building it. A couple of our duty managers were in the films. So you know, there's that huge kind of love for it, really.

Geoff Spooner: One of the things, I suppose, that really appealed to me, and sort of convinced me to come over and drive an hour and a half to work every day is that Warner Bros. just have a really amazing approach to the way that they work. They have this incredible, I suppose, expectation of quality, and they want everything to be done to a very, very, very high standard, and also to invest to deliver that as well. So it's not unattainable. They very much very consider what they want to do. What is the experience we're trying to deliver? What is the service levels going to be like?

Geoff Spooner: I suppose the opportunity to come and work in that environment, knowing also that we were going to be building, if I came along, that I'd be working on an expansion that was massive, which is the one that we've just opened in 2019. So there was a lot to be doing, lots to going on, another expansion that we'd be opening in 2017 in the meantime. A really amazing brand.

Geoff Spooner: It's a bit irresistible, I suppose, is probably the best way to... You know, you wouldn't really get that opportunity. I think people couldn't quite understand it in 2016. They couldn't understand, why would you go there? It's sort of over now. It's a bit done. Harry Potter's a bit done. What's happening? But I did know that, obviously, the Fantastic Beasts films were in development, so that was going to bring the whole Harry and the wizarding world back to the people's front of mind. And also, we had the Cursed Child play opening, and all of those things kind of happened at the same time. So the brand was very, very resurgent, people still really, really want to do it.

Geoff Spooner: Also, from my point of view, part of the challenge is, in some respects, it's not easy. But if you go to attraction and you're going there to make it much better, that's can be very exciting, and gives you all sorts of opportunity to try.

Geoff Spooner: If you're going to an attraction that's got 25,000 five-star TripAdvisor reviews, and has a five-star trip about, you can mess that up, I suppose. So the challenge for me, I think, was to come in and really maintain that, but knowing that we were going to have to get bigger, knowing that we were going to have to grow our numbers, knowing that we probably have to grow our price and do all of those things, and make that all sort of successful and be profitable at the same time. So it was a very unique challenge to find yourself presented with as an opportunity, but I'm really pleased that I did it, because it's been absolutely huge fun for since 2016. It's kind of flown by really.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, and an opportunity that you just couldn't have missed out on at all. It was interesting what you said there about an attraction that has such a highly rated, been so highly rated by people because of a couple of stats here. I think I read that since it opened to the public in 2012, it's welcomed up to 6,000 visitors a day during peak times, and TripAdvisor reports that it's been the highest-rated attraction worldwide every year since the tour opened. I mean, it's really a peak, isn't it? To maintain that is something else, but to build on it is a whole other story.

Geoff Spooner: Yeah. And even when we opened, we weren't open at the levels that we were out in 2013 or 2014, so we ramped up to about 5,000. When I joined in 2016, our top day was 6,000. We looked at the operation and tweaked that to six and a half quite quickly before we had the expansion, and with the expansion now, we're up to seven and a half thousand people a day. And you know, like you say, we've got sort of 40,000-odd TripAdvisor reviews now, and our average day is 96%.

Geoff Spooner: It's amazing to do that because I think people come based, I think, on word of mouth, based on that sort of reputation, but their expectation because of that is set really, really high, and our team have this mission to exceed the expectation. But they, all credit to them. They manage to do that really consistently, and the experience is really consistent. We see that not just on TripAdvisor. We see it on Google reviews, we see it on Facebook.

Geoff Spooner: So it's lovely to be in the role that I'm in, because people say, "Ooh, I went to Harry Potter World yesterday." No one ever gets the name of the attraction right. You think, "Okay." And then they say, "And I had a fantastic time." You can walk around the attraction and someone says, "Are you the manager?" And you sort of think, "Oh yes. How can I help you?" And they go, "We're having such a great time!" So-

Kelly Molson: Oh, that's nice!

Geoff Spooner: Yes, you know, if you walk around the bus station and someone says, "Are you the manager?" You know what's coming. So yeah, it's great.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, completely different story.

Geoff Spooner: It's a lovely change.

Kelly Molson: Oh, that's a really nice. I loved what you said earlier, actually, about having to re-engage people with the brand. You knew that the new films were coming out and new things were happening. But I think that with Harry Potter, the story is ingrained in so many of us from such a young age that I now see that progression where... You know, I read all of the books when I was younger, and I've watched all of the films, and I've been to see the play, and I've been to the attraction. And now I can see, like, my friend's children are growing up. My friend's eight year old is Harry Potter obsessed. She's loving the books. As soon as the attraction opened up after lockdown, they went, and it's really lovely to see that progression.

Kelly Molson: I guess one of my questions for you was going to be, how do you keep the magic alive for repeat visitors? Because people will come back time and time again. But I guess they bring small people with them, and they bring different people with them over the years as well.

Geoff Spooner: Yeah. I think we have a real range of audience as well. It's not just sort of one type. It's not just families. Yes, we have lots of families, but we have lots of couples. Today there's a lot of couples in the tour. It's mid-week and it's in December. We have also grandparents bringing kids. And like you say, there's the original generation that watched the films, grew up with the books, and they're transferring that. I think good stories, good storytelling, stands the test of time.

Geoff Spooner: My oldest daughter, for some reason, not into the books. Likes Harry Potter a lot. Just, I think, a bit scared by the books. She's 10. My youngest daughter, who's seven, absolutely loves everything. Wants the books read to them, wants all the characters' accents done properly. You know, everything. So for us, that's great, and that gives you the demand, and we have to create the pull to make people want to come in the first place and visit again.

Geoff Spooner: Now, fundamentally, we've got a really good attraction. The sets, the props, the costumes that you see... Most people have that mental image of what does the Great Hall at Hogwarts looks like. They have what they've watched on the television. And when you walk through the doors and you're in the Great Hall, you are standing on that set, and it has become a kind of Mecca for Harry Potter fans. So that is absolutely a massive plus to start off with. But how do you get them to come a second time, or a fourth or fifth time?

Geoff Spooner: We've taken the approach of doing two things. One is expansions, and the other one is a kind of seasonal features. The expansions we've done three of. Our first one was in 2015. We built out one of our stages and knocked a wall down, and then all of a sudden you were standing in King's Cross station, and you have the actual Hogwarts Express train stood in front of you, and people absolutely love that. Then in 2017, we moved all of our on-site warehousing and things like that, and we moved all our photography around. A very big internal move in an attraction that's open. We introduced the Forbidden Forest, so you can meet enormous acromantulas and Aragog, and they all come down from the ceiling. There's lots of ghostly fog, and you can see centaurs, and you can see Buckbeak and bow to him. And that's been really... People absolutely love that, and that's helped to keep people coming back.

Geoff Spooner: Then with the expansion, we had last year, Gringotts bank has just been.... It's a huge, huge expansion, but it really, really delivers, and I think we had lots of secrets in that as well. So we told people that you could see the bank. We told people, "You'll see the Lestrange vault." We told people that you would see goblins, and how they're made, and people are really interested in how you make somebody into a goblin. But they didn't know that when you leave Gringotts, you walk through destroyed Gringotts bank and you see this huge dragon coming at you, and I think that's a real surprise element that I've now ruined, but I think most people really, really love.

Geoff Spooner: So those are some of the things that we do. And then we have features where it's more like touring exhibitions, where we focus on a particular aspect of the story and the filmmaking process. So we might have a feature like Wizarding Wardrobes, which we did, which is all about costume. We might have a feature about, specifically, the Goblet of Fire. This year, we launched our new Celebration of Slytherin, and we were just about to open that before the first lockdown, so we actually ended up opening on the 20th of August. So slightly delayed. With that, we try to bring in... For example, you come into the Great Hall, all the Slytherin banners are there. If you are a Slytherin, it's a big wow. If you're not, it's a big wow, but you sort of wish maybe it was your house.

Geoff Spooner: Then we introduced the new... We basically took the Slytherin common room set, and we recreated that and put that into our stage. I think the great thing about where it is is that you would never know it hadn't been there forever. So we're always kind of mixing up what the inside of the tour looks like, and trying to re-present that in different ways. We've just launched, because it's December, Hogwarts In the Snow. So very Christmassy, lots of trees at the moment. If you go into Diagon Alley, that's all snowed at the moment. So a really beautiful time here. Lots of people come back for that. Lots of people come back for our Dark Arts season at Halloween, where we have floating pumpkins everywhere, and you can meet lots of Death Eaters and duel with them.

Geoff Spooner: So lots of those things keep coming back. We have lots of event dinners. They're timed with some of those features, Valentines, things like that. So yes, lots and lots of things just to keep that presence there, and keep noise around the attraction. And all of that is backed up, I think, with some really amazing work that our marketing and our PR teams do to deliver that in a very eye-catching and very memorable way. So yeah, it's a great brand to work with from that perspective, because you've got eight films to work with, plus Fantastic Beasts in the future.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, absolutely. It feels like because of the additional films as well, it feels like there's always going to be something else that could be added, and something more exciting that can come along and on. I mean, I'm smiling the whole way through listening to this, because I am a huge Harry Potter fan, and just the way that you talk about it, it just paints such a magical picture as well. It makes me want to go back.

Kelly Molson: I kind of want to go back to the start of when it opened, and I know that you weren't there from 2012, but I mean, it's a hugely hot topic at the moment, and it has been throughout the whole of this year, is pre-booking. It's controversial to some. Some love it, some hate it. But when the studio tour opened, it opened with pre-booking and Carly, a good friend of mine, Carly Straughan, who was a recent guest on the podcast. She said that when the decision was made that that was going to happen, everybody was up in arms about it and said, "Well, it's not going to work. You know? People won't come." It's very clear that that was completely and utterly wrong, and people did come. They come in their thousands.

Kelly Molson: I mean, I don't know how many of these questions you can ask, but I kind of wanted to understand what the motivation was for launching with that model, and then really what the kind of main benefits were, as well.

Geoff Spooner: Well, it was actually, I think, at the time when the studio tour... And we've obviously got a huge film studio at Leavesden Studios next to us. When all that was going through planning, I think there was this sort of, however much you said it wasn't a theme park, there was this perception, I think, or concern, that the tour would be like a theme park. And there is an association, I think, there of there's peak flows into and out of theme parks from a traffic point of view. So actually the reason that we are a pre-book only attraction, it is actually, and timed as well, is because of our planning conditions basically. So it was actually sort of something that was thrust upon us to prevent traffic congestion in the local area.

Geoff Spooner: Like you say, I think at the time, there were a lot of people who were concerned that maybe that'd be a bit of an Achilles heel for the success of an attraction, but actually it's turned out to be probably one of our best positives as a visitor attraction. I think I've been on lots of calls in lockdown, and it's interesting to see lots of other attractions saying, "Oh, it's great. We know who's coming now. It's amazing!" You know, and you're sort of saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."

Geoff Spooner: But I guess the main benefits are, firstly, it is really helpful to know who's coming, and how many people are gonna turn up on... Lots of times in different attractions, you've staffed up for 3000 people, you've no reason to expect there to be more than 3000 people coming, and 12,000 people turn up, and the experience is terrible, and you can't cope and you just get completely overwhelmed. So by knowing who's coming, you've got the best chance of preserving a really fantastic visitor experience.

Geoff Spooner: It means that you can design your attraction to a maximum. So you know that you can operate it at that maximum, and actually the maximum is designed to work as a visitor experience. So rather than there not being an infinite capacity, but, you know, where everything's creaking and it's difficult and there's loads and loads of queuing, and all those sorts of things. You can avoid that if you design the attraction to cope with it. And particularly again, if you have the timed element, you can stagger people through the day. That really helps. It just makes sure that the attraction doesn't get overwhelmed. You've got an opportunity to manage yields really well.

Geoff Spooner: Also, I think when you have limited capacity and you have to pre-book, I think by managing that, you can actually create demand in the quieter periods. So in the non-school, non-weekend periods, I mean, you have to do that. You have to ensure that what you're doing is good and people want to come on the really high-demand days, but then if it then starts to become quite tricky to book a ticket, then people will generally... Suddenly people want to come to you on what would traditionally be a quieter day, which is really helpful, and that's a great balance, I think.

Geoff Spooner: Then I think if you could combine pre-booking with timed entry, you can really create a really fantastic experience, because it's much more sustainable to deliver, and you can deliver it probably more efficiently than if everyone just rocks up on the day. Because if you allow people to choose when they come to you, okay, you've made them pre-book and you know that sort of, let's say, 10,000 people are going to come to you. If you say, "You can come whenever you want," they're all going to pretty much come within the same three- or four-hour window. They'll come between 10:00 and 1:00. So you then have to gear up your admissions area to deal with all processing all those people at the same time, or in that really short period, and you have to process everybody through your rides, or your experience, or your interactives, or your show, or your restaurants. We have toilets. All those things have to be scaled up so much more to be able to cope with that peak demand that actually, if you can phase it all so that there's a constant number through the day, you don't have that, so you don't need to have 27 restaurants and 4,000 different toilets, you know? It's much more manageable.

Geoff Spooner: So we have two big restaurants, a cafe and toilets dotted about, but all of that is able to make sure that none of that ever gets overwhelmed. You're not queuing for ages anywhere. If you look at our reviews online, that's not what people say about our experience. So it just makes it feel, I suppose, smooth, slick, all the things that you would want the attraction to be. So definitely pre-booking, and particularly combining that, if you can, with a timed element, it helps you to avoid that. Helps you to know who's coming and manage a sort of constant demand through the day.

Kelly Molson: It's really nice that you mention the two different sides of that, because obviously, it is a real benefit to the attraction itself, in terms of operational processes. But visitor experience ultimately is improved because of it, because nobody's having to queue. Like you said, there's not an over-demand for toilets, or they can't get seated in the cafeteria or the restaurant that they want to eat in. So it just has a huge, hugely positive effect on the visitor as well as the attraction itself. What about downsides? Can you see any downsides, or are there any downsides that you've come across?

Geoff Spooner: Yeah. I mean, normally when people say, "What are the downsides?" There's if you're sold out three months in advance, there's not massive, massive downsides there. But you have to have, obviously, the product's got to be right, and it's got to be compelling, and all those things. But certainly, the downside of being sold out three months in advance comes along when you have a lockdown, and you have to refund all those people.

Kelly Molson: Of course.

Geoff Spooner: That can be quite eventful. But we managed to do that really well. And the team, particularly, obviously, the service team, did a fabulous job of getting all those refunds processed really quickly and doing it in a way that's automated, so no one had to call us to get the refund, which was great, and we did be very clear that we would do that. So that's worked very well. So there's that element to it, I suppose. I mean, hopefully, we won't have lots of COVID-related things going forwards, but it's something to bear in mind, I suppose.

Geoff Spooner: I think if you're highly weather-dependent, I think it's always going to be a challenge to compel people to come out when it's wet or freezing, so you know. But then I think maybe some of your experience is as a seasonal experience, then maybe you don't open at those times anyway.

Geoff Spooner: I think probably the challenge that we found the most is when you design an attraction to a maximum of X, and then you see that actually the demand is there so that you could actually do probably a bit more, or that you want to expand it, well. How are you going to do that? When you want to move it to Y, there's quite a lot of things you need to tweak all around the place to make sure that it still works as you originally intended it to. So you know, routes. Maybe you have to move something. Maybe you have to put some extra toilets in. We've just built an expansion on our cafe to help in the back lot there. So that can be a challenge, mainly because you might be quite space-constrained, so sometimes you have got to put an expansion on a building, and maybe you can't do that. So those are the sorts of things I think are the biggest downsides to it. But for us, it works extremely well.

Kelly Molson: Do you ever get people turn up? Do you ever have instances where people turn up where they haven't known it's pre-book, or they've just decided to take a chance anyway?

Geoff Spooner: We don't really. I mean, it amazes me, if you think how many people come to us, we have hardly anybody. If we do get people coming, they'd normally come to Watford Junction and spoken to our security team, who are helping people onto the shuttle buses there to come to the tour, they'll have told them, and then they'll probably have got a cab anyway, up to the tour, and then we'll tell them the same thing. So we get hardly anyone. We try to make sure no one leaves crying, particularly if they're children, but really, I mean, it is a handful of people that come a week, so it's not a big problem. Particularly during this lockdown period, it's not really been a problem at all.

Geoff Spooner: But our marketing is very clear, and I think that's what helps us to ram that message home, really, is that we say everywhere, advance book only, and that's what everyone will tell you. So people know that it's difficult. So much so that I saw a BBC article, and the headline was "Getting a COVID test is harder than getting tickets for Harry Potter," or something like that. So I don't know if that's a positive or not, but it did make me chuckle, so.

Kelly Molson: It's probably true. So this is quite a big question, and obviously, pre-booking is something that's been kind of forced on attractions at the moment. My personal opinion is, I have no idea why an attraction would want to go back to not having pre-booking. I think people's behavior has changed. It's an accepted part of the process now. I've always found it quite unusual that attractions don't need you to do that. It's not a requirement. Do you think that UK attractions should continue to offer pre-booking post-COVID, once we are back to a form of normality?

Geoff Spooner: I think it depends on their model, and certainly if you are something which is a... Let's say you're limited capacity, but you're high membership. People will be able to think of the different organizations that fit into that category. That can be a challenge for them, because unless you... It's very easy to go, "Well, I'm going to come every day in the summer," and I'll actually only turn up when it's sunny. I think definitely, people with memberships have found that quite challenging to overcome, and you do need people to commit to come. So that's the sort of area where I think it can be a little bit tricky.

Geoff Spooner: But I think it's a very positive thing to do. I can't see why people would completely come away from it. I think there maybe will be a bit of flexibility. I think certainly for the really peak times, it's a great way to... If you know that there's not going to be huge demand in your park, and your attraction is not going to be at capacity, then on certain days, maybe you could turn it off. But for the days when you know you're going to be busy, you want it to be there. And also there's an element of, might what if people, that helps to drive demand. It helps to make you this hot ticket that people want, feel they need to book months in advance. I spoke to somebody in the tour yesterday, and it was their daughter's birthday. I said, "Oh, when did you get the tickets?" And she said, "February."

Kelly Molson: Oh, gosh. Wow.

Geoff Spooner: So if that's what you want to achieve, if you can... I think people have learned a lot from it. One-way flows and things like that. But I think if they're thinking about it now, they also need to think about, what is the visitor flow, and how you manage that as well. Theme parks are like a big ecosystem. There's lots of little things. Anyone little tweak in one area can have quite a big effect on something else.

Geoff Spooner: So yeah. I think many of them will continue, and some will probably change a bit, but people seem to talk very positively about it when you're on attraction calls at the moment, and people seem to have found this, like, "Oh my gosh, if you, if you just make people one-way through the experience, they see everything, and the experience is so much better." You know, if you walk through some of these cavernous places that are like mazes and you feel, "Did we see everything? I don't know."

Geoff Spooner: It's been a really interesting time, and I think that lockdown and COVID has really forced attractions to really think about their experience and how they deliver that. I think a lot of attractions got into thinking, "Well, gosh. This is going to be really challenging. It's not going to be as good." But actually, if you're doing it right, the end result seems to be, the visitor experience is better at the moment. Even better in our case. We were really clear we didn't want to open if the experience wasn't going to be as good as it was normally, and we've been really pleased with the feedback that we've got from that. So I think there's lots of learnings that attractions will take, and lots of different variables that need to be considered, and each attraction will think of what its makeup on who's coming is, and that will influence their decisions a lot, I think.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, absolutely.

Geoff Spooner: We'll still be pre-book, definitely.

Kelly Molson: Yeah. I can't see that changing any time soon.

Geoff Spooner: No.

Kelly Molson: And so as we start to enter this exciting new year of 2021, which I think everyone just can't wait for, do you have any advice that you could share with the sector? Any pearls of wisdom as we start this new year?

Geoff Spooner: Well, hopefully, 2021 has to be better than 2020. It'd be pretty impressive if it was worse, but... Zombie mutant bees or something next year, but...

Kelly Molson: It could happen. Don't even say it, Geoff.

Geoff Spooner: It's a good opportunity to reflect, and to really look at what's worked well, what hasn't worked well. I think if you've been a popular attraction pre-COVID, you'll still be a popular attraction post-COVID, and you just need to look at what you're carrying through from the learnings that you've made. I do definitely feel that the industry will come back, that demand will come back. People want escapism and they want different experiences a huge amount at the moment because they're missing that. Not to interact with other people, but just to get away from everything that we've had this year. You see that talking to people in the tour, and from the comments that they leave, it was just fantastic to be somewhere magical for three hours, and not talk about COVID. I think that that applies to lots of attractions across the country.

Geoff Spooner: So it has definitely been very difficult and challenging, and attractions have had to think on their feet, and it's been a bit of a battle. I think most attractions have come through that battle, and that's a real positive, and they'll learn a lot from it. I think organizationally, they'll be a lot stronger from that going forward. So yeah. I think we just need to see the demand starts to increase. Maybe capacity will increase. I think some of the limits in demand that we have at the moment are slightly offset by the fact that you've got lower capacity. Not completely. And we'll just have to see really.

Geoff Spooner: I think it's a case of keeping calm. Everybody knows what business they're in and they know who they're talking to and who wants to come to them, and those people, I think, will still be there. I think the one thing that maybe it will change from a business's point of view is visitor's perception of what is an acceptable level of busy. Whilst I think there's a proportion of people who are quite sort of COVID cavalier and don't mind sitting on your shoulder kind of thing, at the minute. But there will be people who just think, actually, if your attendance was 10,000 before, say, and all those people were in the attraction, nobody would have minded that before. But perhaps there'll be more people now who, if you ask questions in your exit surveys about, "Was the attraction crowded?" Going back to normal, I think I would probably expect that percentage who thought it was crowded to be a bit higher. Maybe not massively, but I think that that is something that everyone's got to really think about, and we won't suddenly all just throw our masks away and go back to normal. I think it's going to be quite gradual.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, I completely agree. It's interesting what you say. I mean, this is not an attraction, but we have a Saturday market in our local town, and even at the moment, that feels busy, because you're not used to that many people being around you. So I can completely understand how people would feel about coming to a really busy attraction, and suddenly feeling quite overwhelmed by it, actually. It's a really good point.

Kelly Molson: I think that the demand will definitely be there as well. I agree with you. As a consumer, we've missed out on a whole year of making memories, and I think that that's what we want to get back to doing. It's fun experiences and doing things, like you said, you know? Doing things that are magical experiences and remembering them. Thank you, Geoff.

Kelly Molson: I have one last question for you that I ask all of our guests that come on and it's if you have a book that you'd recommend. So a book that you either really love, or something that's helped shape your career in some way over the years that you could recommend to our listeners.

Geoff Spooner: I don't. I mean, it's shocking, really. I really like reading, but I don't get much time to read generally. So probably the last book I read was about the Battle of Waterloo. I've read a couple of a couple of books on that, and that is a really interesting book to read from a point of view of clutching victory from the jaws of defeat, and also the importance of really clear communication and trust. I think it's a really, really interesting book to read because it's sort of, you know, the allied forces probably shouldn't have won that battle. But it's a very interesting book to read, but not everyone's into military history, I'm sure.

Geoff Spooner: So I mean, the one thing that I am able to do at the minute is read to my kids, and my youngest daughter is very keen on Harry Potter, and I think really, it is a great book to read. We're kind of... Where are we on? We're doing Goblet of Fire at the minute, and it's been nice to read them all. Just what impresses me the most, knowing, having seen everything in the films... And I came to Harry Potter, my experience of Harry Potter originally was not reading the books. It was seeing all the films in the cinema. So I was literally the only person who wasn't expecting what had just happened on the screen to happen. And I think what's really clever about that, it is just all the backstories in there that you don't necessarily see the films, and it is really great. But also you just see how clever Jo was, planting all the things early in the books that are then really important later in the [inaudible 00:41:48]. To have thought that through and planned that through at the very beginning, I just think is really, really clever. I think they're equally enjoyable books to read as an adult and as a child. So it's maybe a bit obvious that I'd say Harry Potter, but I think that's the ones that I'm reading at the minute.

Kelly Molson: I mean, maybe it is, but I'm really glad that you did, because I think they're wonderful books, and I love them dearly. So listeners, as ever, if you want to win a copy of... I think we'll give away a copy of the first Harry Potter book, where the journey started. So if you do want to win that book, then if you head over to our Twitter account and you retweet this episode announcement with the words, "I want Geoff's book..."

Geoff Spooner: Don't call it Geoff's book.

Kelly Molson: I mean, JK Rowling might have something to say about that. However, if you-

Geoff Spooner: Her lawyers will go mad.

Kelly Molson: For the purpose of this, if you want Geoff's book, then just retweet it, and then you'll be in with a chance of winning. Geoff, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I really appreciate it. I think that the pre-booking saga and topic is something that's going to continue long into 2021, and maybe we'll get you back on at the end of 2021 and see how that's all gone, and see what exciting plans that you've got for the tour.

Geoff Spooner: Great. Really nice to speak to you. Thank you for having me.

Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five-star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the Queue is brought to you by 

Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

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Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.

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Show references:

Laura is Head of Content at the National Football Museum in Manchester, UK, where she is responsible for overseeing the collections, exhibitions and communities teams. Prior to working at NFM, she held leadership roles at Oxford University Museums and the National Trust. Laura has 8 years’ experience as an independent museums consultant, a role in which she worked with museums of all types and sizes to improve resilience through transforming organisational practice, better understanding audiences, improving evaluation, and developing innovative programming. Laura holds a PhD in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester, UK, for research into resilient community engagement practice in museums.

Outside of work, Laura likes going to gigs, exploring new places and visitor attractions, watching football (her own footballing ability is, sadly, non-existent), enthusing about dogs (particularly her own rescue Staffy, Chance), and spending far too much time scouring vintage shops to find the perfect 80s dress.

www.nationalfootballmuseum.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurafcrossley/

Twitter: @lfcrossley

Jon is Exhibitions Manager at the National Football Museum and has worked in the sector for 15 years. He’s worked on a number of exhibitions including Curator of the show ‘Strip: How Football got Shirty’. Born in Blackpool, his seaside upbringing has had an impact on his exhibition ethos of bright colours, cheeky humour where appropriate, experimentation and “what’s the worst that could happen?!”. Prior to working at NFM, he served candyfloss to the punters at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and worked in the curatorial department at the Manchester United Museum. With a remit to lead the National Football Museum’s move into digital, Jon has co-presented the Museum’s successful podcast and developed a popular online version of the ‘Strip!’ exhibition.

Outside of work, Jon is a vinyl obsessive and adores electronic pop and guitars. He supports the mighty Tangerines of Blackpool FC and is a season ticket holder at the cathedral of football, Bloomfield Road. He likes visiting attractions and travelling a lot, with a preference for open spaces where he can freely walk and drink ale (not at the same time!) in the countryside.  

www.nationalfootballmuseumstrip.com

Twitter: @introspective81

Transcription:

Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue. A podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world. 

In today's episode, I'm joined by two guests, Laura Crossley, Head of Content, and Jon Sutton, Exhibitions Manager at the National Football Museum. 

We discuss why it's helpful for museums to have a podcast and what you need to think about strategically if you're going to create one. We also talk about their new podcast, Strip!, and all of the lessons learned from creating it. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue.

Kelly Molson: Jon, Laura, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Look at us as well. We've dressed for the occasion. We'll have to do a little standup, we've all got our strip on. Our favorite strip and all will become clear a little bit later why we are dressed as our favorite football teams today. 

Kelly Molson: Okay. As ever, we start with our lightning round. Jon, I'm coming to you first. What is the greatest movie that you have ever watched?

Jon Sutton: I don't know. Karate Kid's very good. Karate Kid's a good film.

Kelly Molson: With Karate Kid, are you a massive '80s fan? Is this your thing?

Jon Sutton: Yeah, that's one of the films that left a great impression on me. I'm watching Cobra Kai at the moment, which is the follow-on.

Kelly Molson: Can we talk about Cobra Kai? Because we were obsessed. I wasn't feeling very well, and I tucked myself up on the sofa with a duvet and Karate Kid. I was like, "Everyone keeps talking about Cobra Kai. We should do it. Let's start it tonight." Oh my God. Genuinely, did the whole two series in less than a week. We just smashed through it.

Jon Sutton: Yeah, I'm stopping it. I'm calming it down because I don't want it to end. I think we got a bit giddy and then I'm calming it now because I want to... Series three is coming very soon so I want to make it that I'm there for it.

Kelly Molson: So, you haven't seen the last episode yet?

Jon Sutton: No, I've not seen the second, I've only just joined the party.

Kelly Molson: It's feel good, isn't it? That's what I love about '80s films, they're really feel good. That was a great answer.

Kelly Molson: Okay, Laura, I'm coming to you. What fictional family would you be a member of if you could be?

Laura Crossley: The Simpsons. That's really obvious, isn't it? Partly because my family was absolutely obsessed with The Simpsons and even now, I find myself saying catchphrases. Like, "I have a feeling that we are going to win the lottery." Or like, I'm a vegetarian and I always quote things from the Vegetarian and I think other people know what I'm talking about but I'm like, "Oh no, it's just me and my family who know that."

Jon Sutton: It was on the first day when you said, "Cowabunga dude." 

Laura Crossley: I skated in, in a hat. 

Kelly Molson: Love it.

Laura Crossley: When I was younger particularly, I would get a lot of grief about basically being Lisa. Like when I was younger, I was very, very right on. I was a vegetarian and in the episode where she becomes a vegetarian, she can see bits of animals. That was exactly like me.

Jon Sutton: Can you play the saxophone then?

Laura Crossley: Can't play the saxophone but I could play the flute. I was in an orchestra, I could play the flute.

Kelly Molson: Oh, that's close enough.

Jon Sutton: Going to play the piano.

Laura Crossley: And in my peak teenage years, I did go out, but I also spent early Friday evenings in Salford Youth Orchestra. So, I was really cool.

Kelly Molson: You really are Lisa. You've already joined the family, you're there. Oh, I love it.

Kelly Molson: Okay, we're going to go to your unpopular opinions. Jon, I'm going to come to you? What's the thing that you think is true but nobody else agrees with you on?

Jon Sutton: I think it's humanity's worst invention, umbrellas should be banned really. I hate them. They're a weapon, pretty much, and particularly as people are more and more on their phones these days while they're walking down the street, if they're carrying an umbrella, you could lose an eye.

Kelly Molson: Do you not think that this is an issue with people looking at their phones rather than the umbrella though?

Jon Sutton: No, I think it was even before. I thought everybody hated them. Apart from Rihanna, I thought everybody hated them.

Laura Crossley: I don't think I've ever hated an umbrella. I lose a lot of umbrellas. My mum once bought me 11, you know those little pocket-sized ones? She bought me 11 of them for Christmas one year. I had a whole stocking full of one pound bargain umbrellas because I just leave them in places.

Jon Sutton: That's the thing, you think, "Well I don't want to spend a lot of money on them because I'm going to lose it," but if you buy a too cheap one, it's going to be inside out, probably leave things, it just doesn't stop revolving that's the problem.

Kelly Molson: That's a great answer. Again, not really what I was expecting but interesting. All right, Laura, what's yours?

Laura Crossley: Mine's going to sound really geeky now which is that I think that often theme parks are better at talking about history, teaching people about history and the environment than museums are.

Kelly Molson: Oh wow, okay.

Laura Crossley: Do you remember when we could go on holiday and things like that last year?

Kelly Molson: The good times.

Laura Crossley: We could go to other countries and it was really nice. I went to Florida last year and I didn't really go to Disney as a kid or anything but it was really fun last year and I nearly came back and wrote a big blog post about all the things that museums can learn from theme parks because I think they can learn absolutely loads. But one of them definitely is about teaching people about history and the environment and science because it just talks about things, you don't even realize you're learning. You think you're just on a ride or having fun or in a queue or just walking for a different land or watching a film or doing something that's just really fun and then you come out and you're like, "I've just learned about this new [inaudible 00:05:55] a new kind of animal that I didn't know about. I've learned about this really interesting thing in history that I didn't know about."

Laura Crossley: Obviously, we can't see the original objects and that is a really good thing about museums but I just think the way that theme parks are quite sneaky about the way that they teach people history. Maybe it's mainly Disney because that is a big theme across Disney.

Jon Sutton: I worked five years at the Pleasure Beach, Blackpool Pleasure Beach, for five years. I must admit I didn't really think about it from that point of view. I felt that I was not getting paid enough. I wasn't very good at doing candy floss either, terrible. If you asked me for a stick of candy floss and I would give you them through gritted teeth. I'd really try and shove a bag onto them because a bag was much easier to make.

Kelly Molson: Oh, I always fancied a go of that though.

Jon Sutton: Oh my god, it's really hard. It's so hard. 

Laura Crossley: Really?

Jon Sutton: Particularly in Blackpool where it's windy all the time. The machine's quite dangerous as well because it spins around but you have to make sure you've got the right amount of moisture on the edge of the... You can't have too much moisture but you need some moisture for it to stick to the sides. It's really, really hard.

Laura Crossley: It's like science.

Kelly Molson: I've learnt so much today, I really have. I haven't even asked you any good questions yet. I've learnt loads.

Jon Sutton: Museums are a breeze compared to producing candy floss.

Laura Crossley: That's really interesting.

Kelly Molson: I think, Laura, it's about making it fun.

Laura Crossley: Yes absolutely, and immersive.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, and then you don't really realize that you're learning, so you suck it in.

Laura Crossley: Yeah, the other thing I really like is that it's really multi-sensory. You can hear music or read stuff and the atmosphere and so you just, yeah exactly, you don't realize you're learning. It's just really cool. Whereas at museum's I think sometimes, we don't talk enough about the story. I think sometimes it's just like, "Oh, there's another object." As Jon knows, I'm not the biggest fan of labels in museums. Maybe that's an opinion that won't go down well with the museum sector but I do think we put far too much stuff on labels and always want people to read everything.

Laura Crossley: And I think sometimes it's nice to also help people use their imagination and tell a story, and not just be like, "This is a thing. Look at this thing and here are some facts about it." It's just, I don't think it's very engaging.

Kelly Molson: Well, this leads us really nicely actually to what we want to talk about today because the reason that we are dressed in our strip is because we want to talk about your new podcast, it's called Strip the Podcast, but it's in line with the exhibition that you've got running at the moment which is Strip! How Football Got Shirty. And I guess that goes a little bit hand in hand about what you're talking about in terms of telling a story about something. So Laura, just for our listeners, can you just give us a little overview of what the National Football Museum is.

Kelly Molson: I mean, it says very clearly what it is in its name, but what do you do there?

Laura Crossley: We do all sorts of things. We are England's only national museum for football and we basically explore the impact that football has on all our lives and how it shapes identity and a bit like I was saying about telling stories, we are moving much more towards telling stories and sharing other people's stories about the diversity of the game. So we are not just about talking about men's elite game, although that's obviously a big part of football but we're also about the women's game and also, I think a really good thing that we can do is challenge attitudes around homophobia and racism. 

Laura Crossley: I watched that Anton Ferdinand documentary last night and just thought, "Gosh, there's still so much work to do in terms of challenging racism in football." So we're trying a lot more to tell those difficult stories and hopefully change attitudes and make football something that's really welcoming for everyone because it's something that touches all of our lives, even if you're not a football fan, it's not something that you can escape. It's something that you might dip in and out of or you'll know people who like football and so it is about telling those really broad stories and for me, about celebrating diversity and making everybody feel like they have a place in the game and that they're represented in football.

Kelly Molson: Lovely. And Jon, the exhibition is something that you've been organizing. So can you tell us a little bit about what this exhibition is about? Again, How Football Got Shirty, I think we could maybe hazard a guess at that.

Jon Sutton: There's no shorts or socks in the exhibition. That was the first thing. We're not having shorts, we're not having socks, it's just shirts. So yeah, it's got over 200 shirts going right back to the Victorian era, so it's very comprehensive. We did the first century of football shirts because there wasn't an awful lot of change and then we branch out into the '70s of Admiral and the dawn of replica shirts. And then we've got some bangers from the '90s, lots of the bright and the garish ones. We've got a bit about the retro revival. Got a real controversial hall of shame area which actually, the six shirts in the hall of fame are all pretty good shirts, to be fair, generally. But they're there almost for a malfunction of design, that's why they're there like that.

Jon Sutton: And then right through to the present. So one of the big things now is eco-friendly shirts, so sustainability and we've also got loads of shirts from the women's game as well because I think we're the first exhibition that have worked out that basically women can play football too and women wear football shirts.

Jon Sutton: There's been football shirt exhibitions in the past or there's almost like kit experts and things like that but I don't think the women's game and the shirts that women wear has been told yet. So it's really comprehensive. One of the toughest things is having to do the top 20 shirts of all time. It's so subjective.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, I'll bet.

Jon Sutton: I'm a Blackpool fan and I didn't put a Blackpool shirt in the top 20.

Kelly Molson: There's no Tottenham shirt in the top 20 either, I checked.

Jon Sutton: There are a lot more Arsenal shirts than Tottenham shirts as well.

Laura Crossley: Oh dear, anyway.

Jon Sutton: The shirt you're wearing is in the exhibition. 

Kelly Molson: It's a great shirt.

Jon Sutton: We've got a Jurgen Klinsmann shirt as well when he did the dive celebration. We've got that in the museum as well. It's not in the exhibition.

Kelly Molson: Perfect moment. Okay, so great exhibition, great museum. You've been shut for most of this year which has been a challenge all around in the sector. So what I really want to talk about is what you've done to engage your audience while you've been shut, and one of the great things that you've done is launch the podcast. It's a big thing to do, it's a bold move, and that's what I want to talk about today really. So I guess my first very short question, which has probably got a really long answer is, why a podcast?

Jon Sutton: To be honest, I don't really listen to podcasts, so it was quite hard presenting one because I didn't really know much about the basis of being the host on a podcast, I'll be honest. And I think David realized that very quickly, our digital producer. I think David realized that too when we started.

Kelly Molson: What have I let myself in for?

Jon Sutton: I was amazed. On the day, luckily Tim, who is our graphics and interpretation producer, basically the three of us in our exhibitions team, we kind of led it I suppose, and luckily, he'd done a script which was really helpful because I was going there without even a script. Laura, why did you [crosstalk 00:13:36].

Kelly Molson: Yeah, how did you come to the decision that a podcast is the thing that you're going to create to engage people with? How did that process work?

Laura Crossley: I think a podcast would... because I joined the museum almost a year, just over a year ago, and even when I joined there were talks, before we even knew about COVID, there was talk about doing a podcast as a way to reach the audiences and share our stories in a different way. I think because our mission is all about sharing stories and a podcast, I think, and that narrative, is a good way to do that.

Laura Crossley: So we'd always thought about doing a podcast and then Jon's team got some funding and it made sense to make that about the Strip exhibition. But certainly, when we then shut, for me it became more of an imperative. I know that museums decided to see lots of different things during lockdown but we have on our strategy, the aim to build a virtual museum, basically reflect the galleries and the content of the museum, but digitally, whether that be in our social media content on YouTube or via podcasts or whatever it might be.

Laura Crossley: And so I saw this year as a way for us to just experiment because what other year do you get... I mean, obviously, it's been a bad year but the one positive, I think, is that it's allowed people to throw caution to the wind and just say, "Well, we'll just experiment with lots of different ways to engage people because why not? And if it doesn't work then it doesn't matter and we learn from it."

Laura Crossley: And I really hope that that's something that museums take into the future. I think we always try and plan and try and be perfect, whereas actually, I think experimentation is much more exciting and just seeing what happens and not really worrying too much if things don't work because so what? You've learnt lessons and you try again. So for me, that was the really good thing about a podcast and also, I did really feel for them. Strip opened in my first week at the museum, and so it was open for what, three months, and then shut.

Laura Crossley: And I could tell when I joined, I mean, Jon can talk a lot more about it because it's his exhibition, but I went to the opening night and I remember just thinking, "Wow, so much passion and love and care has gone into this exhibition," and it was incredibly sad to see it have to close, well, the whole museum have to close. So I think we focused a lot on putting content out about Strip. Partly for that, because it was just such a great topic, something that was really engaging. Something that we know that if the museum had been open, lots of people would have come to the exhibition and we really wanted to give them the chance to experience it in a different way.

Jon Sutton: Yeah, on the day, the last day of March before we closed, we did a frantic tour around the exhibition and we got our own Strip website as well dedicated to the exhibition. And in co-curating the exhibition, we had so many assets. I'd spoken to a lot of the kit manufacturers, a lot of the kit experts. We'd had a panel discussion, been out to some clubs. We had so much and then only so much of that can go into the exhibition.

Jon Sutton: So we're sitting on all these assets and I think we divided it so some went out onto the Strip website but then even then, we had so much and we just thought, "If we theme it right, we've definitely got a podcast here." And so we've managed to use some of those assets in the podcast but also recorded new interviews with people as well for it. So luckily, I think we've done a decent job on it.

Kelly Molson: So you've done six episodes, is that right? Six episodes so far. Let me just go back a bit because what you said is really interesting, Laura, and I think I agree with you in terms of playing with things this year. We all know it's been a challenging year but it has given us that opportunity to do some new things and do some different things that we don't know if they're going to work, we don't know what the reaction's going to be but let's try it, right? Very much the same with this podcast that we're on. I had no idea what the... We'd pre-launched it the previous year. Hadn't really got a lot of traction and thought, "Let's bring it back. There's a lot of people that are potentially sitting around maybe with not a lot to do at the moment. Maybe we can give them something to listen to."

Kelly Molson: And so, that was the objective really. What can we push out there that'll be helpful and engaging for people right now. So with the podcast, did you actually set any objectives for it or was it purely, "We're just going to do this, see what happens."

Laura Crossley: I think this is what we were grappling with a little bit because we were kind of pushed into doing digital before we'd written a big strategy about it, and as I said, I don't think that's a bad thing. It's kind of like writing a strategy for research and development which isn't a bad way to do it. For me, Jon might disagree I don't know, but it's about engaging more people in a deeper way and growing those audiences and also hopefully, some of the people we engage will actually physically come to the museum. Acknowledging that some people who live in different countries might not actually physically be able to get to the museum now or in the future.

Laura Crossley: But for those people, making them aware of us and getting a kind of loyalty to us and looking out for our stuff and feeling part of the museum and then for other people, hopefully encouraging them to come through the door and become physical visitors.

Kelly Molson: And I guess you won't see that until a bit later on potentially, whether you do make that shift from people that are listening to the podcast, to coming along. Jon, I've got so many questions about the podcast because I know myself personally, how much time and effort and a challenge it can be. You said earlier, you've never made a podcast before. Have you ever been a guest on a podcast? Have you ever had any interaction with any of them?

Jon Sutton: No, I don't think I have. I don't even think I've been a guest. I think I just assumed they were a bit like radio but not live. I have listened to some podcasts but not many, so I had no experience really.

Kelly Molson: All right, so you were at the point where you've got all your assets and you think, "Yeah, we've got a podcast here. We can create some content and its valuable content, it's interesting." Where did you start because that's a big learning process, right? To saying, "I've got this idea about a podcast, I've got all this stuff, now I need to make a podcast." What did you have to learn?

Jon Sutton: Well luckily, [crosstalk 00:20:02]. The first episode was a bit... Looking back now, if I listen to it now, I think it would be quite rustic and a little bit raw. One thing I did before we did the podcast, I listened to some other podcasts about football shirts. They were all pretty good, generally, but at the same time, I thought they might be slightly better at presenting than we would be. They may be more confident in front of a microphone, et cetera. But at the same time, I thought they might not necessarily have the assets we've got and also the knowledge that we've acquired in curating the exhibition.

Jon Sutton: So that was a bit of me that thought, "Well, what's the worst that can happen with this thing and if we are terrible, at least we've got the guest to pull us out." The first one we did wasn't the best but then the next one we did was really good and then what we did was we went back to the first one and re-recorded it. But we did that with most of them, so it wasn't necessarily really a quick process. Sometimes we'd start in the morning, rattle through in say, an hour, get lunch. Then we'd go, "Actually, I think we could do that better now."

Jon Sutton: So most of them, we did it in two takes. There was a period where we recorded, I think, probably three or four within a two week period because we were going into the museum, say, once a week when we could. And we found that we found a rhythm to it and then there was one episode, the last episode in the podcast, which I think is actually somehow the best one. We'd been about three, four weeks between recording the fifth and the sixth and that day, we had Linda working on it. She was fantastic. We had Tim working on it, he was fantastic.

Jon Sutton: Whatever reason, I think I might have had a couple of too many drinks the night before or something, but I was absolutely appalling. Nothing was flowing that day, it was awful, but listening to it, you can't tell. So, David's a magician.

Kelly Molson: So you had in-house editing skills, which is a huge bonus because we outsource our editing, we've got a brilliant, Steve is our... He's an award-winning podcaster. I have to just give him a little plug there. But that's the one thing that we didn't have in-house, so we were like, "Well that's something that we need to get professional help with." That's a huge cost saving and, like you say, it means that you can go back and do things again, so you've got that time.

Jon Sutton: I mean, there's a lot of to-ing and fro-ing as well. David would cut something, for example, and I'd go, "David, you just cut me." The pinnacle moment of the podcast, for once I was really funny in that point and David's just like, with a straight face, "It wasn't very funny at all, Jon."

Kelly Molson: Steve does this to me all the time.

Jon Sutton: That's the thing. Just because you're the host doesn't mean you get any kinds of rights, do you?

Kelly Molson: None at all. My bits are always the bits that have been cut. 

Jon Sutton: The weird thing, I've been finding myself cutting myself as well. So when we have the to-ing and fro-ing, I'll say to David, "You need to cut me at this point," because I sound like an absolute imbecile. And it feels weird being the... It's almost like if you did an exam or something and you're the teacher putting the red pen through your own examination.

Kelly Molson: What about equipment or anything like that? I'm just thinking about other museums that might potentially be looking to make this decision and do something like this. Did you have to invest heavily in any specialist equipment or did you have things that you just got? Did you just get by with what you had?

Jon Sutton: Yeah, I think what we try and do with each exhibition is we try and purchase bit by bit, like piecemeal, I suppose. Little bits that make us stronger in the future so we've got a legacy from each project we work on. I'm not really technical, I'll be honest. I think we got new headphones and the new microphone but we had some other microphones. I remember though, I had the worst microphone. It wasn't a massive outlay. The other thing is, David is really particular and Tim, we are quite particular, but I think really, you don't have to have mega-quality to do it.

Jon Sutton: For me personally, I think the stories and what you're going to tell is more important than if there's a little bit of hiss on it, for example. And we did have to lower our standards a little bit because we did some interviews with people via Zoom, et cetera, for it. So it's not all slick, I suppose. But yeah, it wasn't a massive outlay and luckily we've managed to, each exhibition we do, we try and buy a little bit of stuff.

Kelly Molson: All right, two questions. What went well and what didn't go well?

Jon Sutton: I think we managed to replicate the themes of the physical exhibition, I suppose. If you hadn't seen the exhibition, I think you would've got a good flavor of what it was about and I think, actually, at times, we even went a little bit further. In the exhibition, for example, there's a Lewis FC shirt and it's got What If on it as a hashtag and it's about the fact that they are the world's leading club on equality. Their men and women's teams get exactly the same resources, same pay. There are not many clubs doing that.

Jon Sutton: And you've got a label on it and we're really strict, I think it's 50 words on a label, but we then take it one step further, so we then in the podcast, feature somebody from the club about what that stance means. So in a way, it looks at it and expands on it. It adds more to it. So I think in that respect if you think about the podcast and the Strip website as a duo in digital terms, I'd still want people to come and see the exhibition but you're getting a really, really good flavor of what we're about.

Jon Sutton: Things that didn't work was, you can't really tell, but it's quite a time consuming, I think, recording a podcast. David's having to do a lot of editing. Tim, our digital producer's doing the theme music to it which obviously you don't have to do, go down that route, but he was bringing his own symph-pop tune-age to the proceedings. But even writing the script's quite time-consuming as well, so you've got to dedicate quite a lot of time to it really but luckily this year, we've been able to do that with lockdown and that experimentation aspect.

Jon Sutton: I suppose one thing is that if you're doing it, don't see it as an add-on to what you're doing really. I think you need to build it in from the start. I think in the past, we'd never done a podcast. We've done online exhibitions on our website but they've been very much afterthoughts. Whereas we did build it into our thinking when we opened the exhibition in, I think it was November. 2019, we knew we were going to do some of this stuff but when we had the lockdown, it almost accelerated it, I suppose.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, that makes sense.

Jon Sutton: Nothing major. I remember the police sirens going off quite a lot when we were trying to record and then the lift would be going up and down, so it makes a racket. You've got to choose your space as well. 

Kelly Molson: That is really good advice actually because our podcast has been a lot better since I've been recording it at home. I do get the occasional dog bark but that's better than the constant trains that go past our office. So, it's swings and roundabouts.

Kelly Molson: This brings me to a really good question to come back to you on Laura, actually, and it's something that you mentioned before we started speaking which is around what you said about not just bolting a podcast on, thinking about this strategically. Why is it helpful for museums or attractions to have podcasts and what do you need to think about strategically from the start if you're going to go down this path?

Laura Crossley: I'd say this for everything about digital museums, that I think we can get a little bit excited about the word digital and just go, "Oh yes, we need a thing. We need a digital thing and if we get a digital thing then we're going to engage lots and lots of people and then they're all going to come to the museum and it's all going to be amazing." And I try and remember back to my Masters, which was a long time ago now, so before we were talking about things like podcasts, we talked a lot about digital interactives and it was in the first session where the lecturer was like, "Digital interactives are great but they will break and you have to have a reason for doing them and there has to be an audience in mind."

Laura Crossley: And I think sometimes with digital, we don't plan with audiences in mind. It's like everything that we know about audience-centric planning goes out the window because we think, "Digital. Cool. Amazing." And I love digital stuff and I do listen to podcasts. Adam Brookson's podcast is my happy place and I do think they can be really good for museums in order to tell those stories and engage people who might not have heard of the museum before. Build the brand. Engage them with stories that they wouldn't hear if they weren't in the museum. 

Laura Crossley: Keeping engagement with audiences. I suspect that some people who listen to the Strip podcast have come to the exhibition but want more information and also, as I said, potentially convert people into visitors to the museum. But I think it's really important firstly, that there's a reason to do it. The podcast took a long time, it wasn't the quickest digital thing that you could do, so you do have to have a reason for doing it. I also think, really thinking about who the audience is and is the audience right for a podcast or should you do something like a YouTube channel or should you get a TikTok channel. I don't know, all the various different digital things that we can do.

Laura Crossley: And also really plan it into strategic planning because the time it takes, the capacity, the resources. It can feel like it's free because you might not have to buy loads of equipment but it's not free because it takes people away from doing stuff on the galleries and the museum. So it is really important to schedule it in and make sure that you have the provision for it. And although I think that museums are getting better at having roles, actually it's been really interesting, over lockdown, I've seen so many more roles for digital content producers who just solely focus on blogs and podcasts and digital channels. So I think that's definitely going to be a trend that continues but you do need someone to take ownership of these things and not just say, "Oh well, someone will do it at some point."

Laura Crossley: So yeah, definitely have it in the strategic plan. Have a reason for doing it. Know who your audience is. Test if it's the right thing to do, and it's fine if you have all of those things and then you try it and it doesn't work because then you can evaluate why it doesn't work, but you need to know why you're doing it. And also I'd say, next week, we're doing an evaluation session about the podcast which is really important to me because again, I want it to be a learning experience. So there'll be things that have gone really well and there'll be things that haven't as much but it'd be good to really test that. And I'd also really like us to talk to people who listen to the podcast and hear what they think about it and whether it has done what we set out to do.

Kelly Molson: That is really good advice, and actually, my next question was going to be, what would be your best piece of advice to other museums who were thinking about doing this? But I think you just summed it up absolutely beautifully there, Laura. Jon, have you got anything that you would add to that in terms of your best piece of advice for a museum that's thinking about starting a podcast?

Jon Sutton: Yeah, I think I might have covered some of it already but it's things like building the time, don't see it as an add-on, what's the audience? The Strip, I knew that we already had an engaged crowd for that and also it's not particularly niche either. We're not going for necessarily the most niche subject in the world, football kits and what they represent. Particularly at the moment, I think lockdown brings in... This year, if anything, has brought in a real nostalgia to yesteryear, hasn't it? 

Jon Sutton: The first shirt, basically, I ever had. Wore it when I was eight years old. It's an adult one but it's the same design, so I knew there was an audience for it. So that's how we built around the exhibition but if we were talking about football studs, for example, boot studs or something like that. I'm not sure whether that-

Kelly Molson: That's like the niche that, isn't it? I definitely wouldn't have listened to all six episodes of that podcast, Jon.

Laura Crossley: [inaudible 00:32:44].

Jon Sutton: Exactly, but the thing is, you need to realize what you're presenting isn't niche. I'm not sure all museum people do that, I think you get bogged down in the day to day and maybe you need that bigger picture of actually what I do is quite a niche.

Kelly Molson: Great advice.

Jon Sutton: So we knew with this one it wasn't too niche.

Kelly Molson: Really, really good advice. We're coming towards the end of the podcast. On every episode, I ask my guests if there's a book that they would share with us and it can be a book that's either helped you in your career or just a book that you really love and our lucky listeners get to win this book. So Laura, what have you chosen for us?

Laura Crossley: Well, I was racking my mind for museum books because I did a Ph.D. in museum, so I have obviously read some amazing and really not so amazing type of books. Some amazing museum books that have really shaped my career but I was thinking about what book do I actually really love and again, remember that I'm a geek. The book that's really stayed with me for a long time is, Of Mice and Men, which I read when I was in year 10 doing my GSCEs, a long time ago now. And I was thinking, "Has that affected my museum career?" And I think it has because of all the books that I like, like that and The Catcher in the Rye and A Room with a View. Well firstly, they're all set in the past. Well for me anyway, they might have been contemporary at the time but for me, it was reading about the past and so I think that kind of bringing history to life.

Laura Crossley: A bit like I said about theme parks. I think that books can do that as well really, really well and sometimes in a more emotive way than museums do. I think museums have the power to do it but they don't always do it. And also, all those books are about this big and you can probably read them in a day if you put your mind to it. And again, I think that's why I really like the power of storytelling but not over using words, just telling, a bit like with films. I just want an hour and a half. I just want to watch Stand By Me in an hour and a half and be told a really good story. 

Laura Crossley: And the same with books, just tell me a really emotive, evocative story, that paints this amazing picture and transports me into that world. I don't need too much and that's what I think museums should really aim to do as well. Think about storytelling and description and emotional engagement, as well as just, "Here's an object," and expect people to be engaged with it. 

Kelly Molson: I love that. I love that you've tied your book choice in with your career and how it's focused you on what you do. Jon, what about you? What have you got to share with us?

Jon Sutton: Bringing you back to football shirts. When we were starting this exhibition, there was two books that stood out. One of them was book that was The Worst Football Shirts Of All Time, and I was flicking through it and I was like, "Well, that's a banger, that's a banger. These are amazing shirts. This book is so wrong." But the thing is when you look at these best ever shirts and worst ever shirts, often they're the same, they've just put opinion. But the book really that got the exhibition, made me say, "We're definitely doing this exhibition and we need to bring this author in," is a book called True Colors by John Devlin. He's done various books. His latest book is all about international kits.

Jon Sutton: He does these beautiful illustrations of the shirts. He draws every single shirt, for example, England. He will have drawn in that book, every shirt that England have worn. Really nice illustrations. The passion for the subject comes across, the depth comes across as well. His books are amazing and we actually hired him as an exhibition consultant on the basis of his brilliant books.

Kelly Molson: Wow, bet he never saw that coming when he was writing his books.

Jon Sutton: No exactly. We can't feature every club in the exhibition, we've got 200 shirts, but there is this rainbow of football shirts that he drew for us and so most clubs are covered under that, for example, Derby under white, for example, Tottenham under white. And so, True Colors by John Devlin is my choice and it's the right one.

Kelly Molson: Great but I love that book has been part of this journey that you've been on with the podcast as well. It's really great to tie it all together. Well as ever, if you want to win a copy of those books, then if you head over to our Twitter account which is Skip The Queue, and you retweet this episode announcement with the comment, "I want Laura and Jon's books," then you will be in with a chance of winning them.

Kelly Molson: I've loved having you both on today, it's such an interesting topic because I've a personal experience of just how difficult it is to start a podcast, edit a podcast, all right, Steve does the editing, but pull a podcast together. Think about who you're going to have on as guests. It's a huge amount of work and I think it's a brilliant task that you've gone ahead and done this.

Laura Crossley: Can I just say, I think yours is brilliant. It's so good.

Kelly Molson: Thank you.

Laura Crossley: I think that visitor attractions have a lot to learn from each other and I sometimes think museums can be quite snobby and not see themselves as a visitor attraction. Whereas actually, one of the best things we can do is give people a good day out. We should sometimes just relax a bit and say, "Actually, a really great thing we do is give people a good day out."

Kelly Molson: Yeah, it's making memories, isn't it? So six episodes of the podcast have been released, what's next? Do you think there's any more episodes coming?

Jon Sutton: David was really, really brutal in his editing, so I think there could be something in a bloopers episode, like a special. He'll probably tell me, 'No," but I was thinking like some of the bits, sort of me being stupid generally.

Laura Crossley: You've said it now in public, so that's it. [crosstalk 00:38:40]. 

Kelly Molson: It's a commitment.

Jon Sutton: It'll get vetoed, I know it will. It never gets their own way. I think it's probably it for Strip for the time being but then we're going to look at hopefully something that talks about the other stuff we do as a museum. So something that isn't exhibition focused but is about our general offer and the stories we want to tell and the power of football ultimately.

Laura Crossley: I think for me, really feeling down to who it's for because we could just do it in so many ways and tell so many different stories and maybe that's something that museums do grapple with a bit, that unless it's about a special exhibition, you have to really think about who it's for and what you're trying to do, otherwise you could do a podcast that just never ended and you talk about a different random thing every week.

Jon Sutton: That doesn't mean it's not going to have those studs [crosstalk 00:39:28].

Kelly Molson: Honestly Jon, if anyone wants to listen to a podcast about football boot studs, email me and let me know and I'll pass this onto Jon but I think I'm going to get very few emails about this.

Laura Crossley: That's episode 527.

Kelly Molson: Guys, it's been so good to speak to you today. Right everyone, if you want to listen to the podcast, it's called Strip! The Podcast and you will find it on all of your usual podcast channels. Go and download it, it's really entertaining. I have listened to five of the six episodes now and look, I'm a football fan, I love football shirts and I really, really enjoyed it. I think you'll get a lot out of it if you're a football fan in general. So definitely go and download it.

Kelly Molson: All that's left for me to say is, "Thank you both for coming on."

Jon Sutton: Thanks very much, brilliant.

Laura Crossley: Thank you, I love the Skip The Queue podcast, so it's really cool. Thank you so much for inviting us.

Kelly Molson: Thank you for making it... It's the guests that make it, so thanks.

Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip The Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five-star review, it really helps others find us and remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip The Queue is brought to you by 

Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

Download The Visitor Attractions Website Survey Report - https://www.merac.co.uk/download-the-visitor-attractions-survey

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Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.

Download our free ebook The Ultimate Guide to Doubling Your Visitor Numbers

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast
If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this episode.

Competition ends March 31st 2021. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.

Show references:

www.holkham.co.uk

www.holkham.co.uk/wonder/introduction

www.holkham.co.uk/events/details/festival-of-sport

www.linkedin.com/in/sue-penlington-6834722b/

www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-downing-ba-hons-mcim-98ab9043/

Transcription:

Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world. 

In today's episode, I'm joined by two guests, Lucy Downing, Head of Marketing, and Sue Penlington, Sustainability Manager at Holkham Estates. 

We discuss the wonder of Holkham, their exciting sustainability plans, and how they translate to the visitor experience. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue.

Kelly Molson: Lucy, Sue, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. It's such a pleasure to have you on. I'm really excited about what we're going to talk about today.

Lucy Downing: Thank you for inviting us.

Kelly Molson: Very welcome. But as you know, because I know that you've listened to the podcast, we always start off with our icebreaker round. So, Lucy, I'm going to start with you first. Can you tell me what your favorite movie quote is?

Lucy Downing: Oh, that's really hard. I think, most probably, this is a really trashy movie, but I love it. It would be from It's Complicated, starring Meryl Streep, and it is, "It's too complicated. It's complicated, isn't it?" It's that whole, it's complicated. And just that whole thing about life, and it's a bit of a giggle. Yeah, it's complicated but with a smile on your face.

Kelly Molson: All right, Lucy, I think that kind of sums up 2020, right?

Lucy Downing: It's complicated.

Kelly Molson: Complicated.

Lucy Downing: Definitely.

Kelly Molson: That's how we will look back on this. Sue, I've got one for you. If you could travel back in time, what period would you go to, and why?

Sue Penlington: Wow. Gosh, you don't half-post them. Do you know, I'd say it's really quite soppy, I'd love to go... I lost my dad when I was 15, and I would love to rewind and actually talk to him about what he did as a job. And he spent most time traveling. He took early retirement in the Thatcher era, really. And he did loads of traveling around South America. At the time, I was a flippant teenager who didn't really care, but I would love to know what he did as a job and then more about all of his travels around the world.

Kelly Molson: Oh, Sue, that is such a lovely answer. What a wonderful thing to be able to do. That would be perfect, wouldn't it? It's funny, isn't it? When you're at that age, you just don't fully appreciate or ask the right questions, do you? Because you don't know.

Sue Penlington: No, that's right.

Kelly Molson: You're in that zone.

Sue Penlington: And then the other one would be the 1730s, to see Holkham Hall being built. That'd be pretty cool.

Kelly Molson: That would be super cool. And that's a super good answer for this podcast as well. I feel like Sue prepared that one. Okay. Sue, back to you again, have you ever met any of your idols?

Sue Penlington: I don't think so. Maybe. In 2012, I was lucky enough to go to London to the Olympics, and my sister was working for CNN. And so we got to go behind the scenes for one of the interviews, and I met the two rowers, Helen Glover and Heather Stanning, who had won gold that day. But that was pretty cool, I think. And now, Heather's married to Steve Irwin, who my son is a big fan of, and incidentally, they're both coming to Sportsfest at Holkham next year.

Kelly Molson: Oh, so this could happen next year?

Sue Penlington: Yeah. Amazing. But yeah, I met Heather in 2012 and touched her gold medal.

Kelly Molson: Wow. That's really impressive. I've never even seen a gold medal up close. Great answer, Sue.

Sue Penlington: Yeah, they're pretty big. They're pretty weighty, as well. Yeah.

Kelly Molson: I would imagine them to be quite heavy. You don't see people just wandering around with them, do you?

Sue Penlington: No, and at the time, they had no idea the significance of the impact, and they were just in an absolute bubble. It was a special time.

Kelly Molson: Oh, that's great. Thank you for sharing that. Lucy, back to you. I want to know, I've been a bit mean here, sorry. What's something that you're not very good at? Mine's ironing, terrible.

Lucy Downing: Yeah. That could be that, as well. Oh, digging. Terrible answer.

Kelly Molson: Okay.

Lucy Downing: Not great at digging, as my husband tells me.

Kelly Molson: Does this have to happen quite a lot in your life?

Lucy Downing: Yeah, no. Yeah, no. I've got a vegetable garden. Yeah. Complete lockdown. Veg garden. Yes. So, we've been digging, and apparently, I'm not that great at it. I haven't got the right action. Chopping, there's this theme here. So, chopping wood, not very good at it. So I think I'm better at cooking, cooking anything that comes out of the veg garden. I can light a fire, so I can do things... Yeah. But general hardy maintenance outside, not great.

Kelly Molson: Which, interestingly, fits in probably quite well with what the topic of what we're going to talk about today, tales of sustainability. Lucy, take Lucy out of this equation. All right. Thank you both for sharing those. But a question that I always ask our guests is about their unpopular opinion. And I have stolen this from Greg James. He would never listen to this podcast, I don't think. And if he does, he might fully appreciate that I've ripped it off from him. Who knows? But I'd like to know, Lucy, starting with you, what is something that you believe to be true, but nobody else believes you on? your unpopular opinion?

Lucy Downing: I think, again, this is quite personal, I have had many debates with friends who are moms about being completely open and honest with your kids, all the way through. Whether you're going out, tell them you're going out. Even if they cry, tell them the truth. And I've been like that all the way through. I've now got a 15-year-old and 12-year-old. And for me, that's worked really, really well. But most people always say, "Oh, don't know if you should be really open and honest all the while." So, that would most probably be my unpopular opinion. Is that an okay answer?

Kelly Molson: Yeah. That's a great answer. Again, I don't know how unpopular that's going to be, because I would think that that's the right thing to do.

Lucy Downing: Okay. Or if not, raw mushrooms are nice. 

Kelly Molson: I agree with you on that one. But a lot of people will find that very, very uncomfortable.

Lucy Downing: I'm not very deep, here, am I really? I'll leave that to Sue. Sue can be deep.

Kelly Molson: There you go. Well over to you, Sue. What's your unpopular opinion?

Sue Penlington: I'm not sure I've got one. I'm a pretty kind of uncontroversial, black and white, what you see is what you get. But I guess, and this is top secret, really, because part of my role is hosting school visits as the learning manager, and all about education and training and engagement. But I think my unpopular opinion is actually GCSEs don't really matter that much. So, I see a lot of young people under a lot of pressure and they're really hyping it up, and the reality is, great if they can get Maths and English, but has anyone ever given you a job based on your GCSE results?

Kelly Molson: No, that's a really good answer, as well. And actually, it's a topic that comes up over and over again when we ask this question, not always about GCSE results, but about university education or whether mainstream education actually works for everybody. And you're right. I don't even know if anyone's ever looked at my GCSE results.

Sue Penlington: No, you don't know. 

Kelly Molson: I don't know that might B in science ever did me any favors.

Lucy Downing: Might now, with that sustainability plan.

Kelly Molson: Maybe.

Sue Penlington: Yeah, I would just want them to come out as a well-rounded individual that's confident and healthy at the end of the day. Because of the pressures on them at the moment, social media and mental health and all that kind of stuff, they're growing up too quickly. So, yeah.

Lucy Downing: I'm not telling my 15-year-old son that because he's revising really well at the moment. I'm not going to tell him they don't matter.

Kelly Molson: Don't let him listen to this podcast. Keep that podcast from him for a while. Now, a couple of weeks ago, I read a LinkedIn post that your Marketing Assistant, Joanne Birch, put out, and it's really relevant to what we're going to talk about today. I just want to read it out to you. She posted, "Looking after the social media for a diverse 25,000-acre rural estate has its challenges. Whilst our content is largely based around tourism and leisure, it is also important to share the stories from the wider estate, from farming, houses, and forestry to landscapes, gamekeeping, and reserve management." Now that, for me, summed up the vastness of Holkham Estates, and it will have an impact on what we're going to talk about today and what a huge challenge this has been for you. But Lucy, I wondered if you could just give us an overview of Holkham Estates for our listeners that might not be aware of you or have visited there themselves.

Lucy Downing: I can. So if you're going to picture it, most of the time, when you think about stately homes, you picture a stately home with a garden. At Holkham, we are very much a landscape with a stately home. So as you said, we're 25,000 acres. We have a national nature reserve, a beach, a beautiful beach. It's been in Shakespeare in Love. If you know the final scenes of Gwyneth Paltrow walking across the sands, that's Holkham. Absolutely stunning. We're a farm. But at the center of that, we've also got our 18th-century Palladian-style mansion, and that's home to Lord and Lady Leicester and their family. They live in the halls, it's a lived-in family home. But then we also have all of our visitor-facing businesses. So we've got the hall, our Hope and Stories experience, which is the attraction museum telling this whole history and the now and the future of Holkham.

Lucy Downing: We've got a high ropes course, cycle hire, boat hire, normally a really buzzing events calendar, usually. Obviously, not this year, but it will be very busy and it's very exciting for next year. We have accommodations. We've got the Victoria Inn, which is near the beach. We've also got Pinewoods, which is a holiday park with caravans and lodges. We have our self-catering lodges, which are within the park. And then we've got farming, conservation, gamekeeping, land and properties. We've got nearly 300 properties on the estate that are tenanted. A lot of those people work for Holkham, or if not, they work in the local community. We've got forestry. And then we've also officing, where our land and property business is, that is home to lots of businesses. And it's won lovely awards for the place to work in the UK. It's a stunning landscape that surrounds it.

Lucy Downing: And we've got, I don't know if you've heard of her, but Monica Vinader, which is a global jewelry brand. She's based at Longlands, at the offices. She decided a few years back to base her whole business there. She's got all of her shops around the world, but that's where her business is. And I think she's ahead of the times, ahead of this year. She knew how wonderful it would be to be working there, I suppose, and not in a city center. So I hope that gives you a flavour, but yeah, I think it's 25,000 acres of beautiful landscapes with a house in the middle. And lots and lots of wildlife.

Kelly Molson: It really is one of the most beautiful places. And that stretch of the world holds a really special place in our hearts. It's somewhere that we visit very, very frequently, and it's stunningly beautiful. But, Sue, I'm just thinking. Sue, you lead on the sustainability plan for the estate, which I'm sure, considering the vastness that we've just heard about, is no mean feat. That's what I'd really love to talk about today, is how you've been able to do that, and what that means. I guess my first question is, how difficult has that been to put plans in place, considering everything that's been happening in 2020? Has it had a huge effect on it? Have you even been able to start?

Sue Penlington: Bizarrely, I would say COVID-19 had a bit of a positive spin, in that environmental awareness has really increased. People are a lot more passionate and aware of the disposable culture, and that sort of thing. My biggest challenge initially, I started the role in April, doing initial research. I started off visiting different teams, but then lockdown arrived in March, so I couldn't actually spend time on the ground. So that was a little bit frustrating. And then in terms of building the strategy, it was probably six months of Zoom with senior managers, which, if anyone knows me, I don't really sit in front of a computer very much. So that was really interesting, though, because we've got a farm manager, we've got a conservation manager, a finance manager, and across all the different businesses, the one thing that was the thread that unites them together is sustainability.

Sue Penlington: So it was a really interesting time, and it took four or five months to really come together, and what we would say is build that strategy, because there's so much. We could chew on everyone's day-to-day jobbing to do it, and take it as sustainability. So it took about four months. And now we're at the exciting stage where we communicate that with our teams. So I've just been doing a workshop with some of the teams on the estate to share it with them, and then really get ready to deliver for 2021.

Kelly Molson: What does that look like, then? What does your sustainability plan look like for 2021? And has it changed dramatically since it was first conceived?

Sue Penlington: No. I would say the shape is still there. So we've got three main themes. One is pioneering environmental gain, which is all about connecting ecosystems and biodiversity and habitat. One is champion low carbon living, which is all about carbon emissions, our impact on construction and housing, our leisure operations, that sort of thing, and farming. And then the last one is the one that we always talk about, tread lightly, stamp out waste. So that's all about recycling, reducing single-use plastics, and that sort of thing. So those three things are what we're running with for 2021. We've got three goals, which are quite ambitious as well. And for me, I just see 2021 is that year of change, where we'll make an impact. So we've done quite a lot of talking, and rightly so, and we want to take our visitors on that journey and really start to chip away at those goals.

Kelly Molson: With the goals that you've got, can you share what they are, and how you'd hope to achieve them with the sustainability plan?

Sue Penlington: Yeah, absolutely. So pioneering environmental gain, the goal is to increase natural capital with every decision that we make. So natural capital, if you're not aware, is soil, it's water, it's air quality, it's biological organisms. So everything in the environment that we as humans need. And what we want to do is increase that. So provide more homes and habitats for birds and insects and pollinators, that sort of thing. And then looking towards construction as well. So, for example, if we're building four houses in Burnham Thorpe, we're now looking at a little meadow down in the village, and let's improve the biodiversity there, but also give the public access. So a big thing for us is bringing nature to people and really engaging with them throughout. So that's pioneering environmental gain. Champion low carbon living is one that you'll probably be pretty familiar with.

Sue Penlington: We haven't decided to go for net-zero. We haven't decided to be carbon neutral. We want to be carbon negative by 2040. So we want to take it that next step, where we're actually taking in more carbon emissions than we're letting out. So that's quite a bold run, and the key to that is agriculture. So our farms emit a lot of carbon through the use of artificial inputs, and the Belted Galloways and our cattle fart and burp a lot. And then also the diesel use for our big tractors and that sort of thing. So subtle changes to that farming system will be really important. And then all the stuff that we know about, like saving energy, we're going to look at a solar farm or solar panels, moving over to electric vehicles, all little changes that will make a big impact.

Sue Penlington: And then the last one, tread lightly, stamp out waste. The goal is to reduce the amount of non-recycled goods on their state by 10% a year for the next 10 years. So at the moment, we're processing the COVID waste mountain, because we had loads of all our cafes went to take away. We had a great event called Feast in the Park, which enabled people to come out into the countryside safely and have some food and drink. But again, that was all packaging, all take away stuff. So we're looking at our waste mountain, but then ultimately we want to reduce the amount of waste that we create.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, it's a really good point to raise that issue. It's something that we talked about a few weeks ago, very briefly, with Yael Coifman that was on, in terms of, I think that in the last few years, us as attractions, but actually us as individuals, we've made quite big steps forward in terms of what we're doing for single-use plastic. I'm really aware of what I'm doing just in my own home, not buying vegetables that are wrapped in plastic, and just small, small changes like that, marginal gains. And, unfortunately, the COVID situation has meant a bit of a step backward in that in terms of packaging, single-use plastic, even down to, we were discussing when you go to the hairdressers now, the robes that they put on you, they're single-use plastic, they're going to get thrown away.

Kelly Molson: And it's a real shame that that's happened. So it's great that that's being acknowledged, and something that you know that you're going to work on for the following year. What I'd love to know is how do you get the general public involved in this? Because you're a huge estate, and as Lucy mentioned earlier, you've got so many different ways that people can visit or engage with what you do there. How do you bring your audience? How do you bring them into that sustainability plan and get them involved with it?

Sue Penlington: Totally from that pre-visit, from the website. Everyone just Googles nowadays, and straight onto the home page, and so sustainability is on that front page, which I think is really important. And then what we're working on is consistent messaging across all the businesses. So if you're staying at Pinewoods Holiday Park, the recycling bins look the same as if you come up to the Courtyard Cafe. So just making things really easy, making things really clear, and then using different media. So, obviously, social media is a great way of communicating with people, interpretation on the site as well, all of the events that we run. We're looking at running a green-based event as well. So every sort of touchpoint that they come across, and through staff as well is really important. We just want to take them on the journey.

Lucy Downing: I think that staff point's really important as well, that we're a team of 250 people, and it should be seen at every touchpoint. So yeah, that's where Sue and Alex, our head of HR, are doing these staff training sessions to introduce our sustainability strategy, and get everyone involved and make sure that everyone's informed and passionate about it and really energized because we are a customer-facing business. So when the customers, whoever they're engaged with, whether they're buying a coffee in the cafe, or whether they're on a nature walk on the nature reserve with one of the team, everybody is talking the same talk and believing what we're doing and know what's happening and can engage everyone in it. So I think that's a really important point.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, definitely. And that was one of my questions, actually, is how does the plan translate to visitors and their experience, but actually, it starts with your internal team.

Lucy Downing: It does, yeah. It's so important. So I think that's, yeah, without everybody's buy-in, and it's actually, we've got our vision. We have a vision for Holkham, which is to be the UK's most pioneering and sustainable rural estate. And then, under that, we have our five great Holkham behaviors. And last year, we made the decision that one of those would change, and in its place is sustainability. So there's actually a behavior for us. It's something that we need to be inherent. That something that we naturally do, so every decision that we make on the estate, whether it's to print something, whether it's put a lid on a coffee, whether it's the supplier we're using. That sustainability has to be a natural instinct, and that's what we're aiming for.

Sue Penlington: Right.

Kelly Molson: And that's why it's so important to embed it with the team, isn't it? Because there's so many different people involved in decision-makings throughout the estate. Each of them has to be fully aware of that sustainability plan to understand, okay, well, what decisions do I make about what paper we order, or what suppliers we work with? Are they aligned to our plan as well? It's a huge, huge task, isn't it? But really exciting.

Lucy Downing: It is. It's really exciting. And also, if we can, whether visitors or one of those team members, if they can also take that thinking home and start to make changes in their day-to-day lives, and then they talk to other people and their friends and their family members, and it's a ripple effect. And it is much more in the human psyche now, thanks to David Attenborough and COVID. And we are talking about it more than ever before, but it's actually taking action and making changes. That's the important bit.

Kelly Molson: So one of the things that you mentioned earlier is, and this is coming back to how this translate to the visitor experience, but you mentioned specific events around sustainability as well. Is that something that you're looking to do more of next year, to highlight the plan and to bring your audience into it and help them be part of it as well?

Lucy Downing: Absolutely. So I think, in general, we have lots of tours in the hall and on the nature reserve. So we'll be looking at incorporating that into those, and then on to chat about it. But a green event, we want to have a big event at Holkham. It's our vision to be the most sustainable estate and be pioneering, which means that we want to bring people on that journey with us. So, yeah, we're looking at introducing that next year, and we hope it will grow, much like, I suppose, Glastonbury, from a small music festival. So if we can have that span of growth, that'd be great.

Kelly Molson: So, can you share any of the plans for this event? Because I'd love to hear about it, myself. I'm sure our listeners would.

Sue Penlington: Yeah. So, what Lucy alluded to, we have a year-round program, and we have to manage to inform and inspire influence. Be it guided walks on the national nature reserve, or we do trailer tours, explore with the experts. So we can learn a little bit more detail, that sort of thing. So throughout our whole events program, we have what I guess would be called educational events, but they're really interesting. And so we'll layer sustainability throughout those. And this individual event, we're looking at starting fairly small, and really influencing local tenants and the local community, and looking at a pioneering environmental gain. That's an area where we've got opportunities. I think we're already ahead of the game in some respects. And then we'd like to build it as a lifestyle event, but obviously, at the moment, we don't know if you can have 500 people together or 10,000, so going to start small and build it up.

Kelly Molson: Yeah. That's a challenge in itself, right? Trying to plan anything in advance at the moment. We have no clue what's coming up. I'd like to understand a little bit about how you measure the effectiveness of the plans. Actually, what would be really interesting is maybe to get you back on at the end of next year, to see how these plans have developed and what's come from it. But, yeah. Lucy, how do you measure the effectiveness of it?

Lucy Downing: Well, I think there's two different focuses here, but what overrides all of it is data is king. So I think that we're, at the moment, undergoing, we're nearly finished doing our first big carpeting audits of every business. So that's land businesses, but also all the leisure businesses as well because we really need to know where we are right now. Because I don't think you can really set goals and informed goals and also track your progress and measure your progress all the way through without knowing where your starting point is. So that's really important, particularly with our carbon goal. And then, from there, we're going to measure and track all the way through. So we've got lots of systems, whether it's in farming, but we're going to measure and track. And then that most probably will adjust our goals, because at the moment, we're saying we'd like to be carbon negative by 2040. We may well be better than we think. We could be worse. We just don't know.

Lucy Downing: So that's really important. And then in terms of marketing, I suppose, that's what I'm looking after. It's our web traffic, it's our social growth, our in-use engagement. We'll be doing online and on-site surveys to find out if people are engaged, where they're at, what they want to find out about more, our PR coverage, it's everything. And then, as you said, it's having those times where you review, so like you say you'd like to chat with us next year, find out where we've got to, have we surpassed some of our goals, and then others we're struggling with. It'll be really interesting, but that's definitely a review. And I think that's where Sue's role is so important because she's herding sheep. I don't think she is. Real amazing. But all the general managers of all the different businesses, they could have all gone off on their own tack with their own goals. What Sue's done is brought everyone together. We're all working towards the same strategy and goals, and it makes it then an estate vision and objectives. So I think that's really important, and it's wonderful to work with all the businesses, as well.

Kelly Molson: Yeah. So you've united everyone under a goal. That's lovely.

Lucy Downing: When people go onto our website and see our film for our sustainability, we've titled it, Wonder, because we feel we are a place of wonder, you stand in awe, we're peaceful, but you also wonder what it could look like if you don't do anything about it if you don't look at sustainability. So Wonder is our sustainability campaign, it's the title of our strategy. And Sue is our Wonder Woman.

Kelly Molson: Oh, she absolutely is.

Lucy Downing: She's going to hate that. Sorry, Sue!

Sue Penlington: Yeah, [inaudible 00:27:29] .

Lucy Downing: I'll get you a mug. I'm going to send you a Wonder Woman mug because I think you need to keep that on your desk all day long.

Sue Penlington: Yeah. I bought sustainability shoes. I'm not sure if it works.

Kelly Molson: I think Wonder Woman is a little bit, you know, that's power.

Lucy Downing: A mug and a cloak. I think that it needs both.

Kelly Molson: I'm not sure Sue's keen on that. Don't think the cloak's going to go down very well.

Lucy Downing: Or the gold beads. Anyway, [inaudible 00:27:54] .

Kelly Molson: It would be interesting to know what advice you can offer to any of our listeners that will potentially be going through this process themselves, or thinking about how they can make, you know, we talked about small marginal gains, where you can make things increasingly better and better and better over time. Are there any advice that you could share with our listeners, in terms of how they start or begin to look at sustainability?

Lucy Downing: Interesting. I was chatting with Lord Leicester yesterday about the subject, and we're agreeing that I think you definitely need to know where you are, particularly as a business. You need to know where you are because then you can set your goals in a realistic fashion. I think the one thing to remember is that it has to be realistic because you need to set goals that you can financially deliver. Because if they're not financially viable, then you're not going to be here as a business to deliver them. And what we're also finding, talking to other businesses, is that actually quite a lot of the sustainability gains that you can make are actually financial ones, too. Because you always probably cut down on some of your resources that you're using, you'll think better, you'll work smarter. I think that's something to definitely remember, that it has to be sustainable in all ways, socially, financially, and environmentally.

Lucy Downing: So that's definitely some key advice. And I think be authentic. There's a lot of talk around greenwashing. Don't be guilty of thinking, "Wow, this is something we really should do, and we're going to do it." And just talk about it. It has to be authentic. So really think about where you can make the biggest changes environmentally for sustainability and focus on those, and just make sure, yeah. It's like us, really. We're saying we're launching our sustainability strategy. Actually, for the past 10 years, we've got a hundred-acre solar farm. We've got an anaerobic digester. We heat the hall and all of our businesses with a wood chip. So we've got our biomass boilers. So we've been doing it for quite a long time without telling anyone. But what we're now doing is saying, actually, that's not even enough. We need to up it further. So yeah, that's the thing. I think it just has to be authentic and realistic.

Sue Penlington: Yeah. And from my point of view, I'm a bit of a doer, not a talker, so don't get bogged down. It could be absolutely overwhelming. And I think when I was first approached by my boss here, I was just like, wow, because it isn't just rubbish. It's every single business. It's huge. But from my point of view, small differences can make a really big impact. And keep chipping away at it, because solutions are out there. There's loads of people doing really cool things. Every night, I'm on Google looking up something else, or going down another rabbit hole because I've seen something on Twitter. So for me, every day's a school day, but yeah, get stuck in and collaborate with other like-minded people. Nowadays, you're not considered swampy because you're talking about sustainability. It's totally on brand, isn't it? And let's not reinvent the wheel. If we can learn from other people, then let's do that. Going through it, literally, every single individual can make a difference.

Kelly Molson: Oh, Sue. You've just got me right there, Sue. I think what you said about collaborating and learning from people, that has been something that's so key this year. People are so willing to share their plans. They're so willing to share what they're doing and how they're doing things, especially within this sector. There's always somebody that's doing, or a couple of steps ahead of you, that you can learn from, and people are so, so willing to give up that advice and their time at the moment as well. So definitely, that's a key one for me, ask people. Ask people for help. Ask people have to do things. Lovely. Thank you both so much. I cannot wait to see what happens next year. I'm really excited. I'm going to be at that green event, for sure.

Lucy Downing: Yeah. Well, you'll get an invitation, a special one. You'll have a special invitation.

Kelly Molson: Thank you. I might even bring Doris, my dog, who has kindly not barked through the whole of this podcast. Thanks, Doris. Now, we always end the podcast by asking our guests about a book that they'd recommend. So if you've got a book each that you'd recommend, that you either just love or it's maybe helped shape your career in some way.

Lucy Downing: Okay. For me, I could have just been, I looked at Brene Brown and all of the books have been published, they're really helpful. But I've actually got it here, I brought it in with me today.

Kelly Molson: Oh, that's a great book.

Lucy Downing: So I'll just say The Kitchen Diaries because I'm a bit of a foodie. And I think that you need to be nourished well, because if you're fed well, if you feed yourself well, and you really, again, it's about sustainability. It's about knowing where your food comes from. You then perform better. So if you want to do really well at your job, and in life in general, you need to look after yourself. So yeah, Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries. It's a very spectacular book. Yeah. I love Nigel Slater. I think he's an inspiration. And he calms me down at the end of the day. Otherwise, I can get quite excited.

Kelly Molson: He has this beautiful garden, as well. He has a really beautiful garden. Whenever I see that on telly, I'm like, that's the garden of dreams. It's so neat and beautiful and lovely.

Lucy Downing: It is. Oh, he's got a great kitchen. And he relocated his kitchen, and he's down in the depths of his kit where the old kitchen used to be. Yeah. A bit of a sanctuary. So yeah, I'm a bit of a stalker of Nigel Slater.

Kelly Molson: All right. Well maybe he's listening, and he'll run a mile now.

Lucy Downing: Yeah, he will.

Kelly Molson: Sue, what about you? Do you have one you can share with us?

Sue Penlington: Well, really any Usborne book that's got a lift flap for my 4-year-old son. We love reading anything about science or farm machinery. But, to pull it back to sustainability, it's a bit of a cliche, but there's an awesome book called Dirt to Soil, by Gabe Brown. And it's all about regenerative agriculture, and how he turned an American dust bowl into a sustainable farm that can grow crops and repair the soil. And it's all the kind of ethos that we're delivering over here. So, yeah, really inspiring. And I haven't got it to show you because I've passed it on to someone in my team to read.

Kelly Molson: Oh, I love that. That's what you should do with books. They're never to be thrown. They're always to be kept or passed on.

Sue Penlington: Yeah, that's a really good read.

Kelly Molson: Brilliant book choices. I love that they're on-topic as well, because, as you know, we give these books away as prizes. So again, if you'd like to win a copy of these books, and if you head over to our Twitter account, Skip the Queue, and you retweet this episode announcement with the comment "I want Lucy and Sue's books", then you'll be in a chance with winning them. And so if you have got a really keen interest in sustainability, this is the podcast for you to enter that competition on because I don't think you could have got two better books. Thank you. I cannot wait to come and see what you guys do next year. Just before we leave, can you let us know where's the best place to see what you're up to? Is it your website?

Lucy Downing: It's our website and all of our social channels. And join our newsletter. Join the database so that you received the news. At the moment, you might get a little bit bombarded by Christmas, but a lot of that is sustainable Christmas. So it's really nice to read. But definitely head over to our home page. You can sign up there. And watch the launch film, which is wonderful. And Sue and I, this afternoon, are about to go and record the second film.

Kelly Molson: There you go. So, head over to the website. And what is the website? We'll put all of the links in the show notes, but what's the website domain for us, Lucy?

Lucy Downing: Holkham.co.uk.

Kelly Molson: There you go. Thank you both for coming on. It's been an absolute pleasure finding out about what's happening and getting to know you both. So thank you.

Lucy Downing: Thank you.

Sue Penlington: Yeah, no worries. Thank you. And don't hold fire. If the restrictions allow, Kelly, come to Holkham before this time next year.

Kelly Molson: I will be there. No worries about that, Sue. 

Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five-star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the Queue is brought to you by 

Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

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Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.

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Show references:

Jon Young is Director of BVA-BDRC. With over a decade in the Culture, Tourism and Leisure. Author of Holiday Trends since 2012 and working across a range of quantitative and qualitative methodologies.

www.linkedin.com/in/jon-young-9451a92a/

www.bva-bdrc.com

https://hcontent.bva-bdrc.com/clearsight

www.bathnes.gov.uk

www.painshill.co.uk

Transcription:

Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world. 

In today's episode, I speak with Jon Young, Director at BVA BDRC, an award-winning international consumer insight consultancy. 

We discuss their exciting new research around pre-booking and what the drawbacks to this are in the eyes of the visitor. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue. 

Kelly Molson: Jon, thank you for joining me on the podcast today. It's really lovely to see you again.

Jon Young: Yeah, you too. And yeah, I've been listening for quite a while now. So it's an honor to actually to be on here as well. I think it's got a great role to play for the industry. So thank you as well for doing it.

Kelly Molson: Aww, Jon, thank you. That's super kind of you, right? Don't be too nice to me yet because you know that we're going to go into our icebreaker questions.

Jon Young: Yeah. Which I'm a bit worried about.

Kelly Molson: Don't be worried. I think I've been quite kind to you, Jon. So I want to know what would you rather give up, your smartphone or your computer?

Jon Young: I would say my smartphone definitely because I'm always trying to spend less time on it and I think that'd be a great way of doing that. I have actually read stories of people who've done it, but they've never sort of followed it through. But yeah, so definitely the smartphone.

Kelly Molson: What do you do to try and reduce your screen time? Do you lock it in a drawer in the evenings or-?

Jon Young: I've put it into a separate room. I've tried that. What else have I done? You can set your settings so it's grayscale. And apparently, that sort of deactivates the colors in some of your apps, which makes them less appealing. I've actually tried quite a lot and miserably failed. I've read loads of books about that sort of thing, but I'm still sort of scrolling through a tad at night and it's next to my bed at night as well. So I've failed at that. So if you could take it away from me, I'm sure my wife would say thank you as well if you do that.

Kelly Molson: Okay. I don't know if I can help you with that because I'm the world's worst. It's difficult, isn't it? Because I think I like to engage with people. We speak on Twitter every now and again. And I think that the Twitter platform and LinkedIn for me-

Jon Young: Yeah. Actually, that is something I've done. So I can't access Twitter on my phone now, is just through my laptop. So that has helped. But you end up just wheeling that out then at night.

Kelly Molson: I'll just get my laptop out and check.

Jon Young: Yeah, check something. Yeah.

Kelly Molson: Okay. All right. Next one, what was your least favorite food as a child? And do you still hate it or do you love it now?

Jon Young: Mushrooms. I remember quite clearly when I was about five years old, my dad tried to feed me a mushroom. I think he thought that this would be a good way to get me to like them. And I hated them and he chose to... He actually physically puts it in my mouth and I bit his finger. And he didn't talk to me for a while. He had a few stern words. I remember it really clearly. And my wife, she's Polish and they love going mushroom picking whenever we're in Poland. It's like quite a regular pastime. So they go into the woods and they go mushroom picking and they really, really try to get me to like them. But I think I read that if you eat something five times, then you will like it. So maybe I just need to do that, but I still hate it.

Kelly Molson: So you still hate them. You're still a mushroom hater. I think that's quite common, isn't it? Mushrooms are a bit of... They're a bit marmite for people, aren't they?

Jon Young: Yeah. I like marmite, but mushrooms, no, unfortunately, but it's an ambition to like them.

Kelly Molson: To like mushrooms?

Jon Young: Yeah. That's what lockdown does. You have these weird ambitions.

Kelly Molson: I love that. It's such a strange goal, Jon. Okay.

Jon Young: Well, I'm full of them. 

Kelly Molson: All right. Well, let's go to the unpopular opinion. So tell me something that you believe to be true that hardly anybody agrees with you on.

Jon Young: So I struggle with this. So I've oscillated between going really superficial to really deep. So I've ended up with something a little bit superficial, but so my unpopular opinion is that I really don't enjoy Bake Off or Strictly. Just not for me. And I've tried really hard to like both, but I just can't get excited about people baking on TV or dancing. And I like doing both. And I know the masive tube layer or something like that, the dance, and the Soggy Bottom and all that. I can hold a conversation. It's almost like people who don't like football, but they can kind of hold that kitchen conversation.

Kelly Molson: You've got the cultural reference down.

Jon Young: Yeah, absolutely.

Kelly Molson: But you're not down with the shows. 

Jon Young: But it's a no, unfortunately.

Kelly Molson: I'm kind of feeling you on this one because if it's on, if Bake Off's on, I'd watch it, but I'm not a massive baker. So I don't have a huge kind of interest in it. And also, I thought I would love Strictly. I used to tap dance when I was a kid.

Jon Young: All right. Okay.

Kelly Molson: But I was really big into tap dancing and I thought I'd love it. Just don't love it. I feel like we're taking one for the team there, Jon, because I've agreed with you on this. And I think we're going to get some Twitter backlash.

Jon Young: Backlash, yeah.

Kelly Molson: Sorry, everyone. But thank you for that, Jon. 

Jon Young: No worries.

Kelly Molson: So Jon, you are Director of the BVA BDRC.

Jon Young: Yes. 

Kelly Molson: It's also a name that I have gotten wrong about four million times on this podcast.

Jon Young: I know. It's a nightmare.

Kelly Molson: Something needs to be done about this, but tell us a little bit about what you're doing.

Jon Young: So with the name, I think it was the brainchild of the founders about 25, maybe 30 years ago now. And they just came up with a name, Business Development Research Consultants, and there were just two of them and it got shortened. And now here we are. There's about a hundred of us and we're stuck with it, but we've got bought by BVA, which didn't help. That's where that comes from. It wasn't some kind of genius branding idea. But yeah. So as a company, we've got an international presence, so we've got offices around the world, but we are so split up into divisions. So we've got two divisions in our London office. So we've got this of the commercial team and that they work with the banks and media. So ITV, Channel 4, et cetera.

Jon Young: And then we've got our division, which we call On The Move. And the teamwork in, we sort of specialise with attractions and tourist boards. So I've been there 11 years now. And throughout that time, I've worked pretty much exclusively with visitor attractions and tourist boards, so the likes of Visit Britain, Visit Wales, Visit Scotland and a few overseas as well. So we do market research and we do the whole spectrum really. So it can be anything from focus groups to one-on-one depth interviews, to online surveys. So we do audience segmentation, membership work, pricing, pretty much anything that involves trying to understand what the public thinks. 

Jon Young: And yeah, we work with loads and loads of brilliant attractions. It's a wonderful sector to work in as I'm sure you know, Kelly. So we work with the little museums and some of the large nationals as well. We run the ALVA Benchmarking Survey. So this is a survey that is conducted a few times a year amongst visitors to around 80 different attractions across the UK. And we then sort of benchmark each attraction against the others just to understand the visitor experience, which marketing they've used, their profile, and a load of other things as well. So it's quite broad, but yeah, it means we work with lots of great organizations.

Kelly Molson: It's incredibly useful as well, the things that you provide. And I think one of the ways that we met was through the Visitor Experience Forum.

Jon Young: That's right.

Kelly Molson: We both spoke on one of their webinars, didn't we?

Jon Young: Yeah.

Kelly Molson: And I had become aware of what you guys do at the BVA BDRC because of the consumer sentiment tracker that you've been doing all the way through lockdown, which was something you were... It was something that you did off your own back. So tell us a little bit about it because it was incredibly useful for us as a kind of suppliers to the industry, but it must have been a fantastic resource for the sector itself.

Jon Young: Yeah, it was really great. So it was actually the brainchild of my colleague, Thomas Folque. I'll give him a name check there because it was his idea back in, I think, late March. And obviously, a lot of our work got canceled. We work with a lot of hotels as well. So that's the other team in our division. And so he just felt it'd be good to have some sort of tracker and then we also discussed it and it grew from there. And there's, I guess, a dual motivation just like any sort of content marketing. It did obviously paint us in a good light. It was a good way to sort of stay in contact with organizations that we worked with, but also to make new contacts. And I think I spoke on about 10 different webinars in the first two months and one of which I met you yourself. 

Jon Young: But it was also really good for us to help out as well. And most of us in our team, we are regular attractions visitors ourselves, and we've sort of built up relationships with the people we work with as well. So it was nice to be able to provide something for free. And we did that for 23 consecutive weeks. So every week, we produced a new report. It kept some of my colleagues busy as well because I think in the end, it was about 70 pages which is a bit ridiculous by the end of it. But it was full of data to understand how people felt, whether they were open to go out in public and who was and who wasn't and loads and loads of other things. 

Jon Young: And so we stopped that in August, but we've now gone down to conducting the research on a fortnightly basis and producing a monthly report. And so there should be one actually landing around about now.

Kelly Molson: Oh, fabulous.

Jon Young: Yeah, it's been a good experience. And when we did stop originally, we had a load of lovely emails from lots of different attractions saying how useful it had been. So yeah, it was worthwhile.

Kelly Molson: I think that's something that's really come across from great people in the sector throughout this situation that we've been in, is that things that have... Like you described it. I mean, ultimately, it's a marketing piece. It was a content marketing piece, but it was helpful. And that's what's been really, really important, is that anything that people were pushing out was helpful and useful to the sector. And it was so invaluable to be able to see the snapshot of how people were feeling. And even for us, we were able to kind of build our own content pieces on your content piece because we thought, "Oh, wow, people have really changed their opinion on how they feel about this thing." Now, that's something that affects what we do. Now, we can talk about it. And so, yeah, thank you for doing it because I just think it was such a great and useful piece of data to produce.

Jon Young: Yeah. Thank you. And I think I'm not sure if other sectors would have responded so well to, I think, because one thing that's really striking about the attraction sector is just how much everybody works together. And more often than not, they are actually technically competitors, but they don't see it that way. They think that as the sum of the parts is greater than the individual. Yeah. You see that with ALVA and I think we've had lots of organizations who we may sort of compete with also promoting this as well. So yeah, it was great.

Kelly Molson: Brilliant. Yeah. And sector communication is something that we've been talking about all the way through this. Long way, it continues.

Jon Young: Yeah. Absolutely. 

Kelly Molson: So this brings us to a very recent and new piece of data that you have been working on. And I'm really excited because I have a little copy of it here, and I feel like there's not many people that have got this. So I feel quite special. Now, this is about a topic that has... We have been talking about this probably since March, but it is still a hot topic and it's on everyone's minds and it's pre-booking. Now, there is a huge debate at the moment around the benefits of pre-booking versus the more kind of traditional walkup approach the attractions have taken. And you've carried out a new piece of research, which is specifically around this. Just give us an overview of what you've done, of what you've carried out.

Jon Young: Yeah. So actually listening to your podcast and some of the various conversations that we've witnessed on various webinars, we felt that there was a lot of debates and a lot of opinion that maybe is worth putting some numbers against some of these opinions just to understand what was an issue and what wasn't. So we added, I think, around a dozen questions to our fortnightly tracker that we've just spoken about amongst a nationally representative sample of the UK population. And we just try to understand what proportion of these people had pre-booked, what proportion had booked but not shown up? What were the reasons for this? Were they understandable? Now, what proportion had actually booked and didn't fancy a visit but actually visited because they booked?

Jon Young: And then we've also looked at whether people are put off by pre-booking generally. Whether people would think it's a good or a bad thing to go to 100% pre-booking after COVID. And what are the reasons that people like it and the reasons people don't like it? So I guess that's it in a nutshell. And we've also looked at some of the different audiences and dug into some of our other data as well just to understand some of the other issues that people are talking about such as spontaneous visits. So that's it in a nutshell.

Kelly Molson: Excellent. Let's dive in to this because it's really interesting. I'd have to say I am a huge advocate for pre-booking. And I know, again, I've said this over and over and over on these podcast interviews. And it's quite surprising. I think I put a post out on LinkedIn a little while ago asking people what their experiences of it are and whether they think it's a good thing, whether they're uncomfortable with it. And the responses I got were really surprising.

Kelly Molson: I think potentially because I'm very much a planner and I'm very comfortable to book in advance about what I'm going to do, but obviously, there's a percentage of people that are more spontaneous and they would prefer to just decide what they're going to do on the day. And pre-booking doesn't work for them at all. And it's really fascinating, the data that's come out. So from an attractions perspective, we know what the benefits to the attractions are. We know that pre-booking, it allows them to know how many people are coming. It's great from an operational perspective. They know how much of their team they need in. They can even out that kind of pattern of visitor arrivals throughout the day. And we have seen an increase in donations and gift aid contributions as well via pre-booking. But let's start with what the visitors see as a benefit. How supportive are visitors of pre-booking?

Jon Young: So I think it's quite sort of striking that the majority of your markets, so these are people who visit attractions, seven in 10 do think it's a good thing. So 70% stated that they would still go ahead and visit if they found out that the place they had wanted to visit required pre-booking. So that is a strong majority, 70%. We also asked the question in a slightly different way if post-COVID attractions went to 100% pre-booking, would you see this as a good or a bad thing? And 75% stated either a good thing, or it wouldn't make any difference to them. So these are strong majorities who are probably in your camp, Kelly, who are sort of the planners and the organizers and they're fine with this.

Kelly Molson: Interesting. But that's not all of them, is it? Okay. 

Jon Young: Absolutely.

Kelly Molson: Which we'll get to in a little while. And what do they see the main benefits of pre-booking is?

Jon Young: The main benefit was to be able to plan the time with more certainty. So that was around three in five. So 57% of visitors to indoor attractions. Slightly lower for gardens, and just to make the point that we tested pre-booking at indoor attractions. So looking at museums, art galleries, historic houses, and also gardens and country parks because clearly, the weather has a big impact too. 

Kelly Molson: Sure.

Jon Young: And we also tested the restaurants just to kind of get a feel for that sort of benchmark where pre-booking has been in place for quite a long time. So yeah, the main reason was just the ability to plan in advance. The second most popular reason was that there's less queuing when we get there. So over half stated that. People were allowed to give more than one reason.

Jon Young: And then it drops a little bit to around three in 10 stating that places just tend to be less busy. One in four saying, "We can do some research ahead of the visit." And I think personally, I think that's quite an important reason even though only one in four were giving it. I think for me, one of the benefits of pre-booking to the attraction is they can have this conversation with the visitor in advance of the visit. And you can maybe raise awareness of parts of the attraction that you wouldn't necessarily see.

Jon Young: Year after year in research we've done with attractions, we speak to big chunks of visitors who say they went for maybe an exhibition, but they had no idea that half of the other elements of a site were there. They didn't know that there was an original version of this document on the back and would have loved to have seen it. So I think being able to have that conversation is really important. But for the visitor, that's one in four. And then one in five stating there are fewer debates about what to do on the day. So I can imagine families, certainly, if it's not spontaneous and it's in the diary a week in advance, then you don't have to have that debate and any sort of toys thrown out of premises.

Kelly Molson: Yeah. It's decided in advance, "This is what we're doing on Saturday, team. So let's plan for it." Rather than on the day, maybe have to have multiple conversations with different people in your family group about, what does everybody wants to do? The decision's already been made, we're doing this. 

Jon Young: Absolutely. Yeah. 

Kelly Molson: So what about drawbacks? Let's dive into those because I find these really interesting. So what are the drawbacks in the eyes of the visitor?

Jon Young: Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, three in 10 felt it was actually... They'd probably think twice and not visit and one in four saying it's a bad thing post-COVID. And the number one reason that people don't like to book ahead was that they just don't like to commit to things too early. They prefer to be spontaneous. And that was 67% of those who thought it was a bad thing to go to 100% pre-booking. So that's quite a big chunk of people who are quite spontaneous in their behavior. And we had some really... I thought, some quite interesting quotes alongside that. So we asked people just to write out, "Why do you think is a bad thing?" I'll just read a few of those out. "I like to be able to make spontaneous decisions in my life. I don't like to be tied to a time. Because I often visit places when I'm passing by." 

Jon Young: And we've noticed in our research that if it's a city center attraction, particularly if it's free, you will often have up to one in five of your visitors actually deciding to visit when passing. And I do this quite often myself. Our office is in Holborn in Central London. So you'll often go for a walk maybe at lunchtime or after work. And I might sometimes walk past the British Museum. And I think, "Actually, I might just pop in," or any number of others in the area. And when I was working in Birmingham, there's Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, similar sort of thing. You can easily just pop in. And there's a lot of people for whom attractions are just nice places to be. And it's just that they might choose it over a café or over a park just because it's a nice place to spend some time. So that was quite interesting. 

Jon Young: The next couple I thought were also quite an interesting. So one person said, "If you plan on visiting several places in a day, that means a lot of booking and you have to be hyper-organized."

Kelly Molson: Which again, with a family, that's difficult, right? It's hard enough to get people out of the house on time to get to the first attraction at the time that you've booked. But then you're constantly clock-watching because you think, "Well, we've got to get to here at this point as well." And things might happen that way-lead you.

Jon Young: Paul had actually said he had his own personal experience of going to London during half term and with his son and then maybe they had a few museums planned and it's actually quite hard sticking to time. Yeah. So I think that's actually one that I hadn't thought of beforehand because you kind of think in the silo, don't you? I'm pre-booking one place. But the reality is people try to squeeze loads in, especially if they're visiting Central London or a big city.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, completely. And from my personal view, I had kind of not considered how close people might be to attractions and how easy it is just to nip in. You described where your office is in Holborn. We're outside of London. So for me, I'm always kind of making a trip somewhere to go to something. So I've got to get into London first. So for me, I'm kind of always doing that plan ahead. There isn't really those opportunities to be spontaneous where I live. So I don't think about being in that zone.

Jon Young: Absolutely. I mean, I know London. I'm from South Wales, but I probably know London in that sense better than anywhere in the UK. But maybe Edinburgh from when I've been there is quite similar. But if you imagine, I've been to South Kensington umpteen times and often take family there. And I'm thinking to the last time my sister came up, we went to the Natural History Museum as you do. And then we finished and we had a bit more time. So then, "Actually, should we just pop in the Science Museum?" So we went there and I think we even went to the V&A afterwards just because we were enjoying ourselves so much, but we hadn't planned the other two. It was just Natural History Museum. So I think certainly when they're quite close to each other, that's quite something to bear in mind too. 

Jon Young: What else was there? Another quite interesting quote, a couple of quotes around the spontaneity point. Someone said, "When it's about entertainment, it's just stupid to plan your mood." I quite liked that. 

Kelly Molson: I like that.

Jon Young: And about three months ago, I spoke to somebody. I was doing some work for a museum in Central London, and I was trying to understand the sort of habits before lockdown, before COVID, and after lockdown. And the lady I spoke to was an artist. And we did the Zoom chats and you could see in the background, there was wonderful pieces of art. And she's clearly an incredibly creative person. And she said that before COVID, she was going to attractions maybe two, three times a week if not more. And she just liked being in the National Gallery or the National Portrait Gallery or all these other places. But after lockdown restrictions were lifted, she said she'd been maybe twice in a month if that. And she had a few reasons, but the main one for her was pre-booking. And she said, "I'm such a spontaneous person. I really hate planning." And she even said that when you've got something planned say at two o'clock, then you spend most of the morning kind of thinking about that. 

Kelly Molson: Right. 

Jon Young: You know what I mean? I could actually imagine myself, there's a little anxiety. Am I doing everything for time? So there's definitely that type of person and they definitely exist and they are a minority, but they're a fairly chunky minority. And then there's the not organized people. Someone's said, "It would put me off because I hate organizing. I like to float around and browse. The commitment can be a serious burden and other events may occur." Maybe a bit extreme, but I think these people clearly exist and I think they're quite valid reasons.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, completely valid. And this is really difficult, isn't it? Because as an attraction, you need to cater for all of these different types of people and how everybody needs and wants the flexibility to be able to book or not book. Gosh, it's really difficult task that people-

Jon Young: It really is. And I think a couple of people gave the weather as well, which is obviously more applicable for some than others. I think one thing that maybe is missed in the debates, and maybe I've just not heard enough debates in it, but is that a lot of visits to attractions aren't necessarily those tick box, memorable moment, life-changing experiences. And if you're going to Warner Brothers or maybe a Merlin Attraction or Natural History Museum for the first time, then obviously, these are moments you'll never forget. But a lot of attraction visits are actually really casual visits. We call them the social mindset segments and they tend to make up around one in five people who visited typically visit attractions. And these are people who just go there to be in a nice environment and to maybe chat with a friend or to have a coffee or just to be around like-minded people. And I guess that can sometimes get missed off. It's not necessarily that big standout tick box experience every time.

Kelly Molson: Yeah. Like the example that you gave of the artist, I'm sure she finds those environments quite inspiring for her work and for what she does and who she is as a person. To have to plan that is almost like planning your inspiration. It's not quite right, is it? You take yourself off for a walk somewhere random to be inspired. And I think having to kind of go, "Okay, well, at two o'clock, I'm going to go to the Tate for my inspiration for the day," it doesn't quite sit well with that, does it?

Jon Young: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. It is a minority, but yeah, it feels quite valid.

Kelly Molson: Are there any differences by visitor party types? So families, retirees, et cetera.

Jon Young: Yeah. So it was quite interesting when we asked this question and when we looked at the life stage. So we looked at pre-nesters, those under 35s without children in household, older independents, so 35 and over without children in the household, then families, and then retirees. So we look at those four different life stages as opposed to age group. And families were a little bit higher in terms of being resistant. I think it is worth noting that they were a little bit higher. It's about seven percentage points. It's not a huge amount, but the vast majority were still happy with that. And I think my take, having thought about this quite a bit now, is that the differences aren't really based on life stage or party size per se. There are some, and I can understand why families would be resistant.

Jon Young: There are more moving parts with a family literally and more things that can go wrong in the day. Whereas if myself and my partner, we've just got ourselves to worry about. So I can see why that would be a barrier. But for me, the biggest distinction is in attitudes. And as I mentioned earlier, we do quite a lot of audience segmentation. So we don't tend to do them on demographics anymore. So we don't do it on gender or age or any other demographic. We do it on people's attitudes and base their attitudes to life. Or it could be to how they do their leisure behavior or anything else. And that's what's come across here, I think, is that the key distinctions are attitudes to pre-booking and how organized you are and how spontaneous you are and how much you like planning and how much you don't.

Jon Young: And that does transcend all life stages. Certainly, there's an indication that families are a bit more resistant, but it's not as big as the sort of differences in terms of attitudes. One other thing we noticed though is that even though families were a bit more resistant, they were actually more likely to go ahead. So it's almost as if they were gritting their teeth and visiting. And again, that did make sense because I guess when you're a family, you really need to fill your spare time and to get out and do things. So whereas maybe an individual on their own or a couple, there's less pressure to do that.

Kelly Molson: Yeah. You've got the challenge again of keeping children and younger members of your family occupied. 

Jon Young: Absolutely.

Kelly Molson: So that's that. We've got to do something. Whether we like this or not, we've got to get them out of the house. They're a bit stuck in these four walls. Everyone's going crazy. We've got to go out and do something kind of attitude.

Jon Young: Yeah. So my sort of take from this whole section is that not to get too caught up on the party type and just to think about these different attitudes because that feels to be the big dividing point.

Kelly Molson: Okay. And audiences that are not picked up by the research. Again, I think this is really interesting to me because I hadn't thought about some of these things as actually being a challenge for people, which is it's not on them to be honest. I should have been more aware of them, but tell us about the audiences that have not been picked up by the research and how it would affect them.

Jon Young: Yeah. So I think the international audiences. This was amongst a UK sample. So I can visualize here my wife's parents who are Polish and they don't speak any English. And coming over here as they have done a few times and just setting them free into London and see what they get up to. And they often do visit attractions, but they'll walk up and they'll have that conversation. And there's less room for error, but to ask them to go on a website, they don't book their National Express from Stansted. They get my wife to do that because they know that they can do something wrong. They're a great example in my mind that there's likely to be a barrier for international visitors, particularly those who don't speak English. And there's lots of those who come to London and the rest of the UK.

Jon Young: So that's definitely a barrier thing. And unless you can cover all the bases with language, then I think that will be. I know that Google have an inbuilt translation function, but again, you have to be quite IT savvy to know that. So I think that's definitely one audience. The older retirees, so we conduct our surveys on a panel. So these are people who've signed up to do the surveys online. So we're naturally missing out that small proportion of older citizens who aren't that IT savvy. So I guess my Nan would have fallen into that category. She always liked to phone ahead, for example. So there is a danger that they lose out a little bit. And I think, obviously, there's always the option to phone and they do that. But perhaps that is just one extra barrier then, one extra step when maybe a year before, they would have just turned up. 

Jon Young: So that audience, I think, is quite an important one still, although they are becoming more IT savvy. I think a lot of data shows that. I see people's grands on Facebook now just to make that point. That's a different place to 10 years ago for sure. And I think the third big audience is the low-income audiences. So we've been doing some work for a network of libraries in the UK. And I think it was about two months ago that we had a big meeting with representatives of these different libraries around the UK. And we decided to switch our research to online, again, because of COVID. We used to have paper-based surveys that we've handed out in each library. And we felt, "This is a great idea," maybe for the same reasons as the pre-booking. It's much more efficient. You get much better data, more reliable, blah, blah, blah. 

Jon Young: And about halfway through, someone from a Glasgow Museum put their hand up and said, "This is great, but can we have paper surveys as well?" He said that it was around about 30% of his catchment area didn't have access to the internet. And I was really surprised by that.

Kelly Molson: Right. It's a huge amount.

Jon Young: It is. You don't expect numbers like that. But I know there is quite high deprivation traditionally in that area where the library is. So he said, "It's absolutely essential that we have paper surveys." And there was another way of doing this as well. And obviously, that made me think about pre-booking online too. And it's been a challenge for certainly the museum sector and cultural attractions to reach out to all of their audiences. And actually, in Glasgow, they've done a really amazing job. The likes of Kelvingrove, for example, but this audience is quite large. And I guess it needs to be thought-about too. So yeah, that's quite a big barrier as well, I think.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, absolutely. And it's a focus for cultural organizations to raise their awareness in audiences that are not necessarily their natural audiences or people that are less aware of them. Those people would fit into that category. So it's understanding all the different ways that you need to be able to help people visit, help them understand what you do and be able to book.

Jon Young: Absolutely. I think certain funding like HLF funding is dependent on attractions actually doing that as well. So they kind of need to be seen to return in all these different ways.

Kelly Molson: Gosh. So what are the conclusions from this? Because there's not a one answer fits all, is there? This is going to be some kind of hybrid model. 

Jon Young: There really isn't. I think one thing I didn't mention is the no shows as well. I don't know if you wanted to mention that. 

Kelly Molson: Yes.

Jon Young: But I think there's a big worry as well. In our survey, around 10% of people... Actually, it's 15%, sorry, said that they booked and hadn't shown up. And so there's another, I guess, barrier as well. Although we also found that a similar proportion had shown up because they booked. So I think that maybe balances out. So I think in terms of our conclusions, that was quite an important point for me because there was a lot of people not showing up just because they were never committed in the first place. So I think about seven in 10 of those people said actually it was always 50/50, "I've just booked it." So I think there was a need to maybe make that more taboo.

Kelly Molson: There's a challenge there around annual passes as well, isn't there?

Jon Young: Absolutely.

Kelly Molson: So if you have an annual pass for an attraction, and you have to pre-book as well to use that annual pass, you book it but you might not go. But that can't then be resold. So the attraction in a way kind of loses out because there's no one else that they can put through the door.

Jon Young: Yeah, it is a real challenge. And I think I was really struck by the fact that the majority of people who don't turn up just said they had more than one option that day, and they didn't really get the gravity of it. And I mentioned that we tested restaurants as well. And what was really striking was that the proportion of no shows is a lot lower. And people who don't turn up to restaurants were more likely to give understandable reasons like they were ill on the day or so. And I think not turning up to a restaurant is a little bit more taboo. You can kind of visualize in your head that empty table that you're leaving there.

Jon Young: So I think the more the attractions can create that sense of taboo without sort of shaming anyone, the better. And maybe that will happen less and less. And I think they are doing that. But you said the annual pass point is quite important. So I think when people have parted with a lot of money for their pre-booking, they're less likely to do it. So yeah, I think one of the conclusions is if we can reduce that a little bit as well, that will help.

Jon Young: But in terms of overall conclusions, I mean, I'm like yourself. I'm massively in favor of pre-booking. I think it's brilliant at so many different levels. And I think you listed those right at the start. It's great for the attraction. And it can really improve the visitor experience. It can see improve rates. And also, you can gain loyalty in the long-term and have that conversation on either side. So I'm really behind it. I think it really does suggest, though, that there's a need for some sort of hybrid where there is a walkup option possible because as we've discussed at length, this one in five of your visitors, they may be spontaneous visitors, depending on where you're situated. 

Jon Young: Obviously, it does matter where you are and how much you charge. If you are the British Library, then there's loads of people coming out of King's Cross and just popping in. But if you're in the middle of nowhere, then you're less likely to have that. So there's obvious differences. And I guess people need to sort of work those through as well. But I certainly think some sort of hybrid. And I'm glad I don't have to sort of deciding on how that works. And I just got to give the data because it's clearly very challenging. But there's a lot of operational brains out there, I think, that can really can work that through. 

Jon Young: And maybe there's a bit of trial and error as well. But I think the point I made earlier about just understanding it's more of an attitude, no barrier, I think, than anything else. And not to get too bogged down in the demographics of it all. And just to understand that some people hate planning. Yeah. I'm not so good at it myself. So I can kind of empathize. Yeah. And I guess just to be aware that there are other audiences out there who might really struggle. I saw some figures today from Visit Britain and their projections on inbound tourism and it's so low.

Kelly Molson: Yeah. 16.9 million, wasn't it? For next year. 

Jon Young: Well done. I can't remember.

Kelly Molson: I think that's what I read this morning. I've been looking at it myself. But it's so vastly down. It's really scary.

Jon Young: It really is. And markets like the states will take longer to catch up just because there's a big lag from bookings to visiting. So we need to do all we can to get as many of our British-based visitors in as possible. So I guess we just need to have all the options we can. So yeah, that's the key conclusion, I think, really. And yeah, like I said, I'll leave it to the boffins' fractions to work out how to do it because I guess you don't want to have a situation where if you can turn up walkup anyway, why would you pre-book?

Kelly Molson: It's difficult, isn't it? Yeah.

Jon Young: So, balance. 

Kelly Molson: It is about balance, I think. I mean, a lot of attractions are just going to say, "No, that's it. We're going to keep the pre-booking. That's it." It's almost tough, but I think it depends on... It's very location-driven like you were saying. It's interesting. We've actually got Geoff Spooner coming on the podcast in the New Year from the Warner Brothers Studio Tour, The Making of Harry Potter, which obviously launched with pre-booking from opening day. So it'll be really interesting for people to tune in and hear all of the positives from that. But Geoff is very pragmatic when he speaks about it because he does say a lot of those decisions are driven by location actually in terms of kind of parking and congestion in the area where they're located as well. It made sense to do that. And so there's so many factors you have to think about, and it is going to be down to the individual attractions to work out what's going to work best for them.

Jon Young: It really is, and I think the likes of Warner Brothers, as I said earlier, when you visit Warner Brothers, it is-

Kelly Molson: It's magic. 

Jon Young: ... amazing. I went a few years ago with my niece, and we actually booked four months in advance. And it was amazing. And everyone's had the same experience, I think. So it is maybe different to the [inaudible 00:41:38] in Central London where you can visit more regularly perhaps. But I think actually one thing that Simon at Roman Baths mentioned was that their booking system is really flexible. So they've had a really low proportion of no-shows. So you can cancel, I think, up to the minute pretty much. And so I think the more flexibility, the better, and maybe that will help as well. So yeah, lots out there. And I'm sure there'll be some great best practice.

Kelly Molson: Well, lots to think about for 2021. Hopefully, this podcast has given you a little insight into what visitors are thinking about pre-booking. Jon, I mean, I've been lucky enough to have my copy in advance. Where will people be able to find this research so that they can have a read of it themselves?

Jon Young: So hopefully, by the time this is published, we'll have put it into a blog and maybe in a Q&A format. We'll see how it goes. Might put a few graphs in there. We love a graph.

Kelly Molson: Love a graph.

Jon Young: Feel a bit naked without a graph actually just talking about this. So yeah, we'll put it on our website. Follow me on LinkedIn or whatever, and I'll be promoting it on there as well.

Kelly Molson: Right. Well, for our listeners, we will link to all of these things in the show notes. So we will link to Jon's LinkedIn profile. We'll link to the BVA BDRC website and their Twitter profile. So go ahead and follow them. And then you will have access to this brilliant research. Jon, I always end the podcast by asking our guests to recommend a book. Something that they love or something that's helped shape their career in some way. So have you got something to share with us today?

Jon Young: I do. I've got this book called How Emotions Are Made. 

Kelly Molson: Great.

Jon Young: So I read this on jury service.

Kelly Molson: Okay. Interesting jury service then?

Jon Young: Yeah. Well, when I got to the jury service, I noticed that there were loads and loads of thousand-piece jigsaws which gave me an idea that we wouldn't be doing a lot with our time. I think I spent 90% of it just hanging around. So luckily, I had this book, which is written by a neurologist called Lisa Feldman Barrett. And it's the science of how emotions are sort of created. It's a hard read. And I don't think I'd have read it if I didn't have so much time on my hands. But it's really, really fascinating and it kind of changed how I thought about the visitor experience.

Jon Young: In a nutshell, it sort of talks about how you can only really feel emotions if you recognize the stimulus you're given and if you're not distracted in lots of ways. So when we test the visitor experience now, certainly in exhibitions, we will just make sure we sort of test how relatable exhibits and descriptions are and whether there are any distractions in the exhibition room, and lots of other things around that. So I do recommend it. It really changed how we thought about the visitor experience. I'm just looking at the footnotes, were about a hundred pages. So I'm not sure if anyone wants to win this, but it's really interesting.

Kelly Molson: Jon, you're not really selling it for our listeners. I'm not going to lie. Listen, if you've listened to all of that, and you'd still like to win that book, then if you head over to our Twitter account, and as ever, retweet this episode announcement with the words, "I want Jon's books." Then you will be in with a chance of winning a copy of it. Jon, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. It's been an absolute pleasure. And I would like to just thank you again for all of the work that you've been doing throughout lockdown because it has been invaluable for us. And I know that it's been invaluable for many, many attractions up and down the UK. So thank you. 

Jon Young: Thank you. 

Kelly Molson: This is the last episode of 2020, which is crazy. I have had an absolute blast this year talking to the most interesting people. And I'm so grateful that all of you, listeners, have been tuning in week after week after week. So thank you. We are going to be back on the sixth of January with a very exciting episode. In fact, we've got loads of exciting episodes lined up for the start of the New Year. As you heard earlier, we've got Geoff Spooner coming on from The Making of Harry Potter, which I'm really excited about. I definitely fangirled a little bit on that podcast. We have Holkham Estates coming on to talk about their sustainability plans. And we have the brilliant National Football Museum who are coming on to talk about why your attraction should have a podcast. So stay tuned. We'll see you in the New Year. But in the meantime, have an absolutely wonderful Christmas and festive break.

Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five-star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the Queue is brought to you by 

Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

Download The Visitor Attractions Website Survey Report - https://www.merac.co.uk/download-the-visitor-attractions-survey

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Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.

Download our free ebook The Ultimate Guide to Doubling Your Visitor Numbers

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast
If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this episode.

Competition ends March 31st 2021. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.

Show references:

Alex Robertson leads global advocacy for the Scotch whisky portfolio and a team of 60 international and graduate ambassadors.

www.linkedin.com/in/alexrrobertson

Scotch Watch on YouTube

Scotch Watch uncovering whisky one story and one dram at a time.

To register for future Scotch Watch live shows,  follow Alex on Instagram at @dramgoodlife

www.chivasbrothers.com

www.chivasgraduates.com

Now accepting applications for roles starting in Summer 2021.

Transcription:

Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world. 

In today's episode, I speak with Alex Robertson, Head of Heritage and Education and International Graduate Programme and Archives at Chivas Brothers. Alex leads global advocacy for the Scotch whisky portfolio and a team of 60 international and graduate ambassadors. 

We discuss the superb program of digital audience engagement that Chivas Brothers developed during lockdown, and how that's gained them a global audience with viewers from over 30 different countries every episode.  If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the YouTube channels by searching Skip the Queue. 

Kelly Molson: Alex, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. I'm super excited that you've come on because we actually know each other. But that does not mean that Alex gets away without doing the icebreaker questions. So my first icebreaker question. What is top of your bucket list? 

Alex Robertson: That's an outstanding question because part of the reason that I took this job is because I had such a passion for travel. And since taking it more than a decade ago, I've visited more than 60 countries around the world. 60 countries. I guess it's something that would really challenge me. I guess it's something that I feel that would conquer a fear. And I have an astonishing fear of heights because as a child I was repeatedly rescued from the school roof, from the local university crossed the roof of my house. 

Alex Robertson: So I think it would need to be something that challenged that like skydiving or climbing Mount Everest, something really off the scale because I've certainly got a job that allows me to address those bucket list challenges of visiting places you would never go for your two-week break in the summer. 

Kelly Molson: You chose a really good profession for travel to combine your passions. 

Alex Robertson: Yes, it was part of the motivation, Kelly. I love travel. And a journalist had the opportunity to travel, albeit under very different circumstances, whether that was to Sri Lanka after the tsunami or whether it was to Italy to cover the G8 summit. And part of the motivation, in addition to a real passion for Scotch, was to see the world and to travel to wonderful places, from Serbia to India to Kazakhstan and Ukraine. And do you know? The one lesson I take away is that you can see these wonderful places but what makes a country is its people. And that's what you remember most of all. Wonderful. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah. I completely agree with you. It's all about when you travel, it's about immersing yourself into the culture and the people that are there, not just the place that you're at. I just want to go back to your fear, because... So you have a fear of heights. What on Earth were you doing on your school roof if you have a fear of heights? 

Alex Robertson: I loved climbing. I absolutely loved climbing. So I specifically remember, as a child, one of my earliest memories, was climbing up the drainpipe of my school roof, an old-style school just outside Glasgow, and then getting to the top and thinking, what am I going to do now? And that happened repeatedly. So that's what's informed the fear of heights today. So for example, I can't even go up the Arc de Triomphe. At all. So I need to stay below while my family enjoys the views from above. 

Kelly Molson: Okay. Now I know, Alex, that you're a really big music fan. You might not have ever thought about the answer to this question, though. So if you were a WWF wrestler, what would be your entrance song? 

Alex Robertson: Oh, that's superb, I love it. I love a deadline. I oversee deadlines the same day. And I remember a colleague of mine saying, "We need to have Europe played through the tannoy when a deadline's coming, Final Countdown, to pump everyone up." Or I think it would need to be Eye of the Tiger, you know? 

Kelly Molson: Yeah. Yeah. 

Alex Robertson: Do you remember that? That was in Rocky, I think. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah. Brilliant. 

Alex Robertson: Something old school that really gets us going. 

Kelly Molson: I like that. Eye of the Tiger was my running song. And it was always my five-mile song. Because if I could get past five miles, I knew that I was going to get back home, which was the eight-mile loop that I was doing. So that's a good song. 

Alex Robertson: That's a great... Do you know my running song is Gorillaz, which is Melancholy Hill. 

Kelly Molson: Oh, nice. 

Alex Robertson: It just really keeps you driving, and it gives you a little bit of push when you need it. 

Kelly Molson: I like it. That's a good song, as well. This is my last icebreaker question before I do the unpopular opinion, which I love. So what is your weakest claim to fame? 

Alex Robertson: Oh, goodness. Well, you know what? I'm a huge fan of Six Music, BBC Six Music. And Shaun Keaveny has a great slot in that which is called the Small Claims Court. And I was actually on that. And I've called in before. So my small claim was that at some point, it would have probably been the late 90s, and I was interviewing on Rudolph Giuliani's broken window theory in Glasgow. You know, that if you tackle vandalism and that type of thing, then that prevents more serious crimes. And I was walking through Glasgow and a limousine pulled up, and Cher was inside it. And they sort of spoke to me and said hello. And my claim to fame is that actually, Cher was trying to pick me up at that point. 

Alex Robertson: And I'm not sure if that's a direct link. Another minor one is that I once shared a jacuzzi with Brian Gecksa at a family holiday park in the north of England. 

Kelly Molson: Wow. That's so impressive. The Cher one has blown my mind. Wow. 

Alex Robertson: Yeah. Yeah. I remember saying to Shaun Keaveny, and it wasn't my joke, actually, it was his producer's, but I said, "If you could turn back time, what would you do?" I think I ran away. I was terrified. 

Kelly Molson: That's a terrible, terrible dad joke. 

Alex Robertson: It is. It is. 

Kelly Molson: Awful, that joke. Okay. Thank you for sharing, that was awesome. Tell me your unpopular opinion. So something that you believe to be true that hardly anyone agrees with you on. 

Alex Robertson: Actually, one that my wife permanently disagrees with me on is I believe if you add vinegar to chips it reduces the fat because you're adding acid, therefore if makes them healthy. 

Kelly Molson: Hmm. 

Alex Robertson: But no one's bought into it. No one. 

Kelly Molson: I'm not sure about that one, but I'm going to try it the next time I want chips. My partner is on a super, super health kick at the moment. So chips, they're not in our house. Maybe I could convince him with the vinegar trick. 

Alex Robertson: I think that science proves it. I think it's that acid breaks down fat. I'm sure of it. 

Kelly Molson: Absolutely. 

Alex Robertson: I'm absolutely sure of it. In fact, I should have Googled it beforehand to at least support my argument. Same as I should have Googled was Cher actually in Glasgow in the late 90s, or was I just imagining it? You can't tell. We'll never know. 

Kelly Molson: It's a mystery, and it should stay a mystery, I think, Alex. 

Alex Robertson: Yeah. 

Kelly Molson: Amazing, thank you. So Alex and I, just as a caveat, we do know each other. We have worked on a number of projects together for Chivas. But I had a little look back over your career and, oh my gosh, it's really impressive. And I actually didn't know this about you. That Alex has been a crime reporter, a BBC journalist, an international brand ambassador, and now he's Head of Heritage and Education and the International Grads Programme and Archives at Chivas Brothers. 

Kelly Molson: Honestly, Alex, if at some point someone says to me, "You know that Alex Roberts? He's only an international spy," I would believe it. 

Alex Robertson: I'm going to tell you something really interesting. So I studied European politics. I went to university to study English and become an English teacher. That was my plan. And I studied European politics because it was a huge passion of mine. I think it was the time of the Maastricht Treaty in the early 90s, a really important time for European politics. And I can't believe 30 years later how much that's changed. 30 years, Kelly, can you believe it? That sounds bizarre to speak in those terms. And I believe in following our passions. And I do follow my passions from journalism to Scotch whisky. I was a journalist for ten years. 

Alex Robertson: But I have an uncle who is absolutely convinced that I work in the international stage for a government agency of one type or another. Absolutely convinced. 

Kelly Molson: I can see that. I can see why, though. You're like a man of travel, slightly mysterious, with a journalistic background. I can see that. 

Alex Robertson: Well, he mentions it every time we see him. He's deadly serious. He sort of just nods a wink and says, "I know what you're up to.", you know? 

Kelly Molson: Oh, I love it. Well, tell him that I agree with him now. He'll probably go [inaudible 00:08:43] at you next time. 

Alex Robertson: Yep. 

Kelly Molson: I want to know, this transition from crime reporter, journalist to brand ambassador, what was it that made you make that switch? Because it's incredibly different.

Alex Robertson: Yeah. There were a couple of reasons, and also, they're very alike in many ways. I'd spent nearly a decade as a journalist, and much of that on radio. I absolutely adore radio and congratulations on the podcast, this is just superb. I love the spoken word, without sounding ridiculous. And I'd worked freelance for a long time with The Big Issue. Which you know, and was lucky enough there to win The Amnesty International Prize for Human Rights Reporting. I was passionate about asylum seekers and refugees relocating in Glasgow. 

Alex Robertson: I worked for the Scotland Sunday and Sport because I loved football, without sounding like an absolute cliché. And I used to work the crime beat in Glasgow, too and then moved to the BBC which, to use a football analogy, if you're a journalist, it's the only team that you ever want to play for. And I spent a couple of very happy years at the BBC working on website reporting, working on the radio bulletins and, occasionally, on television. And do you know what? Journalism was changing. I could see the writing on the wall for journalism. 

Alex Robertson: The opportunity to travel, which I'd done previously, I earlier mentioned going to Sri Lanka to cover the tsunami. I mentioned going to Genoa to cover the G8 summit. The real passion for travel and getting out and really identifying stories on the ground and working on stories, that opportunity was diminishing. And many more stories were being written from press copy or agency copy at your desk. And I could really see the writing on the wall for the future of journalism. I'm delighted to see that, actually, there still are tons of them. Many fine journalists out there today in Glasgow, in the UK, and internationally, especially at these crucial times of whether it's Brexit, COVID, or the US elections. 

Alex Robertson: And there are people doing a great job. And I wanted something else. I felt I'd taken that as far as I could. I had a huge passion for Scotch, I had a huge passion for travel, and the international brand ambassador role just seemed absolutely perfect. And I joined that 2008, I think. And I think my first trip was to China. Never been to Shanghai before. And traveled throughout China, and then moved to India and never looked back. As I say, that's more than 60 countries since. 

Alex Robertson: I also had a very small whisky club in Glasgow that... It's a feminist theory that when men get together they form clubs. And that's certainly what happened. But it was a very diverse club. And I remember walking into the Pot Still bar in Glasgow, I don't know if you've been there, Kelly...

Kelly Molson: No. 

Alex Robertson: But it's an amazing bar. You walk in, there's about 500 whiskies on the wall. And I thought, how do I begin to understand that? But given the similarities, it's still about presentation, it's just still about structure, it's about engaging people, it's about inspiring people, all of which you also did as a journalist. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah. Absolutely. And actually, it's the engaging of people that I want to talk a little bit more about. But there's something that I kind of need to talk about, the visitor centres that you've been part of, initially. Because obviously this podcast is for people that work in the visitor attraction world, or work with the visitor attraction world. But I think from some of the things that Chivas have been bringing out during the pandemic, there's some really key learnings that we can take from that that translate across.

Kelly Molson: But I want to talk a little bit about the Malt Whisky Distilleries. So Aberlour, Scapa, Strathisla, and The Glenlivet. They have been closed at certain points during the pandemic because, of course, they haven't been able to have visitors into the centres. How were you able to adapt the centres during the COVID pandemic? What happened there? 

Alex Robertson: You know, I see visitor centres as the beating heart of communities, you know? And Scotch whisky is not only a passion for what I do, it's a pride in what we do, because we've got 10,000 jobs directly employed by the Scotch whisky industry here, and 40,000 indirectly. There's an incredible impact on communities. And, as all your listeners will know, the visitor centre is where your story comes alive. Sometimes I used to say, "If you enter The Glenlivet, just being there was enough.", you know? The sounds, the sights, the smells. It made the hairs on your neck stand up. It's an amazing experience. 

Alex Robertson: And then comes along COVID, and all of that closes. And this is where you experience our Scotch whiskies. This is where you understand their heritage, their craftsmanship, their flavour. And now the priority, of course, was making sure the stills continued to run. That was number one. And Chivas Brothers implemented an industry-leading safe system of work to ensure that that could continue to happen in the most extreme circumstances, at the height of this pandemic. And also came to the aid of communities. It produced, I think, 160,000 litres of hand sanitiser and made 300 contact-free deliveries. Becoming social care providers to charities. 

Alex Robertson: In May, Chivas Brothers became the NHS Scotland's first pro bono hand sanitiser supplier. So a great effort. It was all about protecting our communities and ensuring the stills continued to run. So that was number one. And then you're absolutely right. As Head of Heritage and Education, I had to look at this and say, okay, we bring in tens of thousands of people a year. My specific role is to bring in our trade guests from all over the world and take them to a beautiful house, which you've been to, and...

Kelly Molson: Yes, it is very beautiful. 

Alex Robertson: Show them around the distilleries. And I think it demonstrated that there was an opportunity. Suddenly we realised there was an opportunity to reach people through digital advocacy. And very quickly, I turned around a digital plan which would centre on Scotch whisky education in the Scotch Whisky Academy. This would address a thirst for knowledge, but within our business, because that was important. We also want employees to be engaged during this, Kelly, it wasn't just about the visitors. And then engage a global audience. 

Alex Robertson: And I would say the key learning is that we've actually extended our reach beyond those numbers that we would normally engage. We've got a much greater footprint, albeit digitally. And looking to the future, I would say that we will always place physical activations hand in hand with digital activations. And they will always go together from here on in once we can open again. And, of course, the distilleries are, the brand homes are open. I can tell you more about that. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. And that's something that I have been thinking more and more of over the past few months, about at some point we will go back to normal. A version of normality. But all of these incredible things that have happened means that our reach for visitors and our reach for people that we can educate and get our brand in front of, has just expanded. And I don't want people to kind of go back to the old ways. I think like you say, it has to work really hand in hand. One of the things I really want to talk about it, Scotch Watch. 

Kelly Molson: So this is one of the things that has come out of the pandemic, in terms of your digital plan. And I think it's wonderful. I want you to explain what Scotch Watch is for us. And how did you come up with the idea? How did this happen?

Alex Robertson: I think Scotch Watch was important because there were a couple of drivers, I think. And it's amazing how we were able to learn from others, too, and see how others were prepared for digital in terms of offering virtual tours and so on. Scotch Watch had a couple objectives. The first was actually to meet the makers, the people behind our Scotch whiskies, in a very informal setting. And second, on digital, we know that seven percent of a presentation is what we say. The other 93 percent is our body language, it's how we interact, it's our tone, it's how we look, it's how we shape our conversation. But all of that vanishes on digital. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah.

Alex Robertson: So I wanted to create something that was much more informal in nature, that took us away from the traditional pillars of heritage, craftsmanship, and flavor, and actually brought through the personalities of those involved. That gave an opportunity to meet the people who have decades of experience and real passion for Scotch whisky, and also showcase some great new whiskies and demonstrate that the work of Scotch whisky, the work of Chivas Brothers, The Glenlivet, Chivas Regal, Aberlour is very much still going on. 

Alex Robertson: Now, the idea wasn't mine. Although I'm perfectly happy to claim it. And the idea was our master blender, our director of blending, Sandy Hyslop, my co-host on the show. So he approached me and said, "Listen, what can we do here? We're doing the Academy, we know that we know we're supporting, mentoring globally. We've reached 3,000 people in three months. Incredible reach. What else can we do?" He said, "I want it on a show, on Zoom, weekly, or on other platforms, where we just informally have a chat." 

Alex Robertson: Sandy's a huge antiques collector, he's a watch collector. He wanted to talk about watches, he wanted to talk about... I'm a huge music fan, I wanted to get music in there. And then we would have a studio guest and we would just talk about whisky. And we had a great session recently where we went live to an ambassador of Poland, Anna. We had our brand manager Hannah in the Ballantine's team in London. And just the dynamic shows a real passion behind Scotch. We moved to a monthly show, and do you know what? We've already reached more than 30 countries. 

Kelly Molson: Wow. 

Alex Robertson: In that time. And more than 500 people. And this is just the start for Scotch Watch. I want to... We've now got it on YouTube, we'll have events every Thursday, they can just find out more on Instagram, my handle is at DramGoodLife. But I want to take it further and have Instagram lives. But really, it's an informal look at Scotch whisky, Kelly, so that's a very long-winded answer for you. 

Kelly Molson: I loved it. So I watched the last episode, I watched the October edition. And I think it's where you unveiled the new Ballantine's 7 Bourbon Finish. Now, I'm very appreciative of whisky, but I wouldn't call myself a whisky connoisseur. I've got a gin bar in my house, not a whisky bar. Sorry. But what I found really engaging, and it goes back to what you were saying earlier about being a storyteller and having that kind of connection with brands. I loved how each person on the webinar spoke really passionately about not only the whisky but something that was personal to them that was connected to the whisky. 

Kelly Molson: So, for instance, you mentioned Sandy being a big vintage collector. Now he took the whisky, and he associated the whisky with an item. He had a stopwatch. A beautiful, beautiful vintage pocket watch, sorry, a pocket watch. And he talked about it in terms of how that connected with the whisky itself, and then you spoke about a song, a record, that you connected with the whisky. And I loved that. Even for someone that's not a huge, huge lover of whisky, I really related to those things, because actually, I'm a big music fan, and actually, I really love vintage pieces. 

Kelly Molson: And then your, I think it was Hannah, the brand ambassador, brand manager, sorry. She spoke about a book that connected with it as well. And I thought, "I love all of these things." And it really made me feel a connection to the brand that I probably wouldn't have got previously if I'd have just seen it on a shelf or if you'd talked about it in some way. It felt very, very personal. 

Alex Robertson: I think that's a great observation, thank you. Because, again, it's how do you establish an emotional connection online? That's the challenge we're all facing. How do we bring to life these great distilleries and these great whiskies when, actually, we're on the celebrity squares of Zoom? And people are at home. And you've got to make that emotional connection because we all have it. And the second point is that, actually, whisky is accessible, you know? The most significant change I've seen in the past decade is the emergence and the rise of whisky cocktails. Superb. I love it. 

Alex Robertson: And I believe if you're going to make whisky accessible, then you can pair it with music. Because you can follow the rhythm of music in the high flavour notes and the low flavor notes of whisky. You can pair it with your favourite pocket watch, you can pair it with dinner. It's so accessible. And if we're doing that, if we're making whisky accessible, and someone sitting at home's saying... Actually, it was interesting, we had Jenna Mariwan who was a The Glenlivet ambassador on the previous episode, The Glenlivet is number one in the US. And I said, "Listen, what is it that makes The Glenlivet unique? What is it makes people in the US passionate about it?" And she said, "Because it's for people like me." 

Alex Robertson: And that's what I want the emotional connection to be when they watch, just as you said, Kelly. If you watch Scotch Watch and you go, "You know what? This is for me. I don't feel excluded from this, I feel part of this."

Kelly Molson: Yeah. That's exactly the feeling that I got from it. When I started watching it I thought, "Is this for me? Yes, I appreciate whisky, yes I work in a whisky world, but is this really for me?" And within ten minutes I thought, "This is absolutely for me." It really got me right here. And I really enjoyed that, at the end, it was Anna who took us through making an old fashioned. I was like, "Great, I could do this." And, again, it felt really easy, it felt really accessible. And that, for me, is the biggest part of building that audience engagement, is that you're making it for that person. 

Kelly Molson: I felt like you and Sandy were talking directly to me that evening. And there was a lot of people on that call. You were getting a lot of questions. But it really felt like you were connecting with me individually, and that is what's so important about the engagement level. It's really...

Alex Robertson: Yeah, that's wonderful, thank you. And I think that's the challenge, because for all of us, because people are at a laptop all day now, at home, too. And we're calling on them to then join us on the laptops again. There's no change of scenery. And that's a real challenge. How do we work against, shall we say, online fatigue? Is that a risk? Because I guess none of us predicted this still to be running. This started in March, you know? It's now December. 

Kelly Molson: What was nice, and obviously I didn't have the ingredients to do it, but I thought what would be nice is that actually, I could make that cocktail while you were doing it. So there's maybe that level of interaction is what differentiates it from your day. Where you've spent all day on Zoom calls. Actually, when you're doing something as well, it doesn't then feel like just another Zoom call. You've got that level of interactivity. Which I guess, is that something else that Chivas are now doing? Your virtual tastings, for example. That's something quite new. 

Alex Robertson: Yeah. We had to try this carefully. So the other brand homes, they did a great job of opening up safely to allow people to come in and taste whisky. And given the current restrictions, that's now been moved outdoors, though Speyside can be lovely in winter. If you come and visit. 

Kelly Molson: It's beautiful, but a tad chilly. 

Alex Robertson: So we had to move very, very quickly to an online advocacy strategy. And I built that, essentially, on three pillars. And one beauty was that you could get to meet people that you wouldn't normally get to. Or makers could, instead of having to travel across the globe and spend a week, all I needed of their time was an hour. Which is a complete game-changer. Our distiller's Alan Winchester, our blender's Sandy Hyslop. 

Alex Robertson: So the first thing we launched was our Scotch Whisky Academy, to address a real thirst for knowledge internationally. And that's been a huge success. It's now running every single week. And you can come on, you can attend three sessions, and you can learn all about Scotch whisky. Heritage, craftsmanship, flavour. What makes it unique. And that has been an enormous success. And that's largely been to an internal audience and customers. Our challenge now in 2021 is how do we take that, in partnership with our visitor centres, to the public? Because we know people want to engage. 

Alex Robertson: And then the second part is we've had a great amount of activity. We've launched Ballantine's 7 Bourbon Finish, as you said. We've launched The Glenlivet Spectra and Caribbean Cask. We have a new Chivas Regal 13 range, extra. And we've been supporting that internationally. And the team are working incredibly hard every single week, hosting sessions from the US to Canada to South America, all across Europe, as far afield as Australia. And we are doing that every single week to customers and consumers. We're reaching a much broader audience. 

Alex Robertson: And in addition to that, I have a team of about 50 graduate ambassadors in 27 countries, each and every country at a different stage of this pandemic. And they have responded just quite brilliantly to this. And my recommendation to everyone, bring energy to it. Bring creativity to it. Create dynamic content. And have people who understand the medium. Which is a challenge, because this is a brave new world for us all. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah. It absolutely is. And just touching on the graduates that you spoke about, for them and the world that they live in, this has not been as challenging for them. They live their lives relatively digitally, so for some people, this has been a huge, huge, huge change, but for them, actually, the assumption is that they've dealt pretty well with this. 

Alex Robertson: Yes. Yes. Superbly well. I can't praise them highly enough. Of course, they're a digital generation. They don't know a time where they didn't have that access to social and digital. So they're able to drive content. But what they've managed to do is create engaging content and have actually been creative in the process. They've brought energy to this for us. And actually, at a very difficult time for them. The majority are far from home during a pandemic. And often in a lockdown. Then have been creating cocktails online, have a look at Chivas graduates on Instagram, you'll see them. We've been engaging local bartenders, have been supporting their own trade. They have the consumers, they've been doing really creative videos online. Really, really proud of them, an incredible effort. 

Alex Robertson: But the lesson for us all is how do we bring creativity and energy? And for us, it was also how do we get the glass in hand? How to look definitely at e-commerce, too. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah, that's right, actually. Chivas has been through... There was a lot of e-commerce stores that have launched through the lockdown, which is actually, it's quite a new thing, isn't it? There's not been a real focus on direct sales through the brands. 

Alex Robertson: You know, Kelly, it's really interesting, I don't know what you think yourself, but people really had to rethink this. And I don't want to say that I don't know if we were all well-prepared for digital advocacy because you place such value on physical interaction, and rightly so. But I think it had to make us think differently. You know, if someone came to a whisky tasting that I was hosting in Mumbai, we knew the whisky was there on the table. If we were launching an international Scotch Watch from Scotland, how are we going to get that whisky into their hand? 

Alex Robertson: And that became the challenge, you're right. We had to link it, because, let's be honest, we have to build a benefit to all of this. And the way to do that is through e-commerce. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah. And I think it's worked beautifully. And, actually, the speed and the turnaround that things have been able to happen and to launch during this time is testament to the people that you've got in your team, as well. Coming to the end of the podcast interview, I've got a couple of extra questions I'd like to ask you. I think, really, it's what's next. You've done an incredible job. Scotch Watch I genuinely think is just such a fantastic thing. And I really, really hope that it continues. But what can you see that's coming next for the brands? 

Alex Robertson: Yeah. I had almost planned to first of January. And what we need to do is get back to physical activations when it's safe to do so. That's engaging people face to face, inspiring them on our Scotch whiskies. The Glenlivet, Chivas, Aberlour, Ballantine's, and Royal Salute. But I still think that is some way off. Great news that a vaccine appears to be in the pipeline for the spring. So in the meantime, we need to look at how we raise to another level. I've almost seen this, that we established the base with our Scotch Whisky Academy, we created another level with Scotch Watch and the renovation support, looking at the new whiskies we were launching. 

Alex Robertson: But I think the challenge for 2021 is really how do we continue to impact globally with Scotch whisky aficionados and Scotch whisky novices? And we really engage them, both with our Scotch Academy, linking in our Scotch Whisky Academy to our brand homes. The Glenlivet Academy. There's a great prospect. 

Kelly Molson: Wow. Yeah. It is. 

Alex Robertson: What a great prospect. How do we continue to excite, inspire, engage people creatively? And I'm going to be honest, that's a job I'm doing now. It's really a bit... We're almost planning day by day, week by week at the moment. But I'm excited we can respond, we're about to recruit 20 new Scotch whisky ambassadors for 2021, which is amazing news...

Kelly Molson: Fabulous.

Alex Robertson: It shows you the confidence that Chivas Brothers has in Scotch whisky in the future. Our markets are confident. Our countries, I deal with about 30 countries around the world. They are confident, they have strong rebound plans, and we know that advocacy, ambassadorial work, both physically and digitally, will absolutely be at the heart of it. I'm optimistic about 2021. 

Kelly Molson: This is a lovely, positive way to end the podcast, Alex. Thank you. I have to say, the grad scheme that Chivas have, it's phenomenal. And I know that every year, you are completely overwhelmed with applicants for it. So we've got a little bit of a scoop there, that that's coming out soon. But you've got a really hard task ahead of you, I'm sure, because this year I'm positive that you'll be completely inundated when those come out. What we'll do is all of the things that we've discussed today and all of the links to everything that we've talked about will be in the show notes. So we'll have links to Scotch Watch, we'll have links to the Ambassadors website. We'll have links to everything that you can go and look at. 

Kelly Molson: We always end the podcast by asking our guests if they have a book that they would recommend? Something that they love or something that has helped shape their career in some way over the years? Have you got one you can share with us? 

Alex Robertson: Wow. I read a lot and lost track as I get old. Which I've touched on a few times, the passage of time. As he buys time to answer. I actually, in a professional sense, I listen to podcasts as often as possible. I'm a huge fan of Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, I don't know if you...

Kelly Molson: Okay. 

Alex Robertson: He wrote The Four Pillars of Health. And I listen to that a lot because I really believe it's important to bring balance to our lives in everything that we do, whether that's in diet, sleep, exercise, and digital. In fact, really fascinated by the impact of digital technology on our experiences at the moment, too. I guess the book that's always had a lasting impact on me is East of Eden by John Steinbeck. 

Kelly Molson: Great. 

Alex Robertson: Is number one. The sheer scale of it, the sheer drama, the way he paints colour throughout it. The emotion contained in the book. The generations which it spans. It's incredible, and I'd recommend it to everyone. 

Kelly Molson: Oh, wow. That is a superb book. Now, as ever, we offer your book as a prize to our guests. So if you'd like to win a copy of this book, then if you head over to our Twitter account, it's just Skip the Queue. And if you retweet this episode announcement saying, "I want Alex's book," then you will be in a chance of winning it. 

Kelly Molson: Alex, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on today. Thank you so much for your time. Now, it's just after 11 in the morning, but I think the only way to end this podcast, unfortunately with my cup of tea, is to say Slange Var.

Alex Robertson: Yes, Slange Var. Thank you, it's been an absolute pleasure. 

Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five-star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the Queue is brought to you by 

Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode, and more, over on our website rubbercheese.com/podcast. 

Download The Visitor Attractions Website Survey Report - https://www.merac.co.uk/download-the-visitor-attractions-survey

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Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.

Download our free ebook The Ultimate Guide to Doubling Your Visitor Numbers

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast
If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this episode.

Competition ends March 31st 2021. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.

Show references:

Yael Coifman is a founding partner of Leisure Development Partners (LDP) and has spent over 20 years conducting market and economic testing for both new projects and existing operations, providing services to the development, investment and operations communities.

www.leisuredevelopment.co.uk

www.linkedin.com/in/yaelcoifman

https://leisuredevelopment.co.uk/news/covid-beyond-the-evolving-relationship-of-leisure-retail-a-whitepaper-by-ldp-for-leisureup-mapic/

Transcription:

Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode I speak with industry experts from the attractions world. These chats are fun, informative and hopefully always interesting. 

In today's episode, I speak with Yael Coifman, Co-Founder and Senior Partner of Leisure Development Partners. 

We discuss the impact of COVID on the leisure and attractions sector, the fusion of leisure and retail space that will be accelerated by the pandemic, and we also talk a little bit about learning Spanish. If you like what you hear you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue. 

Kelly Molson: Yael, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, I'm absolutely delighted that you could spare some time to come on, so thank you. 

Yael Coifman: Thanks for having me Kelly, I'm looking forward to it. 

Kelly Molson: Me too. Maybe you won't be looking forward to this bit, because this is the bit that everyone doesn't like, but it's the icebreaker question round. I think I've been quite easy on you Yael, to be honest.

Kelly Molson: Okay, let's start. If you were stranded on a desert island what is the one luxury item that you would miss the most? 

Yael Coifman: Oh, it's got to be the fizz, champagne.

Kelly Molson: Yes. I knew that we would get on, you are a lady after my own heart. 

Yael Coifman: I mean, I grant you I miss the really good cheese and bread and stuff, but you can always on a desert island find some way to make cheese, or make bread, but you can't make your own fizz. So that would be it.

Kelly Molson: Great answer, we're going to get on well. Okay, I have to ask you this, what is your favorite attraction?

Yael Coifman: Well, my favorite park of all time is Islands of Adventure in Orlando. Hands down, that is just the best park in my opinion. I think on the hand in regards to favorite ride, I really enjoy the SheiKra rollercoaster at Busch Gardens. 

Kelly Molson: Oh God, that is good. 

Yael Coifman: It's good because it's kind of a blend of ... what's it called? Oblivion at Alton Towers, but Oblivion ends too soon, and SheiKra keeps going. So I just really enjoy that one as a rollercoaster.

Kelly Molson: Busch Gardens is one of the best places that I've ever visited.

Yael Coifman: It is a great park, yeah. 

Kelly Molson: Just love it, I haven't been for a really long time, I went with my parents a very, very long time ago. Oh, it's a great place. Good, I wasn't expecting that as well. 

Kelly Molson: Okay, back to the stupid ones. If you could only eat one sandwich for the rest of the time, what sandwich would it be?

Yael Coifman: Oh, all-day breakfast. 

Kelly Molson: That's a good choice. That's a good choice, yes, because of so many different fillings.

Yael Coifman: Yeah, and you can have it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. 

Kelly Molson: I thought about this way too hard before I asked you, and I thought I would go with ham and crisp sandwich because then I'd have ham and I'd also get crisps as well. You definitely out trumped me on the sandwich choice there. 

Kelly Molson: All right, the last one is I want to know your unpopular opinion. So something that you believe to be true that almost nobody else agrees with you on.

Yael Coifman: Okay, well I'm qualifying this with saying that there's nobody else in the UK agrees with me on. 

Kelly Molson: Okay.

Yael Coifman: As an American living in the UK, and all that kind of stuff, I personally do not agree that university education should be paid for, for all university students. I don't think it should be covered by the government. I think you can have assistance, you can have government loans, but realistically, not everybody necessarily deserves to go to university, or should be going to university, and if they're not willing to invest in themselves why should we as the taxpayers invest in them. That's my perspective.  

Kelly Molson: I mean this could be quite controversial but I'm glad that you raised it. It's interesting actually because we did have our last guest on, Simon Jones, from Digital Visitor, we also talked a lot about university and his take on university was that not everybody needs to go. So it wasn't about the payment of it, it was not everybody needs to go to university, you can still have a brilliant career if you choose not to take that path, as well, so.

Yael Coifman: But I do think there's an element of it which is asking people to invest in themselves. And clearly, as one who came from the US I'm not saying that those tuition fees make any sense whatsoever, they're way, way too high in terms of the American universities, so that's not the right system either. But there is an element of investing in yourself. So if it's 100% paid for by the government then the students aren't taking a stake in their own future. I mean when I was at university I was still working 40 hours a week while going to classes. You don't really see that here.

Kelly Molson: No, it's true. I mean, I can't comment on university, I didn't actually go, so I choose the route that Simon talked about and I decided that I wanted to go out and work and work my way up. Which was easier than in the career that I choose, but yeah, I worked the whole way through college. I was going to say I had terrible jobs through college, but I had a few terrible jobs through college. But actually, my favorite one was in retail, which is something that we're going to talk a little bit about today. I worked at Argos. 

Yael Coifman: Oh, well there you go.

Kelly Molson: I worked in Argos as a Saturday girl, I was a picker, and then I was on the tills, and then customer service. And then I got promoted to jewelry. 

Yael Coifman: Ooh, a big step up. 

Kelly Molson: It was the pinnacle, it was the pinnacle of my Argos career. Thank you for sharing that with me, I appreciate it. 

Kelly Molson: So what I'd love to do, there's a topic that I want to focus on for our talk today. I'd love it if you could share a little bit about what Leisure Development Partners does, and maybe what a typical project looks like for you. If you have a typical project that is.

Yael Coifman: Well, I was going to say, the purpose of this conversation, with this little bit here, there is no such thing as a typical project. Our specialty is really in the market and financial analysis for any forms of leisure attractions. So that can range from small specialty museums to major theme parks, multi-theme park regional destination resorts, arenas and stadium, and aquaria, anything that's built which has to do with how people spend their leisure time. And we do work globally. 

Yael Coifman: So, the majority of our work is for new projects and new ideas, I'd say probably about 70% of it. Normally a client will come to us with an idea and they want to know if it will work financially. So we do the market testing for it, and concept testing, and all that kind of stuff, to get to at the end of the day how many people are going to visit, what are they going to spend, what are the related operating costs, what's the final profit and loss at the end of the day over a 10 year period of time? And then given the level of investment, is there any return on investment or is this just a bad project for the market? So that's kind of the bread and butter of what we do. We also every once in a while we'll work with existing attractions to improve their performance, as well as with banks, or private equity funds, that are looking to do acquisitions, existing facilities. 

Kelly Molson: Would you also work with attractions that are looking to maybe expand into different locations as well? Would that be-

Yael Coifman: Absolutely, yeah. Along those lines, there are two things we do actually, with existing attractions if they're looking expand, period, as in not just a new ride, but an entirely new land in a theme park, for example, or adding a hotel, or adding a water park as a second gate, or something like that, we would definitely work with them along those lines to see how it would work, and what the impact would be and if it was worth the investment. Then also with existing attractions, if they're looking roll out, we could do a roll-out strategy for them, or in some cases if they have potential partners like we've done a lot of work with KidZania for example. So a lot of times with KidZania first looking at new locations, we will actually do the feasibility study for that location to see if they want to progress, or not, to the next level. 

Kelly Molson: Amazing. That takes to make me to what I really want to focus our conversation on today, and it's actually around the white paper that you pushed out a little while ago. So you released a white paper which is called COVID and Beyond, the Evolving Relationship with Leisure and Retail. In it, you discuss the impact of COVID, what that impact has been on the leisure and attractions sector, and how this could impact the retail and leisure relationship which I think is really exciting. 

Kelly Molson: I guess it kind of starts with the decline across physical retail sectors due to the rise in e-commerce, I guess that's the starting point of this conversation. What was it that prompted the white paper and can you tell us a little bit about what's in it and where those thoughts have come from?

Yael Coifman: Yeah, sure. The white paper was basically just taking a state of the industry of where we are now post-COVID and what it means for attractions and retail, and how they can work together. We've been doing work with, not retailers, but retail mall owners and developers, a lot, over the last five or six years, as they're starting to realize that they do need to do something more, that just the anchor stores and stuff like that is not enough to get people in. So they were already seeing the writing on the wall in terms of the increase in online retail, and more spending online and less in bricks and mortar establishments. But the challenge all along has been the fact that they still very much have that bricks and mortar mindset, and the attraction has to come in and pay rent. It's just filling space. They're looking at attractions or leisure as tenants. 

Yael Coifman: So one of the reasons that we decided to write a white paper was saying okay, let's look at where we are now, and let's look at what people want to do. Taking aside the online thing, which was happening anyway, because of COVID there are three keys things that actually really came out of it. One is, you have a lot more people that weren't used to shopping online, that became used to shopping online. So it was an exponential growth. Not just a growth we've seen over the last five or six years, but a lot of people that were not really used to it, the older generation that might never have used Amazon before, that might never have ordered click and collect from Sainsbury's, or wherever the case may be, we're finally starting to do and we're realizing how easy it was. Not just to order online but also to return, which has always been a thing that was worried about. 

Yael Coifman: So that was one thing that came out of COVID. The other thing was the incredibly high uptake of streaming as entertainment in-home. The fact that I don't know if you noticed this or not in the white paper, but I was shocked. Disney+ launched and it reached its five-year target for subscriptions within six months. 

Kelly Molson: I mean it's mad right, but when they launched who knew that we were going to be in the situation that we're in. So that clearly had a huge impact on it.

Yael Coifman: It was primarily COVID, and Netflix as well. Just the amount to subscribers I think just again, exponential. Again, the thing here, it's not just more people doing it, it's people that had never considered doing it before. So older generation, parents who would have just maybe let their kids do it all the time now, are now saying, "Oh actually, there's interesting stuff for me too." Remember what helped that was the fact that a lot of these online platforms were developing their own content as well. So we're seeing a little bit more of that.

Yael Coifman: So there's the increase in online and in-home online entertainment, not just movies and films, but gaming as well, etc. Then the third thing was the fact that people were locked up and they couldn't do anything. Yes, there is hesitation about going out to attractions and crowded facilities, and people are nervous, but when we saw how quickly, at least here in Europe, how quickly when things opened up, people were going back out to attractions and theme parks. We spoke with quite a few different operators throughout Europe that said actually, the moment they opened up it wasn't that bad. They were at lower capacity but they were doing pre-bookings throughout the entire week. People were adjusting, they were readjusting their schedules so that they could go during the times when they in the old days would have said, "Oh, just on the weekend." So that hunger just to go out and do things socially, especially outdoor experiences, and other areas that you can socially distance a bit more was very, very apparent in regards to August and September when everything basically opened up. 

Yael Coifman: So those three coming together when you look at that from the retail perspective, retailers need attractions now. They have lost their core constituency. The importance of getting forms of leisure attractions into retail settings, or any sort of commercial mixed-use developments, is much, much higher than it was six months ago, or a year ago. Personally, I always thought it was important, but now they are recognizing it, so it's kind of changing to this shift in perspective from the retail developer side. That's a lot of what our white paper lays out, is what are the benefits of bringing in attractions but also what are the keys things that have to be considered, and why would you do that? Why would you as a landowner, as a developer, say "Okay, I'm not going to get a Debenhams into an anchor store anymore, because they're closing them all down, but I need to fill that space but it's not going to be a commercial tenant. So at which point do I make that investment?" That's the heart and soul of the paper basically. 

Kelly Molson: Let's take Westfield Stratford as an example of a shopping center, a shopping mall. You've got a real mix of leisure facilities there, so I think there's a bowling alley, there's a cinema, there's a gaming center, there's a casino. What other types of attractions are going to be a really natural fit for this, and what are the benefits for attractions going into these spaces? 

Yael Coifman: So I think what's interesting what you just brought up there, and this is where there's a lot of times there's a disconnect. So bowling, cinema-

Kelly Molson: They're very standard, aren't they? They're the ones that you expect to see.

Yael Coifman: They're standard and those are what we would term commercial leisure. They can pay rent, basically. It might be slightly more of an anchor rent, but they're commercial leisure, commercial ventures that are pretty standard. They also don't have much drawing power, cinemas typical user catchment is 20 minutes drive tops, bowling even less so, depending on the location where you are. I think Westfield Stratford is a good example because it is in a unique situation where it's the east side of London, but it also has some pretty strong competitors nearby, Lakeside, for example. Lakeside has put in a Nickelodeon Park. That I would consider an attraction, but that's the difference.  

Yael Coifman: Attractions, these smaller attractions, we see some of them in South Bank, for example, Shrek, or the London Dungeon, etc. Those are actually more attractions, and that means that they have higher drawing power. They can sometimes appeal to tourists, not just the resident market, but they also typically have higher operating costs because you need more staff. They might have higher capital investment requirements in the first days as well. So it's not just a simple fit-out, like a cinema, where you just get a bunch of screen sound systems and a bunch of chairs. That's where the really big difference is. 

Yael Coifman: So if you look at, now again looking at Stratford, so what could you put in there? Well, you'd want to do things there that would actually extend the catchment, the drawing power, of the facility itself. We've seen that in places like Dubai, where they put in the Dubai Aquarium into Mall of Dubai or the ski hill in Mall of the Emirates. They were really in recent years the forefront of putting in major attraction draws. You'd see that in the US now with the American Dream Project going on in New Jersey, where they have a water park, and a theme park, and a ski thing that are going in there. They're really making clusters of these attractions that can draw from two hours away. That's different.

Kelly Molson: That's a big difference, isn't it?

Yael Coifman: That's a big difference. So that's where these mall developers have to start balancing out the benefits versus the cost because they are going to have to invest, they have to put some skin in the game. Most of these attractions are not justifiable as standalone investments, so they have to invest into the attraction themselves, partner with the attraction operator, so that there actually is a benefit to the mall overall. That's where the struggle has been over years is convincing them of that, and I really do see a shift in this these days, where they're starting to realize, they have to partner, they have to put some investment into it too, they're not going to have somebody just come in and solve their problem for them and pay them a commercial rent.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, I can see there's a huge difference between this is a cinema, this is a standard fit-out, and they come in and they plug their thing into that hole. But yeah, like you mention, the Shrek experience, completely different. It's hugely, hugely different. 

Yael Coifman: Sorry, can I just add one thing to that? 

Kelly Molson: Yeah, please.

Yael Coifman: Because you brought up Shrek again, and I forget to mention. This is also where IP becomes very valuable, Intellectual Property. So you have Shrek as intellectual property, or you have Nickelodeon Lakeside as an IP as well. That has a brand recognition that can also increase the drawing power, and also can remain relevant as long as new content is put on online. So that's a way to connect the attraction with the in-home entertainment as well, so that's where the strength of IP comes in. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah, absolutely. So you've got kids that are sitting at home watching Nickelodeon, they make that connection. They have that, mum, dad, I want to go here. 

Yael Coifman: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Kelly Molson: Okay, yeah, of course. So how do you choose the right partnership? How does a shopping center, or an attraction look and work out who's going to be the best fit for each other? How does that happen?

Yael Coifman: Well, they hire someone like us. 

Kelly Molson: Of course, they do. 

Yael Coifman: Thank you. Oh my God, that's brilliant. No, I think it's really, really important that any shopping center that's out there, that they don't just take whoever comes knocking, because that's not necessarily the best fit for them. They have to have a really good understanding of their market. Not their shoppers market, but their attractions market. That's why I was saying it's important to hire a feasibility consultant that can look at the overall environment available to any attraction that went in there. Also, look at the competitive environment, what else is out there? Again my example from earlier, if you look at Stratford and you look at Lakeside, Lakeside has a Nickelodeon park that's part of its development, you would therefore never want to put in another Nickelodeon park within Stratford as you just cannibalizing each other. And you probably wouldn't want to do an attraction which was targeting the same age range, because you'd just be cannibalizing each other. 

Yael Coifman: Understanding the competitive environment is incredibly important, is the key thing. That helps you strategize and get to a shortlist of different types that could work, but then the next thing is actually doing a solid feasibility study and looking at what the performance could be of the facilities. As I said earlier, how many people are coming? How much are they going to spend? What's the potential benefit to the center overall in terms of the impact on other retail tenants and F and B tenants within the mall? All of it is incredibly important and then fortunately for us that data is not available publicly. The KPI's that you use for the analysis is all very confidential. The attractions industry is different that way than others. In the hotel industry, for example, you can purchase reports telling you how different hotels are working in different markets. What the occupancy rates are, what the average daily rates are, all that kind of stuff. That does not exist in the attractions industry, you need the function of actually building up your database of KPI's for different markets, and types of attractions, over time. 

Kelly Molson: Is that why, because you mentioned in the white paper, that it's actually really difficult to measure the benefits of entertainment in a retail environment. Is that why? Is that what it comes back to? Just not access to the data?

Yael Coifman: Well, it comes down to two things, one is making sure that your business plan is actually based on real comparables, and assumptions based on real key performance indicators from other locations. That's one, so you actually understand how the attraction itself will work. The second thing is measuring the benefits in the rest of the mall, and part of that depends on the type of attraction. There is some research that's been done saying, for example, if you to an attraction in the mall how much will each of those visitors spend in other locations? But more research could be done, and this is something where the retail industry has been remiss. They don't know their customers, as well as the attractions industry, do. You look at the amount of data that companies like Merlin, or Disney, or whatever have. They know who's coming, they know how much they're spending, they know where they're coming from. Retailers aren't that great at that and they also tend to ask not necessarily the best questions. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah, you're right. Is that harder when you're in a large mall, you're not going to be as granular about your audience? Does that make sense? So are you relying on ... So Westfield, are you relying on Westfield to give you the data about who's coming through Westfield stores rather than-

Yael Coifman: Yeah, exactly. And the thing is, it is their responsibility and it has been for years, is a thing, the concept of a mall intercept survey is one of the basics you learn when you're doing statistics and everything else at business school. So they've always done this, they're just not asking the right questions, and part of it has to do with the fact that they've never seen leisure as a benefit, so it's never really on their list. So they're more concerned saying, who's coming? How frequently do you come? What do you spend? But they're not saying, what was your primary reason for coming? Was it to go to the cinema first, and then did you spend on other things while you were here? Or did you come here first and then you decided to go to the family entertainment center? For example. It's figuring out what the primary driver is and that's something that's always been missing from a lot of their surveys. 

Yael Coifman: Hopefully, now they'll start seeing that there's actually a value to that, because if they can get those stats in, then they can justify to their retailers why they might have to pay a little bit of the share for this attraction to come in because they will benefit as well. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah, it's hugely beneficial isn't it to understand if someone who's coming to the center to go to the cinema, and then they might go to a couple of those shops that are there, or if they're coming for the shops. My guess is it's kind of flipping.

Yael Coifman: I think it's flipping more towards entertainment.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, for sure. Okay, I don't know if this will be a good fit for you actually. I saw something, there's an organization in Cambridge, they're called Sook. They have a retail space in Cambridge, and they have a retail space in South Molton Street, and I think one on Oxford Street as well. Basically, they are an adaptive retail space. So, you can kind of set it up, so if I wanted, for example, if I wanted to run a workshop for my agency, I could hire this retail space, kit it all out with all of my ... they've got screens you can put up all of your things, all of your branding, etc. on. You can rent it by the hour. So I could rent a retail space in the middle of Cambridge for XX amount per hour. Brilliant, it's a really good opportunity for small organizations to get into a different audience. Thinking about how attractions can maybe reach a different audience, or reach a different demographic that wouldn't normally come to their venue, things like museums, for example, could use a few spaces like that for doing a pop-up museum, or a pop-up gallery, or that kind of thing. Do you do anything like that, in terms of that merge of retail sales?  

Yael Coifman: Well, it's a bit more challenging. I mean, I can see where you're going with it, and I think that we will see that, we will see some empty retail space which is being used sometimes for attractions or experiences. But it's going to be done of the cheap, because the thing is with most quality attractions, or even museum experiences, there is a level of investment which is necessary, and you need a certain amount of time to run that attraction to get your return on that investment. So, unless you're doing a cheap and cheerful haunted house thing for Halloween, for example, or something like that, I can't really see that working so well.

Kelly Molson: It's a short-term fix, isn't it? 

Yael Coifman: It's the short-term thing which is the challenge. I mean, unless it's one of those things where you had a traveling exhibition. Like The Body, for example, which are going places. But that's already all done, and the way they pay back their capital is if they do multiple locations over a year, or two years, or whatever. But to just set something up for three months and then go away, it's really hard to make that work financially.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, for sure. So if attractions are listening, which I hope that you are listening to this podcast, attractions. Are there any downsides to this for attractions? If this is something that they're thinking of at the moment, this merge, are there any downsides? Is this just a massive benefit? Can you highlight anything?

Yael Coifman: I think it opens the opportunity up a lot more for attractions now in terms of the situation that we're currently in. But I think the downside, I hate to say downside, it's not necessarily a downside, I think it's a challenge, is you're still going to be dealing with hardcore real estate professionals that every step of the way you're going to have to justify your decisions and why you're doing this, and explain to people who don't understand the attractions industry why you're doing the things that you do. So, it is going to be an uphill battle for a while. There are people out there that are starting to get it, they really want to learn, they want to understand. Then there are others that still just think in terms of square footage, and that's it. So that's probably the biggest single challenge.

Yael Coifman: I think the other challenge is to be flexible. Be a bit more flexible, not about your business model, I mean if it's a solid business plan, it's a solid business plan, but be flexible in regards to how it's funded. Because we also have to remember that a lot of these larger retail developments, or malls, or shopping centers, they want to be flexible now too, but they're owned by pension funds, and reet. So it's not as easy as you'd think for them to find the money, and it's not that they don't want to help or work with you, it's just that they have to find a workaround to get there. So I think that's probably the key lesson for both sides is that flexibility is key to make these deals work.

Kelly Molson: And there is a way to make it work all the time isn't there? I mean, for instance, just thinking about this whole mixture of retail and leisure, there's now going to be a mixture of retail and rental. John Lewis is going to sell off some of its stores and they're going to become housing. Which is kind of obvious right? You could see that [crosstalk 00:28:27]. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah, it'd just be really interesting that people will now be living, and shopping, and all these brilliant experiences all in one place. 

Yael Coifman: Yeah, you're kind of recreating the old city center in one sense, before people starting moving out to the suburbs and getting their houses, and all that kind of stuff. Everything used to be just on top of each other. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah, thank you for sharing all that. It is fascinating to hear about what potentially could happen, it makes me feel really excited because I don't really like shopping that much. 

Yael Coifman: I can't stand it.

Kelly Molson: It's horrible.

Yael Coifman: I can't stand shopping, this is the whole thing. I'm one of those people if I have to go, I have my list, I go in, I get it, and I get right back out again. I'm not one of those girly girls that love to go shopping.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, I feel exactly the same and most of my shopping I do online now, but I do miss the experience of a brilliant shop. I don't want to just go to a shop to get the basic stuff, but if there's something special I want to buy I love that feeling of going somewhere really wonderful where you just get this incredible experience of someone looking after you, or really tailoring that service to you, but I think that is becoming less, and less, and less now. We're really lucky in the town that I live in that we have a lot of independents, and you tend to get that in those small independent shops still, which is lovely. So yeah, I'll carry on shopping here, but I'll get my clothes online. 

Yael Coifman: Yeah.

Kelly Molson: I want to talk a little bit about sustainability. It's on topic, but slightly off-topic, I know it's something that you're really passionate about, and it's something that we had a quick chat about when we spoke about the podcast in the fact that there's been an awful lot of really great work that's taken place in the last few years to ... I mean I've personally been more sustainable about the things that I'm using in my home, but the awareness of sustainability of what our surroundings are, or what we're using, and unfortunately the COVID pandemic has really taken a step back for us really because there's an awful lot of single-use plastics that are happening now. There's not a lot that we can do to control that unfortunately at the moment, but I just wondered if you could share what your thoughts are around sustainability in the leisure industry because it's something that I really want to keep it current and not be forgotten about.

Yael Coifman: I think that is actually the key thing. I mean people are shoving it aside. To be frank, you look at the attractions industry, not everybody was doing a good job anyway. There were quite a lot of parks that were perfectly happy to keep giving plastic straws out until the government outlawed it or individual plastic cups, or in some cases even styrofoam, god forbid, depending on the country you're in. 

Yael Coifman: There are some parks though that actually were leaders in regards to really taking sustainability seriously. PortAventura is a very good example of that, in Spain, their sustainability office is not the one that's tucked down at the end of the hallway behind a broom closet, it's actually quite important for them, and it does shape every decision that they make. Not just in terms of shall, we have plastic cups or paper cups, but in regards to any kind of corporate decision, what's that impact going to be? We need to take that into account. So they've actually really integrated it into the decision-making process, into their education process as well, where Oscar the Grouch, for example, is their mascot that teaches all the kids about recycling. So they've really done a good job leveraging it. 

Yael Coifman: The Looping Group in France is another one as well, there are quite a few parks just trying to take it on board, but a lot of them hadn't fully embraced it. I think the problem that we have now with COVID is that they found it too easy to slip backwards into their old habits. It's easier just to give single-use plastics to guests when they're coming in. It's easy to say, we have to use plastic gloves because we have to clean everything, and keep it hygienic, and all that kind of stuff. Then you have a bunch of plastic gloves all over the place or disposal masks, and blaming it on COVID. 

Yael Coifman: I'm not trying to blame them, it's been a very, very difficult season for the attractions. It's been incredibly challenging, and I celebrate each and every one of them for actually reopening and doing what they could. But there is a question of let's not drop the ball on this one, COVID will not be around forever. We don't know how long it's going to be, I don't have a crystal ball, you don't either, but in five years time hopefully, it will have moved on with either a vaccine or much better treatment options, and it's going to be back to normal. There's no reason not to keep that planning going now, to take this time now when things are slower when capacity is down, and in some cases a lot of the parks might be closing soon for the winter season anyway. Look at your strategy and look at your sustainability goals, and how you're integrating them. Take the opportunity to take a step back and reassess, and make sure that you still keep with your targets so you know where you want to be in five years, even though now you're dealing with what has to be dealt with. I guess that's the key thing that kind of concerns me a bit.

Kelly Molson: I completely agree with you and I think it's about when it's the right time to do that, isn't it? I think like you say if we're coming to attractions have done anything and everything that they can to be open, and to stay open for as long as possible this year, understandably, but I think yeah, now is the time to take a little bit of a step back and say what are we doing and how can we improve that for when we reopen in a few months? What can we do to improve that? 

Kelly Molson: We are going to have Holkham Estates come on the podcast in a few weeks, which I'm really excited about, and they're going to be talking about their sustainability plan for 2021, so if you are interested in learning a little bit more about that, and understanding what their plans are, then definitely stay tuned. 

Kelly Molson: Yael, I've loved having you on the podcast today, thank you. I do have one final question for you.

Yael Coifman: Okay.

Kelly Molson: Which is a book recommendation. We ask all of our lovely guests if there's a book that they would recommend to our listeners that it's either helped shape their career in some way or just they love it for whatever reason. So have you got one that you could recommend for us today?

Yael Coifman: I'm actually going to answer this in a completely different way, starting off by saying no.

Kelly Molson: Okay, no one has ever done this before, you rebel.

Yael Coifman: Because, okay let's be honest, the traditionalist would probably say it's probably Buzz Price's book, or it's The Experience Economy or any of that kind of stuff. And the truth is no, they haven't shaped my career. 

Yael Coifman: What did shape my career is the fact that when I was doing my undergraduate degree I did it economics and political science, and I read a book called The Economics of Latin America. That got me very interested in Latin America and then made me want to actually get into that from the political standpoint. So I went to go live in Spain for several years so I could learn Spanish. While I was there I got involved in the leisure and tourism industry in the sense that I used to run tours for all those bratty US high school kids that do Europe in 10 days.

Kelly Molson: Great job.

Yael Coifman: Yeah, it was brilliant. Then I went back to the US and I did my MBA. But the thing is what I got out of that was actually learning Spanish and becoming fluent in it, and that shaped my career more than anything else because it meant that I had much more mobility in my job, I was given responsibility for all of Latin America because I was the only senior staff member that actually spoke Spanish. It's been incredibly useful here, I also speak French. So I answered your question in a different way than what you expected, I think. 

Kelly Molson: Yeah, you did, but I love it, I love that you did that because I am attempting to learn Spanish myself at the moment, quite badly, via Duolingo as well because I'm doing Duolingo is an app, you can do 5 or 10 minutes a day, and it's quite good in the sense that there are words that are sticking, but there's nothing that beats going and actually living in a country and learning it in that way is there?

Yael Coifman: No, 100%. I would say of all the things that I did that is the one that probably shaped and helped my career more than anything else was learning ... Granted, I did know French before anyway, but Spanish is, after Mandarin, I think it's the second-highest language in the world in terms of speaking so that just opens up so many doors it's just ridiculous.

Kelly Molson: So, this is for me and not for our listeners, sorry listeners. So normally we offer the chance for our listeners to win the book that's recommended, but I'm going to ask you a question but this is for me personally. I can't go to Spain right now, sadly, I'd love to, it's warm. What else can I do to help improve my Spanish? What else could you recommend that would help me?

Yael Coifman: Right, so one of the things, and I don't know if you can get this but you might be able to on YouTube or something, one of the things that used to help me when I was living in Spain, granted remember I had maybe one semester of Spanish, so I was not doing well in the early months, was I would actually watch American television shows dubbed in Spanish.

Kelly Molson: Oh, that's a great idea.

Yael Coifman: The reason for that is they actually ... the Spanish language, the sentences are a lot longer normally, they speak a lot more quickly, Americans don't speak that quickly, with me as an exception clearly. But it was the early days of 90210, so yes, I'm dating myself now. 

Kelly Molson: I love that.

Yael Coifman: I would watch 90210 in Spanish, and that actually helped. The other thing which again sounds really stupid, but I read really cheesy harlequin romances, I think here you call them something and Boone.

Kelly Molson: Mills and Boone, yes.

Yael Coifman: Because again, not really difficult in terms of sentence structure. 

Kelly Molson: Love it.

Yael Coifman: But then you start reading it quickly, and you start skimming and seeing the words, and understanding what's happening because it's not challenging to be honest, it's just a way to get it in. 

Kelly Molson: Thank you. So sorry listeners, you don't get to win anything this episode, but maybe you're trying to learn Spanish just like me and Yael has completely helped you out.

Yael Coifman: There you go. 

Kelly Molson: So what I'm going to do, I'm going to find my favorite cheesy programs and I'm going to watch them Spanish dubbed. That's the way forward.

Yael Coifman: That's the way to do it. 

Kelly Molson: Do I admit what my favorite cheesy programs are? I'm not sure. I could do for a bit of 90210 though, that's a good retro. 

Yael Coifman: I think you kind of have admit it, given the fact that I've admitted I used to watch 90210. 

Kelly Molson: Okay, I tell you what I'm loving at the moment, it's new, it's not retro, but I'm loving Cobra Kai on Netflix if anyone's watching it. So good, it's so good.

Yael Coifman: I haven't seen it yet.

Kelly Molson: I am the Retro Queen, I am the '80s film queen. I'm a really nostalgic person so I'll watch those films over and over again, they just give me such a great sense of comfort. I was a bit poorly last week, so I sat on the sofa with a duvet watching Karate Kid, and then I was like, right great, well I'm in the zone now-

Yael Coifman: You're in the zone, you can go to Cobra Kai.

Kelly Molson: Oh my God, it's so good. It's really good, we were obsessed with it. Every night we're just like ... and the episodes are 25 minutes long so-

Yael Coifman: Perfect.

Kelly Molson: Anyway, so completely off topic there, but-

Yael Coifman: Completely. 

Kelly Molson: Yael, thank you so much for spending time with me today, I really enjoyed it.

Yael Coifman: My pleasure, yeah.

Kelly Molson: I'm going to put all of your contact details into the show notes, but just for the listeners who aren't going to go and read those show notes, where's the best place that they can connect with you and find you?

Yael Coifman: Either via our website, they can just email directly from there, or LinkedIn is probably best. 

Kelly Molson: Cool and what's your website address?

Yael Coifman: Leisuredevelopment.co.uk.

Kelly Molson: There you go kids, if you are listening and you want to chat with Yael, that is where to get her. Thank you so much for coming on, it's been a pleasure.

Yael Coifman: Okay, thanks Kelly, it was fun. 

Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast please leave us a five-star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the Queue is brought to you by

Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions, that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes, and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast. 

Download The Visitor Attractions Website Survey Report - https://www.merac.co.uk/download-the-visitor-attractions-survey

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Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.

Download our free ebook The Ultimate Guide to Doubling Your Visitor Numbers

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast
If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. 

Show references:

FREE ebook: The Ultimate Guide to Doubling your Visitor Numbers

Visitor Attraction Conference - Your website is your brand

Kelly Molson VAC 2020: 5 Top Tips to Improve Your Guests' User Journey (so you convert more bookings)

Simon Jones VAC 2020 : The rising importance of your website

Transcription:

Kelly Molson: Hey, everyone. It's just me today, which kind of feels a bit strange. It's like I'm talking to myself because I don't have a guest with me. In the spirit of the show, I did ask Paul, my Rubber Cheese Co-Founder, to come on and ask me a few quick-fire questions. I thought it was only fair after catching so many of you out with them. So this is how it went.

Kelly Molson: I'm slightly nervous about what you're going to ask me?

Paul Wright: Why?

Kelly Molson: I'm not used to being on the other side of these questions. And I know that you've got a slightly warped sense of humour. So be kind.

Paul Wright: I've kind of been kind.

Kelly Molson: Fire away.

Paul Wright: If you had a time machine, would you go back in time or into the future? And where would you go?

Kelly Molson: Right. I thought back immediately. So I'm going to stick with back. I don't know that I want to know my future. I think that's more terrifying. Yeah, I don't want to know what's coming. But I would go back and albeit there'll be a risk of being eaten, I'd definitely go back to dinosaur times. Because I proper would love to see a real-life actual dinosaur.

Paul Wright: You'd live in a cave.

Kelly Molson: Maybe, I would live in a cave. Yeah. I think I'm quite hardy. As long as I could have some soft bedding.

Paul Wright: You'd be there three weeks.

Kelly Molson: Three weeks.

Paul Wright: Would you think you could survive or thrive?

Kelly Molson: I feel like I could survive. But I don't know about thrive. What would that even mean? What would that even mean? I think honestly if you are back in those times, surrounded by a human eating dinosaur, surviving is probably the best you could hope for.

Paul Wright: Next question. The zombie apocalypse is coming, who are three people you'd want in your team?

Kelly Molson: Oh, this is a great question. Three people, I'd want in my team. Okay. Zombie apocalypse is coming. What kills zombies? I probably would pick you.

Paul Wright: Thanks.

Kelly Molson: Welcome. You're very practical, you're really good at building stuff. You're good with woodwork, you can make things. I feel like that would be a good skill that we'd probably need to stay alive.

Paul Wright: I thought you were going to say, it's because I'm hard. And you'd say, I could stab someone in the head.

Kelly Molson: No, that's not where I was going at all, I was thinking more of practicality. Sorry. Do you feel bad about that?

Paul Wright: No, I think you're banging on.

Kelly Molson: Good. Okay. I think I'd pick Sandra Bullock.

Paul Wright: Sandra ...

Kelly Molson: Yeah. Sorry. She just popped ... Did you watch that film that she was in, Bird Box?

Paul Wright: Is that the one where if she opens her eyes, she sees stuff?

Kelly Molson: Yeah. She got through that. I reckon she could get me for a zombie apocalypse. Also, she's pretty incredible. So that's you and her. That's quite a good duo. Maybe someone like Freddie Flintoff.

Paul Wright: Yeah, that's a good choice.

Kelly Molson: He's quite funny, but also he's quite big, isn't he? I don't know why ... I've got like, I need someone that's a bit stocky. I'm five-two, I feel like I need someone that could be tall and reach things and he can throw well as well, right? He can throw stuff.

Paul Wright: Yeah. I think he would be up for stabbing zombies in the head.

Kelly Molson: Yeah. And you'd have a laugh while you were doing it. Maybe a beer.

Paul Wright: Yeah. He'd probably find it quite fun, wouldn't he?

Kelly Molson: I think that's a good team.

Paul Wright: So to recap, it's me, Sandra Bullock, and Freddie Flintoff.

Kelly Molson: Yeah. It's a great team.

Paul Wright: Great.

Kelly Molson: Hope they're up for it. Is that my questions?

Paul Wright: That's it.

Kelly Molson: Thanks for your podcast contribution.

Paul Wright: Hey, no problem. Anytime.

Kelly Molson: Maybe that serves as a slice of revenge for some of you. It's been really fun working on this podcast. We have learned so much from all of our amazing guests, about them, about their roles, and about the sector as a whole.

Kelly Molson: The show has reached nearly 3000 downloads and we get around 150 downloads per episode, which is mad. I can't believe how many people are actually listening to it. So thank you. And we've gone global. We have people listening to the podcast all around the world.

Kelly Molson: Guests have given up their valuable time and insight, mostly during a global pandemic that's been far from easy for anyone. I want to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to each and every one of our guests, and to each and every one of our listeners. We're so humbled that you're enjoying the episodes and that you keep tuning back in.

Kelly Molson: Our hope is this podcast brings you a little smile and it also delivers you learnings that you can implement to make a positive difference in whatever you're doing.

Kelly Molson: If there is a burning topic that you'd like us to cover or something that you think that we can improve or even someone you think would make a really great podcast guest, send me an email. If you send it to [email protected], then we can have a chat. I'd really, really love to hear your input on this podcast to make it as best as we possibly can.

Kelly Molson: On that note, there's a couple of things that I really want to highlight. One of our recent guests, Simon Jones, MD of Digital Visitor, spoke at the Visitor Attractions Conference. And I joined him in the Your Website Is Your Brand section. If you missed out on attending, you can watch my talk over on our YouTube channel. And we'll link to Simon's in the show notes of this episode too. Both talks offer a load of practical tips on improving your website. Because let's face it, your website has never been more important than it is right now.

Kelly Molson: Then there's our free ebook, The Ultimate Guide To Doubling Your Visitor Numbers. Yeah, I know, it is a pretty unfortunate name. But it was conceived pre-COVID in our defense. But look, it's full of digital strategies that you can implement to help generate more revenue from existing audiences. And yes, to help you get more guests through the door. Eventually. There's a link to this in the show notes too, or you can find it by visiting rubbercheese.com/visitor-attractions.

Kelly Molson: As this platform begins to gain a larger audience, I've been thinking about ways that we can help the sector even more and use it for a purpose of good. In the new year, we'll be starting a mini 10-minute interview series with people in the sector that really, really need help right now. Maybe you've been made redundant. Maybe you can come on and showcase what you can do. Maybe you need connecting to someone. Why don't you come on for a mini-interview? And let's see if we, and all the lovely listeners, can help you in some way.

Kelly Molson: These episodes will be published as usual and we'll share them across our social channels and our email marketing list. If you send me an email, if you're in a position where you need some help right now, let's have a chat and see what we can do. It's just [email protected].

Kelly Molson: We'll be back next week with our usual interview episode. But for now, thank you all for listening and sharing, and supporting Skip the Queue.

Download The Visitor Attractions Website Survey Report - https://www.merac.co.uk/download-the-visitor-attractions-survey

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Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.

Download our free ebook The Ultimate Guide to Doubling Your Visitor Numbers

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Show references:

www.digitalvisitor.com

www.linkedin.com/in/simontjones

With nearly three decades worth of visitor attraction experience, Simon Jones has a unique background and understanding of the issues faced by visitor attractions.

Before co-founding Digital Visitor 15 years ago, Simon managed science centres and large-scale attractions including household names such as Sea Life, IMAX Cinemas and At-Bristol (now We the Curious). Knowing what it is like working brand-side has given Simon a unique perspective of a client's challenges, as it is likely he faced the same challenge himself. 

Nowadays, Simon works as Managing Director for Digital Visitor and uses his brand experience to help deliver digital projects that drive clear, measurable results for tourism businesses across the whole of the travel industry.

Transcription:

Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world. 

In today's episode, I speak with Simon Jones, Managing Director of Digital Visitor, the UK's leading strategic digital marketing agency for travel, tourism and hospitality. In this episode, we discuss experience gifting, focusing on niche products and multiple strategies to secure revenue for Christmas. 

Just a heads up. We had a few tiny audio issues but none of them take away from the invaluable advice that Simon has shared. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue.

Kelly Molson: Simon, welcome to the Skip the Queue podcast. It is really lovely to have you on today.

Simon Jones: Hi Kelly. Thank you very much for asking me on.

Kelly Molson: You are very welcome. And as ever, we start off with our icebreaker questions. What is your karaoke song?

Simon Jones: Angel's, Robbie Williams.

Kelly Molson: It's a classic.

Simon Jones: It is. Not when I sing it, though.

Kelly Molson: Okay. And what is your favorite place to visit in the UK?

Simon Jones: Cornwall. I absolutely love the sea. I've been growing up going to the beach since I was a youngster, and it's something I've always enjoyed. I'll get in the water at whatever the weather, how cold it is, rain, whatever. It's just brilliant, and I love the waves. I can't surf. My kids surf. But I can lie on a body board and hit some big waves. So from that point of view, I love it.

Simon Jones: There's a little place in north Cornwall called Treyarnon Bay, which is just around from a Constantine Bay, which is a big surf beach. And Treyarnon's just kind of become my spiritual home. In fact, I should not tell you because it's not very busy and I don't want it to get really busy. But it's just stunningly beautiful, the most beautiful sunsets that you'll ever see. And we stay like a minutes walk from the beach and I'm in water at 8:30 in the morning and probably at 8:30 at night. And my wife will tell you that I just never get out of the sea. Yeah, I just love it.

Kelly Molson: That sounds like an absolutely incredible place. I don't know of it, but now everyone knows of it. They'll all be flooding there. The closest that we've been is Watergate Bay, which is, it's similar. The sunsets in Watergate Bay are just out of this world. I've never braced the sea there though. I've never done, I've never gone in and body boarded there, but I quite fancy that.

Simon Jones: Really, honestly, there's nothing more exhilarating and embracing. We were down this summer, and we didn't have fantastic weather, but it doesn't matter. The waves were absolutely out of this world and the beach was actually red flagged a few times because they were so big this year. But yeah, I would, honestly give it a go. You will not regret. It is just that, my kids now are in the water for hours every day when we go down, they've just grown up with it and they just love it. My 10 year old in particular surfs like a little demon and you just look at it and go, how have you done that?

Kelly Molson: I love that. Thank you for sharing. And a would you rather question for you, would you rather be a superhero and if so, which? Or the world's best chef?

Simon Jones: That's a good one. I think everybody loves a superhero. It would be great to be able to do that. And in terms of which one, it would probably be Superman just because to fly would be brilliant.

Kelly Molson: That'd be pretty awesome, wouldn't it? What about the whole pants outside your trousers thing though?

Simon Jones: I've done that many times, so it's kind of not new.

Kelly Molson: Okay, good. Glad that we've learned that about you today. All right. The last question on this section. Tell me something that's true, that nobody else agrees with you on? What's your unpopular opinion for us?

Simon Jones: I've got two, if that's all right?

Kelly Molson: It's very all right.

Simon Jones: The Alarm, which are my favorite band of all time, are probably the most underrated band of all time. And second one is that I don't think it's essential to do well in education to be successful.

Kelly Molson: Okay. Let's talk about this because I kind of agree with you. It depends on the path, right? Not everybody learns the same way at school. And I've often talked about this myself because I didn't go to university, chose to go and get a job back in the day. This was a very long time ago. It was a lot easier to get a junior designer position. And I just wanted to learn. I wanted to be hands-on. I wanted to be learning as I, working as I was learning. And it's never really done me any harm. If I think about my career journey and what I've done and how I've learned and now where I am, I think that was the right decision for me.

Simon Jones: Yeah. I'm very similar to you, Kelly. I actually left school at 16. I didn't get on with the school and education environment. Nothing against it, just didn't suit me. And I went out into the working world straight away at 16. I haven't done any professional qualifications, haven't been to university.

Simon Jones: It's all about let's say, it's the right path for each individual. I think it's about your attitude. It's about what you want to do. It's about the desire to succeed and how you get on. If I'm looking to recruit, I think it's probably harder these days. In all fairness to youngsters. But from my point of view, education and what people have done is not the first thing I look at. It's you read into a job application, the experience they've got. Or even a covering letter sometimes is more important, have they done that, absolutely to what you're looking for. Is there enough passion and inspiration in what they're looking for?

Simon Jones: Yeah, from my point of view, obviously education is important. I'm not saying that. But I just think it is down to each person's path. They need to do what they're comfortable with and what they're good at. And if you look back at some point in the future and go, well, maybe I should have done something different. It's not the end of the world. You can find your right way, you just need to work hard at it.

Kelly Molson: I love this. And I think I completely agree with your unpopular opinion, whether it's unpopular or not is to be seen. But I would love to, if you're listening and you're following us on social media, I'd actually really love to know how you feel about that and what your career journeys have been like from education path as well. Pop us a little tweet over, I'd really love to hear about that.

Kelly Molson: That leads us really nicely on to the things that I'd like to talk about today, Simon. Simon and I, we met recently because we both spoke at the Visitor Attractions Conference, and we were both in the Your Website is Your Brand segment. And I think one of the joint messages that we both pushed out this year is that "Your website has never been more important as it is right at this moment in time." We're going to talk a little bit about that in a minute, but I'd really like to understand how your career path has developed from school and to where you are now. If you can give us a bit of a potted history, that would be great?

Simon Jones: Yeah. Sure. I left, when I left school, based in Bristol and I'm from Bristol. And financial services was huge in Bristol, so I basically ended up working in financial service sector for quite a few years, working for SunLife as it was, and AXA. But nothing against it. It gave me grounding, made some great friendships there. People I'm still in touch with now but it didn't really inspire and wasn't anything that really thrilled me.

Simon Jones: I wanted to move into a sales line of work, but the last thing I wanted to do was financial sales, because back in those days, it didn't have a particularly good reputation and it's not that most of interesting. I ended up selling housewares products of all things. I worked for a company called Brabantia, who are known for their pedal bins, bread bins, ironing tables, et cetera.

Simon Jones: I worked for them for a couple of years and it was great, absolutely brilliant products, brilliant time, got to learn an awful lot, spent a lot of time on the road. And then I was fortunate enough randomly to end up finding a job for Merlin Entertainments, or Vardon Attractions, as they were back in those days. I went through an interview process with them and was very lucky enough to become working in the trade side. For the first few years of my working world in, or working life in Visitor Attractions, I worked in trade marketing for Merlin Entertainments. Across the Sea Life Dungeons brands, and just fell in love with the sector. Absolutely. Merlin was a brilliant education for me. Hadn't been, really know anything about this attractions or tourism at that stage, other than the fact that I love going on holiday. I just fell in love with the way attractions are, and how they operate and how much you were just dealing with people's fun time, leisure time. It's really about giving people great experiences.

Simon Jones: I was with Merlin Entertainments for probably about six, seven years. I think it was. Based down in the head office in Poole. And then I moved into museums, or science centers. I went to work for a science center called At-Bristol in the day, which is now We the Curious. And I went there as, originally from the marketing side and ended up working right across the sort of commercial areas for that. And again, it was just brilliant. Back in Bristol, my hometown. Really, really great products, great team, had fun there and dealt with the, they had three sites. There was a site center side, which getting the hands on experiences and getting kids involved with science was brilliant. We had, at that stage a nature attraction as well. And then an IMAX cinema. And IMAX films are the only way to watch films. Large format film, it's just brilliant. Really immersive.

Simon Jones: And then, that moved on from there, always had fancied having a go at something myself. I never quite had the nerve to do it, if you like. And then I met my now business partner, Anthony Rawlins, through mutual contacts. And he had already started a company, it's Digital Properties back in those days, which was all about video marketing. And he was the person that realized that there was a good opportunity for video marketing in tourism, and sort of approached me. We started to work together and I took the opportunity at that stage to go, do you know what? This is the right time for me to break off and try doing my own thing.

Simon Jones: We set Digital Visitor up, and we only work in tourism. We have dabbled in a few things across time, as I think you do. But from my point of view, why would you move outside of this sector? I'm passionate about it. I absolutely love tourism, visitor attractions, the whole side of it. Since we've been going, we've worked exclusively within the sector.

Kelly Molson: I love that. And now Digital Visitor is the UK's leading strategic digital welcome agency for travel, tourism and hospitality. You've done all right.

Simon Jones: Absolutely. Well, thank you. Yeah. I think when you're passionate about something, it becomes a lot easier, doesn't it? And as I say, we're still dealing with people's leisure time. We're able to work with a lot of great partners that deliver fantastic experiences, and it's our job to make sure we get those people to them to have those experiences. Yeah, it still works really well.

Kelly Molson: Fabulous. And now, look, it's been a tricky year. It's been, to say the least. But I don't want to look back on this episode because I think we've talked quite a lot about how people have come through the pandemic and how people have been supporting their clients through that. But what I really want to focus on today is what comes next, because we are now starting that run-up to Christmas. And as we said earlier, your website has never been more important as it is now. And that's not just in terms of pre-booking, but that's in terms of retail and in terms of gifting as well.

Kelly Molson: What I'd like to share with our listeners today are things that they can take away and implement. Should we start with digital marketing strategies for Christmas, and what does that look like? And what can attractions be focusing on right now that is going to push them through to Christmas and really make the most of what they can achieve?

Simon Jones: Yeah, sure. I mean, I think it was interesting over this period is that the shift towards digital has just absolutely built momentum. It was obviously happening over the last few years. And when I started in marketing, obviously digital didn't even exist. To now go to a stage where for me it becomes absolutely the most important thing that you do, is quite bizarre to see the shift that's happened over the last few months. It's probably moved on what would have been five, six years from that point of view.

Simon Jones: What digital does is it gives you that complete immediacy to be able to look at things, what's working, what's not working, change your tactic straight away. It's completely agile and it's totally transparent. You can really see what's working for you, what isn't working for you, things that aren't working for you, you turn off. You don't need to wait for three months whilst the poster has to run its course in a place, that you can actually change it straight away and really, really focus on those bits that will drive the revenue for you.

Simon Jones: And in terms of, we still don't know what the next few months are going to bring. We don't know if we're going to be open. We absolutely have no idea at the moment what's going to happen. But what we do know is Christmas isn't going away. It may be a different style of Christmas, but people will want to give gifts. They will want to treat people to nice things that they can do. And I think the whole concept of experience gifting is just absolutely an opportunity that visitor attractions should not miss out on. The experience gifting market has grown over the last few years hugely anyway. And I just think this is going to really intensify that. If people can't see you or they're not allowed to travel to have big family all together at Christmas, sending the best possible thing you can do as an experience when people can go back out. And obviously from an attractions point of view, that's brilliant because you get the revenue now.

Simon Jones: It is a really difficult time. If you can get your revenue in at this stage and then the actual visit can happen at any point over the next 12 months or whenever it is, but really focusing in on driving that revenue from those ticket experiences is just a huge opportunity that people can't miss out on.

Kelly Molson: And that is something that was continuously talked about at the VAC when we both spoke at it, is that drive for memberships and selling the experience of something that you can't go to it now, but you can go to it in the future. And I think it was something like 23 to 25% increase in sales, in memberships, when actually attractions were locked down. There was a huge spike in, there is a huge need for people and a want and a desire for people to come back. It's definitely something to focus on now.

Kelly Molson: I mean, what about looking at securing the revenue? We've got reduced capacity at the moment in terms of visitor numbers, how does experience gifting help that?

Simon Jones: Yeah. From a point of view, from the experience gifting, I mean, there's, and actually you mentioned one thing there Kelly which is also very important, is memberships. If you're someone who is buying a gift for someone, that whole point of saying here's a bit of clothes or some clothes or something that you don't like, compared with giving a gift that is going down a zip line at a hundred miles an hour, or visiting some of the best experiences or attractions that you can go through. There's just no comparison, in that you're giving people real experiences and potentially memories for life.

Simon Jones: From that point of view, that's brilliant. But from the attraction side, I mean, obviously there's going to be a big push in the buildup to Christmas for people looking to buy, looking to secure these presents. And the revenue goes into the attractions at that time. If you're going to be closed for the next few months, there's a great opportunity to drive a load of cash into your business. And some people may not, you may account for that once the visit actually happened, but whatever happens is you're building up a cash reserve there, which can help to some degree. When obviously then people do come and visit at a later point, you'll get secondary spend from them. There'll be other opportunities to get even further revenue from those people. The whole shops, we know people are buying more in visitor attraction shops when they go through. Obviously from a catering point of view as well.

Simon Jones: And even better, rather than selling just a one-off ticket if you've sold them a membership as a gift, if someone's giving a membership, you're going to get that visit time and time again. And over the next few months, you're going into probably six months through next year. I think local visits are going to be hugely important. People aren't going to be looking to travel as far. They don't know what the long-term plans, if we're going to go into a lockdown again. Keeping local and experiencing things on their doorstep is going to become an even bigger part of what they want to do.

Simon Jones: Finally, just on that, once you've got their details, if someone's bought from you there is always the opportunity to constantly contact them. Go back to those people and potentially upsell. Get more commitment from them. You've got a direct line. And, okay. Even if someone's buying a gift for someone else, you never know, you might encourage them to want to do it as well. Or even just adding value to the package that they've already bought. There's no reason to say a few weeks later, they might want to add something else to that, if you can get them.

Simon Jones: It opens up a whole new load and that's just on the ticket side, but it really does open up a whole load of opportunities to drive that revenue.

Kelly Molson: It's interesting what you said about, I mean, I've always very much myself being someone that will buy people gifts that have a longevity to them and a membership or something like that, or an experience feels right. It feels more exciting than just, I don't know, something that's going to get used and then you throw it away. I'm thinking about what I'm, my parents don't listen to this podcast but I'm going to get them a National Trust membership this year because they live about 45 minutes away from where we are. They've stayed very, very local to their area. They live in a market town in Essex. They haven't really been outside of that town that much. They've come to visit us a couple of times when they were able to.

Kelly Molson: But I think that gift will give them, they will expand their area slightly and they can still go to places that are outside that they feel more comfortable with. Hopefully they'll appreciate that I've thought this through for them this year.

Simon Jones: It'll be just your luck that is time will be the one time they do listen to the podcast, [inaudible 00:18:20].

Kelly Molson: God, I hope not. But I mean, what you talked about, locality is really interesting as well, isn't it? Is that local audiences are even more important than ever now.

Simon Jones: Yeah. I mean, certainly people haven't wanted to travel very far. If they've been going out and doing things, they'd been staying in their local market. And there's a lot of evidence to show that people are going back to sites and places that they know, in terms of they've got the confidence, they know the site, they know how they're going to get there. They know what's going to happen when they're on the site itself.

Simon Jones: And it just gives them that confidence to take that step, if it's something they'd been unsure of previously. That's definitely not going to change over the short term. I'd know, from my point of view, I've explored more in the local area in Bristol over the last few months than I just, I've just discovered places I didn't even know existed. And when you're about 500 years old, like I am, you just don't think you're going to come across new things.

Simon Jones: The opportunity to get people doing more locally and supporting their local attractions and their local businesses, it's just hugely important. And I think people are willing to spend money locally now, sorry, when previously they would've gone further afield to actually have those experiences. They just wouldn't have thought about coming locally. Whereas now they will. Now it does translate very much into, if you're thinking about Christmas, we talk about experience gifting as being obviously a key opportunity for that giving the experiences there.

Simon Jones: But many attractions have got fantastic products and fantastic shops. It's not only that, they very much need to be thinking about themselves as a retail business in the buildup to it. What have they got? What products do they have that will sell? Now, I'm not saying compete against an Amazon or the big boys. You need to think really closely about what branded products there. The added value that you get from your brand. Now, what can people see? What will they value to it? Niche things that they didn't, I said I worked for We the Curious before. You see places like I see in the science museums and stuff. They have amazing science experiments and things that you can buy. How about just focusing in on those really niche areas that you can then give people great fun to have at home? Which is easily extending your brand and obviously securing the sell from your point of view as well.

Simon Jones: And from that side, just as an example, what about if it was almost an annual membership where you could say, right, well, you get a different experiment a month? Or something along those lines. Just very much thinking about, all right, we've got great products. How do you sell them? And it's about competing in that marketplace as well, but with the right things. Not trying to compete where you're going to be massively under cut, or you're not going to be able to compete with the marketing spent.

Kelly Molson: I love that. And it makes it really personalized to that attraction as well, doesn't it? We had a really good chat with Paul Griffiths a couple of weeks ago from Painshill Park. And he talked about how when during lockdown, they actually went out and they sold the wine and the gin that is produced from the vineyards that are at the park. And I was like, that's fantastic. That really makes, it makes that gift very personal to that venue. And it's something that nobody else can sell as well.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, I think that's so important to concentrate on. What about, how do we get people to the attractions? If attractions need to focus on not just ticket sales from a digital perspective, but also retail and gifting, how to get them there? What channels do you use?

Simon Jones: Well, I mean, from the point of view of conversion, obviously this goes back to the session Kelly, that the website's the most important thing in terms of driving that conversion there. Making sure you've got really simple, easy conversion process going through to once you get people to the site, is absolutely imperative from there.

Simon Jones: But in terms of driving people in, we almost look at it into three separate areas. There's what we call converting intent. Converting intent is really encouraging those people who are already looking for something. They might be looking for you from a brand name, or they might be looking for something to do around what you do, or they might be looking for something to do in a location, but they are actively searching for something to do.

Simon Jones: And there's two ways to get reaching those people. One is obviously from an SEO point of view, making sure that you're doing really well from that organic searching, the right phrases, the right areas, making sure you're ranking really well for those. And then there's the paid search. Really focusing on driving through those conversions. And it is definitely worth paid search going through to the site and making sure that you are putting money into those areas because it definitely does show a return. From that point of view, there's converting that. And also, for those attractions that are charitable attractions, so like many of the people that we deal with, I'm sure most people are looking at this. But there's the Google Ads Grant. And Google Ads Grant gives you a good amount, $10,000 a month in terms of supporting your marketing activity online. And it gives you a really good opportunity to use that spend that Google has provided to drive that traffic through to your website. It gives you another great opportunity from there.

Simon Jones: In terms of inspiration, digital is great. To be able to use great content, great video, great visuals. Social media obviously provides a huge amount of opportunity in terms of putting the right message in front of the right audience. We can target by so many different things these days that you can really, really show that you're getting the right people to see the content and then to click through and get back to your site. The cost per clicks from social is a lot lower. We find some really good value from driving people through, but it's not always been.

Simon Jones: Previously, I would say not always been the best of converting channels. That's changed. People are very used to clicking through and buying from those social routes now. And all of that feeds into then the re-targeting, and obviously Kelly, you guys do great websites. It's about making sure that you've got, when you've got them to the site, you've got the right tracking in place then so that if they don't buy that time, you can continue that message to them. You know they're interested, they've been through to the site. Get your retargeting correct and then you can drive them back in, in terms of driving those sales.

Kelly Molson: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for the plug on the websites as well. I think what I really like about when you and Anthony speak, and I've seen both of you speak now a number of times, is that you look at things from a very holistic approach. It's actually, it's not always just one channel that you're talking about or digital actually. What about other channels that we can consider? What about things like audio and TV, for example? Is that a bit of a far cry for attractions right now? Or is that something they should be, or could be focusing on?

Simon Jones: I think it's a really important part of it. You think back to traditional TV advertising, I would have said it probably was way outside of most people's capabilities, or budgets. Sorry, not capabilities. But when you had just a few channels to choose from the amount of money that you needed to invest in it from a point of view of a return. But again, digital in these areas really does help. If you look at something like a Sky [inaudible 00:25:34], for example, basically it gives you the option of the TV advertising, but overlay that with the absolute brilliant targeting you get through social. And it really does give the opportunity to hit the right people. Eight houses watching the same program in a street can all be delivered a different ad based on their traits, their what they watch, what their habits are. You can really make sure again, that you're getting the right message in front of the right people.

Simon Jones: Audio. I mean, I spend all my life on, listening to podcasts now. I walk in and out of work every day, it's a great way to relax after a day's work. And you can put specific adverts, or you can put specific content on front of the, obviously the right podcast. You know, again, if somebody is listening to a podcast about football or about wartime history or whatever, if you then get a message to them that you're getting a really niche audience, sorry, who you can pretty much guarantee are going to be interested in what you have to offer.

Simon Jones: I think it's going to be really hard for a lot of out of home over the coming few months. I mean, you're seeing the pictures of what's going on in London. There's not a lot of people in Central London at the moment. Yet that, from cheap advertising, TFL, that used to be a really, really important part of the way attractions would think of communicating with audiences that were in those area. But it does now need to be shifted and go, the audience isn't there so you need to go where the audience is. Outside of just that, you've got things like influencers, the whole idea of bloggers and influencers and people these days that can have a big say on what people do. That's massive. And make sure that people, you're embracing that. Look at who are your local influences are? What are the influencers in the space that you're looking at? Engage with them.

Simon Jones: Yeah. Okay. Some of them might need to be paid to do it, but if they have the right audience, they have an engaged audience, it's actually in terms of engagement side, where they call the sort of the smaller influencers who have much better audience in terms of getting reactions and engagement from. It really does work well, from that point of view.

Simon Jones: And another one I'm always keen on is partnerships. I've spent a big part of my career talking to people that partnerships are a great way to work. And it doesn't have to in your sector. For example, you mentioned National Trust, there. You might go for someone like a bird hack or something like that, where they've got very, very similar audience demographics and their interests are the same opportunity. If you can forge a partnership and you can work together to benefit both audiences, then that's great because it's just extending up a whole new set of people you can talk to.

Kelly Molson: On the topic of partnerships, actually, I was thinking about this in terms of Christmas. A lot of the attractions that we're speaking to are doing different Christmas events than would usually have been planned. Just because of social distancing, logistics, demand, capacity, et cetera. How about, would you ever recommend attractions partnering up with another local attraction to do, you buy a ticket for this one and you get ticket for this one as well? Or doing a joint package? Something like that?

Simon Jones: Yeah. I mean, it's something, again, I've actually always thought it's a really good idea. And when I was based in Bristol working at [inaudible 00:28:51] into there, we were partner with all the other attractions there and did joint ticketing and joint sales where you could. Or sometimes joint ticketing can be difficult depending on the ticketing systems and what's allowed, but certainly cross promotion. You're not, for something like that you're not really competing for, people are going to do many things over the course of the year. Particularly if they're concentrating on staying local.

Simon Jones: The more that you can look to work together and the more that you can benefit each other, particularly in these difficult times is absolutely something I would work towards. And the other thing from a partnerships point of view, maybe not so much with the attractions, but if you can, we've done some great data capture campaigns with when we've been using say a major retail brand that has a huge audience. And if we can engage with that audience, get them back in to run a competition with a visitor attraction, then you can capture that data. Obviously, as long as it's GDPR compliant, you can then have an ongoing communication with those people for however you want to then. And that can be a really, really effective way of building that proper communication channel with people.

Kelly Molson: Awesome. Yeah, that's a really great idea, especially in the run up now to Christmas. What, we're coming towards the end of the podcast. I've got a couple more questions for you. But what would you, if you could sum up the top three things that attractions should be focusing on right now while we're in that run up to Christmas, what are those top three things, Simon?

Simon Jones: Definitely from a point of view of, I'd get the basics right. What things can you sell? Have you got a voucher to start with? Make sure you've got that and then do the simple steps to get people in to buying that voucher. Make sure you've got your paid search and your organic search strong. Get people into the site, use social media to inspire people to get to the site, and then get your retargeting right so that you can convert that audience. That's probably four actually.

Simon Jones: But there are many others that we could go through, but I think, look, start with them. If attractions are further down the line, then there's a lot more, they can think about digital, the audio, TV, what other products that they can sell. I think it's very much thinking about their own situation. How far down the road are they? I mean, and even what events have they got coming up? Sorry, I'm just going off on a bit of a tangent here. But now I remember there was, again it was back, I think it was, I think Sue Briggs from RHS was talking about the shows that they'd run through the summer that obviously are normally incredibly important for them.

Simon Jones: And they were doing the online versions of those and people were paying to see, enter the shows from that point of view. There are so many attractions that do fantastic events over this time. Light shows, Longleat down by us do great ones. I know Edinburgh Zoo do fantastic. There's so many there. It's a case of, all right, if we're not going to be able to get the volume through, how else can I monetize this? What else can I do to give people that little bit of value that's in, kind of and encourage them to come along and actually? Or it's not to come along, but to participate in this online.

Simon Jones: You're not going to stop the audience that wants to come locally because we can reduce capacity. We're still going to be able to get those people through. But actually, how can you just get the little bits of revenue from other people to help the pot of money build up over this difficult time?

Kelly Molson: Brilliant. Thank you. Super advice, as always Simon. We're going to put all of Simon's details in the show notes, but where's the best place that our listeners can find you, Simon? If they want to book a call with you to discuss any of these things?

Simon Jones: Okay. Well, I think probably the best thing would be to go to our website, which is www.digitalvisitor.com. And my details are on there, and they can come through to, from that point of view. But, thank you.

Kelly Molson: Fab. We will put all of that in the show notes. We always like to end the podcast by asking our guests about a book. We'd like to know what book that you'd recommend, that's maybe helped shape your career? Or just a book that you really love, that you'd recommend that our listeners could pick up and read?

Simon Jones: Kelly, sorry, I'm going to have to two, because I know, I'm sorry.

Kelly Molson: Budget out the window, again. 

Simon Jones: Okay. From a personal point of view, I love John Steinbeck. I love the books that, things like, I'll give one just so you don't have to do too many, but I think Cannery Row is absolute brilliant. I love the area that's, the whole area around California. And I've been traveling around there and it's so atmospheric, they give a really good insight to what the area was like in the times.

Simon Jones: And obviously Of Mice and Men as well, which I will go with Cannery Row [inaudible 00:33:31]. Steinbeck's great, and I think any of the books by John Steinbeck are really engaging. From a business point of view, it's interesting. Over the last few years, I've got more into reading business books, particularly using Audible walking in and out of work. And I think one of the hardest things I've always had in business is dealing with difficult problems. If you've got, particularly from a staff point of view, if you've got a difficult situation, it's very hard to deal with that. It can be very easy to bury your head in the sand and just let things go. But it always, majority of the time that always gets worse.

Simon Jones: A little while back there was a book by Kim Scott called Radical Candor. And I found that really helpful in terms of how to approach that and actually what the benefits of it were and just the structures and the ways that you can do proper constructive conversations and feedback with people to actually help everybody in that. Yeah, Radical Candor was something that opened my eyes into a slightly different way of doing things. I think that's what I'd recommend.

Kelly Molson: That is a great book choice. I have read that book, it's sitting on my bookshelf upstairs, and it is, yeah, it is really great actually. She's so, yeah. Yeah.

Kelly Molson: As ever, if you would like to win a copy of this book, then head over to our Twitter account which is skip_the_queue. And if you retweet this episode announcement with the comment, "I want Simon's book." Then you could be in with a chance of winning it.

Kelly Molson: Well, it's been an absolute delight to have you on the podcast today, Simon. Thank you for coming on and sharing all of your insight. As we said, all of Simon's details are going to be in the show notes. I would highly recommend if you are not fixed for Christmas already book a call, and I'm sure that Digital Visitor can help you out. Thank you.

Simon Jones: Brilliant. Thanks very much, Kelly.

Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five-star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the Queue is brought to you by 

Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

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Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.

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Show references:

A dynamic and proven senior manager with over 20 years’ experience within the leisure and heritage sectors.  Paul has been Head of Operations for the Mary Rose Museum. Head of Visitor Operations for the London Historic Properties at English Heritage. Guest lecture at Southampton Solent University in Contemporary Tourism. In July 2018 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Business for services to Tourism, Heritage and Conservation.

www.painshill.co.uk

www.twitter.com/Painshill

www.facebook.com/painshillpark

www.linkedin.com/in/paul-griffiths-63432763

Transcription:

Kelly Molson:

Welcome to Skip The Queue, a podcast for people working in, or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world.

In today's episode, I speak with Paul Griffiths, Director of Painshill Park, a beautifully restored, 18th-century landscape, designed by Charles Hamilton. We discuss the transformation of Painshill, the emotional reopening, team motivation, and the benefits of pre-booking. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip The Queue.

Kelly Molson:

Paul, welcome to Skip The Queue podcast.

Paul Griffiths:

No, Kelly. Thanks for having me.

Kelly Molson:

It's really lovely to have you on. Paul and I have chatted a few times. We've been kind of Twitter buddies for a while, haven't we? That's how we first-

Paul Griffiths:

Yeah.

Kelly Molson:

... got introduced-

Paul Griffiths:

It's how you meet people these days, isn't it, via Twitter?

Kelly Molson:

Absolutely. And then, we've had a chat, and now Paul's very kindly agreed to come on to the podcast, to share all about Painshill Park. But we start as ever with our ice-breaker questions, Paul. Are you ready?

Paul Griffiths:

Yeah, nervous, but ready.

Kelly Molson:

I've gone easy on you, don't worry. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Paul Griffiths:

Probably a professional footballer, but before that, an astronaut.

Kelly Molson:

Oh, quite different. And so, football ... I know this about you. You're a big Charlton fan, aren't you?

Paul Griffiths:

Yeah, I'd have been playing up front in the valley, but no I wasn't good enough to play for the park, because I don't know I'd make a professional debut. But no, that was my dream for years, to be a professional footballer.

Kelly Molson:

Oh, and then the astronaut, just didn't happen?

Paul Griffiths:

Didn't happen, no. I never did make it to space. Space Mountain, is about as far as I've got. Yeah, but that's-

Kelly Molson:

Same. Okay, this is another retro one. What is the most embarrassing fashion trend, that you rocked?

Paul Griffiths:

Ooh, that's a good question. I tell you what I had, and I don't know if any listeners will remember these. Jeans, with pictures of The Flintstones on.

Kelly Molson:

Yes.

Paul Griffiths:

And I'll have been about 12, or something at the time. And you had Fred on one leg, and Barney on the other, or something like that. And they were really trendy, for one summer.

Kelly Molson:

I think we're probably around the same age, because genuinely, I had those, and I can remember. Yeah, I had those. Yeah, what was that about?

Paul Griffiths:

No idea. I remember being really excited, on holiday. It was on a holiday camp somewhere, and there was a little market nearby. Finding them in the market, and buying them, and being really excited by this. Various other dreadful things... I remember wearing dungarees for a while, and thinking I was really trendy. But from a bloke, that's obviously a bit of a strange one.

Kelly Molson:

I still wear dungarees now, Paul, so-

Paul Griffiths:

Yeah, that's why I said-

Kelly Molson:

[crosstalk 00:02:43] That's okay.

Paul Griffiths:

... but yeah, it's ...

Kelly Molson:

I was thinking about this question, this morning, before I asked you, and thinking, "What would I answer to this?" And I thought, "Well, it would be the Bros era for me," because I had the Grolsch tops on my shoes. And I had a denim jacket, that had a massive patch, of Bros, on the back of it, as well. What a loser.

Paul Griffiths:

But you see, what I find really weird, is that people in my office haven't heard of Bros. I brought them up, as a cultural reference point, at some point. And younger people haven't heard of them. No one's heard ... I was trying to explain the whole Brosette thing, and people having watches on their shoes, and just everyone was looking at me like I was ... I was DJing somewhere once ... that's a completely different story, but put on, When Will I Be Famous? And the floor cleared, no one knew it at all.

Kelly Molson:

Oh, no.

Paul Griffiths:

Note to self, don't play Bros at a disco.

Kelly Molson:

Except, if I'm there, and I'd have been, I'll be right in the middle. Okay, one more of these and then your unpopular opinion. If you could have an unlimited supply of one thing, for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Paul Griffiths:

Ooh, that's a good question. Probably McDonald's breakfasts.

Kelly Molson:

Oh, Paul, they are the [crosstalk 00:04:06] ultimate hangover cure.

Paul Griffiths:

You can't go wrong with a McMuffin.

Kelly Molson:

Yeah, I'm with you. Double sausage and egg?

Paul Griffiths:

With bacon, for me.

Kelly Molson:

That could be an unpopular opinion in itself, Paul.

Paul Griffiths:

Well, couldn't it just. Yeah, what do you have as McDonald's breakfast?

Kelly Molson:

On that note then, I want to know what your unpopular opinion is.

Paul Griffiths:

I'm going to say, that I just don't get the point of Instagram. You've got Twitter, you've got Facebook, why do you need something else? I just don't get why you need another channel. Surely two, Twitter for work, and professional stuff. Facebook great for your fun stuff. Why do you need Instagram? I don't get it, at all.

Kelly Molson:

Oh, no. I feel like this is going to throw up some debate, Paul. I do not agree with you on this one, so this is-

Paul Griffiths:

Fair enough.

Kelly Molson:

... definitely an unpopular opinion. I find Facebook a bit negative, whereas on Instagram, I'm just in my little, happy world of posting up all my lovely things. It just feels a bit happier, a happier place, to me. It's less ranty-

Paul Griffiths:

Yes, I could do it again, yeah. I just tried it for a while. I was talked into it by a good friend, and former colleague. He was saying, "Oh, you really want to do this." And after a week, I thought, "How am I going to run three different things, trying to put three different things on?" So for me, it's easier to separate my life. So I've got friends and old colleagues and things, on Facebook, and then everyone else on Twitter.

Kelly Molson:

So everyone, when you get promoted to Facebook, you know that you're Paul's real friends.

Paul Griffiths:

Yeah.

Kelly Molson:

Brilliant. Thank you for sharing that, Paul. I really appreciate it. Gosh, I've got so much to talk to you about today. I've been looking at your background-

Paul Griffiths:

Oh, that's scary.

Kelly Molson:

... in the attractions and heritage world, and gosh, it's very impressive, isn't it? So you're currently Director of Painshill Park, and director of, is it ... Sorry?

Paul Griffiths:

Well, a Director, one of the board.

Kelly Molson:

One of the board?

Paul Griffiths:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:06:02] chair, and about seven or eight board members, who do an amazing job.

Kelly Molson:

Fantastic. You've been Head of Ops, at the Mary Rose Museum, Head of Visitor Operations, at London Historic Properties, at the English Heritage. You Guest Lecture, at Southampton Uni, in Contemporary Tourism, and in 2018, you were awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Business, for services to Tourism, Heritage, and Conservation. It's not a bad list, is it, Paul?

Paul Griffiths:

Sounds good when you say it like that.

Kelly Molson:

Wasn't it?

Paul Griffiths:

I wonder who you were describing-

Kelly Molson:

It's you. So I want to know, where this love of the sector has come from, because you've got such an impressive background in it.

Paul Griffiths:

Do you know? It's a really easy answer. I went off to Uni, to study Leisure Management. And at that point, I was thinking of going more into sports, and so leisure world. So maybe running ... after we talked about earlier on about, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" Well, I knew I wasn't going to make it as a professional footballer, but well, could I work in football? Could I work in the offices? Could I become a commercial manager in a football club? Could you do that stuff? So I went off to study leisure management, and at the end of year one, we had to do a month's work placement. One of those head out for a month and I couldn't really think what to do. And in the end, approached a few tourism attractions, because I sort of got a bit more into the tourism side, in that first year. Because it was a modular degree, so we were doing four different subjects, every term. And it was very much like school, there were three terms, and we'd do from four different subjects.

Paul Griffiths:

And I wrote to Hever Castle, and they accepted to take me down there for a month. I was down there, with a chap called Piers, who was the business services manager, or business operations manager, at the time. Just had an amazing job. So I spent this month, shadowing Piers, who I still occasionally now. He works for the Tate. Well, he did ... last time I saw him, he worked for the Tate, so I hope he still does. Otherwise, this could be a really difficult episode, if he doesn't anymore-

Kelly Molson:

Awkward.

Paul Griffiths:

... Yeah. I still often bump into him, at ALVA events, and stuff, which was absolutely fabulous. But no, I spent this month with Piers. It was just brilliant. We put on flower shows, in the castle. I can remember driving this funny, little van. I'd never driven a van before in my life, and I was thrown the keys, and told to go and pick up this lovely old lady, with all her flowers, because it was like the local WI, doing a flower display. You know how fabulous events can be, in our industry, and it was just brilliant. The weather was fabulous. Piers' job involved wandering around ... I don't mean wandering around, but going from the tea room, to shop, to ob missions, making sure everything was working right. And I just thought, "This is just brilliant. This is what I want to do, is in a fabulous, historic setting, talking to people, dealing with loads of different heads of departments."

Paul Griffiths:

And everyone was really lovely, in the same way, that most people in our industry are really lovely. So everyone-

Kelly Molson:

Very true.

Paul Griffiths:

... everyone you bumped into round Hever, was just utterly fabulous. So I went back to uni, and at this point, we had to choose our ... Sorry, this is quite a long answer, Kelly. Apologies. But we then had to choose a pathway, of which we'd specialize in. So you then had leisure management as half your course, and then your pathway as the second half. And you could have done rural tourism, straight leisure management, there was a more legal side. And I chose to do heritage management, so that sort of swayed my degree.

Paul Griffiths:

So my degree was in Leisure and Heritage Management, a fabulous thing to have. And then, after leaving, I just wanted to get a job in the sector. And was quite lucky, just got a job in English Heritage. My first job was making the tea for the quantity surveyors, and booking their travel, and just working in the office, as basically the dogsbody, is the only way I can describe it. But it was a route in. And EH's rules then, was that they would try and recruit most jobs internally first. So you'd get a weekly jobs file come round, and I'd open it eagerly, every week, to see what was available.

Paul Griffiths:

And then, got this job at Down House, home of Charles Darwin, which hadn't opened to the public. It had just been taken on by EH. We had this amazing two months, getting ready for opening, and then throwing the doors open to the public. And all the fun and games that went on then, it was just ... So from there, I just stayed with English Heritage for, gosh, 15, 16 years, something like that. Thankfully, just moving into different, progressive roles, which was fabulous. And ended up, as Area Manager for London. So I had the entirety of London, with 12 sites around London. Really spread out, as well. So you had Kenwood House up on Hampstead, which was where my office was. Chiswick House, and Marble Hill in West London. As far afield as Tilbury Fort in Essex, and sort of towards the east, the Jewel Tower, which was the oldest surviving part of the Palace of Westminster.

Paul Griffiths:

It's the bit that you always see, behind ... when MP's are being interviewed on the news, the Jewels House always just merrily behind it. So we managed to move ... when I was there, some signs, to be just behind where the interview was. It was a perfect product placement for us. But yeah, it was an amazing job. I spent most of the time-traveling, from around. I was rubbish at diary management, so I'd find myself agreeing to be in Kenwood, in the morning, and then Down House, or Elton Palace in the afternoon. So forever turning up late to those.

Paul Griffiths:

Yeah, but great. I loved it. As I say, I was there for, well, gosh 15 ... so from '97, to 2012, so what's that, 15 years, isn't it?

Kelly Molson:

That sounds incredible, and what a place for an office, as well. A spectacular place for an office. I'm just going to pick up Essex, as well, because Essex girl. So Tilbury massive, well done.

Paul Griffiths:

It's the thought that counts.

Kelly Molson:

So now, you're at your new role, this role. Tell us a little bit about the park, and how you've come to be there, and what you're doing there.

Paul Griffiths:

Yeah, so after English Heritage, I spent five or six years, down at Mary Rose, as you mentioned earlier. Then, came here in November 2018. I must confess, I'd sort of heard of Painshill, but I didn't really know it. And I think that sums up what its problem was, so much that even local people didn't know it was here. I came in November, as I say. It wouldn't be fair to go into details, but there had been a lot of changes at Painshill, and a lot of the team had moved on. And so, I was left with a smallish team, and then we were able to recruit some, actually fabulous new staff, as well.

Paul Griffiths:

So myself and the head of finance started on exactly the same day. We both arrived in our cars, parked up, getting our little boxes out, with our mugs in, and everything else, that you do on day one. And set about trying to make changes. Painshill itself is an 18th-century landscape garden. It's 158 acres, we have the most amazing views. It was designed by the Right Honorable Charles Hamilton, obviously in the 18th century, who'd done some grand tours around Europe, and then came back and set about building, and creating this quite sensational landscape garden, which includes a number of garden buildings, or follies, as a lot of people would call them, towers, crystal grottoes, hermitages, temples ... two different temples in fact, a ruined abbey, so built as a ruin. And guests, in the 18th century would walk the route.

Paul Griffiths:

And it was designed that people could get their easel out, at any point and paint, because every view would be picture perfect. This is a very quick, potted history. I could talk for hours on end, but I won't. The gardens were sadly lost, after the second world war, whereafter they'd been used for training and development of troops, sold off piecemeal. And it wasn't until the '70s, and '80s ... well, the '70s really, that there was a campaign to save Painshill. It was really recognized by particularly local garden history experts, that what had been one of the first, and most finest landscape gardens, was lost. It really was a completely overgrown mess, is the only way I can describe it.

Paul Griffiths:

And very, fortunately, and quite farsighted, for the time, the local council purchased 158 acres of the land, through negotiation, compulsory purchase, et cetera. And The Trust was then formed because the council realized they wouldn't be able to fundraise, because who gives money to local councils? So The Trust was formed, and we were given the park, on a 100-year lease with ethical rent, and basically told to restore it back to how it was in the 1700s. Which is what The Trust has been doing ever since. The Trust will be 40 years old next year.

Paul Griffiths:

So that's a very potted area of where we are. And today, whilst I don't think the restoration work will ever be completed, because the second you turn your back on it, a tree will grow behind you, or something, work we didn't do. I don't want to sound like I'm being rude about people who were before. And I'm not, I promise, but the site may have been coming into the insular, hence people didn't really know of it. It wasn't really managing to push itself enough. It wasn't really connected to a lot of the local, or national tourism industry things, that we all know work so well. And in this last nine ... or in the six months, or whatever we've now been through in the whole COVID situation, how much we've all worked together. And Painshill wasn't really connected in with any of those networks.

Paul Griffiths:

One of the things that I wanted to do, was obviously make it more well-known and get the name out there a lot more. So, Chrissie, who's my Head of Marketing, has been doing an amazing job of pushing the story out there, and getting it into so many different places, and we've been getting so much amazing coverage. In the last part of the summer, we've got on BBC News, we've been on ITV News. Really great coverage for the park. One of the first things we did, when I arrived, was to do quite a major piece of rebranding, because what we didn't have, was a brand. Painshill didn't have a strapline.

Paul Griffiths:

If you Googled it then, you'd come up with about 12 different names. Most of them we'd given ourselves, at some point. Whether it was Painshill Landscape Gardens, was it Painshill The Hamilton Landscape? But of course, no one's heard of Hamilton, because he didn't really do much else. Unless you're a real garden history fanatic, you wouldn't know who he was. It didn't really work, so we utilized a consultant chap, called Scott Sherrard, who did an absolutely sensational job, of pulling together trustees, and volunteers. We got local industry people, the head of tourism in Guildford along, and all this stuff, and did a few workshops.

Paul Griffiths:

And Scott then used his years of experience and skills, and came up with this phrase, "Painshill, where the walk is a work of art," and it just worked so well. And we've been able to use that in all our promotion and marketing, and it's just given us something to always hook ourselves onto, is that we are where the walk is a work of art. Because you have to walk, everyone in the 18th century had to walk round it. It's the way you get around Painshill. And as Hamilton described it as where you can get your easel out and paint, you can now get your iPhone out, and get your Instagram picture. You see-

Kelly Molson:

See?

Paul Griffiths:

... I found a use for it.

Kelly Molson:

There's always a link, as well. I love this, there's always a link to my weird questions somewhere, in these interviews. Gosh, Paul, can I just ask how long have you been in the role, currently?

Paul Griffiths:

Nearly two years. So November I started, November 2018.

Kelly Molson:

Okay, and so I'm getting that a global pandemic wasn't something that you were ever expecting to have to deal with, in your second year of employment there.

Paul Griffiths:

Right.

Kelly Molson:

I want to talk a little bit about lockdown, what it was like, what you've needed to implement, since you've been reopened. And again, let's talk about what demand has been like, because the message has been very, very clear, the whole way through, "Outside is safe." So my assumption, and I know we've chatted, is you've probably been quite busy, since you've been back open?

Paul Griffiths:

Yeah, it's been a very interesting time, hasn't it? For everybody, and none of us saw this ... Maybe some people did. I didn't have it on our risk register, I didn't have it on any of our planning. We'd often talked about high winds, and storms, and floods, and fires. But global pandemic, I don't think was up there, or any virus, was it? And that point being, global I think is the most remarkable thing.

Paul Griffiths:

I've got a really good friend, who's the development director, at the San Diego Museum of Us. And he and I, would sit, regularly chatting, during the lockdown on Zoom, and you've just got the same problems. It was so bizarre really. You have exactly the same ... "What you closing? And what are you doing? How are you re-opening?" It was just bizarre, to be sitting, chatting to someone on the other side of the world, literally, having the same problems. We went into lockdown in ... it was a worrying time, as it was for all of us. So myself, and my head of finance, we sat and we played around with business plans, and figures and stuff. At one point ... this is before ... and when you look back, it really did come quick, didn't it?

Paul Griffiths:

You look back on that ... and I looked in my diary recently, for something completely different, and thought, "It was only two weeks earlier, we were out for someones ... one of our team was leaving to go on maternity leave, and we all went to the local pub and had a nice meal." And we were all sat down on the table, and that was like three weeks before we were closed, or two weeks before we closed. Blimey, that was ... I was at a football stadium. I was at The Valley, the week before football was canceled, 20 odd thousand people sat around me, without really feeling anything concerning. There were a lot of people washing their hands a lot more. In fact, it was the first time at football, I'd ever queued to wash my hands. I'm not saying men normally do, at football.

Paul Griffiths:

But yeah, it was a really ... so we had all these business plans, and there was a genuine, genuine fear the charity Painshill wouldn't survive, because we're an independent charity. We received no government funding. We're not part of The Trust, or anyone else. We are our own, little, independent charity. And there was a genuine, "Look, okay so if we close for three months, four months ... " whatever it might have been.

Paul Griffiths:

You were hearing all the rumors, "We won't survive. We'll have cleared all our reserves, and would be owing the bank lots of cash, and we'd be trying to close the place down." And we was ... "Well, we can't do that." Luckily, before we had to close, the job retention scheme had been released, so we were fortunate to go into closure, knowing that was there. And that was savior number one, I think, because we were able to make 80% of our team on furlough. And isn't it funny, I'd never even heard the word furlough 12 months ago.

Kelly Molson:

I know.

Paul Griffiths:

I can remember just having a discussion in the office, trying to work out how to pronounce it. "Are you furloud, fullood, fullowed? What is this word, that now suddenly everyone's writing about?" So we were able to do that, and that really did set us up to say, "Right okay, so we'll use a lot of our reserves, but we can get through a potential three, four-month closure, and still be alive." We then launched a save Painshill campaign, and that was a really fabulous thing that we did.

Paul Griffiths:

And that was our head of fundraising, Karen, and Chrissie, into the head of marketing, really pushing those messages out. So we released a lot of footage, that hadn't gone out before, with a real clear message, with voiceovers. I did a few recorded voice messages from home, and they were either put over videos, or I was just talking to the camera, like I am now, saying why we needed help. And we raised about 30 grand in the end, for that campaign. It was brilliant.

Paul Griffiths:

10 grand of that, was a foundation picked up ... We hadn't applied to them. They picked up our campaign, and said, "We really want to support Painshill, it's so important." So, that was a brilliant start. And all these little things ... Steve, my head of visitor and commercial services, came up with this idea of selling our own wines from our vineyard. So we always sell wine, and we make our own gin, which is made from botanicals, from the kitchen garden. So all of the botanicals come from the kitchen garden, and the little gin kitchen in Dorkingshire. The little startup business turns it into the product, and it comes back in these lovely jars. We did a delivery service, around the local area. A number of our volunteers, who were happy to come and help ... because we rely very on our volunteers. Although we've shut the [inaudible 00:22:14] all our volunteers down, anyone happy in their car, to nip round the local area, delivering.

Paul Griffiths:

We just couldn't sell enough. We sold so much of this gin and wine, and delivered it. It was brilliant, and I think for people it was a way of supporting us, and also getting a great product at the same time, everyone's a winner. So, that was great. So we got about 10 grand in the end, from sales from gin and wine. So all these little things, kept edging away at it. Whilst at the time, we were obviously planning reopening, we've been one of the last places to close. We literally were open on Monday the 23rd of March, and it was only that night, when Boris said at eight o'clock, or whatever it was he said it. He always did these messages really late, didn't he?

Kelly Molson:

Yeah.

Paul Griffiths:

That you'd have to change your plans, overnight. So the announcement there was like, "We've got to close." And I remember sitting there, and funnily enough, I was putting my son, Barney to bed. And I was sat with the iPad, just writing, as he was dropping off, saying, "We're going to have to close. We can't pull this off any longer." But what we had done is, we'd had a little practice with social distancing, because that weekend before, and going into that week, when it was things like cafés could only be takeaways, so we reconfigured our tea room, to be a takeaway only service. You needed to have social distancing, and one way systems, so we'd started to introduce it.

Paul Griffiths:

So we had a little practice, which was great, and it meant that we knew how we could reopen. So we were very lucky, in the sense that when, therefore, we started planning our reopening, we'd had a bit of a go, and we knew what would work. So we probably had a little advantage on some of our friends, at other sites, who maybe hadn't had that trial to see what happened. We had to still amend it a bit further. We closed the shop and brought people out of the shop. And then there was all that, "Could you open the shop? Can you open the shop?" And we ended up reopening on the 28th of May, with four days for members. And the first few days we opened, was really emotional. I felt really emotional, having people back in. My team did.

Paul Griffiths:

I actually remember, during lockdown ... because although we were all working from home, we'd all pop in occasionally, to check phones, and just do little bits and pieces, and also just to make sure everything was all right, and just check on everything. And I came up with my dog, and I walked the dog round the grounds, with not a soul in there. And there was a part of me that thought, "Wow, this is quite special. I'm walking round Painshill, and there's not a soul here." But then the main part of me, was like, "This is really sad. I feel a bit weird, there should be people here. I want public, and people, and stopping, chatting to members and visitors."

Paul Griffiths:

But what was really emotional was the response we were getting from members who were coming back. There was two particular different incidents. One lady said she'd not been out of her house for nine weeks, and this was the first time she'd come out.

Kelly Molson:

Wow, yeah.

Paul Griffiths:

And that was like, "Wow, you've put a lot of trust into us then, because you're coming here, on your first time out." And the second woman ... this was really quite emotional, said ... The stuff we'd sent out, like videos, pictures ... because we were doing lots of blogs, because obviously, you weren't seeing the seasons, and people love ... they'd seen a bit of the daffodils from this blog, and the bluebells, and [inaudible 00:25:20]. All this had just gone without anyone seeing it, this year. And then we had all the chicks, and all the wildlife, giving birth to all their little ones, pottering round the lake. And we were able to put lots, and lots of pictures out. And this woman's come up and said, "All the stuff you've put out, is the one thing that's kept me going."

Kelly Molson:

Oh, gosh.

Paul Griffiths:

And you're just like, "We're a tourist attraction, and that's not normally how you ... " I'd never been thanked so much, for basically just doing my job, because we'd got the doors open. And people just kept stopping, saying, "Oh, thank you for getting it open." And just carried on. We opened to the public on the 1st of June, and the numbers have just been phenomenal. I think because we've been very public on how we'd done the social distancing side of it, so people knew before they came. We did a little video, very basically filmed, but it worked really well. Just showing how you were going to come in, which was your route, where the toilets were because we'd closed our main toilets. You'll remember, Kelly, but that was the subject on everyone's lips, wasn't it?

Kelly Molson:

Toilets.

Paul Griffiths:

"How do you do toilets?"

Kelly Molson:

Big issue, yeah.

Paul Griffiths:

Biggest issue. And we were very lucky, of course, because we're outside. So we closed the main toilets, and put some posh Portaloos in. And people liked them, because there was one cubicle. You opened the door, went in and did your business, came out, and off you went. Bit of a quick hand sanitizer, and off you went, sort of thing. And it worked really well. And yeah, the numbers carried on. August was great, September was good, October has been good. It's just for us, it's this whole, when will the bubble burst? In terms of numbers, which I hope it won't. But it's been very difficult planning, as I know it is for all our colleagues and friends that we chat to.

Paul Griffiths:

You can't, really, realistically, start planning events and things for next year, because you just don't know what you can do. How many people are going to come to a wedding? How many people are going to be able to come to an event? And things like that.

Kelly Molson:

I've got so many questions, Paul. Thank you for sharing all of that. That little story, about that lady has really just ... it's just made my heart just pump a little bit. I can completely understand why you were so emotional about that. It's so heartwarming, isn't it?

Paul Griffiths:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Kelly Molson:

You forget how much places mean to people, what it means to them.

Paul Griffiths:

I've never been in a job ... I've been in this industry ... I've never done anything else, as you talked about earlier. I've always worked in attractions. And I've never been on first name terms with people before, in an attraction. Or people will stop me, to ask how I ... I used to do a quite a bit of running. I haven't run properly for a while. Literally, we're talking 5K park runs here. I'm not saying marathons or anything. I had a bit of a knee injury, and this chap, regularly now, stops me to ask how my knee ... It's just really nice, because people see us as being part of the ... it's where they come. We do have people who come every single day.

Paul Griffiths:

They come and walk the dog, they stop, and they have coffees, but part of their experience, is chatting to the staff, as well. It's-

Kelly Molson:

Is that something new, since lockdown then, or did that happen before, as well?

Paul Griffiths:

It definitely happened before. I think since lockdown, I've certainly found I've got chatting to a lot more people. I don't know if that's maybe I've changed. I don't know, it just feels that maybe I'm just getting to know people, after I've been here for two years. And I think because I'm ... I'm not meaning this ... trumpet playing, but because I, as director, fronted up a lot of our campaigns, to appeals, and was filming videos of me, talking saying, "We really need support, please ... " and we had a number of ways that people could support us. One of which was, "If you're a member, please stay being a member. Please don't leave us and go. Please renew." We made the decision very early on, that we would add some time onto membership, and went out there. Maybe because we've got a lot smaller membership base, we were able to get our messages out very quickly to people, and tell them what we were doing.

Paul Griffiths:

And I think, because we are a small, independent charity, with only one attraction, we were only making decisions for one place. Which, I think was harder for some of our friends, and colleagues, where they've got hundreds of sites, or whatever. They were having to consider all sorts of different scenarios, weren't they? When we were only ... consider one.

Kelly Molson:

I want to ask about membership, actually. Membership and locality, were two really key topics, at the Visitor Attractions Conferences. What we were hearing is that, in a lot of attractions, people purchased memberships, while those venues were locked down. And we were seeing something like a 23 to 25% increase in memberships, across some attractions. Did you find that happened at Painshill? And has your audience changed, as well? So do you have more people coming back, that are locally based now, as well?

Paul Griffiths:

I'll answer the first part of the question straight away. Yes, we managed to retain our members, and even saw some growth during lockdown, because it was one of the big things we were pushing, saying, "Look, when we reopen, you'll be able to come out and see Painshill, will be able to enjoy the landscape." And I think we certainly have seen a lot of people joining, since we reopened. Because of our small visitor numbers, and because we're only one site, we made a call very early on, as well, that members wouldn't have to book in advance. And that really helped us, because I think we gained a lot of members, because they quite like that flexibility. So if you're a day visitor, if you like, you want to buy a day ticket, you needed to book a slot. That's been great, and there's a number of things we've talked about on that.

Paul Griffiths:

But for members, I think not having to book meant that they could just have that flexibility to come when they liked, and stuff. And I think that's really helped us push those members. The challenge of course, is we need to keep those members, because my trustee board won't expect to see a dramatic drop in visitor numbers. And they'll be asking me, quite rightly, questions of what we've done. One of the things we're trying to plot now, is what can we do to really impress those members, that if when we get to 12 months from now, you're not having to pre-book anywhere else anymore. Although I'm starting feel like this is going to be on a lot longer than, I think, any of us did think.

Paul Griffiths:

I just had another [inaudible 00:31:27] there. Why I'm saying that is, because when we reopened in May, I was making decisions based around a summer attraction. And I now have [inaudible 00:31:36] year-round. And we're now having to think, "Well, actually we need to give some thought to heating, and keeping people warm." So our volunteers, and front of house team, we took out ... In the pre-COVID days, at Painshill, you came into the shop, which also doubled up as a visitor center, like so many sites do. And you'd buy a ticket at the desk, and then you'd go and have a lovely time. Whereas, we decided to not make people go in through the shops. They didn't have to go inside, so we bought a couple of little pods, and put them outside, and there's a screen and stuff. And people would turn up with their membership card, or their tickets, and show them, and off they'd go. And I've [inaudible 00:32:15] people.

Paul Griffiths:

But now, I'm having to think, "We're getting deep into autumn, actually we can't stick two volunteers outside, however many hats and gloves they've got, because it's going to get wet and cold." I hadn't thought of that, in May, because I didn't think we'd still be doing this. Here we are, in autumn, and I think a lot of people were probably in the same boat, but those who opened early, particularly. Actually, we weren't thinking that far down the line.

Paul Griffiths:

The second part of your question, Kelly, about different audiences. We don't have a great deal of data in the park. Painshill went a bit GDPR bonkers and got rid of everything. 

Kelly Molson:

Right.

Paul Griffiths:

When Chrissie came onboard, we had about 500 on our database. It's now up to about 10,000. So we're actually building a bank of supporters now, who ... it is brilliant. We've certainly, and totally seen different audiences this summer. We saw a lot more younger people, during the height of summer, particularly if lots of places were still locked down. Lots of people sunbathing, and sitting round, bringing little chairs, and reading books for the day.

Paul Griffiths:

Traditionally, our [inaudible 00:33:25] time, was an hour to an hour and a half, but people are now spending half a day, if not a whole day.

Kelly Molson:

That's great.

Paul Griffiths:

You'd see families turning up, with full-blown picnics. Tables, tablecloths, all sorts of ... and they're putting themself in a spot, then kids were going off and having a lovely time. It's nice, lovely to see it. The only problem with that, is our car park really struggled of course, without having the turnover. And we had a few complaints from members ... and I totally get where they were coming from, but there's not much we could do about it, where they were turning up in the afternoon, for their three o'clock dog walk, to find the car park full. So one of those things we just have to keep managing, and working on.

Kelly Molson:

Thank you. I want to go back a little bit, actually, because you've mentioned pre-booking, a few times. And it's definitely a topic that ... well, it's a very key topic, mixed opinions on it, I think. I, personally, think that pre-booking is a brilliant thing, and I want to know how you feel about it. Has it worked for you, do you think, and would you like to keep it?

Paul Griffiths:

Yeah, it's definitely worked, and yes, I'd love to keep it. It's been great, and it's been particularly great during these times because we're managing numbers. So a weekend in October, where we had 1500 people in because we were sold out. Painshill sold out, I never thought when I joined, we'd see the sign saying, "Painshill have sold out," which is lovely in itself, but it has been able to manage the numbers. It's mainly just to make sure that members aren't having a poor experience. Also, people are turning up, and one of our biggest problems is, we are very weather dependent here, and if it's wet, we tend to have a much quieter day.

Paul Griffiths:

So what we're finding is, if it's raining now, people are still turning up, but they're just putting on their waterproofs. Maybe under their breath, cursing their bad luck, but actually walking around with an umbrella, and getting on with it, and having a nice, romantic walk in the rain, or under an umbrella, cuddled up, whatever. But yes, I'd love to keep it, because it has meant that numbers are coming in. It's brilliant, I remember in your podcast with Carly. I think Carly used the example of Warner Brothers, owning Watford. And I was in that same boat, because when they opened ... and I can remember being in a seminar, where people were talking about it, saying it was pre-booked only. I was like, "No one's ever going to come." And of course, as we know, since it's opened, you've not been able to get a ticket for either love nor money. 

Kelly Molson:

Yup.

Paul Griffiths:

What a success story, what an amazing attraction, as well. Despite running a historic landscape, I find myself always looking at those bigger attractions, as places that we could just learn so much from. The service, and just everything that these places do, I always think is so good.

Kelly Molson:

Yeah, I totally agree. I think that there's been a behavioral change, right? People ... they're okay to pre-book now, because it's an expectation of what they need to do, to go and visit the place that they want to go to. I just can't imagine why anyone would want to take that away, if you've already changed someone's behavior to purchase in advance. It doesn't make any sense to me. So I think that they will-

Paul Griffiths:

No, I agree with you completely. The only thing I think, which would take it away, is if people are upset about it, and it's a demand from the public. They want to just get that flexibility back. I can't deny, there's some times when I have really got frustrated, with the lack of flexibility for places. My little lad, Barney, desperately wants to go swimming, and yet, we just cannot get booked in to go swimming. Now, in the past, we'd have just decided, on Saturday morning, "Let's go swimming this afternoon," rocked up to one of four or five, local swimming pools, and gone and had a lovely time.

Paul Griffiths:

And the worst-case scenario is, they'd have said, "Oh, there's a half an hour wait, and you've got a band for a session." And you went and sat in Costa, or whatever, and had a coffee, and then cracked on when it's your time. But now, not being to make those decisions, I think is just ... it is a shame, but I think we're very different on that fact, because we're not massively limited. We do have a limit, and we have sold out a few times, but on the majority of days, there are tickets available.

Kelly Molson:

I think it's what you said earlier, as well, about the length of time that people are spending there. Now, actually your venue is a day trip. It's not just, "I'm going to pop there for an hour, and walk the dog." People are changing the amount of time that they're going to spend there. And then it becomes ... There's another thing about pre-booking, that makes it a little bit more special.

Paul Griffiths:

Yeah-

Kelly Molson:

Do you know what I mean? You've got to plan in advance, you're going to do it, and actually you've got that build-up of excitement, because you're going there. I think that's quite nice, as well.

Paul Griffiths:

I think that's why we also saw all these very, very luxurious picnics, as well, because people had planned, amongst two or three friends ... obviously, no more than six, but had planned to come and meet. We were seeing lots of people, as I was saying earlier, with tables and chairs. But one of the chairs would have a little birthday balloon on it, because obviously, people were coming to do that, rather than go to a restaurant or a pub. And that's particularly before they re-opened. And obviously, now it's just difficult, because we'd like to see our friends, in other hospitality parts of business, supported. But there is a bit of nervousness, isn't there, about people wanting to do things like that?

Kelly Molson:

Yeah. There is.

Paul Griffiths:

Every day, the news now, is full of more and more stories of where this could go. And this isn't going away, is it? As much as [inaudible 00:38:39] before.

Kelly Molson:

We had a question from one of our lovely, regular listeners, Richard G, on Twitter. And he wanted to know how you shared your vision, and motivated your team, to realize the vision for Painshill. And I guess part of that is, how have you kept your team motivated, during the last few months?

Paul Griffiths:

Gosh, they're two really good questions. I think I mentioned earlier, that we've been able to recruit quite a lot of the team, because the people that were here, when I arrived, really wanted to drive the place forward. I think a number of them wanted to change it for some years, and hadn't been able to. And my philosophy has always been about trialing stuff, "Let's give it a go." I often see that, rather than sit, and write a lengthy business case ... I'm not really a massive fan of writing big, lengthy stuff, but you could give it a go, trial it, and see if it works. You think, "Well, actually it's brilliant." Or if it doesn't work, you can quietly close it away, or never talk about it again, and pretend it didn't happen, unless something has gone disastrously wrong, of course, but I wouldn't go that fast.

Paul Griffiths:

So I think in terms of motivating the team, initially it was just about people wanting to take the place forward. I made it very clear that I think there was lots and lots of quick wins we could do, just to transform the place, and give it a tart up. I wouldn't say I was a yes man, in the sense, but I will try and say yes to good ideas, and say, "Well, let's give it a go," or, "Let's see how we can develop that. And let's see how we can take that forward." And certainly, getting everyone together, and onboard, and sharing things. It's so important, isn't it? That people know what you're trying to achieve, and buy into it, and you get people on board very early on.

Paul Griffiths:

In terms of division, of course, things like, as I've mentioned earlier, the work we did with Scott. Everyone was involved with that. The entire team were involved with that, and feeding into it, at some point. So everyone at Painshill, members of staff, lots of trustees, everyone ... We'd almost signed up in blood to ... because we'd all been part of designing that new strapline, that thing. So actually taking that forward ... and everyone knows that we've got to make Painshill, financially sustainable. It can't survive without being sustainable, and it hasn't been for some years, because the only years, when you look back, that Painshill made a profit, if you like, is where very generous donors, in the past, were writing large checks.

Paul Griffiths:

And those people aren't always around, and there's more of a demand. So we've got to make our operations side financially sustainable, so that if we're getting visitors in through the door, we'll generate enough money to pay the staff, and cover the costs, and stuff. So I think it was a stark motivation, in the sense that we have to make this place work, and let's really try and have some fun while we're doing it, as well. We work in an industry, which is making great memories for people, and giving people great days out. You want people to be leaving going, "What an amazing place." And there was a lot of quick wins. Signage needed changing. There was no guidebook. There was nothing for people to buy, and take away, and learn about. 

Kelly Molson:

Right.

Paul Griffiths:

The tearoom was quite bland ... is the right word, so we've now to create a bit of a sense of place. We've put some quotes up, on the tearoom wall, from where Painshill's featured in either literature, or people's comments. So two presidents in the United States have visited Painshill, and Adams gave a great quote, about it being the best piece of art seen. And so, we've got that up there, and Painshill features in War of The Worlds, and so we've got a quote up from there. There was a wonderful piece, in a newspaper, about how Queen Victoria used to like to come and promenade here, with Prince Albert.

Kelly Molson:

Nice.

Paul Griffiths:

So we've got [crosstalk 00:42:21] there. So actually, it creates a bit of a sense of where we are, and that we've arrived. And in terms of motivation, I think people have motivated themselves, and I think there's been a real ... there was a desire to make sure we got through this. And since reopening, this has been, this outpouring of people, and love [inaudible 00:42:40], I think has driven the team on. I think there has been a lot of exhausted people, and I think you're seeing that across our whole industry, aren't you? Because there's a lot of people, who have worked very hard, without much of a break, since March. I certainly saw it on the face of some of my team, who've been working all the way through the six or seven months, not being on furlough. And I'm not saying being on furlough was easy, from any stretch of the imagination, because I don't think it was, because most people actually wanted to do stuff, and wanted to help.

Paul Griffiths:

A bit like when you had Rachel and Carlton on, the other day, and Rachel was saying, on the podcast, she wanted to be doing stuff, and couldn't. And I think that was the same for my team. They wanted to volunteer, they wanted to help. Lucy, who looks after our volunteers, wanted to keep doing the volunteers [inaudible 00:43:23]. Of course, we couldn't let her, because she couldn't be doing work for Painshill. Whilst I understood why the regulations came in, I think it affected charities in a way, because they couldn't let people just still help, and keep everything afloat.

Paul Griffiths:

So yeah, I think it's been an interesting time, and it's been hard work for everyone in our industry. But I think what's pulled it through, has been the fact that everyone's worked so closely together. I think the fact that organizations, like ALVA and the amazing work Bernard's done, through the last ... Well forever, but for particularly [inaudible 00:43:57]. Letting people enjoy webinars, or getting those daily updates, when you're not a fee paying member of ALVA, because you're not a big enough attraction. But actually, the realization that everyone's in it together, I think has just been amazing. And I'm just so grateful for what everyone's done, during this time.

Kelly Molson:

Yeah, it's been lovely. I think that's been one of the most wonderful things to come out of this. 

Paul Griffiths:

Yeah.

Kelly Molson:

We're coming towards the end of the podcast, Paul, but I've got two more questions for you. You know we always end up on a book recommendation, but before we get to that, I want to know what's next. So we're in the run-up now, to Christmas. 

Paul Griffiths:

Yes.

Kelly Molson:

What have you been able to plan, for Christmas, because I'm guessing, it's not what you were expecting to be planning.

Paul Griffiths:

What we do at Christmas, is we have what we call a Santa Snow train, a land train basically. So if you think of one of the things that potters up and down the seafront, during the summer, with a pretend train at the front, and a few carriages. And the train would chug round the landscape, and delivers kids to the crystal grotto. And then the kids would wait in a tent, with the elves, and they'd play games and stuff. And then the elf would invite them in to meet Santa Claus in the grotto, so you're seeing Santa in a grotto, which is perfect, of course, in many ways. And then you pass them back. We run it during the day, and into the evening.

Paul Griffiths:

Of course, when it run into the evening, we needed lighting and stuff like that. So there was a lot of outlay of costs, and a lot of concern. And also, we were really struggling to make the train social distance-able. Our booking system wouldn't quite allow it, and couldn't be made to allow it, without us parting with a large amount of cash, which of course, was just adding more onto the risk. So a couple of weeks ago, we made a quite emotional team. We know it works, because some people have spent since last Christmas planning it, and getting everything in place. So actually to have to make the decision to cull it, was really, really hard work. But we made that call, that we would pull the whole event, and really just try and see what we can start again.

Paul Griffiths:

Now, we've worked with a company, who are relatively local to us, by sheer chance. We got in touch with them ... well, I found them on the internet, and then only discovered, after talking to them, they were not even a couple of miles away. It's one of these, who do large models, so we've used them for the dragons that we're having in half-term, and we've also had some dragons before. So they are doing, what we're calling the Snowfari trail around the grounds. And this is just literally, people will walk round the grounds, in their own little bubble. So no train, no grotto, no tent to wait in. Because obviously, the other thing to it, if we have kids waiting in the tent, we've got to entertain them.

Paul Griffiths:

Now, last year, myself and a number of other parents, as it were, brought in out of ... not out of date, toys that their kids had stopped using. So Barney's old train set, was merrily set up for playing. And kids were loving it, because they'd come in play around a bit, and off they'd go. But of course, we couldn't let kids do that. They can't be handling toys, that other kids have just handled. So we've got the Snowfari coming, which is going to be a really ... Well, I hope and I know, cracking walk around the grounds, looking at penguins, and polar bears, and looking for reindeer, and there's some gingerbread men in a big tree.

Paul Griffiths:

And then we're doing a sort of tea with Santa. And this will be quite a limited capacity, but we are doing some form Santa event. And that's just used in decking up one of our ... a function conferencing room, but in a nice, Santary way, and kids and families will come in, sitting in tables and then we'll ... socially distance obviously, have a cup of tea. It's not like an afternoon tea, but tea and a slice of cake, or a mince pie. And then Santa will come in, tell a little story, and then you go up individually, to meet him. So at least there is a, Santa is not, not coming to Painshill.

Paul Griffiths:

The main thing will be the trail, I'm going to try and push that, so people can walk outside, wrap up warm, and just enjoy the landscape, with multiples of animals, all over the place.

Kelly Molson:

Yeah, I think that sounds really fun. I think that there's some Instagram-able moments there, Paul, isn't there? For sharing on social media, for sure.

Paul Griffiths:

Yeah, I'm sure there is. I'm sure people can have a lovely time with Instagram.

Kelly Molson:

We'll convert you, eventually. Thank you for sharing all of that. Last question, which we ask all of our guests, which is, do you have a book, that you recommend, that has helped shape your career in some way, or you just would like to recommend to our listeners?

Paul Griffiths:

Oh, gosh. Yeah, I thought a bit about this, actually, and I was trying to think of a book. I'm just trying to think of one about work. But then I noticed ... I was going to pick one by one of your former guests, actually, which was Creating Magic, by Lee Cockerell. I, back in my Mary Rose days, we had a team away day, and I bought everybody a copy of this, before ... so none of them can apply to get the book off you, Kelly. I made everyone read it, before we then had a session, because what was in there, was so many good points about ... all around trying to take away problems from visitors. And I was so impressed with that. And that's why I've always been ... I mentioned earlier, looking at the larger attractions, or companies, or how they manage to do stuff, and think, "Well, how could we do that, to make things easy?"

Paul Griffiths:

I was so impressed with the story, that Lee told in one of his podcasts when they started taking the luggage from people. So actually, wave goodbye to your suitcase, at Heathrow now, and you next see it in your hotel room, in Orlando. So I just noticed it, and that's a really, really good book.

Kelly Molson:

Great. That's a really good book recommendation, and I'm sure that when Lee listens to this episode ... because if he isn't a subscriber, he absolutely should be-

Paul Griffiths:

Definitely, yeah.

Kelly Molson:

... He'll be delighted, that you've recommended that. So thank you. As ever, if you would like to win a copy of that book, then if you head over to our Twitter account, which is Skip_the_Queue, and you retweet this episode announcement, with the comment, "I want Paul's book." And you will be in with a chance of winning it.

Kelly Molson:

Paul, thank you. I've loved having you on the podcast today. I think it's been a brilliant episode. I'd really like to say a big thank you for how ... again, everyone that comes on, is superb, but people are so honest, and so open, and so happy to share their experiences, so thank you for doing that today.

Paul Griffiths:

No, thank you for having me. It's been great.

Kelly Molson:

Thanks for listening to Skip The Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five-star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip The Queue, is brought to you by 

Rubber Cheese, a digital agency, that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast.

Download The Visitor Attractions Website Survey Report - https://www.merac.co.uk/download-the-visitor-attractions-survey

We have launched our brand-new playbook: ‘The Retail Ready Guide to Going Beyond the Gift Shop’ — your go-to resource for building a successful e-commerce strategy that connects with your audience and drives sustainable growth.

Download your FREE copy here

Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, MD of Rubber Cheese.

Download our free ebook The Ultimate Guide to Doubling Your Visitor Numbers

If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast
If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this episode.

Competition ends March 31st 2021. The winner will be contacted via Twitter.

Show references:

www.linkedin.com/in/williamkallaway

www.kallaway.com

www.kallaway.com/blog

www.kallaway.com/blog/post/id/113

Transcription:

Kelly Molson:

Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. Each episode, I speak with industry experts from the attractions world. These chats are fun, informative, and hopefully always interesting.

In today's episode, I speak with Will Kallaway, MD of PR and Sponsorship Consultancy Kallaway. Will leads a team of experts, creating smart, imaginative campaigns for clients across the culture, travel, property and retail sectors. 

We discuss why PR and communication is so important to attractions right now, and what they should be focusing on. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue. 

Kelly Molson:

Will. 

William Kallaway:

Kelly.

Kelly Molson:

Welcome to the Skip the Queue podcast, it's really good to have you on today. 

William Kallaway:

I can't tell you how excited I am. 

Kelly Molson:

That sounded quite genuine. 

William Kallaway:

I'm also slightly nervous about the questions you're going to ask me. These questions, you wouldn't tell me what you were going to ask me. 

Kelly Molson:

Don't be nervous. Everyone says this. They're nervous about the ice breaker questions. Come on. 

William Kallaway:

Yeah. 

Kelly Molson:

Right, first one. What are you not very good at? 

William Kallaway:

Oh, how long have you got? I mean, I thought this podcast was about 50 minutes. What am I not very good at? I'm terrible at lists, absolutely terrible at lists. 

Kelly Molson:

Oh, okay. 

William Kallaway:

Writing lists, and I'm not very good at seeing them through. I'm lucky I'm surrounded by brilliant people who hold my feet to the fire. 

Kelly Molson:

I like that. It's all about delegation. 

William Kallaway:

All these things get delegated back to me, but at least I have someone else telling me that I'm delayed, and I'm behind. So yeah, I'm good at ideas and big picture and strategy and things like that. But my new shortlist always escapes me. 

Kelly Molson:

Right. Noted. Okay, if you were a wrestler, so imagine WWF wrestling, what would be your entrance theme song? 

William Kallaway:

I think, probably, I will survive. 

Kelly Molson:

That would be the weirdest wrestler walk-on I've ever seen in my life. But an honest answer. Okay, brilliant. 

Kelly Molson:

All right, a third one. If you had to delete all but two apps from your smartphone, what two would you keep? Oh, this is really tough.

William Kallaway:

Two apps. I would keep Podcast because I just listen to podcasts all the time. And I love that.

Kelly Molson:

Good answer. 

William Kallaway:

Particularly ones on attractions. Cool, Skip the Queue. I'm just looking now to see actually which ones I would actually keep. My photos, there you go. I'll keep those because lots of memories in there. 

Kelly Molson:

Yeah, that's good. That's the biggest thing about losing your phone, isn't it? The idea that you might lose all your photos from it.

William Kallaway:

Yeah, I always keep losing my phone. It sometimes crops up, sometimes I have to get another one. That and my [inaudible 00:03:02], which I've lost for a week and I don't know where they are. 

Kelly Molson:

Oh, God. Okay, so something else Will's not very good at, keeping things, not losing stuff. 

William Kallaway:

You got quite enough about what Will's not very good at. I'm sure of that as we go through.

Kelly Molson:

Okay, all right. Last one, and then we'll move on to the good stuff. Okay. So everyone gets asked this question. So I think that you've probably prepared this one. But I want to know what your unpopular opinion is. 

William Kallaway:

Daniel Craig is not a very good James Bond. 

Kelly Molson:

In what way? And who would be? Who is your favorite Bond?

William Kallaway:

Well, it has to be Sean Connery, obviously, because to suggest otherwise is just simply wrong. I just think it's overblown now and overinflated. And actually, I think the way it was approached in the early years, it was a far stronger product, there you go.

Kelly Molson:

Okay. I'm with you on Sean Connery. I definitely feel like he's the best Bond, but Daniel Craig would be my number two. Because handsome.

William Kallaway:

Ah, there we go.

Kelly Molson:

Let's move on. Thank you for answering those questions, Will. So I want to know about your background today. And we're going to talk a lot about what you do as MD of Kallaway, but how did you... What's your background? How did you become the MD of Kallaway? 

William Kallaway:

Well, so it's a family business, was founded by my father in 1972. So we've been going for just over 40 years, and gosh, getting up to about 50 now, and I never intended to do this. I always intended to be a farmer. So I have a degree in agriculture. It was either that or the army. So I had an army scholarship when I was about 16 and then decided that tractors were far more appealing than tanks, which is something I've never really sort of squared the circle, I ended up joining the reserve forces until later in life.

William Kallaway:

But so yeah, I was a farm manager for a little while, I used to write for Farmer's Weekly and Country Living and all those sorts of other titles. And actually, I sort of moved away from that, because I just found it quite lonely as in, you would be on the back of a tractor for hours and hours sometimes, or you'll be off with the animals and I love working with livestock, absolutely, cows and sheep are my favorite things. But after a while, you just kind of feel, "Actually, I really need a human contact." And I really enjoyed being around people, sharing ideas, and coming up with innovative solutions for problems, with brown problems.

William Kallaway:

So anyway, that was a long time ago. And from there, I actually ended up working for an agribusiness, PR company, dealing with all sorts of interesting issues, everything from GM modified crops, through to fertilizer rates on farmland and sort of illness in cattle, all this sort of good stuff, which was great. Then I went into corporate public relations, and I did some really interesting work there. I mean, I think the thing I was most proud of was lobbying for the release of Briton on death row in Florida, which was a really interesting project. I mean, it's still ongoing, actually, the wheels of the legal system turn slowly, but that just was really a powerful thing to be involved with. 

William Kallaway:

And from there, I ended up then joining the family firm. And I was interested in the work that we were doing at the time, around purpose, and linking brand activity through to really helping people through sponsorship, but also citizenship, and also placemaking, as well. So when Kallaway started out in 1970, we were the first organization in the UK to really apply the commercial aspects of sponsorship to the arts. So we created some of the biggest sorts of cultural prizes at the time. So the Costa prize was originally the Whitbread Book of the Year, which we created way back when. Choir of the year, which some of your listeners may know it was created by us. And it's still running 20 years later on BBC Four now, the sort of big amateur singing competition. Those sorts of initiatives.

William Kallaway:

But we also work with Barclays to introduce citizenship into the classroom, developing those sorts of initiatives really interesting. And then from there, we moved into placemaking, and destinations, and then our work with museums in particular, and cultural attractions was growing. And that's sort of where we've been focused. But we do more and more work now around F&B and general tourism as well. So the company's been on that sort of journey. And I have too, I suppose.

Kelly Molson:

A couple of questions on that. One, which is slightly off-topic, but did you work alongside your father? And how was that joining the business with him as your boss, I'm assuming? 

William Kallaway:

Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I think it's really hard. And I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for people who don't want to blur the lines between being an employee and being a son if you see what I mean.

Kelly Molson:

I can imagine it was really, really difficult. 

William Kallaway:

Yeah, it is difficult. But you sort of learn fairly early the boundaries and how you're going to cope with it, and then you take it from there, really.

Kelly Molson:

And what about the specialist? So as an organization specialize in destinations, arts, culture, travel. Where did that originate from? Was it something that was always there? Or you won a client in that sector, loved it, decided to focus on it? How did that come about? 

William Kallaway:

It's always been there. So really, why we existed as an organization was to help brands harness the transformative power of culture. So that could be a large insurance firm that wants to a sponsor theater, to help it reach new people, or to genuinely do some philanthropic good by creating an entirely new program. So culture is such an interesting word because essentially, it's the culture of an organization. So for a theme park or for a destination, it's not only the experience you get but the engagement you get with being in the place with the people and the culture of the place. 

William Kallaway:

So harnessing the power of culture, helping brands tap into contemporary culture, or amplify their own culture. We've recently been working with Hard Rock Cafe and now that organization has a really interesting brand culture and a really powerful and effective way of marketing itself because of that, and it retains its staff far more than the industry average. And it's something that can be a really powerful force for effective marketing. But essentially, really, if you strip that away, we help ambitious brands grow. And that's either brand who tend to be in the cultural space just simply because of our heritage.

William Kallaway:

But more through now into destinations and places. I mean, at the moment, we're working with Imperial College, and Glen and Charl Caps, which is the UK's largest adventure builder. On a new space they've created on White City, which is called Scale-Space, it's going to become a physical home and an online home for ambitious scaling companies. And we're helping them communicate that and unpack it to engage as many audiences as possible of tech organizations that want to locate there. 

William Kallaway:

So our work is very varied, from F&B brands, culture brands, tech brands. And actually, what's interesting about this is it gives a diversity of thinking to brand problems, or brand challenges. It helps give a richness, I hope, to our clients in the way that we're able to respond to particular... I will help them overcome particular challenges that they might be facing. 

Kelly Molson:

Yeah, absolutely. Can we talk a little bit about the last six months? Because I think it would be wrong not to mention the fact that we've been in a global pandemic, it would be wrong not to mention the fact that both your organization and, we've spoken about this offline, our own organization works very closely with the attraction sector and tourism. How has it been for you as an organization? And how has it been for yourself and for your team through this? Because I'm guessing it's been quite challenging as it has been for us.

William Kallaway:

Yes, it has been challenging. I would just like to say a big thank you to my team, they've been absolutely fantastic. Each and every one of them, they've all played a part. And I'm grateful and lucky to have them. So thank you guys, if you happen to be listening to this. 

Kelly Molson:

I hope you are, that's lovely. 

William Kallaway:

It has been challenging. Our guiding ethos as a business is to solve for the client, to help our client succeed. So we always need to have the right number of people in the organization to deliver whatever the client may want at one time. So we're not an option where, as an organization, you can simply pull down the shutters, you could do I guess, but that wouldn't really solve for our clients. So we helped our clients by working alongside them to find solutions to help them stay present and contribute to their audiences in new ways. 

William Kallaway:

Just two examples of that, so when lockdown first happened, one of our classes are Royal Academy of Dance. And we created a program that helped them engage people online for the first time called RAD@Home. And we segmented the message to different audiences. So what one of the bigger concerns was actually helping old members of society stay connected, and stay really sort of moving, keep moving. And because they were the people most risk being isolated and also sedentary. And so we took one of the RAD's programs for older people called Silver Swans, took it online, but one of the messages for family audiences was "Get granny grooving."

Kelly Molson:

Great message.

William Kallaway:

Yeah, it was phenomenally successful. We had media coverage all over the place, the RAD's website traffic zoomed up, it got mentioned, completely unprompted, on Today program, Radio 4, as sort of a leading example of how brands are engaging. Things like that we've done, through to working just most recently with Japan House London, helping them open a new exhibition. So our work has varied during this time. But how's it been? I think it's difficult and for everybody, I think, as you've identified, people have their own personal challenges as well. People working remotely, some people love it, some people hate it. Some people have very different working environments than you or me. And so one has to be mindful about the fact that they might actually want to escape the home but go somewhere else. So yeah, it has been difficult. But we're sort of moving forward, as it were.

Kelly Molson:

Yeah, aren't we all? What lovely positive stories from the campaigns that you've had going on throughout the lockdown. No, that's really lovely. I'm not going to forget that, get granny grooving, that's brilliant. 

William Kallaway:

We've also tried to contribute to the wider sector by running regular webinars. We've been doing quite a bit with the UK, bound on that, and others. And bringing sort of experts who we work with as well in a bit from placemaking experts through to experts in communicating with the Chinese consumer, through to help not only for clients but everybody in the industry, learn a little bit more and hopefully come out the other end of this a little bit stronger. So, and all that information is on our website, including actually, I'm just looking at the website now, we ran a webinar with Chris Earlie, the head of Tower Bridge, which is another one of our [inaudible 00:15:36] and one of our clients. And he's in the webinar there, he shared some really great insights about what they're doing as a brand to segment the audience in thinking about how they're essentially getting back to work. So there's some good stuff in there as well, if you want.

Kelly Molson:

Oh brilliant. Well, all of these things we'll link to in the show notes. So you'll be able to log onto the website and find links to all of the things that we'll mention today. But actually, it's some of those things that I want to talk about in a little bit more detail. So like you say, you have been running webinars throughout, and they've been incredibly valuable. I want to ask a few questions about them, if that's okay, because I think that some of the information that's in them would be really, really valuable to our listeners right now. So I guess my first question is, why is PR and communications so important to attractions right now and the tourism sector? And what should they be focusing on?

William Kallaway:

Right. Well, I think the first thing is, it all depends on where you want to be in the future, and then working back from there. So if you want to be front-of-mind when your audiences can start to travel again, when your consumers can start to travel again, if you want to have secured a certain level of footfall, or you want to have secured a certain level of brand value in how people think about you, you need to communicate, ultimately. You have to communicate. Going dark is not necessarily the best option, there may be an option for some organizations who simply just can't do it.

William Kallaway:

But for those that can, they should continue to communicate and add value in a way that helps set their brand apart. Because public relations, ultimately, it's the professional maintenance of a favorable public image, to give it its proper term. But actually, it's so much more nuanced now. I mean, I think sometimes the industry and other industries tend to think about PR as a sort of promotional stuff. But actually, it's far more nuanced than that. And where we come from particularly, is from a very strategic communications perspective, and thinking about all aspects of what the brand's doing, how it's behaving, how it's training its people, how to invest in the local community. Even from what sort of sponsorships has it got in train at the moment? What are its key messages? And put all that together into a coherent plan that enables the brand to reassure its customers, engage new customers, and reignite interest and engagement about what it is doing now, in a manner that hopefully builds footfall into the future. 

William Kallaway:

So it's also about reacting, I think, to how customers are perceiving brands at the moment and where they're getting information from. So I think there's an opportunity to reassess your target customer at the moment. And by that, I mean it's not only just looking at the demographics, but I was very interested in one of your earlier podcasts, I think it was the marketing lead from Continuum talking about actually, doesn't really look about demographics at the moment, it's all about almost tribes, people being different ages, being interested in different things and similar connections. 

William Kallaway:

So I think reevaluating your audiences about what their interests are, and then how you can engage and connect to those audiences in new and meaningful ways. So there's been an acceleration in how consumers are using social media and how they're using digital equipment. Lots of older people are getting online for the first time, there's been a massive growth in the older population getting on Facebook, there's been a boom in people using Zoom who are older. So how can you, as a brand, actually harness some of that technical innovation by the consumer so you are being present in a new and interesting way, either in their social media feeds, online, or even in the home.

William Kallaway:

I was looking online recently, there was a brand, a spa brand that was enabling you to sort of relax and take a virtual spa at home. These sorts of things. And Amazon has launched the opportunity to do a guided tour of a city, you pay for that and the guide takes you around the city and takes you into shops. So how can a brand react to that? But more importantly, I think, particularly for many brands that are located in different parts of the UK, how can they be seen to be contributing positively to the local community and giving back? Because purpose is going to be one of the biggest things that comes out of this pandemic. It's not necessarily... Sorry, localism, I think. And when I say local, I mean regionalism, really.

William Kallaway:

But YouGov's got some really interesting tracking on this around how people think about multinational brands now, and actually, they are steering towards the local side of things, when people start to travel again, they're more likely to go locally rather than internationally. So either staycation, been a huge increase in that, but actually traveling locally rather than going nationally, so there's an opportunity to not only demonstrate your value for money but to use a bit of a cliche phrase, your values for money. And I think that's something that should be really powerful into the future. So demonstrating what a brand is doing, to train its people, to give back to the local community, to support local schools, so on and so forth. 

William Kallaway:

And I think that that will need to be done in a distinct way that's relevant for that particular brand, rather than just doing what everyone else is doing. And I think also then goes back into a, "Why are we here as an organization, what is our promise to our customers?" A promise needs to be deeper than we're just going to give them time, it needs to be multi-layered. And then this goes... once brands think about that, and understand that to a great deal of detail, it will help them communicate effectively, both through their actions and what they say, which then folds back into professional maintenance of a favorable public image. Because it's not something that is necessarily forced, it's something that just comes from within the organization itself. 

Kelly Molson:

Some incredibly powerful advice there, Will. Thank you for sharing that. Just want to touch back on, because my second question relates a little bit to what you're talking about, about consumer behaviors, and how there is now that focus on localism. And we've had our own conversations with attractions where we're seeing new visitors come to new attractions that didn't even know that they were on their doorstep, but they've lived 10 or 15 minutes away from this certain place for years, but just never engaged with it before. 

Kelly Molson:

So I kind of want to ask you, and this is one of the webinars that you had out during lockdown. So I want to ask you about the new emerging consumer behavioral needs, what is it that attractions need to know about? And how do they kind of tap into that now?

William Kallaway:

Well, I think they need to tap into it in a way which is relevant for them and authentic to them as a brand. Authenticity is, I think, going to be so much more powerful now. Because authenticity and the quality of what you do, rather than just the price, the quality of what you do, the quality, the richness of experience, is going to be so much more powerful and relevant now, when people's disposable income is going to be squeezed as well. That said, there are some clear consumer themes. First up is super connectivity, which I mentioned earlier, which is people want to have an engagement online first before they choose to buy in physical form. That's not to say they're more likely to book you months out, because actually, people don't know what's going to happen in a couple of months. But they do want to be able to experience it, so think about how you're projecting yourself online, super connectivity. 

William Kallaway:

Then also think about how you're tapping into... Some themes have come through from this around wellness, self-development, mental fitness, physical fitness, and also quality of life. You've seen people actually thinking during lockdown, "You know what, I do want to spend more time with my friends and my family. I want to spend more time investing in myself. I want to spend more time reading or doing the things that I like." So for an attraction, it's about thinking about how it can reflect some of those themes in some of its messaging. 

William Kallaway:

So I was interested with the podcast you had on with the Chap from the National Parks. The National Parks naturally lends itself to be able to communicate issues around wellness, physical, mental well-being, spending quality time with families. There might be a slightly more challenging task there for roller coaster-based rides, attractions, but one can think about that in a different way to build those connections in the right sort of way.

William Kallaway:

So yeah, wellness and self-development are sort of one in the same, really, but those are the top three. And then underneath that you've mentioned, is virtual engagement. So super connectivity might be one thing but virtual engagement is going to be something else. And you've already seen brands already doing things like this. So you can engage on a brand on anything from Minecraft to Animal Crossing, lots of attractions moving into that space. And it's been right for some, it's not right for everybody. 

William Kallaway:

And then doing the right thing is the CSR aspects of it. But doing the right thing is now going to be absolutely what customers expect. There was some polling that was on YouGov before I came on this call today. And it was saying that about 85% upwards of individuals, this is across all Generation X, Y, Zed, Boomers, etc., would move away from brands that they felt didn't hold the same worldview as them, and were seen to be polluting or seen to be not treating their staff correctly, or seems to be underpaying their staff, they actively avoid that. And really, there's an opportunity here to demonstrate leadership because, again, some polling from YouGov shows that customers really want to live a more sustainable life. 92% of people say that, but only 16% of people follow it through. 

William Kallaway:

So actually, brands have got a really interesting leadership role to play here. They've got an opportunity to talk about how they are embedded in the local community, the local economy, importantly, and sustainability is not just environmentalism, it's about the local networks that support us all. And this element of localism, this element of, "Actually, I might commute 100 miles to go to work every day. But actually, this is my neighborhood here." And I think that these changes are going to stay very much great ingrained, become ingrained because we're likely to be in the state for the next six months. We've almost been a year in this situation by the time we come out the other end. And I think that will just naturally force people to make new habits, to see the world differently. 

William Kallaway:

So it's all about the stories that we can tell, it's all about the stories and it comes back to that promise. What promise do you making your customers? And as a marketeer, what change do you want to make in the world? And what change do you want to bring to those customers? And that goes beyond just having a good time whizzing around in a rollercoaster or seeing some artifacts. It needs to be a far richer and multi-layered promise and change you're trying to make. Which is one of the reasons why I love working with attractions, museums, because they genuinely impact all ages, every member of the family. And they just have some astonishing stories there. And I love that. I love that. But I love talking about it, writing about it and taking people on the journey. Can I just tell you a story?

Kelly Molson:

Yeah, please do.

William Kallaway:

So almost 13 years ago, I introduced a woman to her own heart. The only reason I remembered this is because the lady concerned dropped me an email just to say it was 13 years ago when this happened. And there was a picture of her holding her heart, surrounded by the world's media. And she held it there.

Kelly Molson:

What? 

William Kallaway:

And it's just-

Kelly Molson:

Hang on. This needs more explanation, you introduced her to her own heart. 

William Kallaway:

So I launched the Wellcome Collection for the Wellcome Trust. And it is an amazing building that brings together arts and science and culture to help us understand what it is to be human. As it says, "A place for the incurably curious." But one of the first exhibitions was the heart exhibition, and there on the wall was going to be a space for human hearts that had to have to be removed from a sick individual. And I just happened to be looking at the space in the pre-briefing and I said, "Is the lady still alive?" And there were some people who weren't entirely sure, and we had to go through some networks and stuff to find out. But yes, she was. And so we got in touch with her and said, "Would you like to come and see this and talk about it?" Talk about what it is, talk about meeting the heart, talk about it as from a sort of personal and emotional thing. But also talk about it and give the opportunity to talk about the importance of organ donation." And it was just incredibly powerful because there she was, she was connected with her own heart, the World's press went absolutely mad for the story, as you can probably imagine. It provided us with an opportunity to communicate the power of medicine, life and art, that's what the catch was.

William Kallaway:

Then, through the World's Media, through the Red Top Media reaching an entirely different section of society with these sorts of stories. And yeah, it literally went global and that was just such a really visceral reminder about how powerful stories can be within museums and within that sort of setting. And that's also one of the things that I like to bring to these organizations. Because you can ask, as someone coming in, from the outside, you can ask sort of questions which haven't necessarily been asked before, like, "Is that person still alive? Can we get her to meet her heart?"

Kelly Molson:

Gosh, that is incredible. What a story. I'm so glad that you shared that. It's phenomenal, isn't it? What an incredible, powerful story. But what an incredible way to sum up what that organization is all about.

William Kallaway:

Yeah, if you haven't been to Wellcome Collection, do go. And I think also, look at that organization as a really interesting attraction based brand that just has astonishingly rich outreach and engagement. As a Radio 4 series at the moment running about Touch, which is sponsored by them, or isn't sponsored by them, is run in partnership with them. But I've been very fortunate to launch all sorts of different museums with William Morris Gallery, Mary Rose Museum, National Museum for the Royal Navy, The View from The Shard, there are loads of things and each and every one of them is fantastically interesting.

Kelly Molson:

It's really lovely watching your face there while you were talking about it, so completely lit up.

William Kallaway:

Well, there's something completely different when we launched The View from The Shard, we'd been contacted by someone who wanted to be the first person to propose up there. So it was all fine and we'd got this person upstairs and we had the then London Mayor, Boris, etc. And the World's Media were all there ready to... The ribbon was being cut for the grand opening of the top of the Shard, and there was this very nervous-looking man in the corner, get out of one knee, and we had some flowers off stage as it were to do the right thing, assuming his partner's going to say yes. And anywhere else, somebody else jumped in and did it first.

Kelly Molson:

No. Oh, that's awful.

William Kallaway:

Just another member of the public just went off and did it and that was...

Kelly Molson:

Oh, no. All that build-up.

William Kallaway:

[inaudible 00:32:16] was crushed, he became the second person. 

Kelly Molson:

I hope his partner said yes. 

William Kallaway:

Yeah, he did.

Kelly Molson:

Oh, God. Thank God for that. Because it could've been worse, couldn't it?

William Kallaway:

Yeah, [inaudible 00:32:26], they're always good things to find.

Kelly Molson:

Brilliant stories. Right. Thank you. I have got one more question for you. We talked a lot earlier about your own team. And people working from home and it being dispersed. And it's just everything has been really, really different for people. And I guess what I wanted to ask you was around PR planning tools. So I think one of the questions is what are the best PR planning tools to help remote teams gather the information and then run communications with clarity and real, measurable impact? How do people do that when they're so dispersed at the moment? 

William Kallaway:

Okay, so that's an interesting question, in terms of remote tools to bring teams together to help them plan on things. So we use one, which is called Monday, we also have our own database system called Daylight, which that's all really techie boring stuff, frankly. But it is essentially glorified to-do list. 

Kelly Molson:

I'm just thinking, someone needs to help you with those to-do lists, Will. 

William Kallaway:

It always comes back down to what am I trying to achieve? And how can I measure success? So one of the things that we always set for our clients, and the reason why we won so many awards, is because we work to very clear and measurable goals. And what I mean by that is, if you're going to value something, you need to measure it. And one of the things I think, particularly, with PR, sort of straightforward PR, it gets very much shoved into the promotions bracket, "Get the press release out." Actually, let's take a step back and put a far more nuanced and effective communications campaign that links tightly into marketing and advertising and helps raise a brand profile.

William Kallaway:

So if we're going to do that, "Okay, how are we going to measure it?" Footfall. What are smart goals, specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely, sorry, relevant, and timely? Those, just being really crystal clear about what we're trying to do, actually unifies minds towards that central purpose, and then everything else should follow. So I don't think it's necessarily about what sort of tools you have. But it's about how you are working towards that common name. 

William Kallaway:

And we do have some grids that we use. In fact, I shared it on one of the webinars where we talked about you want to look at your different audiences, so you map out your audience. You say, "Okay, this is the audience I'm looking to communicate to, how do I want my audiences to think and act now about me as a brand? And how do I want them to think and act about my brand in the future?" Once you understand that, you should have two less, and it's got a gap in the middle. So essentially, if you have your audience and the way they think about you now, and the way you want them to think about you in the future, what do you need to do? And what do you need to say, to take people on that journey? 

William Kallaway:

And then you need to think about what are the best channels for me to show that I'm walking the talk? There'll be some channels that are more relevant to others for different elements of your audience. The older audiences or the parenting audiences might have very different channels to the Millennials, the Generation Zeds. But ultimately, what buying that, what should all band together is some clear, consistent messaging, that comes back to that central promise about why you exist as an organization. And that promise that you're looking to communicate. 

William Kallaway:

And then you need to measure. And this isn't just about clicks on websites, it's not just about footfall. Of course, all of those are absolutely relevant, and absolutely what we should do. And if you look on our website, on case studies, everything we do is set out like that. But actually, it goes deeper than that, which is, "How am I going to measure meaning and difference?" So meaningful is, "Can I look at the type of coverage that I'm securing or the way people are talking about my brand that talks about, 'This is making me happy.' Or, 'I see the quality of what you're doing.'" Words that reflect that qualitative status that you're looking to achieve if you're wanting people to pay to come walk through the door.

William Kallaway:

And then the other element to look at is your difference. Are they excited about visiting X or Y attraction? How are they describing it? So essentially, there are two ways to look at these things, qualitatively or quantitatively. And I think lots of people tend to focus, because it's easier, on the numbers, "We secured X number of website traffic." Which is all great, but that's a short-term thing. And actually, the longer-term build of consistent growth over time, is based on something that's far more powerful, and t's that thing that people want to sign up to about a brand, the guiding star that is going to orientate all your communication, and that will compel people to sign up, because they're really interested to learn more. Or they're going to not just be a visitor who's going to visit once, they're going to keep coming back, or they're going to turn into an active ambassador about your brand, and get others to come.

William Kallaway:

And that sort of response is multifaceted. It goes down to, particularly in this time of COVID, "How are you going to handle ticket refunds? How are you going to be easy to deal with if people can't come? What's your customer service, like?" All of that feeds into the overall brand perception, right way through to what you're talking about doing locally, how you're investing in people, if you're going to get announcing, exciting new sponsorship with a confectionery brand to sponsor your roller coaster or something. All of that, every element along there really, really matters. But if you've got a strong core, based around a clear set of values, then it will help you communicate far more strongly.

Kelly Molson:

Absolutely. 

William Kallaway:

Far more strongly? Is that right?

Kelly Molson:

Yeah, that's right. Brilliant advice, Will, thank you. Thank you so much for sharing. 

Kelly Molson:

I think that our listeners will get a lot from that. I'm taking a lot from it myself, I'm thinking about our core mission and how that comes across in our communications. 

William Kallaway:

Well, I think you do that really well.

Kelly Molson:

Oh, well thanks.

William Kallaway:

I looked about that, there it is, it's just simply put. Mission, purpose... I think people kind of... yeah, there it is. 

Kelly Molson:

Very kind. 

William Kallaway:

It is interesting. It's one of the things I really enjoy about this work, is helping brands find that way forward and then doing really interesting things with it.

Kelly Molson:

It's really interesting because I think that listening to you... And we have spoken before, at length about storytelling really, essentially. And I think people do pigeonhole PR and comms agencies into a press release, just pushing stuff out and not really thinking about it in a holistic way. And I love how you've talked about it today from it has to start from that core message, that core kind of story and vision for your organization. 

William Kallaway:

Absolutely. I think if you draw three rings on the traditional Venn diagram, it's like, "What is your purpose? What am I doing to establish my reputation and build trust?" Those three sort of rings, and in the middle is then what you're going to do. So reputation might be based on the excitement of what you're doing, underpinned by first-class, customer service. And then the customer trust would be built out of the way that experiences the brand, but the purpose then comes through about what you're doing with the company profits, how those are being shared, whether or not you're investing back into local people, all that. So yeah, that's really interesting to look at that. 

William Kallaway:

Then the tactical stuff, about, "Should I be engaged with influencers? Should I be on this channel? TikTok? Should I be on regional media?" All of that sort of follows naturally after. I think there's a temptation to get straight into the tactical weeds, rather than actually take a step back and say, "What are we trying to do? And how do we get there?" And that's one of the reasons why we always create a named-and-framed campaign for our clients. So our brand essentially is Smart Imagination. So that's creativity focused towards solving business problems. And we will always create a named solution for a client. So for Japan House London, the campaign to launch that, this new cultural presence for Japan in the UK to stimulate understanding and trade with Japan, ultimately, the campaign name was Your Gateway to Contemporary Japan. So it was your gateway, so it was a personalized campaign that was specifically focused at one type of person, who that attraction's very keen to get in.

William Kallaway:

And it's that approach that actually... So rather than just doing stuff, leave all that over there, it's actually being really clear about what the campaign is going to be called, and how it's going to be moved forward and then how it's going to be measured. That's cool. Okay, so here's a good example, right? So when we launched the Mary Rose Museum, this is several years ago now, we created a campaign that was called The Journey of The Ship's Bell. And to do that, we worked with the museum, and we took the bell of the Mary Rose from the museum out into the Solent. And it was rung to mark the ship and those that had perished with her.

William Kallaway:

But then we dressed it up, and we took it in... we partnered with the Royal Navy, and we worked with HMS Duncan, which is the sister ship of the Mary Rose, and we found the youngest sailor on board, who was then going to ring the bell, we invited a flotilla of ships and boats from across the local ports to come and join this. So we were creating this story about linking this wooden structure that many people, young people were slightly alien to. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when Blue Peter, when the Mary Rose was coming up, and it-

Kelly Molson:

Yep, same.

William Kallaway:

... just [inaudible 00:42:43]. But to many younger people, there wasn't that connection. And what is this thing? So actually, The Journey of The Ship's Bell enabled the brand to tell the story visually, and we timed everything to happen on various parts of the news bulletin through the day. So we started in breakfast television, lunch-time television, and there was a big ceremony in the evening, all of which was broadcast nationally. But it was that story that actually turned the museum opening into something that was far more rich, and engaging for the World's Media. And we did other stuff, like we got interesting talks about wrestlers. We got people who might be linked, or could say things about the Mary Rose involved. So we got a bridge wrestler called William Regal, I think his name was. He was sharing stuff out of LinkedIn... Sorry, not on LinkedIn, on Twitter. It was actually, this was many years ago now, but it trended in numbers, trended number two in the UK, I think.

Kelly Molson:

Oh, lovely. I see, I knew that my stupid icebreaker questions would somehow be related at some point in a podcast interview. 

William Kallaway:

But I think it's about telling that story. So always naming-and-framing your campaigns in a really effective way. So it's tempting to say, "We're going to run a Christmas campaign." Well, let's talk. Well, let's do something more exciting with that. If we can excite ourselves about what Christmas might be on the attraction, then we'll be better able to excite our customers rather than just being a Christmas campaign.

Kelly Molson:

Love it. Perfect. It's a perfect way to bring us towards the end of the podcast interview. I've got one last question for you, which we ask all of our guests, and it's a book that you recommend that's helped shape your career in some way, or just a book that you really love that you would recommend to our listeners? 

William Kallaway:

That's a really good question. So I have several books that I try and read. I sound pretty terrible at this, as in, I lug them round in my bag. They're just in there and they get more and more buggered. But there are a couple of books that I think people who are interested in communication should read. And the first one is called Influence by Robert Cialdini, and he's the sort of guy... He's a behavioral psychologist and he wrote this almost defining book on influence, really. It's really, really interesting. And there's another book, which I would also recommend is written by James Carville, who was one of the Clinton's campaign experts really. And the name of the book is called Buck Up, Suck Up... and Come Back When You Foul Up, I think. And I've often returned to that book because it's just got some brilliant truths in there about the learn from the war room of political campaigning. It's really effective. So definitely recommend that book.

William Kallaway:

For relaxation stuff, I love the work by Neil Gaiman. I just love that, I love reading those books. And I also think it's important to sort of challenge yourself philosophically as well. So for a couple of years, I've been reading books on stoicism, which I think is a really interesting philosophy. Particularly, there's one book called The Daily Stoic, which is by a guy called Ryan Holiday, which provides meditations from Marcus Aurelius, another where you can dip into on a daily basis. He's also got one at the moment called Ego Is the Enemy, and also Obstacle Is the Way, which I think is a really, really interesting, stoic way of looking at the world, which is, if there is an obstacle in the way, it becomes the way. You just have to deal with that and how you react to it actually defines who you are, and how you're going to move forward, generally.

William Kallaway:

I'm not really doing this justice. I've not read the book, but I listen to a lot of his podcasts, but I definitely recommend you that. And I also try and reread The Screwtape Letters, because they really deal with some really interesting issues around to do with self, soul, temptation, staying on the straight and narrow. Because I go to church, I'm Christian, I'm trying to live my life with Christian values, and the dichotomy between stoicism and what's in The Screwtape Letters is really interesting. So those four books are sort of ones that I would always recommend. And they're all challenging for different reasons.

Kelly Molson:

Great book choices. Another thing that Will is maybe not good at is following instruction, because that's four books and not one book.

William Kallaway:

Oh, sorry. 

Kelly Molson:

But that's fine. So everyone that comes on, blows my marketing budget out of the window. However-

William Kallaway:

If you have to give one book, a one readership book... Sorry, a book to professional basis, I think Buck Up and Suck Up is just such a great book, because it's just boom, boom, boom, boom. And it's all about how these guys helped win the White House-

Kelly Molson:

All right, well, that's the one then. That's the one. 

William Kallaway:

And I found that really [inaudible 00:47:45]... Yeah, that one. There's also one I'm reading at the moment called How to Argue with a Cat, which is brilliant. And it's all about how to persuade and how to use... Which is just really interesting when you're thinking about how you use that to communicate as a brand, brand and all that sort of stuff.

Kelly Molson:

That sounds like a great book. All right, but now that's five books. So if you don't stop-

William Kallaway:

[crosstalk 00:48:07].

Kelly Molson:

... recommending books, you'll be arguing with a podcast host soon. Anyway, as ever, if you'd like to win a copy of this book, and I think... What's the one we're going to go with? The Buck Up...

William Kallaway:

Buck Up and Suck Up, is a good one. How to Argue with a Cat is great. Influence one...

Kelly Molson:

Oh, gosh.

William Kallaway:

We'll come to pick one-

Kelly Molson:

We'll pick one at random. Okay, so if you want to win one of Will's books, if you head over to our Twitter account, which is skip_the_queue, and you retweet this episode's announcement with a comment, "I want Will's book," then you'll be in with a chance of winning it. And we'll pick what book it is at random. Will, thank you so much for coming on today. It has been an absolute pleasure. And thank you for sharing so much insight with us. It's really, really appreciated. 

William Kallaway:

My absolute pleasure. And if anyone wants to find out any more, then it's all on our website as well. We put quite a lot of information about what we're doing for clients and the type of things, the way we're working to deliver those sorts of results. So people can apply that in their own brand situation as well. And if anyone wants to a hand with anything, then I'm always free to have a conversation, always happy to help and to have a chat and help people find a way through things. So just give me a call.

Kelly Molson:

That is really kind offer, Will. And we will put all of Will's contact details in the show notes. So if you want to take him up on that offer, then go for it. I'd highly recommend a chat with Will, he's fab. Thank you, and we'll speak to you soon. 

William Kallaway:

Thank you. 

Kelly Molson:

Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five-star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip the Queue is brought to you by 

Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast. 

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