Coca-Cola. Ferrari. Lego. These are some of the most recognised brands in the world, with huge market share in their respective industries. Part of what keeps these companies on top is their desire to keep their brands at the forefront of consumers’ minds in the midst of life’s cacophony of marketing messaging and sound bites.
To that end, companies such as The Lego Group and Jim Beam have recently built (or re-built) compelling brand attractions aimed to forge deeper connections between consumers and their products. But what makes a successful brandland? There are five key ingredients: 1. Authenticity – an authentic location (a corporate headquarters or production facility) with real stories, real people and real processes. 2. Access – providing visitors with access to things such as collections – artefacts, and memorabilia, processes and people. 3. “Only-here” experiences – giving guests the opportunity to see and experience things that can only be found at the attraction. 4. Personality of the brand – letting it shine through the architecture, aesthetic, exhibits, media experiences and people. And 5. Human Interaction – putting a human face on the brand by allowing guests to interact with employees and brand ambassadors.
While different corporations may not use these ingredients in equal measure, those who wish to become successful should incorporate them into their brand attraction recipe to lure new visitors and keep loyal ones coming back.
Sweet start
Hershey was one of the first companies to create a theme park around a consumer product. Founded in 1905 by Milton S Hershey, the park was first envisioned as a picnicking destination for Hershey Chocolate Company employees. It is now one of the top 20 theme parks in North America and offers more than 65 rides and attractions for enthusiasts of all ages.
Guests are reminded of the brand and its personality at every turn, down to the Hershey’s miniatures and Reese’s and Jolly Ranger signs that help identify the height requirements for each ride. The adjacent Hershey’s Chocolate World envelops the guest in the sights, sounds, tastes and even smells of Hershey’s products, while providing them with only-here access to Hershey’s production processes. Guests can even get everything from a Chocolate-Dipped Coconut Immersion to a Whipped Cocoa Bath at the nearby Spa at the Hotel Hershey, making for an unparalleled confectionery experience.
Across the Atlantic, the Lego Group opened its first Legoland park in the company’s hometown of Bilund, Denmark in 1968. The largest Danish attraction outside Copenhagen, Legoland Bilund welcomes 1.6 million annual visitors. Based on the success of the Bilund attraction, Legoland parks were later launched in Germany, England, Malaysia, California and Florida (the Legoland theme parks are now part of Merlin Entertainments Group). Even though the newer parks are hundreds to thousands of miles away from the brand’s home, all of them make a clear visual statement about their inspiration – Lego bricks.
Each of the parks’ activity areas relate to a different Lego play theme and offer rides, shows, interactives and a Miniland – a series of recreated towns built meticulously from millions of these bricks. The child becomes the hero in each activity, whether riding and jousting on a horse or putting out a fire, just as they are the heroes when they complete their Lego creation at home. This feeling of heroism is the hallmark personality of the Lego brand.
Motoring on
But not all brand attractions are theme parks. Volkswagen Autostadt in Wolfsburg, Germany is an authentic tribute to the car brand and offers a glimpse into the tradition and design that have made the brand a success. The ZeitHaus (auto museum) features one of the largest car collections in the world, telling the story of the development of the automobile. Its authenticity derives from the fact that Volkswagen was so committed to telling an authentic story about automobility that the first car displayed is actually a Mercedes, the world’s first car. In the history gallery, exhibits showcase the personality of the company, as it evolved from its People’s Cars roots in World War II, to its Love Bug reputation of the 1970s, to its current reputation as an innovative and sustainable company. Autostadt offers a series of one-of-a-kind experiences where you can take a ride inside a gyroscope to learn about safety or walk through an automobile testing experience.
But the real only-here experience can be found within the site’s towers, which are filled with cars recently produced at the adjacent factory, the largest automobile manufacturing facility in the world. These cars are ordered by customers, which are placed into the tower via an elevator. The sense of anticipation reaches its peak when customers see their appointed time come up on an electronic board, and they can go and pick up their car. Its reverence to automobile tradition, its tongue-in-cheek look at Volkswagen’s history and personality and its abundance of only-here experiences are the reasons why Autostadt has welcomed more than 25 million visitors since 2000 and spurred the economy of this small German town.
Winning formula
Another automaker, Ferrari, recently transformed its need for speed and love of luxury into the largest indoor theme park in the world. Ferrari World Abu Dhabi, which opened in 2010, offers rides, attractions, shows and restaurants all themed to the car manufacturer and is perfectly situated, adjacent to one of the most popular tracks in the Formula 1 universe. While the theme park is located in Abu Dhabi, Ferrari World offers Italian touches throughout the park in tribute to its home country including several five-star chefs from Italy. It also offers opportunities to experience Ferrari’s Italian roots, such as Viaggio in Italia, where visitors fly over the Italian landscape, or Bell’Italia, where they drive through miniature recreations of famous Italian landscapes.
The park’s only-here attraction ties to the automaker’s tradition for speed. Formula Rossa is the fastest rollercoaster in the world – hurtling to 150 miles per hour in 4.9 seconds to simulate the acceleration of a Ferrari race car. The coaster was recently featured on the Travel Channel’s Insane Coaster Wars: World Domination, where it beat four of the globe’s most audacious thrill rides. The brand’s commitment to its roots, coupled with its passion for acceleration, wrapped up in trademark red, makes Ferrari World Abu Dhabi a destination for locals and tourists.
Bottled success
Beverage companies are some of the newer entrants into the brand attraction scene, but recently they’ve become the most avid adopters to the trend, creating new brandlands and completely re-envisioning old ones. The Coca-Cola Company opened the new World of Coca-Cola in 2007, replacing and relocating the company’s original attraction. Atlanta is The Coca-Cola Company’s birthplace, so its very location screams authenticity and grants guests entrée to the heart of the brand, especially its people. Guests can see images of the employees who produce and bottle the product around the world and hear the real stories of consumers’ love of the brand. The attraction even features a real miniature bottling line to showcase the authentic process of how to make a Coke. At the end of the tour, visitors get to take a bottle off the line to take home.
The World of Coca-Cola provides access to the largest collection of Coca-Cola artefacts and memorabilia in the world, including the Advertising Theater, which showcases all the great Coca-Cola commercials. The attraction also incorporates authentic human (and polar bear) interactions.
The visit begins with an overview of the company, provided by a live host. Guests also encounter 1950s soda jerks, who can answer their questions and serve their favourite drink.
Exciting for younger Coke fans is the opportunity to have their picture taken with a walk-around polar bear character, created by Jim Henson Productions. But the main one-of-a-kind attraction is the tasting area where visitors can try all the drinks that Coca-Cola produces around the world.
Spirit levels
More recently, another beverage maker has literally raised the spirits of the Bourbon Trail. Last October, Jim Beam introduced its American Stillhouse and Distillery Tour in Clermont, Kentucky, the birthplace of the bourbon known as liquid gold. The down-home, rural personality of the brand is evident in the attraction’s authentic buildings and lush landscape. The tour begins in the stillhouse, a new building designed specifically for the re-envisioned attraction. Its architecture and aesthetic were developed to match the agricultural and industrial roots of the brand (while also embracing its quirkiness), and features the stillevator, an elevator made out of a bourbon still. The brand’s motto is “come as a friend, leave as family,” so the stillhouse was designed to be homely and welcoming. Jim Beam is first and foremost a family company, with seven generations of master distillers, and this legacy is featured throughout the stillhouse and tour.
Guests have the option of taking the Distillery Tour, before making their way to the state-of-the-art Jim Beam American Outpost tasting room for an only-here experience. In contrast to traditional bourbon tastings, Jim Beam creates a cocktail party atmosphere with the Enomatic – a wine-serving system adapted for bourbon for the first time. Guests are given a tasting card and are briefly introduced to the different brands. They then choose which two samples they would like to drink.
The American Stillhouse, Distillery Tour and American Outpost tasting room offer the guest an authentic, interactive encounter that has already earned Jim Beam accolades and new visitors. Attendance is projected to reach 160,000 in 2013, which is a 60 per cent increase from last year, and it’s expected to climb to 200,000 in 2014. The attraction now offers 11 tours daily, and one guide observed that the re-envisioned tour has brought back bourbon lovers who hadn’t set foot at Jim Beam’s distillery in 20 years, as well as a new generation of enthusiasts that the company can now introduce to its vast cadre of products.
Child’s play
One of the newest brand attractions is also the most colourful. From personalised crayon-makers to larger-than-life animated art adventures, the all-new Crayola Experience, which is located in Easton, Pennsylvania and opened in May, is designed to help children of all ages discover the magic of colour and reconnect with one of the world’s most iconic and nostalgic brands.
Throughout the Crayola Experience’s 60,000sq ft (5,574sq m) of exhibits, interactives and activities, guests can create digital works of art and interact with them on large projected surfaces as well as appearing in their own colouring page with some of Crayola’s characters. They can also learn how crayons are made; and create objects with melted wax.
Unique to Crayola Experience, guests can use their colour-mixing skills to create their own clear barrel marker in Marker Mania and fashion their own crayon label in the Wrap It Up! area.
As well as housing the world’s largest crayon, Café Crayola offers Crayola-inspired foods from coloured cupcakes to design-your-own pizzas.
With 90 per cent of the market share, Crayola saw the re-envisioned attraction as a way to communicate rather than compete. “Our goal isn’t to compete versus private label,” says Vicky Lozano, Crayola’s VP of Corporate Strategy. “We did this to help bring the Crayola brand to life in a way that captures existing positive emotions and elevates that connection to a much deeper level. We want kids and families to experience creativity in ways they can’t easily do at home.” Crayola expects the new attractions to increase current attendances from the current 300,000 to almost half a million visitors each year.
By infusing authenticity, intimacy and interactivity with personality and innovation, these companies are creating brand lands that deepen human connections with their products while offering entertaining attractions for fans and families alike.
