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Episode Transcript

Charlie Melcher:

Hi, I'm Charlie Melcher, founder of the Future of StoryTelling. It's my pleasure to welcome you to the FoST podcast. You're in for a real treat.

Over the last decade, Netflix has revolutionized the way people watch TV and movies around the world. They did it by allowing viewers to consume content in ways that they prefer by using the data of their watching habits to better serve them, and by creating really compelling programming. In other words, they did it by understanding what people want. Well, today, Netflix is once again revolutionizing the way fans can interact with the programming they love. It turns out that the real fans don't just want to watch new seasons every year or two, they want to get into the action. They want to go deeper into the story worlds, they want to interact with the characters. They want to be the star of the show.

My guest today, Greg Lombardo, is giving fans exactly what they want. Greg heads Experiences at Netflix, and over the past two years, he and his team have been building rich and compelling immersive experiences around their most popular IP, such as Stranger Things, Bridgerton and Money Heist. Having been to a number of their experiences, I was blown away by the quality, creativity, and level of fan engagement, but even more impressed to learn from Greg about the number of immersive experiences they're producing, how many cities they're in around the globe, and the overall value these experiences bring the shows, the fans, and to Netflix the brand itself.

I'm thrilled to have Greg Lombardo on the podcast today, a true trailblazer on the front lines of the experience economy.

Greg, welcome to the FoST podcast. It's really a pleasure to have you here.

Greg Lombardo:

Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Charlie Melcher:

I should start by just saying thank you for that extraordinary tour that you gave to the FoST Explorers Club some months ago of the Stranger Things experience at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It was amazing.

Greg Lombardo:

Thank you. We were really happy to have you and the FoST team attend. It was a pleasure.

Charlie Melcher:

Tell us how that experience is doing, and then I'm going to ask you about the larger efforts at Netflix.

Greg Lombardo:

Well, I'm happy to report that experience is going very strong. Obviously, Stranger Things has been a remarkable title for Netflix. Season four eclipsed our wildest expectations. That's a title now that in season four has grown year over year, and you have fans who come to that title for the '80s, they come for the supernatural and horror elements, and I think they come for those themes of friendship over fear and common folks becoming heroes. So, that particular experience for us was really important to capture all those elements and bring them to the fans in a way that they could participate and partake and feel like... In essence, our thesis of that was: let's make fans feel like they're in an episode of the show.

Charlie Melcher:

More than even just being in an episode, what was amazing was to feel as if you had superpowers. You became a hero in that story, and in a very embodied way. Just tell us a little bit about how you think about designing an immersive experience like that, and what were some of the highlights of that experience?

Greg Lombardo:

That experience, like all the experiences we've done so far, is an incredibly collaborative effort, and it involves an incredible team on the Netflix side, which I'm very honored to work with on a daily basis, but also working with some of the best content creators in the world. You've got, in that case, Matt and Ross Duffer were involved early on; we brought in Paul Dichter, who was a writer on an episode for season four, and also a producer. We leveraged Rodeo, who does the demogorgon and demodog special... The CGI. So, there was a lot of series talent involved in that effort from the get-go.

Charlie Melcher:

That's amazing. That's amazing, because also you just have world-class people. Most immersive experiences, with the exception maybe of Disney aren't getting that level of talent, as you said, from the beginning to help them envision and create it.

Greg Lombardo:

It makes all the difference in the world. It is the difference between... With a show like Stranger Things or Bridgerton or La Casa, some of the things we've created experiences for, the fans know if it feels genuine. They will sniff that out very quickly, and I think it's almost impossible to bring these shows to life without that real active and passionate participation from the creators. Then we have an in-house team that draws upon a tremendous amount experience from design and production and operations, and then we also pull in a lot of amazing talent from the industry.

Charlie Melcher:

I'm really curious as to why Netflix, a company that we all associate with some of the best streaming content in the world, would make a decision to invest in immersive experiences. I think about the volume of people who get to watch your shows on television versus the volume of people who get to go through a live experience. Why are you doing this?

Greg Lombardo:

Look, we're always looking for new, innovative ways to engage with the members on service. When you have content that speaks to people the way Stranger Things does, the way La Casa de Papel does, the way Bridgerton does, the way Army of the Dead speaks to them, you want to find ways to deepen that relationship with the story. Ultimately, we do it because we're relentlessly pursuing fan joy. We want to find ways to give people more ways to love these stories, more ways to love Netflix. And ultimately, I think immersive experiences are an incredible way to give fans their hero moment.

So, it's about that notion of unlocking that fantasy, unlocking that agency and unlocking that world for fans in a way that's going to give them an additional touchpoint, and frankly, most importantly, a touchpoint that happens in between those season releases. We want to be there and meet them at that moment and give them that reminder, that engagement, another lens into that world. I think that's why we're trying to focus on finding a particular thread within that universe that we want to pull on and expand upon. Again, it's another reason why it's so important to have the creators involved.

Charlie Melcher:

I think about the old-school model of merchandise, licensing off of a successful show. There's an expression or an idea that I learned from folks at Disney where you can do things that are taking away from the value of the property or things that are enhancing it, and what creator doesn't want something that's going to just continue to make a happier community around their stories and their characters?

Greg Lombardo:

I think the community is the key, and that's something that I think creators and audiences share, that love of community. If you're a fan of the show, being able to celebrate that love in an environment of like-minded individuals is a remarkable opportunity. I think I agree with you: in the consumer products world, the focus is not always on the end user. It's not always on the fan. That's not to say that you can't be where they are. You can show up in a Walmart. It's just how you show up; whatever category you're working in, making sure that it's led by creative and led by a notion of a story element. It always has to be front and center.

Charlie Melcher:

Give me a sense of how many people go through the Stranger Things Experience, or have gone through it.

Greg Lombardo:

A couple hundred thousand people per market on average usually. With a traveling experience, because we have more than one unit on the road, it allows us to cover obviously more ground. But a lot of that is driven by the fact that we have a global membership. We have 222-plus million members around the world. They're all very interested in a Stranger Things experience. They're all very interested in a Bridgerton experience. So, we want to make sure that we're reaching them where they are.

I think that part of that is also this nature of how can we be accessible. I think when we're thinking about experiences like this, can you create an accessible price point? Can you reduce barriers to entry? By going to people, that's a way to do that. Can you reduce barriers to entry through the geographic proximity? Again, we go to cities around the world. That's a way to get closer to the members and allow them to experience these things hopefully more than once a year.

Charlie Melcher:

A couple hundred thousand in a market. I just want to reemphasize two things you just said, so we don't lose them. One, that you have multiple shows going at the same time of the same experience, and that's pretty unique. I don't know of other people doing that right now. The other is that you're designing these for a global audience so that you can take them all over the world, which again, I don't know anyone else really doing that.

So, there's a lot that's very exciting about what you guys are doing, because you're bringing it on a level of professionalism and scale. There's a lot of learnings I'm sure that you have from being one of the first to take it on at this level of professionalism and scale. Let me go back to this. You have a couple hundred thousand in a market, and maybe you stay there for a certain amount of time; that's three months, six months?

Greg Lombardo:

Yeah, somewhere between three and six months. On average, it's about three to four months. A lot of that is really driven by the venue availability. In the case of Brooklyn, the Navy Yard, with Stranger Things: The Experience is a good example, we still had a lot of demand in that market. We just didn't have the venue any longer. But at the same time, there's always that trade-off of... You can come back to a market. So, it's that trade-off of, "Okay, New York has seen it. Now other markets are out there that want this show and want this experience." That's the balancing act.

Look, it's not without its challenges. I think for me and for the team, the priority when it comes to the concept development is, can we operationalize this creative? Can we operationalize excellence? And is this a concept that not only works for the show, is it a concept that's going to work for the audience? Is it a concept that's going to work over and over and over again, market to market to market?

Charlie Melcher:

When we talk about how you see these as being successful, I'm just curious, are there other KPIs or metrics that you use for success other than ticket sales?

Greg Lombardo:

Ticket sales are a great metric of success, simply because if you're selling out, it means that you've created something that people want. It also means that you've probably hit an appropriate price point. You've made it accessible enough to those people, which is important.

But the big KPIs for us are the guest satisfaction ratings. We do a lot of survey information with the consumers. We make a lot of changes to these experiences. In fact, if you would have gone to the first Money Heist, aka La Casa de Papel Experience, that we opened in Paris, it would be markedly different than the one that opened in London or New York or Miami or Mexico City, because we made iterative changes along the way based on that feedback that we're getting from the guest.

That's the thing I love about immersive experiences like this, is we're having a dialogue with our fans, and they're able to really tell us what they liked and what they didn't. If they tell us they don't like something, we're going to figure out a way to change it. So, that's super rewarding. Then the next step is, are they going to tell their friends about it? Are they going to talk about it? Of course, that organic social that we get off of the experiences is obviously tremendously important. You're generating millions and millions and millions of impressions from folks, and sometimes you find something that just resonates on social.

I think with the Queen's Ball Bridgerton Experience, the diamond of the evening moment has become one of my most favorite things to see on social. It's taken on a life of its own. It's a lens into this incredibly diverse audience for that show, where one, the majority of the audiences is predominantly women, which are not particularly well-served in a lot of experiences when it comes to development for that audience, and also a very diverse community. Seeing a post from a member of the trans community who was selected as the diamond of the evening who then says, "Hey, this was my first night as a woman." That's an incredibly empowering message for that community, and that's an incredibly rewarding moment for us, because there's real meaning in that moment, and it's not just play.

Charlie Melcher:

Well, let's talk a little about the Queen's Ball. You were very kind also to invite me to the opening night of that in LA, and I had a magical evening. It was really I thought a just beautifully-done immersive experience. It really understood its audience. There was just the right kinds of interactions that were appropriate to the show, that were appropriate to the fans' desires for what would happen there.

My favorite example is the moment when you get presented to the queen. People lined up to be able to be presented to the queen, and had practiced their curtsies. This act of just simply being able to walk forward to the queen, and to do this bow and then stand up. Then she was nonplussed and kind of waved you off, couldn't have been less interested. But somehow you got people to do this gesture that was so meaningful to them. Not high-tech, there was no fancy thing. But the embodied experience of bowing to the queen was so meaningful to people. It made their night, and there was an opportunity to capture photos of that.

Then of course you're talking about the other highlight of the night, when the diamond of the ball is identified. The night I was there, it was a mother there with her daughter, and maybe in her fifties; not somebody who was thinking that she was going to be the belle of the ball. She was noticeably emotional about having gotten chosen to stand up and be honored in front of everyone. Anyway, it was really, really nicely done. Congratulations on it. I also have to say, I felt really embarrassed and I let you down, because I was there on work and I didn't come with a costume. I might have been literally one of five people out of, how many are there, 200?

Greg Lombardo:

Yeah.

Charlie Melcher:

That weren't dressed literally in period costume to meet the queen.

Greg Lombardo:

Well, all is forgiven, by the way. I think it's another measure of success when you have that level of participation from the guest. In the case of the Queen's Ball, going in, again, we weren't sure. We knew that viewers of that show were very interested in the costuming, but well over 90% of the guests every night come decked. And it's the men, the... across the board.

Charlie Melcher:

Isn't there a little cottage industry that's grown up around it?

Greg Lombardo:

There is.

Charlie Melcher:

People will come and dress you, or you can rent outfits?

Greg Lombardo:

There is. Actually, we've started working with local costume shops. When we go into town, we let them know, and they then make it known that you can go there and rent costumes. There have been organic communities on Facebook that have sprouted up to help people prepare for the Queen's Ball. It's this community of people who are just in love with the show, in love with the experience, and they're there to help and support others.

I think that experience, it couldn't be more analog to your earlier point. It's a completely different format and experience than Stranger Things. But again, that's what was appropriate for that series. It's not heavily narrative. There's a story for the evening that is held together through a series of performative vignettes that represent the ethos and tropes of the show, but the real narrative participants in the show are the guests. So, giving them those gateway moments like the curtsying, the presenting, the bowing to the queen, that is a bit of an opening salvo to the fact that not too long from then, we're going to be asking people to take the dance floor and participate in a regency dance, which again, is not the thing that out of the gate most people come prepared to do, but it's giving them enough one, license and agency and curation to know that they can. I think that's the part about that show that I love so much, is that I think more than any other show, it's really a party.

Charlie Melcher:

It's something between cosplay and LARPing and immersive theater that you're zeroing in on and letting people live. Having done this now for a while, why is it that the fans are so hungry for this? I really see there's a tremendous demand, the fact that you're having these kinds of successes. What is it about people that these are fulfilling?

Greg Lombardo:

Well, look, I think at the end of the day it's a desire to connect. I think it's a very human emotion at play, which is the desire to connect with others and have a shared experience. I think a lot of it comes down to in the past where you want to share currency of being someplace, I think it's now about sharing the currency of others and sharing a currency of connection. I think you see that when people dress up. It's like Bridgerton: Queen's Ball, it's like prom for adults. It is that fantasy, it's that notion of I want to go back, I want to experience what that is like in this reinvented Regency era.

Charlie Melcher:

I really appreciate the point about the social component of it and wanting to have something to go out to do together. I would also venture that there's a desire to try on different roles; that some of it is also allowing us to have the freedom to have a kind of playing that we would have done as kids when we would play with dolls or play roles or play doctor, or whatever it was, and that this allows us to step out of the role that we get defined by as we become adults and put on a new costume and play a new, you know?

Greg Lombardo:

Yeah, it's the license. It's the license to play. I love the fact that I go to these things and I'm dressed up, I have my Bridgerton outfit that I found online. I can't get enough of it, but I love that there's so many people that are sharing that same experience. It is that moment of just incredible freedom. You're putting on a mask for the night, both literally and figuratively, I guess.

Charlie Melcher:

I'm curious to ask you a little bit about some of the nuts and bolts. How do you make a decision about which properties do you want to invest in to do this? How do you think about which cities you're going to go to? Just some of the practical decisions you have to face.

Greg Lombardo:

Because of the approach being to serve as much as possible a global membership, the initial round of stories that we've chosen to create an experience around have been titles that have a big audience, obviously, and a global audience. Certainly that's been true of everything thus far that we've taken on.

The next step is, not every title with a big global audience is necessarily actionable through an immersive experience. Is it a world we want to walk into? Does it have unique characteristics, and does it have characters whose shoes we want to walk in? How can we provide another viewing point or point of participation into that world? I think those are the things we really look at, and it's always a tough decision, because there's a lot of great content to choose from.

Charlie Melcher:

I have found sometimes that executives at traditional media companies can have trouble thinking outside of the medium that they were raised in. Are you getting the support internally? Is this something that Netflix is investing more heavily in moving forward? What's been the feedback from above?

Greg Lombardo:

Well, it's been great. We're just always looking for ways to connect with our members and ways to bring them more deeply into stories they love. We're trying to allow you to see yourself more in those stories by doing this. We've been remarkably fortunate. It's been a fantastic ride so far. I don't necessarily know if anyone else would have let us do what we're doing. So, it's been great, and couldn't be happier. I think there's a general sentiment among, to your point, the creators and everyone at Netflix that this is something that, at the end of the day, brings members joy and is worth doing.

Charlie Melcher:

Well, I think if you add up all those metrics we were talking about between ticket sales and social media and the way people talk about the brand because of these experiences, not to mention merchandising sales and people coming out through the gift shop and leaving wearing the T-shirt or becoming walking advertisements for the shows, and the fact that you have so many of them. It sounds like in literally a couple of years you've had maybe a dozen, more productions in different cities.

Greg Lombardo:

We've opened... I want to get this right. We've had over, I think it's 35 launches in 17 cities around the world.

Charlie Melcher:

Wow. Damn, that's a lot. Most companies that are doing immersive experiences are lucky to get one up every two or three years. Do you think this is the trend of the future?

Greg Lombardo:

I don't know. I don't spend too much time worrying about what the competition is going to do. I don't think there's a lot of upside to that. I think that I love this space; the more the merrier. I hope there's a world out there where there's a lot more of these things happening.

Charlie Melcher:

Excellent. Well, we're so appreciative for you sharing your experience. I just want to say I feel like I'm speaking on behalf of all of us fans who love not just Netflix shows, but immersive experiences, for the work that you are doing in terms of helping to seed this industry, to feed these passionate fans, and to help some of the bigger media companies to take note of this as a growing and thriving medium or field. So, thank you so much for all the great work that you're doing, and I hope I get to come to some more of the openings… Squid Game, maybe not, but-

Greg Lombardo:

A Squid Game experience would scare you?

Charlie Melcher:

Maybe a little bit. I don't want to be the first one to go opening night on that one.

Greg Lombardo:

Well, listen, thanks. It is been great to be here, Charlie. I appreciate it. You're an incredible ambassador for the industry, and it's an honor to be on the podcast, and I just appreciate everything you do. Every time I talk to you, you always have news for me and you're like, "Have you checked this out?" I love that, and I wish I had more time to go to more stuff, frankly, because there's so much good stuff out there right now.

Charlie Melcher:

Well, you're invited to be part of the FoST Explorers Club, and we will be going every month to see one of the most amazing immersive experiences out there. We'll keep you posted, or you'll just come do them with us.

Greg Lombardo:

Awesome. Thanks a lot.

Charlie Melcher:

My thanks again to Greg Lombardo for today's conversation. To learn more about some of the experiences he and his team have created, please visit the links in the episode's description, and a warm thanks to you as well for joining me. If you enjoyed the show, please consider giving us a five-star rating wherever you listen to your podcasts. Your reviews help us reach a larger audience. You can also become part of the Future of StoryTelling family by signing up for our free monthly newsletter at fost.org.

The FoST podcast is produced by Melcher Media in collaboration with our talented production partner, Charts & Leisure. I hope to see you again soon for another deep dive into the world of storytelling. Until then, please be safe, stay strong, and story on.