reveries - mario d'amico - cirque du soleil

JULY 2002

"On a very ephemeral level, we're about the renewal of hope," says Mario D'Amico, chief marketing officer of Cirque du Soleil. "Everything we do is about the human body's ability to surpass itself physically, artistically or emotionally."

On a less ephemeral level, Montreal-based Cirque du Soliel is about the renewal of entertainment. A circus? Yes, of course. But it is a circus that has astonished its audiences by challenging their imaginations.

"We're a bit like Apple Computer's open architecture," suggests Mario. "We don't tell people, through our shows, how to feel." Cirque's stories aren't linear. Sometimes there aren't even any stories -- unless, of course, you want to see a story. Go agape over the acrobatics, or look for a larger meaning. Either way is okay.

What began in June of 1984 as a not-for-profit enterprise featuring a nomadic troupe of street artists led by founder Guy Laliberte is now a global sensation driven by more than 2,100 employees, deploying eight, separate, hand-crafted shows worldwide.

Cirque is a for-profit company now, although one percent of the company's take goes to support teens in distress. They have a program called Cirque du Monde, where Cirque sends trainers and coaches into underprivileged neighborhoods to teach kids how to walk on stilts, do trapeze, tumble and juggle. Then they can set up their own little traveling shows -- make a little bit of money, renew a little bit of hope.

Cirque's own hopes, actually, are currently set on some intriguing line extensions, perhaps involving hotels and restaurants, anchored by entertainment complexes. Might not have to look much further than Cirque's own headquarters to imagine how that might go.

Two huge training gyms, each the size of a small airplane hangar, are right smack in the center of company headquarters. So if you're an accountant -- or a marketing person -- sitting at your desk, you've got this huge, huge window in front of you, through which you can watch your co-workers practicing maybe a Russian swing act while you're working on your budgets.

Sure sounds like a fun place to be, and Mario D'Amico plainly loves every minute of it. He has been with Cirque for three years now. His background was in advertising and marketing, having started out in the marketing department of a food company in Canada before joining ad agency Scali, McCabe Sloves. After that it was eleven years with Publicis in Montreal.

Then Cirque du Soliel came calling. How lucky can you get?

How is working in a dream factory different than working in an ad agency?

It's actually incredibly different and in fact I'm shocked every day at how different it is. Here, the creators that create are really true artists in the sense that they're not necessarily thinking of an audience when they're creating.

They are just expressing themselves, their emotions, their angst, their preoccupations, and their worries. They're creating for themselves. That there's a public out there that's willing to buy a ticket and come see the result of that creative effort is almost secondary.

The way the creative teams work is a very introverted process. That's very different than the process in the ad agency world. Creative people at agencies are creating with a client in mind, usually, with a budget in mind, and with definitely a target audience in mind. It couldn't be more different here at Cirque.

Does that kind of intense creativity put extra pressure on you to make sure that the marketing is just as creative?

Yes. That is, actually, our biggest challenge. We are so well known for the creative product that we put on stage that I've got to find ways to be just as creative with the way that I portray the image of this company to the public.

That's a daunting challenge because I don't think I can reach those levels. I can only be so creative when I'm putting an ad in the newspaper, basically telling people that the show is in town, buy your tickets, here's the phone number and hurry, because tickets will run out soon.

But then there are other media that allow more creativity. Actually, the Web is one of those media that has allowed us to go a little bit further because it can deliver a Cirque experience online.

Other than the Internet, are there any specific marketing techniques that you've found especially effective?

Our events -- our premieres -- are the pinnacle of our marketing activities. We invite the right people and we provide the right environment for those people. They then go out and tell all of their friends that they can't miss this incredible spectacle that's in town. Our premieres are very much in keeping with the image of our product.

We also have an act called "The German Wheel." It's basically this huge, huge wheel that's propelled by a person inside of it. When we opened in Charlotte we had "The German Wheel" go on the Loews Motor Speedway. That made people do kind of a double take, you know? It's our way of integrating our world with the local world of where we're actually performing. In San Diego, we did the same thing on an Aircraft Carrier.

So you try to infiltrate the local popular culture, be it at a speedway or on an aircraft carrier.

Yes. When we come into a community, we try to do a good job of really penetrating and integrating ourselves into that community for the short period of time that we're there. We build relationships with all of the artistic groups in any community, the educational groups. We often will do charity events, where we'll give away a certain number of tickets to local charities so that they can raise funds.

We do a lot of that sort of non-sexy, but really important, grass roots marketing. We think that's really at the core of what we're all about when we come into a city. The last thing we want is to be seen as people who take the money and run. I think we're really good at meaningful relationships at all levels with our product.

We don't think we could ever compete in a 30 second commercial with the show that you're going to see. So all we are really trying to do in our TV commercials is pique your interest. More often than not, our public is overwhelmed and then they do the job for us. The word of mouth that we get is incredible. That's worth a lot more than any ad that I could place.

You've now got competition from what we'll charitably call "copycat circuses." How do you deal with that?

We don't really deal with it. We think we've created an art form -- a lot of people give us credit for being the creators of this art form. We really removed the dust off of the old, traditional circus, re-infused it with other disciplines and removed the animal component.

We think our product speaks for itself. We will react if people are copying us, if people are benefiting from our success in a copyright infringement sense. But other circuses that have been inspired by the type of work that we do -- you know what -- more power to them! Great. We think that actually is good for the category of what we’ll call the more modern circus.

About a year ago there was talk about Cirque Du Soleil opening hotels, spas, museums, and so forth. Is that still in the works?

Yeah, yeah, it's still in the works, still very much in the works. We think that we can surround our patrons with more than just a show. We've had one creative platform, which has been the live stage.

That's been our playground for the last 17 or 18 years and we'd like to try different playgrounds. We'd like to see what a Cirque du Soleil Hotel would look like. What would that be like?

I give up. What would that be like?

Well, we're still designing it! We don't know! Right now we've got an internal team here working on a prototype that hopefully will see the light of day at some point. There's going to be a hotel, there's going to be a spa, there's going to be a restaurant and there's going to be obviously a theatre with the show inside.

A Cirque du Soleil hotel experience might be one where characters that you see in our show live in this hotel and come in contact with the patrons in some as-yet undefined way. Maybe as you're checking into the lobby of this hotel, there are some trapeze artists just performing their number and doing their thing without even expecting you to necessarily look or applaud or whatever. But they're providing you with some entertainment while you're doing something very mundane.

Maybe a restaurant can have an entertainment component to it where the people who are serving the food are also the people who will be performing while you're eating. So there are all kinds of crazy ideas that are being looked at. But it's really based on trying to make that playground a little bit bigger, and having a totally different playground. We will have a prototype completed we would think by the end of this year actually, and then we'll see.

We're just having a lot of fun with it right now. Ultimately, we intend to shop around and see if another company that knows more about bricks and mortar thinks our ideas make sense.

What do you look for, typically, in an alliance?

We look for companies that understand that there are image enhancement opportunities by associating themselves with us. Without sounding cocky, I don't think there are that many brands that would elevate us to different levels. So we don't look for that in a partnership.

We look for partners and brands that understand us and that demonstrate to us that they are going to use our images in a way that's respectful of our brand and in a way that we think is going to enhance and help our business.

You did a sponsorship deal with American Electric Power that would seem a very unlikely alliance. What was the thinking there?

What we were thinking basically is that, first of all these people have a tremendous respect for our brand. They're also talking to markets that we don't really talk to -- high-end, Fortune 500 type of people and businesses. Those people come to our shows but we, as an organization, can't afford to actually market to those people. So getting our name in front of a different target audience was something that made sense for us.

AEP is in an industry that's somewhat controversial. But we don't want people to judge the business that we're in and we don't think we really want to judge the business that other people are in. We're comfortable that AEP, within its industry, is abiding by standards and codes that are determined by its industry. We're not really in the business of saying that you're in the wrong industry or that your industry is this or that. So that’s basically it.

So what is it like, Mario, to work in a dream factory?

It's a really interesting experience. You'll see people in tights walking by, next to graphics people, next to accountants, next to IT people, and it just really looks like one of these "we are the world" type of places! So it's really exciting.

We're on the outskirts of the city, next to an old dump, basically. We grow our own vegetables. Rather than having plants and flowers, we have broccoli and corn. When harvest comes, we distribute it to our employees. What employees don't take we distribute to the local community.

We're actually in the second- or third-poorest neighborhood in Montreal. So, one of the deals we made with the city when we decided to build our head office here was that the city invest in certain infrastructures around it that would be for the good of the community -- things like hockey rinks, parks, bicycle paths, basketball courts. It's nice to see that the area around our office here becoming greener and with more trees, and just more activity around.

So, yeah, it's a pretty special place. There basically is no dress code here -- it's just whatever makes you comfortable. It's a pretty laissez faire sort of environment. We have a wonderful cafeteria believe it or not, with a choice of three incredibly gastronomic meals everyday, different everyday. Our chef used to be the chef of the outgoing Prime Minister of Canada, Brian Mulroney.

So yeah, we're pretty lucky..