Marketing Your Haunted Attraction: Full Haunter's Toolbox Masterclass

Today we're playing the FULL audio from a marketing masterclass I recently hosted for Haunter's Toolbox, answering YOUR QUESTIONS on marketing strategies for haunted attractions.  This is the complete, unedited recording! If you're a haunt owner or operator looking to boost ticket sales and reach new audiences, you'll find tactics you can immediately implement. Examples from Hush, Woods of Terror, and Transworld included. 
Haunter's Toolbox hosts monthly sessions at haunterstoolbox.com, and you can watch this video version here.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Proven strategies to boost your haunts ticket sales that's coming
up on today's show. Welcome to the show. I'm Philip
on the HN Show. We bring you the news and
information you need to prepare for Halloween. The show is
just one small part of what we do, and the
best place to find everything is our free weekly email newsletter.

(00:29):
The link is in our show notes and on our website.
Today we're playing the full audio recording from the marketing
masterclass I recently hosted for Haunters Toolbox, answering your questions
on marketing strategies for haunted attractions. This is the complete
unedited recording. If you're a haunt owner or operator looking
to boost ticket sales and reach new audiences, you'll find

(00:49):
tactics that you can implement immediately. Haunters Toolbox hosts these
valuable sessions monthly, covering everything but marketing to operations, staffing,
and more. I typically join them once a year, but
they feature different industry experts every month. If you want
to participate in future discussions and ask your own questions,
head over to hunters toolbox dot com to join our community. Okay,

(01:11):
here we go.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
So that's watch and who you are what you do
and what you've been up to over the past year.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
All right, hello everyone, I'm Philip. I run the Haunted
Attraction Network. I'm also the CEO of Gantamighty and Controls,
and I co host Green Tagged theme Park and thirty,
a weekly theme park insights podcast with Scott Swinson, who
many of you also know. And I also am a
freelance journalist and marketer, so I do freelance services. I

(01:41):
have Haunt clients. I also contribute to a Trash's magazine
and park magazine like those, you know, all that kind
of stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Yeah, so it's just been busy the last few year.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Obviously the Haunt season, you know, I did went out
and did video content, you know, and reporting content all
over the world in you know, the US and I
guess the US and Asia and a little bit of Canada,
you know, so maybe not Europe. So kind of gave
Europe a break and went to those other areas to
do reporting on Halloween this year. And then I just

(02:15):
we went through trans World, you know, I also work
for trans World. I helped them out a little bit
with their media and content, and so I also did
produce the Oscars this year. The HAA Awards, and so
I've just been it feels like things did not get
any less busy. So it was like it was like
Halloween season and you were like, you know, every day

(02:36):
it's like you stock up, I just buy palettes of
monster and then you you know, like noodles and you
get through like Haunt season, right, and then like after
Haunt season, you know, I die for a month or so,
you know, you get through that.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
You're in the monster, are you?

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Well? You know I tried it, but the problem is
you you can't heat up the monster. That's the real problem,
you know, like take it separate, best, best serve cold.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Let me tell you.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yeah, So Haunt season, then Christmas Haunt season, right, and
then you get a little bit of a break kind
of in January.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
But then it's TRANSWORLT prep.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
And then since TRANSORLT has just been like editing, you know, NonStop,
and then you know, keeping up with all the other
content and the jobs and all that.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
So, uh yeah, a lot, a lot of things.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
How much video do you produce on for any specific
Haunt on average?

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Oh my god, I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
I think it really depends on the individual project, right,
So I went out with Woods of Terror and did
some work with Erica and the team there, and that
one was primarily you know, like media services and whatnot.
But with Hush, which is one of my long term clients,

(03:54):
that is like they want like a vertical video every day,
you know, like that they're open and so that's like
a lot of vertical content, and they also want to
you know, horizontal content and influencer wrangling and pr. I
mean for them, it's like it's like the whole thing.
So really it really just ranges. If I'm just going
to cover them myself, then typically it will be like

(04:16):
a YouTube horizontal video and then it will be accompanied
by you know, maybe two or three vertical videos.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
So I think each haunt you're looking at like.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
At least one long form video and then multiple short
form video assets.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Well, now you're talking about influencer wrangling, How how do
you go about doing that? And is that something that
you would recommend just somebody at a haunt doing themselves.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
Or mm that is complicated. It might be it might
be something like it might be if anyone in.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
The chat has a specific question about it, it might be
a good way to answer their question. At the same
time as I'm explaining this, So please put in questions
if you have them. But the influencer topic is interesting
because I think in the beginning, I think I don't
know it. Just I always tell people to take a

(05:15):
few steps back and remember that marketing has not changed.
You know, it looks like everything has changed, but really
nothing's changed. It's like we talked about with haunted houses. Right,
Like haunted houses, it's still about the physical environment and
the interaction between the guests and the story and the actors.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
Right, it's all that whole. It's still that physical thing.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
It's been that way, you know, it's been that way
for decades, right. I think the same thing is true
with marketing. The tactics are new, but it's the same
idea of marketing is making sure that you get your
message in front of the right person at the right time.
And the medium maybe has changed, And so I think
I think that people think of like the influencer thing.

(05:58):
I don't know what preconceptions they have, but I think
at this point what you should be thinking about with
influencers is you treat them like you would paid media effectively.
And so whether that be that you're paying them a fee,
and you're putting them under a contract, which is generally
what I recommend. Put them under a contract and put
them in some sort of paid agreement because then you
can utilize the assets that they make from you. Otherwise

(06:23):
then you would be paying in terms of just like
hosting them, right, I mean, so there's some sort of
like you think of them in some sort of paid way,
you know, in the same way that in the beginning,
oh my god, like fifteen years ago or something. I mean,
you could just post stuff organically on Facebook and on
the other platforms, and that's not the case anymore. Like
anything that you're doing is paid. Like not only are

(06:44):
you you know, you're paying your team member and you're
paying in some way a staff cost to create the content.
But then ideally you would be also paying to take
the best performing content and turn it into ads. Because
still the best converting thing you have out there is
going to be your paid average tizing, like your your
search query words. You know, you're turning your ad into

(07:05):
it taking something and turning it into an ad on
TikTok and using you know, cart purchasing tokens all that, Like,
that's still going to be.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
That's that's still.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Going to be like your highest performing and I think
influencing from that you you it depends on your goals
as a platform, because influencers are all over the board,
right just like again just we take it back to
our original marketing right, right person, right time?

Speaker 3 (07:30):
Who is the right person right? What is the right time?

Speaker 1 (07:34):
That's the who the right person is depends on the
goal that you have, you know, and so if the
goal is to sell tickets, so then you know that
that's very different from the goal of just getting brand awareness.
So I think that all then trickles down to the influencers,
which is just one tactic, and that would be you
know that that would be like, are you going to

(07:55):
try and get trash three sixty that's not really going
to sell your tickets, but.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
It's going to get your brand awareness, you know.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Or you're going to try and get the local person
who has a much much smaller audience, but the people
are actually going to buy you a ticket and go.
So it's you're lit. So oh, I see some questions, Okay,
so oh yes.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
One from America. Yeah, an average range for rates for
contracting influencers that they don't have personal rates set up.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
Yeah, So.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
There's not an easy answer to this because I think
a lot of people are still trying to figure it out,
and also because the metrics keep changing. Right, So even
just a few years ago, it used to be you
could judge and influence your based off of their audience size,
and that's no longer the case. I mean, that's like
i'd say in the marketing world, that's relatively old news.
I mean, that's been about two years old. But I

(08:44):
think now I think people are more and more people
are kind of waking up to that. But effectively, what
happened is you had they the algorithms have been changing,
and there's a lot of reasons they've been changing. But basically,
I'll give you a brief background. So, like it used
to be, right that you would add a friend on

(09:04):
Facebook and then you would see the friends right that
you are friends with, you would see their statuses and
similar on YouTube, you know, you would subscribe to a
channel and then you would see stuff based on what
you subscribe to. But there's a notion that started off
in YouTube and then kind of flowed into the rest
of the media ecosystem. The notion is that instead of
you know, basically they could tell you what you like

(09:25):
more than you can tell them, right, and that became
the notion.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
It became more like.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
Less of you curating your feed and them deciding what they.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
Think you like and putting that in front of your feed.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
So you know, YouTube has different words for this, but
basically they're calling it like the right video for the
right person is kind of what they're they redid it to.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
So they're kind of like trying to show you the
right video.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
So no, so that would mean no two persons, like
you know, video suggestions or feeds are the same. So
now that that's trickled through like all immediate ecosystem, you
can see now why numbers are less important, which going
back to influencers, which is what makes it difficult actually
to find a price and to understand which influencers to
work with because you can't really use their subscriber count

(10:11):
as a metric, you know, so you're really you're trying
to figure out you can use engagement. But even then,
like I think a lot of people try and tout
engagement like I don't really care that somebody comments on
their video. I care they buy a ticket, right, And
these are not the same thing necessarily, right. So so
the so the short answer is Erica, that it's like

(10:33):
it's hard, and I think that you need to have
a budget on on your own side, and then kind
of you can again the art of negotiation. I would
have a budget that you kind of have internally, and
then I would maybe, like, you know, if they don't
have a number, you could offer a number. This may
be like half of the budget, and that gives you
room to negotiate and then you can kind of like

(10:55):
you know, see if they hedge it up or down.
But ultimately again back to your media goals, the budget
to work for you. I can give you examples. That's
as best as I can do. So for example, at Hush,
there's several local influencers that I love working with, and
my criteria for them is do they literally live in

(11:16):
the metro area that we are trying to get people from,
Like that they have to live in that area. Their
content has to be all about that area. It's it's
okay if it's food, right, it's okay. If it's just vibes,
it's okay if it's whatever. But like because we have
bars and so that's what I'm looking for and then
I'm looking to see that they create original content that
has some sort of like not necessarily a narrative, but

(11:40):
like basically I want to know they're going to say
we're here at hush Haunt, right, because some influencers just
like they post random shit.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
You have no ideas. I don't know if I can scared,
but they.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
Post random stuff you don't know like where it is
or whatever. So I want these things. I want the
quality of the content. I want them to be in
the area, and I do want them to have some
sort of like baseline engagement.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
I don't care about their numbers.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
I care more that they're getting views or they're getting
views and that whether or not the comments or whatever.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
And then you just test them.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
And you can do this by giving them a discount code,
or you can give them a link, or you can
just set up a schedule because and you could say
your your post is going to drop on this day,
and then you can monitor your ticket sales. You know,
there's plenty of ways to do it. Sometimes they won't
they won't do the codes.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
Any of that.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
They don't like to, so you can find other ways
to do that. But what I would say is for
haunt stuff. Because haunts are in entertainment and people want
to do them. That means you don't you generally don't
have to pay as much. Right if it's like a
medical company, or if it's like insurance or whatever, you know,
those are harder things, you know, to get videos about.

(12:44):
But in this case, I would say that with a
micro influencer, you would be expecting to pay anywhere between
one hundred and fifty and three hundred or four hundred
for somebody who's in the you know, ten thousand follower
to like twenty or thirty in that range. That's what
you would expect to pay. Now, if you do pay them,
I would like one hundred percent. Get a contract and

(13:06):
see if you can put as much as you can
in there. You know, can you negotiate for story mentions,
Can you negotiate for link mentions? Can you negotiate to
get rights to that content so that say they make
this thing and it goes viral? You know, then can
you take that and turn it into an ad on
a different platform, like on TikTok and then you can

(13:29):
use it as an AD. And what that does is
it saves you. Like now you don't have to hire
a videographer, you don't have to hire an editor. You know,
you're already getting the influencer and they're split testing content
for you. But you in order to get that, you
do need to pay them. You need to have it
in the contract, and there's all that stuff. But that's
the ranges. The other big factor it's going to make

(13:50):
the ranges go up and down is how much competition
is in the area. So in a paradoxical way, you
would think Los Angeles would be more expensive, but it's
actually cheaper in Los Angeles to get influencers because there's
so many of them. So there's basic supply and demand.
There's like you can't like literally you're like throw a
rock out this window. You probably hidden influencer somewhere in
Los Angeles and there's camera people everywhere. It's like it's

(14:11):
a So it's the prices are much cheaper, so basically
for them, you really can just give them the food
and pay for their parking and you do that kind
of stuff. In places like the other markets I work in,
there's like nobody, you know what I mean, Like there's
so few of them that they all they command a
higher price just because they're busy, and if you really

(14:34):
want to get them to come out and guarantee it,
usually you had to put a little money behind it.
So see, you just we only need like three questions
and that's going to be the hour.

Speaker 4 (14:42):
So so when it comes to influencers, what should we
be looking for, like local people that like doing events
and theme parks stuff like that.

Speaker 5 (14:54):
Or what and say, we're limited on what we.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
Have around our right I would say there's a lot
of different ways to do this, Like you can buy
software that allows you to.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
Find it in the area.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
You can also try using like deep research in chat,
GPT or in Gemini or some of those areas to
do comprehensive searches, or you could do it manually with
a spreadsheet or whatever. But again that goes back to
your basic marketing plan. Right person, right time, right person.
That means personas So you should have an audience persona

(15:34):
for every group that goes to your haunt.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
Well fillip, how do you make audience personas well?

Speaker 1 (15:39):
If you have exit polling data, you have tickets selling data,
you should know the demographics of who buys the tickets,
how all these stuff and you can lump them into
demographics and then you can make personas. And so then
what you'll do, So if you know that you know, like, well,
I'll just give you examples. So say we got like,

(15:59):
we got the we got the college frat guy, we
got the uh you know, high school group, we got
the Haunt enthusiasts, you know, older whatever, you got the
like childless millennials. You know, you got the people if
you're a cocktail, you know the food people. And then
you know, so you maybe you got your your if

(16:21):
your family, you have your like your mom whatever, you know,
your your old your family package. Okay, so you have
these different personas, so you should if if you think
influencers the best strategy, you can take those personas and
look for those in each one. So you know, again
use Hush as an example. At Hush, I look into
each of those demographics because we have so many offerings.

(16:41):
You know, we have a stage show, you know, we
have live entertainment, we have bars, we have all that stuff,
and so I want all the food bloggers. I also
want the mommy bloggers because we have a kid's day.
So like I want these people, and each one I
target in a different way. So the mommy blogger, I'm
having them make content around our kids day and I'm

(17:02):
encouraging them to bring their kids trick or treating to
our haunt. The food bloggers, I don't want them to
record in the haunt, you know, I want them to
go and do tastings of the drinks and take cool pictures.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Right.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
And I don't actually care about.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
The haunt bloggers, you know, I'm not towing shade out there,
but like, I don't really care about that market because
like we already have that market, Like I don't need
to convince that market, right, And I don't really actually
want to encourage the high school market that doesn't have chaperones, right,
So I might target like a little bit older on that.
So you see how I can break down these personas

(17:38):
and then I can take those personas and I can
go look for people for influencers that serve those personas.
But again, it all goes back to your basic marketing,
your marketing one to one like right person, right message,
who is the right person?

Speaker 3 (17:49):
Who are these people? And then break it down from there.

Speaker 5 (17:54):
It kind of goes to the kind of goes to
Craig's question about creating different types of commercials focused on
age groups gen Z Alpha Center commercial one for parents,
you know, boomers, gen X.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Yeah, right, I think that's a great idea. But again
it goes back to the same marketing plan. Like you're
making your persona, you're doing your basic marketing work. You're
making your persona. You're thinking about the groups of people
that come to your heart. Then you need to figure
out where are those groups spending their time? Okay, and

(18:31):
then from there you can figure out if making a
commercial is even going to be the best rate, the
best way to reach them. And then I'm just like
spitball in here, But like you might do some of that,
and you might realize that, like the boomers don't watch
stuff on media, so for them an article maybe in

(18:52):
the paper or an article from something would reach them.

Speaker 3 (18:55):
If they're really worth it, then you put the money
behind it.

Speaker 1 (18:58):
But say you break all these out, Well, what you're
going to see just by how this works, is you're
going to see, like, Okay, if you think if gen
Z is an important market for you, you're probably going to
see where they spend their time. You're going to see
gen Z spends a lot of their time on TikTok
and love the younger channel Snapchat TikTok those things. Snapchat
is probably a little outdated, but you know, let's just

(19:18):
say TikTok as an example. So then you could say, Okay,
maybe we should make our TikTok.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
Just for gen Z.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
Okay, So this is how this works, right, So you're like, okay,
where what what? Cause, like you shouldn't just be taking
I mean, take take this a little bit with a
grain of salt, because I understand that haunters don't have time,
you know, for a full time marketing team. But I'll
give you the the perfect you know, if if you
had all the money and you had all the time,
what you would do is make a dedicated strategy for

(19:47):
each channel. So like you're not just taking the same
content that perform the you know, and and just like
posting it natively to each thing. You're thinking about who
is on these channels. If if your TikTok is gen Z,
it should be geared for gen Z. If your Facebook
is millennial and boomers, it should be geared for those people.

(20:07):
If your Instagram, you know, is mainly millennial whatever, I mean.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
It should be geared for that.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
So you would in Craig's example, you would have already
broken all that out and then you could you could
make different commercials to cater those different targets. But you
need to know right people, So who are your demographics?
And then you need to know right time, like where
are they like where are they spending their time? And
I would do that first before you know, I just

(20:32):
feel like so many times we think we've got to
make a commercial, but like the reality is that's down here,
Like you're like, you know, that's all that's like you
when you start at step A and you're already the
commercials like step M or something, you know, like commercial
is like at that point you should know, you know,
I should be able to ask you, what is the
purpose of this commercial?

Speaker 3 (20:52):
What is the goal?

Speaker 1 (20:53):
What target market are you're trying to reach? What all
these answers to all that questions? Because who's going to
begin your commercial? You know, is it to be a
young kid getting scared or is it going to be
boomers and older dropping their family off and drinking and
watching people dance on stage. Or is it going to
be college people getting hammered and then like falling over
in the haunt? Because they're so scared and they pee
themselves a little bit. I don't know, Like like again,

(21:16):
I'll you know, just go back to the same thing.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
That kind of leads into Sean's comment. It's like, am
I crazy that it would rather take a well curated
reel versus a post that is on a large audience? Yeah? Yeah,
you make something specific for each of those different.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
Right, Yes, because it's going to resonate with them more,
you know anything. Again, you know, the key to content
here is like as a creator, when I'm making content,
like you really have to under So there's a test.
So whenever I talk to other creators, I have this
like test and I'm like, okay, actually making memes. It

(21:59):
sounds really stupid, but making memes is probably one of
the best ways that you can prove that you understand
your audience. Why is that Because memes, if it resonates
with you, people love them. But they have to resonate, right,
And so that's why I don't know if you all
saw that. Well, like a while ago, I did that
meme with the new Home Depot stuff, and it was

(22:20):
like he's like no, he's like going through and then
at the end it's just like you know, like the
just the grace, you know, the stuff, and it's like
that will resonate with Haunters, Like Haunters will love that.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
You know.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
If I were a creator that was just a general
audience creator that loved Halloween, I would be like, let's
review the new Home Depot drops, you know, and new
skeleton you know, nine out of ten because I love
skeletons or whatever. But like doing it in this way
is speaks to my audience, which are Haunters. Because why
because Haunters love to brag about how they make everything,

(22:53):
and they love to brag about how Home Depot is
terrible quality, and they love to just you know, kind
of pooh poo everything and a Home Depot still my stuff,
and you know, but at the same time they love
to buy cheap skeletons and then just like refab them.
I mean, like you've got this all these dynamics. If
you can understand your audience that perfectly and encapsulate it
into a piece of content, that is the goal, right,
And so you know, if it's that's back to Sean's

(23:17):
thing about what they curated or not, Like the goal
is to understand your audience. So well that you know
what they would find interesting, and you'd be able to
package it in a way that it would resonate with them.
But if you don't have time for any of that,
like say you have notes, say you're like Philip, all
I have time to do is like one post the
entire Halloween season, and I can't even have time to

(23:39):
write an email. And then I'd be like, Okay, maybe put
a generic post together that at least covers your basis
so people know who, what, when, where and why. Okay,
get it, but ideally know like it's going to perform
better with your demographics if you can really make it
speak to them.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
I was just thinking about a package that you could
have home depot sell and for different you know, there's
some people that are gonna want the pre corpse skeleton
for ninety nine dollars. There's other people that would buy
the package for the thirty dollars skeleton with some plastic wrap,
some brushes, a little bit of glue, a heat gun,

(24:18):
and some stain for sixty nine ninety nine uh, and
then spend six hours making their own corpse skeleton. Yeah,
because different packages for different people.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
Yeah, And that would also be like a great way
to even redo that meme again where you could be like,
you know, like be like haunter a just like buy
the thing, or like home Hunter like whatever, buy and
put up or whatever. You could you make some labels
to make fun of people and then you know you're
just like other like home Hunter who like you break
out the costs and it's like six hours at you know,

(24:51):
like minimum wage is actually like this amount and what
do you do to break it out? And then just
because you know how many times we heard that at
Transford where people are like, I can just make my
own lights and you're like, I mean, but like you can,
but like maybe instead you should be working on your
marketing plan, you know, like what's gonna be them? I mean?

Speaker 3 (25:08):
But that would also be.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
Like a great like you're saying, be able to lay
that out, like you know, like okay, I see Craigan
here is asked, how do you determine your demographic on
each platform?

Speaker 3 (25:22):
So this one is.

Speaker 1 (25:29):
I think there's again there is software you can buy
that can only does all this automatically. You also can
get some help from like chat, gpt now and Gemini
and kind of like you can export some of your
data and put it in there and see if it
can give you insights. I would recommend doing all these things,
but I'll explain the.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
Theory to you.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
So basically, what you're doing is ideally you would you
would take that he said he didn't post haunt survey,
So ideally you would take that data in there. There
would be some demographic information that you'd at least be
able to put them into a demographic piles. Right when
you're creating your persona, you're trying to get it as
much as a real person that you can possibly think of.

(26:12):
It's kind of like a little bit like acting, you know,
where you're actually you're trying to like invent a person
that is an example of a whole group. You know,
So like Karen, you know, the sassy mommy blogger you know,
or the sassy mom you know, and you know she
just wants a cheap activity, but if anything goes wrong,
she's gonna complain, and you know she doesn't want to

(26:32):
drive that far. She definitely is gonna need a pregame
because you can't deal with the kids. And you know
her husband isn't nice to her, and you know, so
she takes out you know, I mean like you got
to like, ideally, what you're gonna want is like you're
going to create a persona, and you want the two
elements classically, you're demographic and psychographic.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
Right.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
Demographics are pretty easy to gather from your survey data, Right,
how old are you, how many tickets did you buy?

Speaker 3 (26:59):
How far as you drive? How do to hear about whatever?
That's demographics.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
Psychographics are harder, and that one takes a little bit
more like years in operation, and takes some like analyzing
comments basically, you know, on and kind of see what
the sentiment is that people have and talking to them
and those kind of things, and really just studying at
your haunt, who shows up, who waits, who doesn't mind waiting?
You know what they do all that stuff. So you
got to take that one a little bit more. But

(27:26):
what you can do is combine data. So you can
look at your survey data and then you can look
at the metrics on your channels. So Instagram has this data,
Meta has a data. You know, your TikTok also does
have limited data, So you can go in and you
can look at those and say, okay, what are the
age ranges male female?

Speaker 3 (27:46):
Age?

Speaker 1 (27:47):
You can see that kind of basic information, and you
should be able to combine this together to get a
rough idea of that, and then from there it is testing.
And that's why I'm saying, like in a perfect world,
each piece of content has a goal and it has
something you're trying to test. So then you can say, Okay,
we think that this based on this haunt survey and

(28:10):
then based off of the demographics on Facebook, that we
think that this chunk here pays attention to our Facebook,
and so we're going to make a thing that talks
to that chunk. We're going to test a few of them,
see how they perform, right, and then go back to
it later interview. I think a lot of times Haunters
like never review. They just kind of like make their
whole season and they just like walk away. But you
really should be kind of like reviewing. Did this actually

(28:31):
perform well or not? If we made it for this
demographic and we thought this was right, where did we
get it wrong? Was it that it was just bad
quality or was it that it didn't speak to the
right demographic?

Speaker 2 (28:43):
You know?

Speaker 1 (28:43):
I mean, because there has to be a quality baseline, right,
Like It's just like it's like I see people.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
Basically, it's the whole mic thing.

Speaker 1 (28:53):
You know, even if you are just holding like a
phone mic, you're going to be able to hear the
person so much better right than if you were just
So there is a quality baseline you have to hit.

Speaker 3 (29:02):
But then from.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
There, you know, really you should be able to make
something that speaks to them implicitly or even just try
making some memes and testing it now, you know, and
seeing like, Okay, does the do these like resonate with
this audience.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
Or you know that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yes, I hope that answered the question, Craig. If it didn't,
ll us because I'm just getting panty at this point.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
I need more coffee.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Sean has a good idea or a question. Uh, give
him some good tidbits on uh being a Canadian and
marketing to Americans? So how do we bring people across
the border? And he doesn't want my opinion because it's
far too far for Americans to come visit me, so
m M, except when Philip is in town, and then

(29:48):
you know it doesn't visit.

Speaker 3 (29:50):
Okay, I tried to not even go there. I did try.
There's the whole thing.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
I understand.

Speaker 5 (29:56):
He's got to go back now.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
Yeah, so that one. I don't know. I think I
would say again, you can you can try.

Speaker 1 (30:11):
You could do some tests and you could look back
at your you know, like, right, person, how do we
like get them in? I think you have to determine first,
like whether you are even reaching those people now?

Speaker 3 (30:24):
Right?

Speaker 1 (30:24):
Like do you even have Americans on your mailing lists?

Speaker 3 (30:28):
On your texting list?

Speaker 1 (30:29):
You know, on your social platforms, like do you have
any do you have any chunk of that market?

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Now?

Speaker 1 (30:34):
If you don't, then it's going to become a little
bit of You could test different options. You know, you
could test a keyword strategy or an ad buy strategy.
If you really want to get crazy, you could try
making some content you know, you know yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
I don't know how.

Speaker 1 (30:52):
I mean, I don't know how far you want to
go down there, but you could try making some content
where you're like, you know, come to Canada where you
know it it's you know, tear free and everything is
cheaper or something, and you're like, come, come have dinner
over here, or you know, come it's something like you
like mic drop, You're like, you know, Canadian steak is better?

Speaker 3 (31:12):
Prove us wrong?

Speaker 1 (31:13):
Right, I mean, you know that kind of a you
could you could try and you know, you could try
and do some kind of funny stuff like that in there.
But I think the way I would do it is
first look at do we have any of these people
that we can go ask and look at and kind
of see why they made the decision in the first
place to come to your haunt and get data from them.
And then from there you can go and figure out

(31:35):
if you don't have any of them already, then you like,
if you have no Americans on that list, now, then
you're going to have to like kind of start from
scratch by just making some campaigns, and you should test
out different ones. You should test out you know, is
keyword the keyword stuff the ad buy you know? Or
could we make content? I would say the content is

(31:57):
going to be almost the hardest one because presumably most
of the people that follow you your channels is going
to be you know, like not Americans. But that doesn't
mean you couldn't make you know, ads and then you know,
like not post them as native content. Just make them
as ads from the beginning and run ads on the

(32:17):
different platforms and then just see how you go.

Speaker 3 (32:21):
Yeah, that would be my strategy.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
Yeah, because Windsor is not that far away from the border, right.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah, Windsors like really bridge and water.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
That's about it.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
Yeah, it's really close to that area.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
I mean I could I could see you sitting down again,
sitting down and think thinking. I mean that that could
be one where you might consider doing an awareness strategy.
You know, that would be one where maybe you would
try and host you know, a relatively larger like Detroit
influencer or something and just try and get like awareness,

(32:54):
like hey, this is the thing that's available, you know,
like I could see that working, or I could see
you try to seeing some of these different strategies just
to see, you know, like what what's gonna.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
What would work and what wouldn't. Yeah, okay, okay, what else.

Speaker 5 (33:12):
It's a lot of I have I have some questions
on Facebook Messenger. Okay, So how about the Hont review
Hont review, how about the Hount review crews that show
up in masks every year? What do you think.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
About mass every year? I feel like this is a
question that is.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Designed, uh to get me in trouble, right is that?
What's it's that?

Speaker 5 (33:38):
I don't know? It's from James Warren so Okay, hey James,
So say, do you think they're a good thing for marketing? Advertising?
Do you think they're good for you know, listening on
their websites, the logos they let you put on their website,
that kind of stuff. Social proof does it help?

Speaker 2 (33:59):
So?

Speaker 3 (34:04):
Wait? Can we swear I don't know? Wait?

Speaker 5 (34:06):
Yeah, this is this is.

Speaker 3 (34:09):
Oh okay, I guess I'm gonna go with. UH. So
here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
Let's take it back to what I've been saying this
entire time, right person, right time, right. So if you
can figure out, like if you can draw a connection
between the review and someone who actually showed up to
your haunt after reading their view and buy ticket, I
think there's some justification behind it. Most of the clients

(34:40):
that I have worked with, UH find that is not
the case because the type of people who are going
to a haunted house, very few of them are like
reading a review on an independent website like they're the
reviews they are checking is like Yelp and like Google.
You know they're they're they're just looking for like other

(35:01):
regular people, Like they really don't care about like a haunt,
like expert talking about the haunt, like the people that
care about those reviews tend to be the people who
are like already in the HANT community, and generally speaking,
people that are already in the HANT community are almost
like the least important demographic for haunters because they're already
aware of the haunt and because they already like want

(35:22):
to go and they kind of already know the haunts
they want to go to, right, So there might be a.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
Way for you to like.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Parlay that into you know, content that is useful for you,
like like like like I think of like the scare factor, right, like,
so you know, they have teams kind of all around,
so you know, but like I think I've seen some
haunts and they take some of the highlight of that,

(35:52):
you know, and they make a post about it, you know,
or they they they somehow they they leverage it, you know,
on their own Like the Haunt leverages some of that
stuff on their owned network as a way of like
proving to people, you know, that it's a thing. And
so I think if you're using it in that way, right,
if you're like leveraging it, right, But I think that

(36:14):
kind of just relying on the rew on the independent
reviewer to sell tickets for you is probably like not
gonna net. But then I but like I don't want
to shut on all of them or hate on it,
but like what I'm gonna say is like does it
really like how much does it really matter? Like it's
like a pair of tickets, you know, like come on.
I mean like that part of me is like we're
arguing about the wrong thing. So like here at you know,

(36:35):
at Gantum, generally we have rules in place where I'm like,
if the decision is like fifty to our one hundred
dollars in that range, like why you even asking me?
Because the time it would take to set up a
meeting and discuss it is going to cost me more
in labor than it is like to just solve the problem,
you know, Like I'm like, if you need a pencil,
go buy a pencil, you know. I mean I've had

(36:57):
just real examples of like staff that have been like
I need to prove to buy a pen or buy
a piece of paper or something ridiculous to do this thing,
and you're like, just do it, like and so sometimes
I do think I'm like the amount of time that
we spend like even like thinking about this is almost
not worth it. You know what I mean, Like I

(37:17):
would again back to the making your marketing plan. I
would make your marketing plan ahead of time, and I
would decide then how you're going to answer like all
the reviewers, and you would just decide, you know, if
it's if they're only asking for one or two tickets,
and it's whatever in there in this realm of impact
is in like you know, they're not the New York
Times or the you know, or Fox or something. You know,
They're not like a thing that's like a brand really,

(37:38):
you know, like if Fox comes out and wants to
do something like do it, you know whatever. But like
I would make your plan early and make your decision
as a team as to what you would like to do,
because I also think, you know, honestly like.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
Coming it in so much trouble for this interview. But
I think.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
Most haunters, definitely, like don't run their haunt to make
money or to even be a business. They do it
because they enjoy entertaining people and they see it as
an art form. And so I do think there is
a lot of ego invested, and I think that there
is an argument for like having the reviewers come out

(38:18):
to tell you that you did a good job.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
And I mean.

Speaker 1 (38:21):
That's a whole separate argument, right, Like if you're telling
if you're the question is should we do these review
things because they're going to sell tickets? I think the
answers generally know. But is the question instead we're review
bringing these reviewers out because all of our staff and
all of our actors, since they are haunters and they
could a trans world, they're paying attention to what the

(38:44):
Scare Factor and the other places say, and they value this,
then it's one hundred percent worth it, right because what
you're doing is, you know, you're you're putting your product
out there and you're making your team like happy when
they get to review it and you're sharing it. Are
your customers going to care? I'm not sure about that,
you know. Uh, And especially now there's so many of them,

(39:04):
Like you know, I work with the Scare Factor.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
I think what they do an excellent job.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
But they're you know, they they operate nationally, but there's
a lot of local ones and all over and independent
and all that. I mean, so I think it really
again back depends on your goal for the thing you're doing.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
Uh. And yeah, anyway, that's that's all I come to say.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
You mean the group of junior high students is not
following you know, yeah, Like.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
That's that's the thing. It's just so hilarious.

Speaker 1 (39:31):
It's like we're over here and we're like, these people
don't even know what a haunted house is, right, they
don't even know that you like ours aren't even like, oh,
you have bars, and we're like, yes, that is literally
the thing that we're known for.

Speaker 3 (39:43):
Oh really, can I drink at the bars?

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Like?

Speaker 3 (39:45):
What else are you gonna do with them? You know
what I mean? Like, come on, like what like those people?

Speaker 1 (39:50):
You're trying to convince me that those people are gonna
read X review expert person's thing and buy a ticket? Now, Like, honestly,
you better convinced me to like encourage people to leave
Google and Yelp reviews by doing some sort of like
incentive program, then you would about those things. And you know,
but again, the haunt community does care what other community

(40:14):
members think. And so if you're doing just like with
the scared badges, right, like that's not really gonna you know,
necessarily impress convince someone to buy a ticket if they
see someone with a lot of badges on that's not
gonna mention it by a ticket. What it's gonna do
is help with staff retention, help with staff morale, you know,
help them understand their value, help them feel appreciated, all
these things. That's the same thing the review is doing.

(40:36):
And it's just like a person who if they respect
the person, it means a lot to them.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
Right.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
So, uh, you know some of the best haunts I've
been to too, they have those reviews, like not in
the like they made the posters. They put the posters
like in the staff areas. They don't put them like
in the guest areas, right, So.

Speaker 5 (40:55):
That's what we use ours for. We got the like
number three scare factor they say, the fan voted number
three fan voted in Missouri. Yeah, that was so we
put that on all of our advertising, postcards, flyers, website first,
you know, the first second year, which really helped us,
you know, social proof, right, so stuff like that until

(41:18):
we did get our Google reviews built up, and then
it just became a Google review thing, you know.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
So yeah, exactly, Yeah, I think what Craig said here
in the chat, it's like we assume the customers are
haunt nerds, and that's Yeah, that's so true, because you know,
again that's why it's important to come up with the
personas like they're not they have no idea, you know it,
And yes, he is right. It is an impulse purchase,
you know, for the most part, you know, the bigger

(41:44):
events like you don't generally impulse purchase Halloween, Hohrnites, you know,
tickets and a plane, right, you.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
Know, but a lot of the haunts.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
You know, if your haunt is is relatively priced in
fifteen to twenty ish, that's pretty impulsey, right, So that.

Speaker 3 (42:01):
I think their impulse perching.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
That means that they're searching scary things to do near
me this weekend, or spooky things or well whatever where
there's talking to their friends and it's coming up and
they're doing those things. In no way are they like
you know, I don't know, that's my take.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Then there's always those people that don't want to come,
but they just get drug along because their friends like
to go to hants.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
Yeah, that's a huge and you're not.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
Really necessarily marketing to them, but you need to still
entertain them when they get there. Yeah, Sean's asking, what's
a good formula for the amount of social posts per
day or per week, and is there specific times of
day or where can you find that out when it's
best to post?

Speaker 1 (42:42):
Right Again, that's in your metrics for each of your channels.
Your channels will tell you when your audience is most active,
and you can also test based on the number of
posts you make how that increases or decreases your engagement.
So the answer is testing, you know, But just step
out from that for a second.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
Like I think it is less.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
And less important to even really post natively, Like I think,
you know, like you're not gonna it's just like you
may maybe you'll win the lottery, right, but you're not.
It's like that's that's that's not the important thing. Like
the important thing is understanding like what you're gonna put
your paid advertising behind, right and on social and what

(43:26):
you're gonna boost and what you're not and like how
that whole thing is working and all that stuff. Like
I think that we've definitely moved beyond you getting much
traction from posting natively at all.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
Like the only the only bonus.

Speaker 1 (43:39):
I see it as is like you post natively just
to remind people that the business is open, right, you know,
you're like like as in, like, you know, it's not dead, right,
but like, yeah, you know, most of the engagement really
comes from like ads that you're paying to run, and
that's by design, you know, the platforms like they don't
want you to get anything for free. Come on, like,

(44:02):
oh hashtags, So Erica there has been Erica is asking
what are your thoughts on hashtags?

Speaker 3 (44:08):
And how many are too many?

Speaker 1 (44:09):
The rule last year was no more than three, but
there was some announcements this week that the meta platforms
will be killing hashtags altogether. So I would just you know,
for now, I think around three. But after that, the
hashtags are just not going to be relevant. They're already
not relevant because what happens is the platforms, whether it's

(44:29):
you know, any of the platforms, when you're uploading, when
it is uploading, AI is listening to it, and it
is scanning every frame and it knows what the video
is about by the time that you post it, and
so it's really not.

Speaker 3 (44:46):
It's not about that really anymore.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
Hashtags are taking less importance.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
Now, yeah, they're much less important for indexing, so I
think right now three, but watch the news coming out
from meta and see when they're going to be.

Speaker 3 (45:01):
Sunsetting hashtags altogether.

Speaker 5 (45:03):
Yeah, the James Michael Rotty says, what do you think
of Michael Rotty?

Speaker 3 (45:13):
I think of Michael Rodny. H'm Michael. I Well, you
know I have your book, but I'm not in it.

Speaker 5 (45:21):
Oh shut oh maybe maybe the next one.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
Okay, all right, I'm holding do that.

Speaker 5 (45:30):
Chris Patty. If you do Land, If you do Land
an influencer to advertise on social media, what would they
actually do shout out to advertise your videos on their lives,
et cetera. How does that work? If you or anyone
has been successful with this marketing? I know we covered
that a little bit earlier, but does that can you
add to anything? Fill up on that?

Speaker 1 (45:50):
We We did cover it earlier, So I would say,
you know, when you get the recording, you can go
back and listen to that whole I explained the whole
in pleasure thing. But I will just clarify that you
should have an influencer strategy, and you're gonna you're basically
gonna break them up right into So, first of all,
I think every every haunt should have a media night,

(46:11):
just like every Haunt should still send out a press release.
But why Philip uh, you know AI is killing everything,
isn't you know? Search Dead and blah blah blah, bah
blah blah. I mean, like all this stuff still needs
content to draw from. So when you send out a
press release, even if just a few websites are one
like picks it up, it increases the chances that when
somebody is literally going to chat cheapt and chat cheepten,

(46:33):
what should I do this weekend, which is a thing
that happens, then it hopefully will will see your haunt's name,
and it will increase the likelihood it gets you know,
it gets brought into what it's developing. So so there's
still the basics, guys. The basics is hold a media
knight where you give them food and you make it
a great experience, and that will get you like earned media.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
And then you can.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
Also do the easy stuff, which is like sending out
press release and just letting people know like what's going on.
But in generally, like we've talked about the three types
of media, there's paid, there's earned, and there's owned. Right,
so earned would be that like you're inviting people there,
you're in buying media do whatever. Paid is what we've
been talking about where you pay for the content, you

(47:18):
pay for the ads or whatnot, and then owned is
like the stuff that you're posting. Right, So there's another
type of way. So when I say media knights, you
can invite influencers to media, but generally you invite what
you consider to be traditional media or whatever. Now, in
addition to media and knights, which you can do is
pay an influencer, which we talked about earlier, but just

(47:41):
to reiterate, the distinction with that is that that means
you are basically hiring a freelancer to create assets and
distribute them for you. So it's no different than if
you were going to buy an ad back in the day.
You know, we bought an ad in a newspaper. It's
the same thing. You are paying for advertising on their network.

(48:05):
And ideally what you can do is you could work
into that contract something where you get to use their
video that they make you get rights to use their
video for a certain amount of time, and ideally then
you would do that. So then if they posted it
on their network and then it did well, you could
post it on yours and that saves your team time

(48:26):
for having to do marketing. So the influence is what
they bring is they bring basically like a miniature media
arm where they're giving you distribution and they're also giving
you asset creation.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
So that's what you're purchasing.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
You're purchasing distribution and you're purchasing asset creation from them
when you have a contract with them, which is separate
from when you just invite media to your media knite.
If you are just inviting them their media to the
media knite and they just show up and they get
free tickets and free food, there's no contract, which means
you have no rights to use the content they're creating.

Speaker 3 (48:57):
Okay, you're not hiring them, you're.

Speaker 1 (48:59):
Just yours in buying them and hoping they're going to
give you earned media. That's why we have the paid, earned,
and owned are three types of media. So I hope
that clarifies.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
Okay, I think that that helps a little bit. And again,
you know this will be saved and put up online
so you can go back and watch this again and
catch any of those things that you missed from earlier.
You had mentioned chat, GBT and AI, and we get
two AI questions, So what's the biggest change you see
that AI is affecting online and our blog posts still

(49:31):
relevant and does it help with AI with Google?

Speaker 1 (49:35):
Okay, we'll take these two things separately. The first is
what's the biggest change, And I think in a way
it changes everything, you know, Like you might not like gravity,
but gravity doesn't care. And that's what's happening with AI.
I mean, it is it. It is very quickly going
to become ubiquitous and it will be like everywhere, and

(49:56):
so I.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
Think the change is going to be everything and yet nothing.

Speaker 1 (50:01):
Like we talked about Darryl earlier, like mentioned that not
much everything has changed, but not much has changed.

Speaker 3 (50:05):
So like.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
I think that haunted houses are still going to be
something you physically go to where there are actors involved
with some physical set in some way.

Speaker 3 (50:16):
I believe that that's what why.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
People like haunted houses, because it's the thing they can
go to and do with other people in the real world. Right,
So I don't think that is changing. But like the
rest of it, you could see impact. You could see
AI impacting every element, you know. Alan Hopps talked about
this quite extensively during the State of the Industry talk
which I recorded, and you can go and listen to
that section about Alan.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
But he talked about a lot of stuff. Right, He
talked about.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
You can put GoPros in your haunt and you can
upload the footage every night to AI and say find
every find the best moments of this, or find every
moment of a girl screaming or whatever, and it will
chop it for you. So you can use it in
media production. You can use it to help you with
your personas and all your marketing efforts. You can use
it to write your press releases. You can use it
to help examine your web sites, and you could use

(51:01):
it to find leads for influencers, to find leads for
local media people. You could use it in ideation for
your for your costumes. You could use it in ideation
for your sets and your storylines. You could use it
for script writing. You can use anything else in your
haunt other than like, you know, the physical people showing up.

(51:22):
You know, like you're not going to get AI to
paint the wall for you, right, but basically everything else,
even making props, you know, using AI to help you
write code for something and then using the code and
finding a way to you know, do a three D
model rendering based off of that input. I mean, now
making images you know, AI can make your posters, it

(51:44):
can make your advertising, your collateral. You could create a
clone of yourself and have that clone do live interviews
for TV. You could clone your actors and your characters
in eleven labs and you could have them creating content
every day.

Speaker 3 (51:57):
You could have an AI clone doing a live stream
in your haunt. I can keep going. But like.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
I mean, like so okay, so like it's one of
those things where like I think haunts will still be
a physical thing, but also AI is going to impact
basically most of the things in the Haunt to some degree. Now,
a separate question might be, Philip, what do you think
the best AI tools are? You know that we could
talk about if someone wants to know. But Craig's question,

(52:27):
which are blog posts on the website useful anymore?

Speaker 3 (52:30):
And does it help with AI on Google?

Speaker 1 (52:32):
So AI needs content, you know, and so it doesn't
hurt you know, SEO and search might be dying because
people are increasingly using AI to do searches that could
be doing on Google for like one tenth the energy.
But you know that's the trend is definitely people searching

(52:54):
more in just AI to do that. Of course, people
still we forget that people also still search within meta.
You know, Meta has their own AI, like all these
all these things have have you know, And so what
I recommend is just again back to your basics. You
need to your haunt needs to have information in just

(53:17):
a minimum amount of places. So you need all your FAQs,
You need your website fleshed out. You also need to
send your press releases out to a bunch of places.
You also need to have your Facebook stuff. All of
that needs to be populated correctly. And all this why
because Facebook has its own AI and it will be
reading your pages, and if your page doesn't have the information,

(53:37):
it can't give that information up to other person.

Speaker 3 (53:39):
And same thing with your website.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
It's not necessarily so that humans will go to the
website at this point. It is so the information is
there so that if if someone is doing a search, AI, whatever,
then it can pull that inform, It can crawl it
and pull it into the answer for you. So I
think that maybe not necessarily a blog post strategy, but

(54:03):
some sort of making sure that your minimum basis and
all of these are covered is good.

Speaker 3 (54:07):
And same thing with YouTube.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
I mean, that's another reason also to make sure you
have at least one YouTuber coming out, because people go
in YouTube and search, like I think we're I mean
maybe if you're older like me, you know you're thinking
of search and like they go to Google and search. No,
like people go to YouTube and search best haunted houses
in your state, Like they do that in YouTube. And

(54:30):
so if you don't have any content on YouTube, what
is it gonna it's what is it gonna surface your competitors,
That's what it's gonna surface. Right, And then you know, yes,
you can go into each of these areas and you
can buy you know, AdWords, So I mean you could
buy a search result to be served, you know, to
buy a ticket to your haunt, right, But I think

(54:52):
it's less likely they're going to click on that if
there's not even one video about your haunt, right. I mean,
just you have to under back to the personas. You
have to understand how each of these personas is searching
for the thing. Some people go to Yelp, some people
go to Google. Some people search within Facebook, some people
search within Instagram. Increasingly people are searching within Instagram, people
are searching within YouTube. So understanding your personas and where

(55:15):
they find their information is key. But if you don't
have time or whatever, I mean, I still think it's
still a good idea to like make sure you're at
least having a thing in all of these places.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
And just because you don't use TikTok or I don't
use TikTok, doesn't mean that our customers don't.

Speaker 3 (55:33):
Yeah, that's another it's important to.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
Yeah, it doesn't mean they're obsessed with it too, you know.
I see that a lot too, you know where Yeah,
people like it's all about this channel, and I'm like, well,
I mean not really.

Speaker 3 (55:46):
Look at who's showing up to your haunt, right, yeah? Okay,
what else, guys, anything.

Speaker 5 (55:53):
Tell us a little bit about press releases? What should
we do? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (56:00):
Yeah, So, in its basic sense, your press release has
the who, what, when, where, and why. But the purpose
of a press release is to provide a news entity
or at this point it can be a blogger or
you know, anybody in that sphere of people that make content.
It's to provide either news agencies or content creators or
any of these people with everything they need to produce

(56:23):
a story about your haunt. Okay, so the press release
should have the pitch, you know, like the sales pitch,
like why is this?

Speaker 3 (56:31):
Why is this important? You know, so who what, when? Where?

Speaker 1 (56:35):
Why does it matter to me? And then it should
also have in it a link to digital assets and
you just just think about it, like if if you're
if you want a website to pick it up, the
website's going to be like, okay, are there any photos
that we can put in the thing? Or like what
it's going to be the eye catching thumbnail, you know,
like they need.

Speaker 3 (56:55):
All these assets available us.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
And then if it's if you want somebody like some
blogger on Instagram, you know, like there are all these
accounts right that that are like three spooky things to
do this weekend and blah blah blah, and like so
they're going to need be roll of your haunt, right
and if they don't have it, they're not gonna use
your haunt. Like so, I think in its base form,
you have your press release, which has the basic information

(57:20):
in a clear and concise way, and then it also
has a link to your media assets folder, and your
assets folder has at least photos and at least a
thirty second be roll clip like this would be the minimum,
you know, and then anybody can pull anything they need
about to make any story that they would want on
your Haunt.

Speaker 3 (57:39):
Cause that's that's the whole point.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
Right Also during Hant season, right like, I run the
you know a lot, I work at a few different haunts,
and I run the social and the email for quite
a few of them. And what happens is you get
reporters that are like behind deadline and they're they're like,
I need this, you know, in like an hour, and
so there's no way you're gonna be.

Speaker 3 (57:59):
Able to do it if you wait to Haunt season.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
Now you can just send them a link or better yet,
just put on your website, you know, and then they
just go, oh, here's the media room, here's the information.

Speaker 3 (58:09):
Great, and then move on.

Speaker 5 (58:13):
When do you start sending out press releases?

Speaker 3 (58:15):
So that I think it depends on the market.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
Right So here in California there's generally like a higher
lead time, so you'll see. I mean just this week,
I got a press release for an event that's in September.
So in California, we already have press releases that are
coming out to us to kind of.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
Save dates, you know, save the media date.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
You know.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
Generally, I think if you have the time, the first
thing you should send out is like save the date
for our media night, and you know we're gonna feed you,
We're gonna it's gonna be great, all this stuff, more
details coming soon whatever. That gives media the incentive like
to actually cover the story, you know, because they know
they're gonna get something. And then also you're getting on

(59:00):
their calendar, and then you can you know, drip it out.
I think, you know, six weeks is generally the latest
that you want to send out six weeks from your
opening day. But I would also send a reminder as
it gets closer, you know, like within a week or something, because,
like Craig had said earlier, a lot of the stuff
is impulse purchasing, and so you're sending out stuff like

(59:22):
later because not only is it like an impulse purchase,
but also like reporters tend to like forget about Halloween,
like it's our entire life obviously, and so we're thinking
about it constantly, but regular reporters, the general public, all
these people, like content creators, they kind of forget about
Halloween until like October, and then they're like even then,

(59:46):
sometimes they forget about their Halloween special until like the
week before so I think like making sure that again
you're kind of like keeping it top of mind to
those people at HUSH.

Speaker 3 (59:58):
You know, we generally do like three three or four,
we will do.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
A save the Day, then we'll do you know, a
a big the big announcement one, and then we'll do
like an opening you know, already open or whatever, you know,
like after we've opened, we'll do one, and then we'll
do like a you know, final weekend to experience it,
and here's our special events happening type of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Now, you said, you know, you're already getting some stuff
now in your area because it's such a big lead
time and they're saving the date. But what can people
do to keep these There are people that like Halloween
three sixty you know, three sixty five, twenty four seven.

(01:00:42):
How do you keep your haunt in their minds on
the off season?

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
Ah, I would counter with, is doing that going to.

Speaker 3 (01:00:51):
Make you money?

Speaker 2 (01:00:55):
Point?

Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
Yeah, if you are doing events where you know, again,
a lot of people do, like you know, we hear
about all the time. We hear about save the Industry
all that they do like recruitment stuff. They do monthly trainings,
they maybe they open for halfway to Halloween or any
of that stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
If you have that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
And you have a way to monetize it, then I
would say maybe you can create a list of the
more Halloween focused demographic and you can send some content
out to them personally. But if you have no way
of monetizing your off season, I'm not sure it's worth
the effort. It might just be fine to say we're
going to be doing a recruitment drive, or you can

(01:01:35):
learn how to do this or that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
We know, it might be fine.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Just to stick with the basic. You know, we're casting
and we're going to do a workshop on sliding whatever,
and if you are interested, you know, come by, Like
that might be your best bet. Yeah, like the people
that have That's why I like people to have the
online stores, you know, like post Mortem and the one
Carlos Rebas for Hair's Nightmare, who just received the award

(01:02:00):
this year first year Haunt. You know, they they're building
year round horror stores. I think that the business case
is a lot firmer in that, because you know, they
they're selling merchandise year round. You know that's not just
about their haunt. But then it allows them to kind of,
you know, keep that market engage and then when it
gets closer to HANT season, they're like ready to go.

Speaker 5 (01:02:20):
Okay, James Warren, should you include your media Nite invite
at the same time, I'm assuming as the press releases
or should you keep that separate?

Speaker 4 (01:02:33):
Uh?

Speaker 5 (01:02:33):
He also said we sent our media Knite invite out
one year mini coffins and made the evening news.

Speaker 3 (01:02:42):
Mm hmm. So yeah, So what's kind of great idea?

Speaker 5 (01:02:48):
So as I guess press release would you include like
do press releases media Nite? Is that like? Or I
guess there's two separate things. I guess you can have
two separate things, right.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
They are two separate things.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
Yes, Your your press release is generally, you know, just
something that ideally would live in a media room or
something like on your website that people could access, you know,
throughout the season if they need to in a hurry.
The media night generally is separate. You can include them together,
but you don't have to. And the more that you

(01:03:18):
can do to grab attention with the media invites the better.
So the mini Coffins is a great idea.

Speaker 3 (01:03:25):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):
This goes back though to depending on your budget, right
and your you know, your your time and your budget
and all that kind of stuff. I think that kind
of stuff generally, it's again, I think you've got to
like go back to your your your like think back
to your marketing plan, right people, right time. Okay, So

(01:03:49):
really it's going back to the audience personas you have
and what you're ideally, what you're doing is you're you
have an idea of where those audience personas like are
paying attention. Right, So if they're watching the local stations,
or they're listening to the radio, or they're reading something,
or they're following an online blog or you know whatever,

(01:04:10):
then you're inviting those people that your audience is watching,
like to the media night.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:04:16):
You see how it all connects together, right, So you're
inviting those people to the media night.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
And then you know, if you can do anything to
stand out in those people's minds or you know, capture
their imagination or make them excited, that's even better because
then hopefully you'll get earned media, which we talked about
an earned story in their platforms, and you know it
will give you ROI because you know that your audience
pays attention to that, right. So that's how it all

(01:04:43):
like ties together. I understand this is like not always
possible with the time and you know the stuff that
the haunts have, but that's how it should work, so
you know, but yes, I think if you like, I'll
give you an example too.

Speaker 3 (01:04:57):
Like last year.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
Last year the Queen Mary's Dark Harbor, they held literally
like an entire pre event that was just about It
was kind of like they had a whole pre event
and it was just about to announce that the like
the opening days of the haunt basically, and and you
could take it was a whole like you know, catered thing,

(01:05:22):
you know, and there it wasn't even the full information
about the event. It was just like the event is
coming and here it is and whatever, and like all
the media came out and everyone got to see everybody.
They got drinks, you know, it's this whole thing, you know,
And it was they dressed up the actors, they had
people from the city there and it was the whole thing.
But then they also separately sent out like you know,

(01:05:43):
bottles that had inside like a partient paper and you
opened the partient paper and it was like save the
date for this date for the media night, you know,
I mean you yeah, it gets kind of like crazy
some that. But again back to what I mentioned, Like,
the reason I think is because there's so many creators
in this area and so you're not you don't need
to pay the individual influencers as much, so you can

(01:06:05):
spend a little bit more money on the media night,
you know, to really encourage as many of them as
you can to get out right.

Speaker 5 (01:06:12):
Is there such things over communication?

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
Yeah? I do.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
I generally think again that depends on you know, your
individual situation. But I think of the the smaller haunts
I work with, like, I don't think many people like
care that much. So I think I think in that
you know what I mean, not to be a bad thing,
but you know, it's like they're like, it's you know
what I mean, they're kind of like they have the
attitude of like it's just a haunted house, you know,

(01:06:39):
and it's it's only May. So they're not really in
the right mood to receive that message. So I would say,
if you're in a market that doesn't have as much competition,
or you're in like a you know, a market where
they don't put out debt, you know, they don't put
out stuff in the stores as early, you know, then
I would move that timeline back a little bit, and

(01:07:03):
I would really not try not to overwhelm them, which
is another reason why it might actually be a good
thing to send the media invite separate, you know, because
the media invite can be really simple and cute. You
could send them like a box of creepy cookies and
be like, here's the media invite whatever, and then later
you could follow it up with the press release information

(01:07:24):
and then go straight into the media night.

Speaker 5 (01:07:29):
There was a comment from a nor profit from the
Scare Factor. I'm gonna read it. It's crazy to me
how many Haunts don't think of media as a thing
they need. You know, how many press releases we get
a year. I can count on one hand the press releases. However,
Haunt updates from owners we get hundreds just during the season.

(01:07:49):
I'm glad some are updating stuff, but I do wish
they'd realize that holding information about your show and making
it secret to keep from ruining or surprise also helps
heide it from all of your potential customers. Have changes.
Get that content rolling out rolling out there about them,
tell them what they look forward to, why they should visit,
what and what media can do. What and media can

(01:08:12):
help you do that. So yes, be communicating with your audience.

Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
Yeah, I have one percent agree with that. I mean,
Nora is exactly right. We like it's the easiest thing.
To me, it's the easiest thing to just send out
the precley this is what we're doing. You have to
sell your haunt, like you know, this is why you
should come out, this is what's going on. You could
even repackage stuff that you're going to send out into

(01:08:39):
an email campaign or to a text campaign. You could
just repackage it a little bit and send it to media.
And we don't get like any like, I mean, I
agree with Nora, Like I was. I was just literally
just having this problem earlier with someone who wanted to
get on our weekly newsletter and they're like, how come
you're not talking about us? And I'm like, what do

(01:09:00):
you want me to say? Like there's nothing on your website,
there's no information anywhere, Like I don't, like, this is
way too much work for me to have to hunt
down the information about the thing that you supposedly are doing,
Like you know, you should be sending me the information
so that I can put it into the newsletter, Like
this is crazy, but yeah, and the whole idea of

(01:09:21):
thinking you're going to ruin it, like no, because you again,
I think that's back to the Haunters are artists in
many ways, and they think of it. They don't want to,
you know, they want it to be appreciated like art.
I'm not sure all the customers think of it that way,
you know. I think you have to convince them each
year because in the customer's mind, they're thinking, we just
did that last year, you know, and they have no

(01:09:45):
idea because to them, they only think of Halloween, you know,
maybe once it comes around in late October.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
They don't think of it year round, and they think
that the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
Is stayed static, right, So I think, yeah, dispelling that
is is a big part of it. That's why we
always for Hush at least, it's always really focused on
like this is what we're this is what's new this year,
Like that's like the first thing new this year, new
ice caverns, well, a new ice bar and a geddi
you know, or like get your picture taken with the Eddy,

(01:10:17):
but you know, don't hold your hand too close to
his mouth or you know, I mean, we're like you
gotta you gotta sell it.

Speaker 5 (01:10:23):
M I guess we can pull up a sample press
releases on I'm sure A I could probably do one
for us.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
Right, yeah, I think again, the key for the press
releases is who, what, when, where and why? And I
think that you can use AI to help you structure
the press release. But coming up with the headline is
going to be the most important thing because the headline

(01:10:50):
is the value proposition.

Speaker 3 (01:10:51):
You're like, why does it matter?

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
And so many haunts you get that wrong again because
they're thinking of it, like you know, like, oh, we
readd all these scenes, we repainted the zombies, and I'm like,
nobody knows because nobody remembers what scenes are in your haunt.

Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
Nobody let you know, like.

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):
You could do that press release to your core fans,
or you could that's something for like your email campaign, right,
that's already people that are like invested, but for like,
you gotta make it. You got to sell it to
the general public.

Speaker 5 (01:11:25):
Like you're you're a usp your unique selling the proposition.
You got to you gotta come out and say what
you do differently, whether you're a touch Haunt, whether you're
Bloody is Haunt, whether you're the kid the most kid
friendly haunt. No, you got to kind of stand out.

Speaker 2 (01:11:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:11:42):
I I generally, I think your unique selling proposition is
a great that's that's the technical term for it. I
generally tell people to stay away from doing like st
things and focus on, like, you know, just explaining what
the difference is, right, I mean, like, you know, in
the beginning, like at Hush, for example, we used to

(01:12:02):
be able to say that we're one of the only
you know that you can come drink in the middle
of the haunt because you get these you know, you
get bar, a bar haunt, an integrated bar haunt experience,
you know, which is was pretty unique. But then you know,
we had to move on from that to really focusing
on our entertainment. And so now it's like about the
entertainment that is on the stage, you know. And then
and then you mentioned like you you still have all

(01:12:24):
the bars and all that stuff, but dag knew this year,
you know, we have expanded stage.

Speaker 3 (01:12:28):
You know, we have more seating for this.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
There is this this new uh the ice cavern. You
have to like really like paint the picture, you know.
I think too many times haunters are like, yeah, you know,
get lost in or whatever, you know, last year.

Speaker 3 (01:12:42):
I think that the one that uh woods a Terror did.

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
About Baba Yaga, you know that are you know, having
like the opening a whole new section and really like
describing the section and you know, teasing it to the media,
you know, having having the media Knight, but then say
it's gonna open later so you have to come back
and check out ap Yaga. Like I think that all
that stuff works out. Yeah, I think it can get

(01:13:05):
too vague, you know where you're just like new new scenes. Okay, great,
more blood all right, like yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway, Okay.

Speaker 5 (01:13:21):
What are your thoughts on inviting local radio news stations,
radio hosts out to promote events.

Speaker 1 (01:13:31):
I think you could include all of them in your
Media Night information, you know, include all them to come
out when I make Media Night plans. Again, we're taking
it back to the right person, right time, so you know,
you're you're trying to make sure that the media that
you're inviting, our media, that you know that your demographics

(01:13:55):
are paying attention to That's the whole point, right unless
you're trying to break into a whole new market, in
which case, you know that's a separate you know, test
for that, but you are if if you're drawing it
back to that, then you already know why they're on
the lesser game. Then you've decided you're going to have
a media nite because you're getting these people here.

Speaker 3 (01:14:13):
So then you're planning your media nite.

Speaker 1 (01:14:15):
And I usually say when you plan your media nite,
you need to come up with a content plan or
a media plan or something because all the media need
different things.

Speaker 3 (01:14:26):
Right so.

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
We all know there's a lot of like you know,
haunt of vloggers that do walk through videos, right, So,
but then you know also that if if by chance,
you know, you get a local news to come in,
they don't want to walk through, you know, generally they
have their larger cameras.

Speaker 3 (01:14:49):
You know, they generally.

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
Want like a particular scene, or they want some sort
of stick with the host and an actor, or they
want you to come into the studio and do something
like that or whatever. Radio potentially want something different, you know,
So I think you need to have a plan right
before you even schedule your media nite for all of
these things. You know, are you going to have a

(01:15:12):
are you going to even offer a Q and A
with the owner for someone to get interviews, Are you
offering photos? Are you letting them film in the Haunt?
How all these questions you need to think about ahead
of time, and then when you start to get RCPs,
you can ask the media, you know, like what they
need in particular, right, so that you can make sure
that everyone gets what they need. But this is all a

(01:15:35):
lot of work, which is why you're like go back
to the audience personas, like who are these audiences watching?

Speaker 3 (01:15:42):
Try and get them to the media nite.

Speaker 1 (01:15:44):
Then work with them, you know, to make sure they
get what they need.

Speaker 5 (01:15:51):
And so marketing and advertising for Haunt vendors, I know,
you know we get scared badges kind of stands out
because we're kind of you. But mass makers, costume makers,
how do they stand at online? What kind of things
do you? What can they do?

Speaker 3 (01:16:11):
That's a that's a big question. I think.

Speaker 1 (01:16:15):
It's a big question because it's a little bit different.
But I think if you take it back to what
we've been talking about this entire time, you know, develop
your personas and you need to like pay attention to
where those people are paying attention so you know here,
so I'm trying to figure out how to do it
without ragging on people.

Speaker 3 (01:16:33):
So I'm trying to so okay, let me, let me okay.

Speaker 1 (01:16:37):
Here here's I'm trying to be like what can I
say that's not gonna get me, you know whatever? Yelled
at this barred Yeah, I don't know, man, I was
gonna stay canceled, but I was like yes. So so
here's the thing like Haunt I think hant vendors are
like terrible at like marketing, like I've never seen like

(01:16:57):
I'm like baffled, like.

Speaker 5 (01:17:01):
Well, that's yeah, because I've seen a lot of good
companies come and go and I really like their stuff,
and they're rolling around for like one or two years
and they're gone.

Speaker 1 (01:17:07):
Like but I also think, though, you got to think
a little bit more about it, like you're, if you're
a Haunt vendor, really thinking about your personas. And I'll
try and give a few examples that are like not
really raggy, but like, for example, we know that so
I interviewed, uh, George. I usually interview George every year

(01:17:29):
at Immortal Right, and we kind of talked to me about,
you know, their trends and all what they're seeing everything,
you know, and there's a great insight from him where
they started to realize that that a growing demographic of
their market is actually like cosplayers, like general public cause
players that just want mass for like cool shit. Okay,
that's a very different video, that's a very different website.

(01:17:52):
That's a very different sales proposition than it is to
a haunter, right, and so that's why this is why
demographic you're breaking these personas and knowing who's buying your
stuff is important.

Speaker 3 (01:18:02):
I'll give you more examples.

Speaker 1 (01:18:03):
Okay, so you know I I you know there's stuff
like sliding gear and stuff that's made for actors. Okay,
so just think about your haunt. Okay, how many of
your actors are boomers? I would wager to say less
than our younger you know gen Z millennial that age,

(01:18:26):
that's my guess, right, especially sliders.

Speaker 3 (01:18:28):
Okay, So if you're.

Speaker 1 (01:18:29):
Thinking about this, okay, then you're thinking about where are
those people looking at stuff? Okay, they're probably looking at
like TikTok. So like making sure that you have videos
about your sliding gear on TikTok. That's probably important because
that's where the people who are buying it are. However,
if you are like, let's take distortions, you know, and

(01:18:52):
you are making very expensive stuff, Like I think most
of the Haunt team is probably not going to be
buying any of those because it's too expensive.

Speaker 3 (01:19:01):
It'srobably gonna be the owners. So where are the owners?
We know where the owners are.

Speaker 1 (01:19:05):
They're on Facebook, like they're just They're just on Facebook, right,
Like as a demographic, the most of the Haunt community
as a whole is on Facebook. But you can break
it down and say, okay, where specifically do the actors
hang out in Facebook? Where do the owners hang out
in Facebook? Who watches Transworld Live?

Speaker 2 (01:19:25):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:19:26):
I mean it's generally not I think too many of
the actors, and too many of those is generally the
older people you know, who goes to the networking mixer
at Transworld, not the actors that don't have money to
pay for it. I mean, sorry, that's what it is,
you know. I mean you got to just think about
where these people are putting their attention and meet them
there at those moments. Right, there was a vendor that

(01:19:48):
I say, this is so funny. Also I feel like
I try so I made all these videos for Haunters
in my big Transworld vendor review, right, and you know
the content I made for them was for a lot
of them, the first videos they've ever had, which is
crazy to me because you would think that they would

(01:20:10):
that even now, no matter what your demographic is, that
the first thing on your website would be like a
video about what your product is and how it's used.
But most of the Haunters don't have that, so ours
was kind of like the first thing anyone's really had,
you know. And then it was hard for me to
even get a hold of them to add them as
collaborators on their Facebook pages, and you're just like, why,

(01:20:32):
you know, are they deliberately trying to lose sales?

Speaker 2 (01:20:34):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:20:35):
And then I did have a vendor, right who doesn't
use Facebook, but we just talked, you know, just look
at how many honors are on Facebook. So if you're
selling to honors that are active in these communities and
you don't use it, I don't know what you're doing, right.
So I had to point him to his to his
video that has over one hundred thousand views on my

(01:20:57):
channel and people are asking about buying it and he's
not answering them. Okay, So I don't know, man. I
just I could rant about this for a long time.
But I'm going to wrap up on the whole vendor
thing by just being like, go back to your basics.
Make your personas understand where they spend their time. Understand
also like what in what persona your product falls, you know,

(01:21:18):
and then that will tell you kind of what channels
you can be on and where they are. And then
beyond that, I would say, just make sure you have
your basics, right. You need to have pictures of your shit,
Like I'm sorry, right, you have pictures of your stuff.
You need to have If it's a software, you need
to have like a video explainer of what it is.
I mean, like, there's some basics do you need to
get taken care of. Basics like do you have an

(01:21:39):
email list?

Speaker 3 (01:21:40):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:21:40):
Do you have a text list? Do you have a
basic explainer? Do you have basic pictures right of what
the thing is you're buying?

Speaker 3 (01:21:45):
You know? Can you see it all that stuff?

Speaker 1 (01:21:49):
And then from there you can look at your personas
and figure out where you should be making like you know,
like the individual content for it. But anyway, I don't
want to get too randy trying to you ran, I know,
I'm trying to control myself.

Speaker 3 (01:22:07):
Guys, that's good.

Speaker 5 (01:22:08):
That's good, lots of good information. Uh say fifty three.
We're gonna try to go till nine o'clock. So uh
one last question, See what's a good addition to add
to increase the revenue that you have seen work? This
is Sandy from where are you from? Fielder screams right.

Speaker 3 (01:22:30):
Oh yeah, Phillip screams yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:22:33):
Uh so I actually think phil is screens Well, if
if it is, I think field The screams yeah. In
empty Philip screams Montana. Yeah. So actually I think what
Sean is doing over there at Scarus Windsor is a
great thing. I think basically what we call it is

(01:22:55):
velvet ropes. So I'm sorry it take a step back. Okay,
back to your personas who is coming to your haunt?

Speaker 3 (01:23:05):
Okay, what do they want? How much money do they have? Right?

Speaker 1 (01:23:09):
Are you attracting enough people? You know, are you attracting
enough childless millennials that would pay for a velvet rope?

Speaker 3 (01:23:18):
And a velvet rope.

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):
Is something where like a fast pass, you know, and
like something that Sean is doing. It's Scouse Windsor. Is
Sean is doing like three course really good dinners that
have actors and story and a whole thing, you know,
before the haunt opens and then they get a fast pass,
you know, but I'd wager that, you know, families of

(01:23:39):
four or like teenagers are not buying those things. So
part of it is about back to your personas and
your demographics. Who is coming to your haunt? You know,
is there enough of a demographic of like childless, like
Disney adults or whatever, you know, people that have a
little bit more disposal income, And what are they interested in?
Are they interested in skipping the line? Are they interested
in upsells? Are they interested into the IP experiences tours?

Speaker 3 (01:24:02):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
The the Child's Day that we added to Hush that
was a huge success, you know, because there were a
lot of parents that drop their kids off or you know,
parents in that region and whatever that were that wanted
still to do something with the haunt, you know, or
they had younger kids or whatever, but they didn't want
to go to the main haunt. So adding the Children's

(01:24:24):
Day opens it up to that entire demographic, you know,
and lets us to double sell that day basically, like
we can sell a whole event where we don't have
to do anything but.

Speaker 3 (01:24:32):
Hand out candy.

Speaker 1 (01:24:34):
You just open the Haunt hand out candy, you know,
and then so I can double sell my inventory.

Speaker 3 (01:24:39):
Right then at night we can open up, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:24:42):
And and then also the bar passes, you know, adding alcohol,
you know, right, like that adds the stuff doing fast passes.
There's all sorts of ways you can you know, like
shawondaes add a dinner experience, you can do fast passes,
you can do immediate passes, you can do VIP tours,
you know, and even some of these things you can

(01:25:03):
test with very little risk. So like I remember Spencer
of Fear Factory, they have like a VIP Influencer package
or whatever they call it, like the v v VIP
right like a top like a royal package, and it
basically is like, uh, it's I think it's a lot.
I think it's like three or four times the price
of the ticket. But you know, basically they'll they'll give

(01:25:28):
you a number of texts you could like text Spencer directly,
and then they will meet you like outside and like
personally walk you to like the front of the line,
and you get a picture with whatever character you want.
You get merch, you know, you get this whole like
personalized experience. And the thing with those is it's like
zero risk because if you sell one, it's worth the
time to pull one of your other staff members and

(01:25:50):
let them just walk them around, right, you know, like
vip tours. There's no reason we shouldn't be selling vip
tours because if they don't sell, we're not losing money.
And if they do sell, it pays for someone's wages
for an entire night or more ideally, you know. And
I think he didn't sell that many of those packages,
but I think he did sell like two or three,

(01:26:11):
I mean, more than he thought he would, right, And
that's just extra bank, you know. And all it is
just moving them ahead because they want to feel special.
And I think sometimes you get those people who are
willing to pay X amount more. But I would analyze
all of this really at your different things.

Speaker 3 (01:26:26):
What do they want?

Speaker 2 (01:26:27):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:26:27):
The easiest stuff is like do you have food? And
then just like Disney does, there's also a talk on
green tach. We just talked about something that like takeaways
from a Disney session from the VP of disneylanders Or
and she talks about the strategy of good, better best
when it comes to food. So sometimes you just want

(01:26:49):
something good that's like chicken bingers because you got.

Speaker 3 (01:26:51):
Kids, they don't care. Just give him chicken bingers. Fine, good, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:26:55):
Better would be like we're going to get the cool
themed hot dog that is like a Korean fried cheese
dog or like a little spooky donut, and that's great.
And then we're going to get best, which is the
like smoking cocktail thing that comes in like a souvenir
coffin and you're like, oh my god, like I'm drinking
out of a coffin. I'm like a vampire. I mean,
like right, get these good, better, best things. I would

(01:27:18):
I would say, you know, the basics should be looking
at making sure you have the fast passes, the immediate passes,
looking at your pricing of your food, and making sure
you have good, better best, you know, checking that you
have some basic merch sales and those kind of things
set up that are themed to the environment, to the
story that drawback that because it's not going to be

(01:27:40):
a souvenir unless it's actually like impactful, you know, to
the guest. Right. So also at Hush at Hush, we
make each year we make a different like bottle opener
or wine opener, and it is like hand sculpted by
one of our makeup artists, and it is like a character.
It's like the new character that we introduce every year.

(01:28:00):
We make him into like a bottle opener that's hand sculpted,
and then those things are like printed during the week
and hand painted. Right, I mean that's a cool souvenir, right,
Like that's the that's the thing, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:28:12):
Okay, that was a lot, Hi, Sandy, We.

Speaker 5 (01:28:18):
Got some last many questions. You want to you want
to you want to take them?

Speaker 3 (01:28:21):
Or I don't mind.

Speaker 5 (01:28:22):
That's fine yet, Okay, Christine Campbell, these are all great suggestions.
We are partnering with our local historic historical village. Any
suggestions for working together on the marketing piece. They have
a marketing staff, and I'm a biologist who's learned marketing
from listening to all of your podcasts. Was obviously they

(01:28:43):
are experts, but I feel like we are bringing lots
of HANT specific advice. We will offer a joint event
with us providing a full scare experience and then providing
a family friendly experience. How can we split the audiences
and not cannibalize or dilute the perception of experience for
both of those experience options, same ticket and you get

(01:29:03):
all the experiences, but the interest areas are different. That's it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:10):
I'm a little unclear about the ticket option on that,
Like is it going to be one combined a ticket
where you get so the.

Speaker 5 (01:29:17):
Same ticket, the same ticket and you get all the experiences.

Speaker 1 (01:29:22):
I might in that case, that's one of those things
where I might rethink that a little bit because I
think you don't want to overwhelm them with choices.

Speaker 3 (01:29:34):
But I think in that case.

Speaker 1 (01:29:37):
It might be something where you could do like a
one two three option, you know, like option one is this,
option two is this, an option three is everything you
get included. But it might that in that case might
help to have a lower option where somebody only wants
the scary thing and they can get the scary thing.
If somebody only wants the education the thing, they can
get that and then it raises the perceived value. Right,

(01:30:01):
threes are powerful groups of three, you know, good better
best having like you know, one two, three tier thing,
velvet ropes, you know, like even you see those with
universal having like general and then they have express and
then they have tours. So it's like you know, ninety minutes,
forty five minutes or zero minutes, right, And so I
think having that is a But in terms of breaking

(01:30:25):
up the personas, I would again go back to like
what audiences you have access to, and so I would say, like,
you probably have access to the scary audiences, So I
think you should work on the scary portion of the
marketing stuff. And they have probably the rest of the audience,
and they should they should work on selling it in
that way. And I think you could provide you could
provide to each other some assets that could help with it.

(01:30:49):
But you want to retool it to be to that
different audience. So for example, you're going to your message
is going to.

Speaker 3 (01:30:55):
Be like scary. First, it's going to be like scary,
and then if you want.

Speaker 1 (01:30:58):
To stick around, you know you can get educated and
there's there's is going to be learn about this haunt
and then you get to experience it. Right, So you're
gonna want to flip them depending on the audience demographic,
But I would just kind of split it depending on
who who has what demographic already you kind of they
already have, and then I would share assets so you
know they're going to probably need some video of your haunt.

(01:31:21):
If they're going to make something or photos or stuff
they're gonna need to use, and then vice versa, you're
probably gonna need some assets from them to do the
non scary section.

Speaker 5 (01:31:32):
And what are some ways to find out what your
guests want?

Speaker 3 (01:31:37):
Well, that's the age old question, isn't it right? If
we knew that.

Speaker 5 (01:31:47):
As a co owner, I stayed in the queue line
a lot and just listened and ask questions and talk
to people. That's what I did a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:31:57):
I and again at Gantum.

Speaker 1 (01:31:59):
This is something that we struck with all the time because,
like you know, sometimes your customer really doesn't know and
you like they can't tell you specifically what they want.
They just kind of like want like a genre, right,
like who who is gonna for example, who is gonna
say they want like a better cell phone or they
want a better you know, horse and carriage? Right, that's

(01:32:21):
the old example of the car right a forward right? Like,
So I do think there, I think you need to
work kind of like two approaches hand in hand. You
need to talk to people and you need to just
suss out the vibe, you know, like you just you
just need to like you kind of you need to
be connected, I think, to what's going on and talk

(01:32:43):
to people casually or not look at like what's selling,
what people's interested in, all that kind of stuff, to
get those ideas, to get real time feedback, you know,
from people and write it down, you know, like don't
don't just like you kind of do an anecdotal even
if you just have a little thing on your phone
where it's like every time somebody asked about a fast pass,

(01:33:03):
you put a check mark right, and then you're like, Okay,
enough people have asked and we think this is good.

Speaker 3 (01:33:08):
I also think, though, you need to.

Speaker 1 (01:33:09):
Combine that with the other side of things, which is
understanding what your customers come to you for and where
the market opportunity is that you could create something else
like that reaches that right, So I think, you know,
in the past, we used to just make haunts that

(01:33:32):
were like one and done, you know, you pay. It
was all about like kind of like the restaurant model,
like butts and seats.

Speaker 3 (01:33:39):
It was all about throughput right, get.

Speaker 1 (01:33:42):
Them in, get the turnstile, get them out of your
parking lot because we don't have parking, and make sure
they can leave and then we can turn over the parking, right.
I think increasingly we are realizing nowadays, especially that people
are coming to haunts because they want to be entertained
and they want a value, you know, because otherwise they
could just get Netflix. I mean, right, you need to
be value and entertainment needs to be like a whole

(01:34:03):
night experience, and that gives you options for upselling.

Speaker 3 (01:34:07):
But what if you don't have the parking for that?

Speaker 1 (01:34:09):
I mean, it really is like a So that's an
example of something that like the guests might not tell
you that, but it's about understanding again why they're coming
to you. Why are they even going to a haunted
house to hang out with their friends and to be entertained.

Speaker 3 (01:34:25):
And in order then to do that, you.

Speaker 1 (01:34:27):
Need to provide decompression areas, you know, food, and then
you need to extended parking and those kind of things.
So I think you need to have both of these
strategies kind of working in tandem. And then I do
think you need to test as well, Like I think
you need to test, like I think, you know, don't right,

(01:34:49):
don't you know, buy a whole commercial kitchen and do
a whole menu before testing. If somebody with a hot
dog cart makes any sales, right, Like, you need to
just start testing out some stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:35:01):
Did this do well? What did you know?

Speaker 1 (01:35:02):
What are the kind of getting feedback you know on
some of these things? And then and then like go
from there. But generally, uh, people like can't I'll give
you it's like the little thing to wrap up this answer,
which was really too long. People are really bad at predicting,
but they're really good at telling you what they don't like.

(01:35:23):
So when you are talking to them, you shouldn't be like,
what would you like to see next year? You should
be like, what did you hate about this year?

Speaker 3 (01:35:31):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:35:32):
What did you not enjoy about the haunt? You know,
what did you go? Did you do something else? What
did you hate about that? What do you what do
you dislike about watching Netflix? What do you dislike about
the local bar?

Speaker 2 (01:35:43):
What do you.

Speaker 3 (01:35:44):
Dislike about these things? Or whatever?

Speaker 1 (01:35:45):
And you ask them those questions on what they dislike,
why they didn't buy a ticket, you know, why they
didn't stay with their kids at your haunt or you
know whatever. You ask why they made the negative choices,
and then you kind of figure out what they're looking
for and where the market opening is.

Speaker 3 (01:36:02):
And then you're like here right, see you need feel
a need? Yes, yes, exactly, and.

Speaker 5 (01:36:12):
Sandy was she was also like, well, apparently her guests
want movie characters, but we try to stay away from
movie character.

Speaker 3 (01:36:18):
Yes exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:36:19):
I mean, could you have like maybe a famous movie
character come out and do autographs one night or something.

Speaker 1 (01:36:26):
Yeah, So, but that that's a really awkward one because
I think that gets more into like horror horror.

Speaker 3 (01:36:33):
Convention, sort of like realm.

Speaker 1 (01:36:36):
But you know, in Sandy's case, they're kind of in
the middle of nowhere, like they're like the thing in
that area, and so I can see why because they
almost have no competition that people might be coming to
them for things like that. But you can do parodies, right,
So you could always do you know, instead of Michael Myers,
You've come with a new a different name, like Michael

(01:36:57):
Slasher is coming out, you know, and you know, know whatever,
posing for pictures behind a bush with you or something.
I mean, you could do like fun parody things like that,
if you mean, if she means like an actual movie character,
like an actor, you could.

Speaker 3 (01:37:14):
There are plenty of haunts that do that.

Speaker 1 (01:37:16):
There are so many haunts that do like you know,
meet ex celebrity night and and most of those celebrities
just have a minimum fee, so they just have like
a a booking fee and you just book them and
then usually you negotiate for whether they're going to charge
for uh, headshots, in charge for signatures.

Speaker 3 (01:37:34):
Or not, and how much they're going to charge, but.

Speaker 1 (01:37:36):
Generally it's a booking fee uh and then plus or
minus the fee they charge to do photos or signings.

Speaker 5 (01:37:44):
In her case, I guess like the in the Scarecrow
and then like a not like a horror character, you know,
with fields filled the screens.

Speaker 2 (01:37:51):
I put it might work out or something like that.
But that's where you have your own iconic characters that
that build up over years and become the celebrities themselves.

Speaker 1 (01:38:02):
Okay, yeah, So if she means your own characters, that's
that's usually what I don't think.

Speaker 2 (01:38:07):
I don't think she did, but that's another alternative.

Speaker 1 (01:38:10):
Is okay, yeah, yeah, I think I think generally again,
people are coming to haunts to be entertained, and so
you know, just if you have a character that resonates
with them, that character should spend most of its time
just taking pictures of people, like honestly, you know, really
that's that's a much better use of funds than if.

Speaker 2 (01:38:28):
You elevate your own cast to the level of a
movie character. In the customer's eyes, they become a movie
character even though they don't have, you know, three movies.

Speaker 5 (01:38:38):
So like at the Dead Factory, we had the only
movie or the war movie character we had was Freddy
because my sixty five year old dad wouldn't play anything
else but Freddy. So he had a silico mask and
the glove and the sweater and the hat and he
did a good job. So he was in an alley
way with barrels and he jumped out and he was
kind of like an Freddy alley way and it worked

(01:39:00):
and people were expected to see him every year, you know.
So it's like like he held off for like four years.
So it worked out. Like and I know the people,
other people have used them in the past, and yes,
don't advertise them, don't put them on your stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:39:14):
It was.

Speaker 5 (01:39:16):
Because well, what a movie ever, you know, what a
movie house ever come try to sue you for using
Freddy in the Haunt. I don't know, but it probably
probably like a stop and see thing. We're like, hey,
stop using name. Okay, yeah, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:39:35):
You definitely can't use the name, and even using the
likeness is like also protected.

Speaker 3 (01:39:39):
So everything has to be parodied, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:39:41):
So you know, I think that the best way to
do it would just be, like take the characteristics of
what they're known for and parody them, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:39:49):
So Yeah, but.

Speaker 2 (01:39:50):
Don't make it a team who or a wish?

Speaker 5 (01:39:53):
Uh right, don't say come out and see Freddy. No,
this guy his good eye blade.

Speaker 1 (01:40:03):
Okay, is there anything else that came in on Facebook?
I know Craig has a question.

Speaker 5 (01:40:07):
Yeah, I answered Craig's real quick and then.

Speaker 1 (01:40:10):
Yeah, so Craig asked if there's somewhere, if there's places
where there's a list of resources.

Speaker 3 (01:40:15):
The answer Craig is like everywhere and nowhere.

Speaker 1 (01:40:18):
Like, oh my god, I've spent so much time testing
out different AI tools that like it's exhausting, Like it's
honestly exhausting, and just the amount of tools that are
out there, and I feel like every day there's a
new one. There is an AI marketing podcast that's run
by a social media examiner. I go to their conference

(01:40:38):
every year, social Media Marketing World, and they have a
podcast just about AI tools that's pretty good and it's free.
There's also like AI Explained, which is like a newsletter
that I or sorry, AI Advantage, which is a newsletter
that discusses different tools.

Speaker 3 (01:40:53):
But honestly, you're gonna just have to test them.

Speaker 1 (01:40:56):
Like that's what I've been doing, and like I don't
know how how many like market themselves is AI video
editing tools? And maybe there could be useful for some situations,
but for what I do, like, it's.

Speaker 3 (01:41:08):
Not gonna work at all.

Speaker 1 (01:41:09):
Right, it's not not working, you know, So yeah, I
think uh a lot of it is testing and uh yeah,
but it's crazy, man. It's just like there's so many
new tools. And there's also like there's a bunch of
YouTube channels that also like test out the tools for you.
But a lot of the YouTube channels are literally, uh

(01:41:29):
like AI avatars like explaining AI tools to you. And
you're just looking at this and you're like, is this
how the world ends?

Speaker 5 (01:41:38):
What is what is the best way to run the
fast pass without making general admission mad?

Speaker 3 (01:41:44):
Does it matter if general admissions MAD.

Speaker 5 (01:41:47):
Just makes them want to buy a fast pass?

Speaker 2 (01:41:49):
Right? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:41:51):
You know, I I that's gonna you know, right, Like.

Speaker 5 (01:41:55):
It's a it's a catch to one. Yeah, it's it's.

Speaker 1 (01:41:57):
I think that's a question that comes down to your
individual through put right at your individual haunt and how
you know how much they feel about the lines, and
really when it gets too much or too little, you're
gonna have to test it. But I mean, like again,
look at Halloween Hornites. I mean some of those wait
times are like three hours you know, for one haunt.

(01:42:18):
You know, and it's just like it if you just
have one haunt, it's harder to pull off because then
you know, that's the whole experience and people are like
upset about it.

Speaker 3 (01:42:29):
Also, if your line is not entertaining, that's also harder.

Speaker 1 (01:42:33):
But if it's you know, if it's like basically the dead,
you got like a party going on the line is
fun to be in, you know, I think you can
push it a little bit harder if you have like
Field of Screams in uh, Pennsylvania, they have multiple haunts
and a midway, and so if one is a little
bit longer, then it's mitigated, right because people can do
other things. So I think all those things are going

(01:42:55):
to impact what you can do. But you know, not
to be like a dick, but like, does it matter
I mean, I don't know. It only matters if it
loses you sales. And that's a terrible answer, but like
it's kind of true, right, Like.

Speaker 5 (01:43:09):
I know what the Dead Factory did and a lot
of other haunts are doing, are creating like a midway experience,
and you're you're not really your guests certainly waiting two
hours anymore. They're they're showing up, they're getting bonfire, they're
getting their hot dogs or they're s'mores kits, they're listening
to music, they're chilling, they're hanging out with friends while
they're waiting on their their ticket, their number to pop up,

(01:43:29):
and you know, and they go in. So I know there,
I know fast passes still exist. I was the one
that always bottom, So I like fast passes because it's
usually just me and the wife and I can afford
an extra twenty bucks and here we go, you know,
But I understand a lot of people can't. So I
know it's always a and it's still a thing. So

(01:43:51):
I know a lot of people are using uh virtual
que lines on it's kind of the same thing. Yep,
I'm just kind of waiting. They did factor. All they
did was put a big led board with their number
on there. You get a keychain that has a number
on it, and you when your keychain pops up, that's
when you go in the door.

Speaker 1 (01:44:10):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:44:10):
So something simple like that. Well it's nine fifteen, Philip.
I know you probably need some more drink some more
coffee and get all geared up. Whatever you do next,
and tell us everybody where they can find you, where
they can stalk you, where they can contact you.

Speaker 3 (01:44:29):
Everywhere anywhere.

Speaker 1 (01:44:31):
I'm sure you well know you see me on Facebook,
you know, and then you know Haunted Attraction Network, Haunted
Attraction Network dot com. I think you know that's our website,
but I think generally the best place is to get
on our email newsletter because it goes out every week.
We put news in there, we put our new videos,
and the kind of everything we're doing is centralized there

(01:44:52):
in the weekly basis. But I reply, you can reach
me on Messenger, or you can reach me on Instagram.
You know, all the basic ways I'm in all the places,
all the haunts.

Speaker 5 (01:45:06):
And your podcasts. Your probably you have two podcasts, right.

Speaker 3 (01:45:09):
Oh yeah, so Darryl does our news every week.

Speaker 1 (01:45:12):
You can listen to Darryl on the Haunt Attraction Network podcast.
I also put up interviews, like we have interview with
Sandy from Philiscream's Montana for winning the Oscars this year,
So we have that podcast. And then I also host
co host Green Tagged theme Park and thirty with Scott Swinson,
so you can just type green Tagged anywhere in uh

(01:45:36):
And that one is like that one's more about the
like the business side of the.

Speaker 3 (01:45:41):
Theme park industry.

Speaker 1 (01:45:42):
But I think there's a lot of a lot of
the things we've talked about today you can get on
that show too, because it's like the same thing about
how you do pricing and all that kind of stuff,
But it's just at a theme park versus a haunt.

Speaker 3 (01:45:53):
But haunts are part of that world too.

Speaker 5 (01:45:55):
So and what's the next show you're going to be at.

Speaker 1 (01:45:58):
I'll be at East Coas Haunters Convention in like two weeks, god,
like three weeks or something.

Speaker 2 (01:46:05):
Two week?

Speaker 3 (01:46:05):
Oh my god, two.

Speaker 2 (01:46:06):
Weeks twenty seventh in Oaks, Pennsylvania. Am I correct on that?

Speaker 1 (01:46:10):
Yes, But the the tours began on the twenty fourth,
So there's there's the pre show tour on the twenty fourth,
then there's a tour on the twenty fifth also, and
there's a sat Like there's so many events at this one.

Speaker 3 (01:46:22):
There's the Thursday.

Speaker 1 (01:46:24):
We're doing two haunts. Friday, we're doing hants Saturday, there's
the party at Halloween Nights Eastern State. There's a Hershey
Park tour, and there's a show floor. It's gonna be wild.
I'm flying on the twenty third because I need to
be there like ahead of time for the Haunts, so
I'll be there.

Speaker 3 (01:46:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:46:43):
Crazy, Yeah, here's place to be.

Speaker 1 (01:46:47):
So it's it's it's fun. I mean it's for for
you know, last year was for a first year. Show
is incredible and I think this is just going to
get better and I love Hershey and it's going to
be cool to see that and see Eastern Halloween nice
at Eastern State. I mean, it's crazy. A lot of
stuff planned. So I'll see you all there if you're there.

Speaker 5 (01:47:09):
All right, guys, Well, appreciate all your questions. Philip, Thanks
for your time. I know you're a busy man. Were
trying to get you on these once a year, so
because a lot of stuff happens, and what you know
happens over twelve months.

Speaker 3 (01:47:22):
Yeah too much, too much?

Speaker 5 (01:47:24):
Yeah, a lot of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:47:25):
But the more it changes, the more it stays the.

Speaker 3 (01:47:27):
Same exactly exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:47:29):
It's a big circle.

Speaker 2 (01:47:31):
Sums it up right.

Speaker 3 (01:47:31):
There, Pendulum. Okay, thanks all right.

Speaker 2 (01:47:35):
Guys, Thank you very much. Thank to all our guests
that showed up tonight. And I hope everybody that does
get to watch this that it wasn't live tonight, that
gets to watch this in the future. I hope you
picked up some good information as much as as the
people who were here on Facebook and Zoom tonight. So excellent.

(01:47:56):
Thank you all very much.

Speaker 5 (01:47:57):
If you want to rewatch this, go back to face book.
Conor's Toolbox group will pin it to the top. It'll
be the all you can participate in the chat box
down there and answer the questions and see what everyone
else said and apply to people. And if you're on
our email list at honorstoolbox dot com, if you remember
over there, this will be in your email. So stay tuned.

(01:48:20):
All right, guys, thanks again, signing off.

Speaker 2 (01:48:24):
Ye big Care.

Speaker 6 (01:48:26):
Today's episode was edited by me Philippernandez, with post production
by David Swape and original music composed by Chris Thomas.
Support for today's episode comes from Gantum Lightning and Controls
Gantum illuminates attractions worldwide with the world's smallest intelligent spotlights.
From Dark hourk to Other World, Super Mario Land to
Hagrid's Bike, Gantum goes where other fixtures can't see what

(01:48:49):
you're missing. With a free demo sign up at gantum
dot com slash demo. That's scantum dot com slash demo.

Speaker 3 (01:48:56):
The ha N team includes Daryl Plunky.

Speaker 1 (01:48:58):
Emily Luis Rue, Megan Spells, Gavin Burns and Omni Adventures.
Until next Time, Stay Scary.

Speaker 6 (01:49:07):
This is a Haunted Attraction Network production