Engaging Brand - Sleep No More

Ask anyone who knows me well or… has spent more than a couple of hours with me and they’ll tell you that there is definitely one “brand” that most engages me as a customer.  That brand is Sleep No More NYC.

For those of you who don’t know what Sleep No More is, it is a fully immersive theatre experience that is comprised of equal parts Hitchcock, Lynch, The Shining and the 1920’s with a base of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. You, as the masked-audience (yes, you wear masks the entire night), portray guests at The McKittrick Hotel and follow around the actors as they perform scenes from Macbeth in the venue’s 100+ rooms.

You may think this is an odd choice to choose as a brand that you find most engaging. Why not Google or Apple? Why not one of the flashier, traditional brands marketing today? While I do have strong opinions and follow the story of these brands closely, neither has been able to grab and mesmerize me in its story like Sleep No More.  Yes, it does help that Sleep No More is a theatrical experience, very different from the products and services that most brands provide, but that doesn’t make it any less effective in my endorsing the brand and promoting its story. As Seth Godin wrote in his blogpost, 

"Here's my definition: A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another."

I've been four times... 

Sleep No More succeeds in several ways to draw each person into the story and want them to stay in the story.

One way it achieves this is through secrecy and exclusivity. Now, generally, you’d think it bad for a brand to keep themselves a secret, unless that IS part of the brand. Sleep No More is all about uncovering secrets and they value the customers/theatre-goers that find out about it, for they’re the ones who will discover the secrets Sleep No More has in store. Few people are willing to spoil the show and let out the secrets to anyone who hasn’t seen it BUT once you meet someone who has been, all you can do is talk about what you saw, what you missed and what you need to see the next time.  

This exclusivity is a trait that Sleep No More shared with Google and Apple. Google and Apple both started out with being perceived as exclusive brands - Google with the need to be invited to create a Gmail account and Apple for being long viewed as an exclusive brand and to this day still has an air of snootiness. 

Another way, that I believe is the strongest and most unique to Sleep No More, is its use of full immersion. From the moment you go to the Sleep No More website, you are transported into the world of an old hotel that has recently reopened and has many secrets in its dark corners from days gone by. Then once it’s time for your stay at the hotel, you enter a dark hallway, filled with an odd aroma of must, fog and history. No one, not actors nor staff, breaks character during the show. You’re left on your own to traverse the many rooms and follow the story. This immersion is the most transformative and imbeds something in most visitors who are then unable to get the need to relive the story out of their brain.

One thing I wish that Sleep No More would do is to use their social media outlets, Facebook and Twitter, to continue that story, add new aspects to it, perhaps leave Easter Eggs for those that follow to find in future visits to the hotel. To continue the story in ways unable to be done through the play would cause more people to come back and relieve it with greater knowledge of what’s going on.