The first Brand Experience Center Conference took place in Brussels last week, welcoming brand centres, creatives and professionals from all corners of the industry.
Organised by Bart Dohmen, partner TDAC, and the advisory board, the event sought to discuss every aspect of brand homes in a new targeted conference for the industry.
Whilst brand experiences are like other types of attraction – they create memorable experiences for guests – they are measured in very different ways. Rather than overall visitation, or revenue, their KPIs are often the impact on brand awareness or net promoter score. The attraction is often a business unit of the corporate company, reporting directly to the CMO.
The two-day event held at La Bourse Brussels, the Old Stock Exchange building, offered a chance for attendees to network and meet fellow brand centres, as well as experience Belgian Beer World for an evening networking reception.
Krishan Maudgal, CEO of Belgian Brewers, spoke about the new experience, which celebrates Belgian beer culture and its history. The challenging public/private project had many stakeholders, and as it was located in the UNESCO zone around La Grand Place, it was a protected building inside and out. Nothing could be attached to the walls or ceiling. The exhibition ends in a rooftop bar with views across Brussels.
The first brand centres – BC
In the opening keynote, Christian Lachel, chief creative officer at BRC Imagination Arts, took guests back to the first ever brand centres….. back to a time BC.
When people started trading goods, they did so through storytelling. Through time, this grew to medieval markets (arguably the first trade show). Hundreds of years later, at the start of the Industrial Revolution with the invention of the steamboat, commodities moved to all corners of the world, and so did the birth of branding for exotic goods. World Expos and Exhibitions were becoming platforms for companies like General Electric and Ford to showcase new technologies, and more modern brand homes were born.
It was an impressive whirlwind through time and brand home history. At the end was the future outlook – where experiences are becoming commodities, and the next focus for consumers will be transformations.
Perry Hobson, director of the Academy for Tourism, Breda University Applied Sciences, also looked ahead to the future of the tourism industry. By examining future scenarios, Hobson looked at factors that could influence the future in 50 or 100 years’ time and in turn, impact brand centres. Factors included changing demographics, technology, sustainability, economics and the political landscape.
One-of-a-kind brand homes – never repeated
A running theme in the sessions was authenticity. Brand homes are often located in significant places that align with their history, factory, or story. Even if this is at the expense of lost foot traffic!
Two such locally-located experiences were the newly opened Montblanc Haus in Hamburg, Germany. The new brand home focuses on inspiring people to be creative. “Of course, we want brand desirability,” said Yasmin Turk, head of Montblanc Haus. “But first and foremost, we want them to write”.
Through three floors and various interactive stations, including writing a simple postcard home, visitors are inspired to be more creative. The USP for the brand home is a quiet and reflective atmosphere, so it’s deliberately kept at an intimate crowd level. The attraction also has extensive events programming around creative arts.
Similarly, Lego House in Billund, Denmark, is authentic to its roots- located at the home of the brick from Lego’s origins in 1932. Katherine Kirk Muff, managing director of Lego House, spoke on the fans’ enthusiasm that guides her team. “It is gratitude to the fans for everything they do with the brick every day”.
Some experiences are so exclusive they are created for just a handful of clients. This is the case with Dutch tech giant ASML. Its B2B Experience Center is created for its five clients, making up nearly the entire worldwide chip market. Karolina Misiak-Bilinska, head of ASML Experience Centers talked about the experience that is purely for stakeholders and education purposes. The experience was created by Tinker Imagineers.
The rise of the factory tour
We heard from two attractions who had successfully implemented factory tours as part of their brand experience.
Conservas Pinhais is a 100-year-old luxury tinned-sardine producer in Porto, Portugal. Aimed at foodies and tourists, they recently renovated their brand experience to include several sensory exhibitions, an award-winning film, the ‘Fisherman’s Daughter’, and allows guests to experience the factory floor.
“They see exactly what we do, nothing fake or made more beautiful; we just send them right through,” said Jakob Glatz, owner of Conservas Pinhais.
Engaging the shop floor staff in the consultation and planning process has had a real influence on the end product. “They are the attraction themselves,” said Glatz.
Similarly, we heard from Pieter Verdonck, marketing manager of Brouwerji St Bernadus, about the abbey-style brewery with breathtaking views of Flanders Fields. The experience allows guests to go behind the scenes and experience how their beer is made.
The challenges to overcome on both were food hygiene concerns and visitor safety – with guests often wandering in the path of forklifts. At Convervas Pinhais, the factory shuts down over the weekend, typically at the peak for visitors, but through more engaging tour guides and info, the satisfaction rate was the same as a weekday visit, with the factory tour included.
Squeezing the secondary spend
Many brand homes are product-focused, so the exit through the gift shop is a big chunk of their revenue generation. Montblanc Haus and Lego House offer unique products only available at their locations. Montblanc Haus stated half the guests who purchase products in the gift shop have never had an account or touchpoint with the brand before. This expands their reach to new audiences and offers quality souvenirs for the guests.
In some cases, brands may be reluctant to raise the admission price to protect their brand identity, but they can then employ various tactics to increase the retail spend per guest instead.
We heard from Professor Dr Kai-Markus Mueller, consumer neuroscientist, Neurensics, about the power of price persuasion. According to Mueller, the best practice for a brand experience centre is to add a product at a much higher price – perhaps a VIP experience – that is so high it makes the perceived regular ticket price appear better value. “We can raise the prices without actually raising the prices,” said Mueller.
Through reaction time testing (that uses years of EEG brain scan research and algorithms), the team can do studies showing participants various pricing for an attraction and, according to the brain activity, determine by science what the visitors are actually willing to pay. Often, it is much higher than we think; sometimes, the barrier to price determination is in the brain of the attraction!
This neuro-scientific pricing was implemented at Chocversum in Hamburg. The team increased the ticket price by 4 euros, increasing revenue and secondary spending significantly. Stephanie Schaub, CEO of Chocoversum, spoke about various retail strategies and pricing implemented after the split with previous sponsor German chocolate manufacturer Hachez. Not tied down to a single supplier, the team can now sell a wider variety of products and is working on its own private label.
AI and future tech
AI was a big topic at the conference. While there, China’s DeepSeek was making headline news about its impressive new platform. We heard of several instances where AI can be used across brand experience centres to reduce inefficiencies and free the team to focus on the guest experience.
Catherine Toolan, MD of Diageo Irish Brand Homes, spoke about using an AI chatbot at Guinness Storehouse. The chatbot can handle basic operations questions, such as opening times and ticket prices, saving the operations team many hours of work. The chatbot will soon be expanded to serve other timezones to deliver a premium guest experience for their international visitors. Guinness Storehouse is celebrating its 25th bday this year and recently welcomed its 25 millionth visitor.
Similarly, AI can increase the guest experience by delivering more audio guides in a guest’s chosen language. Olga Coolen, managing director, Philips Museum, shared that the brand centre in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, has done this as it’s an easy win, especially for less dominant market sectors – with the caveat that a local speaker must check the AI’s work to be sure!
In a session with John Carroll, marketing manager for brand homes at Irish Distillers, Jameson Distillery Bow Street, Andrew Jenkinson, co-founder and CEO of vStream, spoke about various emerging technologies. These included neural interfaces, AI-powered hyperpersonalisation, holographic telepresence and spatial computing. In particular, generative AI is changing how we can create brand experiences, generating rich media and stories, which would take months before, but now takes just a week.
Of course, it’s essential only to use technology if it’s appropriate for an experience – guests can tell a gimmick when they see one. “If it doesn’t work on a television, please don’t put it on a hologram’ said Jenkinson.
There was a lot of chatter about immersive technologies, but Laura Sileo Pavat, global head of brand homes, Pernod Ricard, bucked the trend.
“Immersive experiences are a good experience to be added on,” said Pavat. “Tech is not the solution; tech is augmenting your people’s reality experience”. Pavat warned us to be prepared for costly maintenance for tech-driven immersive experiences.
Pernod Ricard has 35 different brand homes in 16 countries worldwide, with 35 million visitors.
Mike Ganderton, creative director of Bricks & Fans, Lego House, led an interactive session asking the audience to participate via a browser and highlight the challenges and hot topics brand centres face over the next two years.
Increase staff engagement, increase guest satisfaction
I moderated a session focused on guest satisfaction in the age of social media, which focused on the power of review platforms and best practices for how to respond. The consensus was to respond to all reviews- good and bad- to learn from the negatives and to share the positives with the broader team.
Toolan emphasised the growing importance of channels like TikTok and Snapchat for guests to plan their trips and experiences. These are becoming more important than review sites to Gen Z visitors.
Coen Bertens, partner at TDAC and former COO at Efteling, spoke about the importance of empowering and engaging the workforce to, in turn, create memorable experiences and drive up your guest satisfaction rating. During his time at Efteling, Bertens created a 9+ guest experience strategy that was the key to Efteling being awarded the most customer-friendly company in the Netherlands – for the last three years.
The event concluded with more Belgian beer at the Belgian Brewers House bar.
Sponsors for the event included MCW/creative agency, BRC Imagination Arts, Heijmerink Wagemakers, Kraftwerk Living Technologies, Hot Pickle, Create.eu, Simple.de, Vintia, TDAC, Tinker Imagineears and Sandenburg-DST.
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