How to create a meaningful experience: advice from Something Special Studios

For our first Masterclass with Something Special Studios, we brought our community together to unpack what it means to create a meaningful experience and why it matters. Michael Goldberg, the founder of Something Special Studios, led the session and shared his insights on how to leave a lasting organic impression.

Think Like a Person

Having executed events for the industry’s most revered consumer brands – from Nike and Off--White to Dior and Alexander Wang – Michael believes that all projects taken into consideration should start with three simple questions: “Who are we trying to target?”, “What is the brand trying to convey?”, and “As a consumer, why do I care?” Too often, brands and agencies “design experiences for their boss, and they don’t design these experiences for the consumer.”

Creating a Community: Connect the Dots

As the founder of one of New York’s leading creative agencies, Michael believes that part of his success in building a community comes from relying on genuine friendships and, in a literal sense, phoning a friend. Reflecting on Social Studies – part of a series of collaborations with artists and like-minded creatives – Michael addressed how special it is when friends come together to bring young creatives together and inspire the next generation. Something Special Studios invited cultural icons like Virgil Abloh and Skepta to join them in participating in workshops, alongside brands like Awake, No Vacancy Inn and Online Ceramics who designed capsule collections in the heart of Miami’s Design District during the city’s Art Week. For Michael the importance of one-on-one communication and visibility is key: “Virgil and Skepta were in the workshops interacting with the kids and giving advice, which created real personal connections.”

Practicing What You Preach

Being true to one’s word is extremely important in creating relationships and experience, but what about actions? Michael created a special projects division at Something Special Studios that cultivates the ethos of the company by giving back and allowing artists to have creative freedom. “We created the division as a way for us to invest in projects that we believe in and, more importantly, creatives that we believe in. We lend our services and time for free to help them and treat their ideas as our own.” SSS’s first passion project was Summer of Something Special, which dives deeper into the webbed network of their global community. “Investing into ourselves, we created the Summer of Something Special. We designed this book to showcase different photographers from around the world whom we have a relationship with and admire. They had the freedom to select work that was meaningful to them and documented moments, events, and people in which they deemed special.”

Understanding what needs to be built

Multi-tasking and taking on too much does not guarantee a productive and satisfying result. Michael believes in the importance of understanding the process and the ultimate outcome. “What are you trying to accomplish? What is the number one priority?” Concerning addressing the client’s need, Michael advises, “as an agency, you start to get into the headspace of that brand. Clarity is needed from the beginning. If you’re creating an experience and trying to figure it out as you go, you’re going to come up short.”

Question and Evaluate Collaborations

Now more than ever, mastering the art of communicating with multiple aesthetics and personalities are paramount to the success of a collaboration. “Collaboration is the word of 2019,” Michael jokes, “There are a lot of collaborations out now that don’t make sense to me. The key to collaboration is for a brand to think about why they are collaborating with this person. ‘What am I getting here?’.” Michael believes that strategy, mutual understanding, and allowing artists’ to have creative freedom are the pillars of a great collaboration. “The best collaborations push an artist forward and let them achieve something that they would have never been able to achieve. An example of the flip side is a collaboration that presents a brand or product in a way that a brand could never do if they were doing it by themselves.”

Deciding If Analytics Are Fun

The main concern of Something Special Studios is making sure attendees and collaborators in their community are having fun. “In the three years of us being in business, we’ve never been asked to report back on data and analytics. I think brands are coming to us to create authentic experiences, not necessarily for KPIs.” Another unusual but growing movement in the industry is the checking in of mobile phones at events, and Michael is a fan. “When you have to check in your phone, you are in the moment. I think that it allows people to focus on what is happening.” He explains that creating real, meaningful experiences will be the continuing driving factor than traditional highlights. “After events, we sit at a table like a group of people and discuss whether the event was great and what wasn’t so great. We don’t measure our success on a number. We measure the success of events by actually attending them and having a conversation.”