Finding a Niche In a Seemingly Crowded Marketplace With Sonny Smith, Co-Founder of Jampack
Sonny Smith who is the Co-Founder of Jampack. Sonny has more than 20 years of experience in hospitality, entertainment, and technology space. As an executive leader, he has built successful teams and achieved notable results with globally recognized brands such as Madison Square Garden Entertainment, Tao Group, and Hakkasan Group. His expertise includes large-scale venue pre-opening, revenue creation, brand positioning, and trendsetting practices in domestic and international hospitality marketing. Sonny is skilled in various aspects of marketing, including agency management, event production, and campaign development.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Discover the potential of collaboration in achieving remarkable outcomes.
Understand the significance of effective planning in attaining success.
Explore the ways AI can enhance your business decision-making processes.
Gain insights into how embracing risks can yield substantial rewards.
Learn about Sonny's emphasis on accountability and ownership.
Appreciate the value of innovative thinking for client benefit.
What you’ll learn in this episode:
Discovering an untapped niche in today's highly innovative and AI-driven market is remarkable in its own right. Sonny Smith and his team achieved precisely this with the inception of Jampack.
A seasoned executive in the hospitality marketing industry, Sonny Smith explains how they capitalized the silver lining of the recent pandemic and took their time to meticulously strategized and give birth to Jampack, foreseeing the opportunity that came in with the resumption of normality, particularly in the event-based travel industry.
In this episode of From Persona to Personal, Roger Hurni welcomes Sonny Smith, the co-founder of JamPack, a company specializing in event and travel experiences. Sonny discusses the origins of JamPack and its unique approach to event-based travel, highlighting the company's focus on providing comprehensive, personalized experiences for event attendees. Sonny explains how JamPack evolved from a collaboration between individuals with backgrounds in hospitality, entertainment, technology, and event production. He describes the company's mission to streamline the event experience by offering a single transaction for event tickets and accompanying travel and entertainment options.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
This episode’s sponsor:
Today’s episode is brought to you by Off Madison Ave. At Off Madison Ave, we create meaningful moments of brand trust and influence how people interact and engage with brands.
There is a science behind tapping into your audiences’ desires and motivation. After all, if you’re not changing your audiences’ behaviors, you can’t truly unlock all of your brand’s potential.
The proven models and methods of Behavior Design are the strategic foundation for your brand’s success.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:02
This is From Persona to Personal podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by Off Madison Ave. Off Madison Ave creates meaningful moments of brand trust and influences how people interact and engage with brands. The science behind their approach taps into your audience's motivations and desires. After all, if you're not changing your audience's behaviors, you can't truly unlock all of your brand's potential. Now, let's get started with the show.
Roger Hurni 0:34
Hello, everyone. I am Roger Hurni, the host of From Persona to Personal, where I get to use my expertise in consumer behavior to engage with top business leaders who are propelling their brands forward. Before I get to today's very special guest. This episode is brought to you by off Madison AV. At off Madison, Ab. They provide holistic marketing that inspires people to visit cities, attractions, and the great outdoors. Their behavioral models tap into your audience's motivation and prompt them to shift behavior. This allows them to specialize in answering the question where to next, and then point them in the best possible direction - yours. To learn more visit OffMadisonAve.com. Off Madison Ave, Go. See. Do. Now, without further ado, I'm very, very happy to be speaking with Sonny Smith today, and Sonny is the co-founder of jam pack. Sunny has more than 20 years of experience in the hospitality, entertainment, and technology space. As an executive leader. He has built successful teams and achieved notable results with globally recognized brands, such as Madison Square Garden Entertainment, Tile Group and Hakkasan group. His expertise includes large-scale venue, pre-opening, revenue, creation, brand positioning and trendsetting practices in domestic and international hospitality marketing. Sonny is skilled in various aspects of marketing, including agency, management, event production, and campaign development, and that is a mouthful, Sunny, you've done a lot welcome to the show.
Sonny Smith 2:04
Thanks for having me. I sure, sure have done a lot. It's been a fun, fun career so far.
Roger Hurni 2:12
That either makes you feel proud or old, and I've never been able to figure out which, when people have introduced me.
Sonny Smith 2:20
You know, it's one of those things that it's how you wear your stripes right? I'm proud of all those years, for sure, and you know how you spin it into being happy and in professional and personal life. It's an accomplishment to have. You know a career that can span that that long and stay in a particular industry.
Roger Hurni 2:44
Yeah, it. It's a testament for sure. Well. we sort of started, but I'd also like to start officially by asking if you can just sort of describe the business model, and how Jampack empowers events like concerts, festivals, sports, events, and trade shows like, how does that all work for you?
Sonny Smith 3:06
Sure, you know, first I'm going to look back on how the company came together, because the evolution really found a niche and in the marketplace that actually didn't exist. You know, my career being in the live events and big venue space, I was the guy that was behind some of the biggest nightclub venues and restaurants and bars and ticketed events at some really large night club, Day club venues and hospitality venues all over the world. And I had a large team of people that were actually in charge of ensuring that if somebody came to Las Vegas or to Arizona or Scottsdale, or to New York City, they would go to our businesses, our venues from a dinner with, you know, five friends to a concert to a lounge experience to a big nightclub. So, our business was very much building itineraries for people physically, right? So, we had people that were in charge of making sure that our guests got from point A to Point Z through our businesses and fell in love with our product. So that is a core necessity that happens in the hospitality space. My other 2 co-founders were from the technology space and the travel space in moving large groups of actually college folks from all over North America to destinations all over the world for three to five-day vacations. And then my other business partner was actually one of the largest executives over at MGM in Las Vegas in the festival and arena space, and really helped produce and develop the landscape in Las Vegas for large outdoor and indoor. Some of the largest venues, the Thomas and Max, the MGM Garden Arenas, and the big festival grounds here in market, and all of that business was the same thing. It was getting thousands and thousands of people to buy a ticket to an event and then go to an MGM property and enjoy their hotel and enjoy their restaurants and bars and experience a single properties’ various brands in a weekend. So, if you take those three backgrounds and put them together, we actually found a niche in the marketplace that didn't exist. We provide a single transaction to go to a big event and purchase your ticket, and then purchase the other three or four days of vacation content that you may want to do around that particular event. So, if I'm going to Las Vegas for a big festival or a trade show or a big event in Miami, if it's a concert, you know, a soccer event, you name it. You're not just going there for the single event you're going there for. We call them “Eventations”. We help customize that experience around the particular event providing a vacation itinerary really, that the consumer can have a single click to get what would normally take call it, you know, eight or ten transactions on multiple websites and multiple places they got to research all in one. So that product didn't exist. And we dove in with both feet about four years ago. And it's been an absolute rocket ship, because, you know, I think the convenience that people really want in their event-based travel is really at their fingertips now.
Roger Hurni 7:15
I love how you've taken something that is a very complicated process and streamlined it for that individual. It makes me have so many questions that are not even in my script. I'm going to start with this one, though, because this is on my script, because of what you said and what you do. It all involves having people come together, go places. You started the company in 2020. What were you thinking?
Sonny Smith 7:48
You know that's probably the most common question, and you know great reward doesn't come without great risk. We actually had a turning point in our careers, too, you know. Yet you had number one - the world was shut down. My co-founders, we got laid off, or a furlough, all at the same time, because the world shut down. I personally had just gotten over to the Madison Square Garden Sphere Project in Las Vegas, you know a 2.5-billion-dollar global iconic entertainment venue, most exciting growth point of my career, and the world shuts down. My other business partner, Darren Livenatti, was building huge festivals for MGM Family then the world, shutdown. He got furloughed and laid off. And then my other partner, Andrew Satorez, he actually just resigned from a company that he was at that was in the middle of building a global destination events and productions. So, you know the moment in time came when the rest of the world was shut down, we actually got together. I've known Andrew for about 15 years, and Darren and Andrew and I actually met through some personal and business relationships and it just the spark went off. So, we had a, we had a moment in time that we could take a risk and give it a shot, and we knew it would take us call it, you know, probably nine months to a year to ramp up the business while nobody was traveling, nobody was buying tickets to anything. We had to develop the concept and get some money together and launch the con and launch the company all while the world was shut down, dreaming about travel that we knew would eventually come back.
Roger Hurni 9:42
Well, I mean, I guess that's how you get it off the ground. During such a difficult period is because you had a year of planning, and just when people were getting the itch to start to travel again, you could be a solution at the right time and right place. Did it ramp up fairly slowly?
Sonny Smith 10:01
Well, you know, we have one thing important to mention, we're a white label solution. So, we actually empower event producers to monetize and capture travel revenues or experience revenues from their customers and superfans. We like to call them. So, you know we had to build the materials, the website, the brand, all while the world was shut down. So, you know, there was a good 9 months of just selling the dream to all of our former relationships, to see if there was a market fit to understand if there was any competition, and then to really customize and hone our product while we were building it. So, we had about a runway of, you know, call it nine months to a year before we even had a product in hand to sell people.
Roger Hurni 10:56
So is that how you got your customers or clients have, whatever term you use in those early days, was just, figuratively, maybe literally hitting the road and just having those conversations. Since you are white labeled to try to get that up and running the business.
Sonny Smith 11:14
Yeah, my, luckily myself and my, our partners. We've been in the business for 25-35 years collectively. We worked with most of the largest entertainment companies. the largest event producers, festival producers, hospitality companies, the hotels, the integrated resorts we've worked in, and outside of pretty much any, any DNA of the event business. We've been there done that over the years. So, it was all one phone call or email away and you know, to be honest, the simplest thing about building a company during a global pandemic, people had plenty of time to listen to what we were pitching. So, it was a great opportunity for you know, people wanted to go golfing, and they wanted to. You know they didn't. You know some people didn't have work, or they were, for, you know, worked ten hours a week versus sixty hours a week they were doing before, and it was a perfect time for us to focus on building and pitching and growing.
Roger Hurni 12:20
So now that we're on the other side of that, has your sales or marketing strategies changed to attract additional business?
Sonny Smith 12:30
Yeah, you know. We were very lucky that coming out of the gate we had some very successful first events that really proved the case study and proved that people wanted a comprehensive, connected experience and live event ticketing solution. So that was our rocket ship, if you will, and you know, I think in a few short years we've done over 120 million in business and generated some very exciting profit margins and really got the interest of Silicon Valley and venture capital to really launch us to the next level, as well.
Roger Hurni 13:19
That's great. That's really, really great. I want to shift a little bit, Forrester - One of the research companies talked about how critical personalization is with brands. To the point I think that the latest that I saw was that brands will outsell the competitors by 20% if they don't engage in some level of personalization. These kinds of experiences, is there something that you're able to help your clients do to personalize this experience and have a better customer experience overall? I mean, I can't imagine. Everything you do is generic. It's got to feel really personal to pull these off.
Sonny Smith 14:02
You know, great, great point. I think the most important part of it from our perspective is we are not the content owner. We're not the brand, and we are not, technically, the relationship with the consumer. So, what we do is take a snapshot of the demographic that our partner event producers have, and we look at producing custom activities and experiences that align with their demographics. Now, it's not necessarily personalized to the consumer specifically. It's customized to the community that are the fans associated to an event. So, I'll give an example. One of our largest event producers and partners is Golden Voice and they have an event called Cali Vibes in Long Beach, California. It's a Reggae festival, one of the best festivals in America. On the water in Long Beach, and about 30,000 people are coming to Long Beach for three to five days, and they're going to see Reggae, right? So, we put together fun experiences outside of the festival before the festival that allow them to extend the experience outside of the four walls of the festival grounds, right? So, what does that look like? It's morning Yoga sessions before the festival. It's an acoustic guitar set with one of the singers from the festival on the deck of the Queen Mary before the festival. So, you know, we take those experiences that are aligned with the genre of music, or if it's a sporting event, we'll build these micro events, that these communities can have a custom experience together around that genre or their fandom if you will. So, in that regard it is customized, and the fans want to be with other fans, right? They want to experience other things around the soccer team they're going to see, or the band they're going to see, so we're seeing that about 20 to 30% of our audiences inside of these bigger festivals buying these travel experiences are getting these add-on experiences to go do those, you know, unique events around the other main event.
Roger Hurni 16:25
Well, I mean, there is personalization there. As you are alluding to you, it's foundational. But even in my work, with consumer behavior and shifting behavior. You're giving people the option to sort of choose their own adventure, right? There's going to be some common denominators for what they like to do given a certain type of an event, and being able to have those options available, I think is really smart. You're just not empowering the technology, but you're making sure that there are choices your clients can have for their brands and their customers that offer that level of personalization. And I just don't think a lot of people think in those terms, and so I think kudos to you on that and if I got that wrong, correct me.
Sonny Smith 17:12
I'll just add to that which is, you know, we look at it as kind of the core of our core of our business. An event producer is focused on their event. And it's and it's tough to build an event, design an event, create an event, and get people to buy the tickets to that event. That's their predominant focus and they're really good at that. They have to get artists excited. They got to get, you know, bodies to the building, and they got to sell you know, beverages and food and sponsorships, and they got to get all that business and be successful there and try and make money. What we're coming to them with is this free opportunity to extend the audience that they're currently monetizing and make additional money where they could not normally have that opportunity. What really happens is, you know look at the headlines for any major event out there, you know the biggest one you could probably think of is Taylor Swift, Global Tour, generated over 10 billion dollars to the local economies and.
Roger Hurni 18:18
Never heard of her.
Sonny Smith: 18:19
Yeah. Morning had never heard of it.
Roger Hurni 18:20
Yeah. I never heard of her.
Sonny Smith 18:21
Much of that money goes into it and don't get me wrong. You know Taylor makes a bunch of money, and her event promoters and partners make a bunch of money, but the local economy still makes the money. But we want to bring the money to the artists and to the promoters that are actually the ones bringing all those people to those exciting experiences. And they're not making a piece of that pie today. So, we wanted to help grow the revenue for the main event promoter, the artist involved, and make sure that it's all done in a seamless way where the consumer gets tremendous value, and they don't feel like they're getting, you know, sold. They feel like they're getting a wonderful, customized experience aligned with what they actually were really passionate about, so in that regard, it aligned really well.
Roger Hurni 19:17
That's excellent, excellent. It's always good to be thinking about your clients, businesses, and ways that they're not able to. And sometimes that's not by choice on their end it's just the operations and how their business runs. I can't let this conversation go without asking you about AI, because it is obviously the topic and changing everything. I'm curious how it's impacting your business model, your operations, are you embracing it, are you not? I just love your take on that.
Sonny Smith 19:51
You know. We actually have a very aggressive strategy around it, due to the fact that you know, I think one of the largest categories of growth for AI is going to be the travel industry in general. Now, how does that fit into our world? Specifically, because we're a travel and experience packaging platform. So, you know, our tech team is really diving into the benefits of either operational efficiency even looking at data better from our audiences, and how to how to drive consumer preferences better and better. So one is, is kind of the concept of looking inside, and how to get better and better about operational efficiencies. Things like customer service and automated, you know, responses and faster response times and databases that pull from typical, frequently asked questions to get consumers more relevant data to help them make better informed decisions. That's kind of the basics. I think every company is doing those things. But then, you know, on our side, specifically, how does it help drive consumer value and eventually help our products get better and better at pricing and better and better value to a consumer. So, we can have an innovative and constantly evolving product. I think that's where the concept of artificial intelligence around any core business, ours, specifically, is all about driving value to the consumer and giving them more relevant data, quicker and more informed.
Roger Hurni 21:34
Yeah, you know I will. I will agree with you, and I think it's very smart that AI is being used in business intelligence to inform decisions. You can argue with me on this, but I interview a lot of people, I do a lot of speaking opportunities. You are ahead of the game, and you're thinking most people don't even do what you're talking about. They either are still in experimentation mode or they're afraid of it. And they're going to have to come and get over that issue. You know, one of my one of my organizations that I'm involved with called LighthousePE has an AI for mobile apps, and one of their clients has been able to triple the number of places visitors go to and extend their stay by making personalized recommendations. You tell people who don't understand AI, you might as well have told them you invented time travel because they just they are just, they're just not there yet. It's like it's 1996, you should do email marketing. But what's that? You know? They just, they don't.
Sonny Smith 22:43
Like, think. I think. And this is just as you know, I'm 52 years old. So, I think I was part of the culture that had the first Internet and first computers really in, in personal and professional life. And you know I was, I was just starting my career in 1999, when the.com bubble burst, while everybody was going towards computers replacing people. Right? So, you know, I think it's a generational challenge to absorb and embrace technology. Luckily, our company, specifically, we have a lot of very innovative thinkers and we're actually a technology company at our core. So, if you don't embrace anything or if you, if you don't embrace everything with wide open optimism while having analytical decision making and trying to come up with that best case study from a testing perspective. You know, you're going to be lost, or you're going to you know, lose at some point or people will be better, faster, quicker in, in the, in the game of optimization and things that can improve. Right? I think it's really probably and that's our core focus is a tech is a technology platform and a scalable global business for any event and or ticketed experience anywhere in the world to be able to activate around it. So, it takes tremendous scale. And we're building for the future every single day So that's probably why we have that outlook.
Roger Hurni 24:26
Yeah, I dig it. I dig it. Well, I think things from my side of it look like they're going incredibly well, I'm kind of curious. What's keeping you up at night? What's the biggest challenge you're facing right now?
Sonny Smith 14:38
You know, I think in any business is number one, there is an 800-pound gorilla out there that might be able to flip a switch and hurt you. But we look at the marketplace very aggressively and realize that number one, our total addressable business globally is about a 7 trillion-dollar event and our corporate world that we could really align with and drive additional experiences around. I think there's room for everybody, even if that 800-pound gorilla you know, continues to grow. And while we grow hopefully a multi-billion-dollar company really quickly, you know, and in a few short years to be able to do, you know, 120 million and gross revenue is really exciting, just shows that could we get to a billion really quickly and we dream about that every day that that probably keeps me up. The excitement, not the negative part, which is probably just in my core.
Roger Hurni 25:49
I like the positivity of that. I've told people in my own business where I'm like, hey, what are you worried about? And I will often say it's actually not the 800-pound gorilla. For me, it's the, it's the two guys in the garage that might or the three people during a global pandemic that might come up with a business model that just turns the industry on its head. There's probably been, I only have a couple of questions. We're almost out of time. And I just, I want to get these out. There's probably been a ton of highlights. There always is when you're growing your business. Is there one in particular that stands out to you?
Sonny Smith 26:28
You know. I'll tell you. The biggest highlight was probably our first real on sale where you know we're looking. We've lifted up the hood. We've built our product. We've got it into a place where you know you got one of those situations where you know, there's not a lot of like call it moving parts. But you know, and we joke about it a lot. Because when you're in the event producer game working with big events. You have these global on sales that you might have a million people come to an event landing page. And our partners that produce these amazing events have tremendous amounts of audiences. So, we've got to build something that can take that traffic and that can absorb and then actually allow a consumer to transact and people to buy and get through the buying funnel. Right? So, we're not an engine but we're a technical engine, right? We're a software engine. So, the first day that that it worked, and we were building it with all of our engine, we had engineers in Vietnam that that, you know, we had communication issues. We had project managers and other parts of the world, and we really bootstrap, this thing, and in an exciting startup model. So, when we realized we had a Ferrari the first day, we turned on the engine and we put 7 million dollars and 7,000 transactions through the system. It was this Aha! moment, right? It was like, Oh, wow! This just happened in 30 minutes, right? What are we got here so. and every time we do one of these bigger on sales, and now we've got hundreds of events on the platform at any given time. So, I took that idea, and I, I had one of our engineers put a big 75-inch monitor in the front of our office at our headquarters, and it's just a, it's a traffic. It's a site traffic board. It's a dashboard about the type of transactions that are happening, live. The product we're selling live and the revenue we're generating live. So it's a scoreboard every single day, and you know it's not the day of having that one event that was an absolute rocket ship, and we're all holding hands like, Oh, boy, we hope it doesn't break, and it working and being excited about it to now, seeing it every day with our teams in front of that board, and this was six people in a room when that launch happened. And now we've got 60 people in our corporate office, and about 120 people all over the world looking at that kind of dashboard on a daily/weekly basis, having hundreds of events on top of each other. Now you know, I pinch myself. I walk into the office, and I look at that dashboard and say, wow! The cash register is dinging right? For me. I wanted to put the scoreboard or the physical nature of looking at you know the if you're in the if you're in the stock market. It's the ticker tape running. But we have it in front of our building, and kind of pinch myself when I when I look at it every day in the office. So, you know, that was.
Roger Hurni 29:49
I was just thinking it was the same analogy. It's your own NYSE, you know, tick or symbol. You know that, that this...
Sonny Smith 29:55
Did it. You know we're in Sales. We're in the e-commerce world, right? So that means I can look at every single second and determine where we're going and how we're getting there. It's been fun in that regard. So, the Aha, the Aha today is when it's not ringing right? And you say, “Okay, where are we going?” But that, luckily that's not very often at all.
Roger Hurni 30:17
That's great. Well, I have one last question, and we wrap up the show. I end every show this way, because I always find that there's a nugget of knowledge in this question and this could be personal or professional. But I'd like to know what is the worst advice you've ever gotten that you said no to
Sonny Smith 30:38
You know the worst advice for me. I got a chew on that one a little bit. you know. I got to kind of spin it into, no matter what the advice I got. I always had to digest it and have kind of a gut experience around it. And you know, I don't know how much, I don't know how much people have influenced me through my life with advice that I didn't at some point digest and flip into the right solution for me or the right opportunity. And what I mean by that is pass or fail, I've been lucky to work for some of the best mentors and the best innovators in the hospitality space my whole career. You know I have got to say I made my decisions with informed you know, value from others. but I would never I would never point at other just to say they. You know I was harmed by that right? So, that's probably a bad answer for you. But.
Roger Hurni 31:52
Sonny, It's not a bad answer. It's what people don't realize is sometimes it's easy to take really good advice, and what people don't realize is that poor advice, bad advice can be a learning tool. and it can teach you what not to do. And I kind of get a sense that you can evaluate someone's advice. Make your own decision, but it's also teaching you what roads not to go down. And that's the nugget of knowledge I'm pulling from your answer.
Sonny Smith 32:23
You're right, and for me, I look at it very, very specifically, and I've been blessed to work for talented people and the biggest lesson that I've learned around any advice or any growth or any failure, and any success has really been surrounding yourself with people that are going to all give you good advice. Now, that's tough. But you've got to have positive relationships, you got to have people around you that care about you. You've got to have mentors in your life. You've got to have, no matter how young or old you are. You've got to figure out how your personal network provides value to you and not I'm not even just talking about business I'm talking about in giving you advice positively that they care about you. Right. So, what does that mean for making better decisions? You know it's about feeling that way but having the confidence to also take that risk and make that mistake if it's a mistake. But you know the tough part is spending those mistakes no matter what they are in the learning experiences, and you know I've failed hundreds of times in my life. But I got up every time and put that helmet back on and got back in the game. And that's it, right? It's because, most importantly, if somebody told you something and you did it, it didn't work out. Whose fault, is it? Right? So, I can't. I can't. I realize, don't take, you know. Try to mitigate the advice because it's got to be you. It's your decision, right? And you're in control of your own destiny. So, you know, I try and live from a place of ownership. And you know, I'd say, looking back for me. It was it was my, my fault for going where I went, or my success, or you know that's important to me. So yeah. I've had some tremendous failures in my life, and I've had continual growth and success. And that's been the launch pad to which I look forward.
Roger Hurni 34:33
Yeah, excellent, excellent! Well, I appreciate all your time on the show. I've been speaking with Sonny Smith, the co-founder of JamPack. Sonny, where can people learn more about you and JamPack.
Sonny Smith 34:46
Jampack.com is our website and then, you know, I'm actually on the website, but my email is Sonny@jampack.com as well.
Roger Hurni 34:58
Alright! That's fantastic. Well, I am Roger Hurni, this is from Persona to Personnel, and we will catch you next time. Thanks.
Outro 35:08
Thanks for listening to From Persona to Personal, the podcast that takes a closer look into how organizations personalize their marketing. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.
