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People come to Amnesia because of its legacy

Amnesia was founded in the 70s by philosopher Antonio Escohotado, who had moved to Ibiza from Madrid. Originally naming it The Workshop of Forgetfulness, his dream was to create a destination on the island where people could come to escape their everyday lives, through music and partying. That dream came true. Within a few years Amnesia was drawing in bohemians from around Europe.

“Antonio wanted to experiment with different atmospheres,” says Bea, Marketing Manager at the club. “People came here to experience things they couldn’t in any other part of the world. It was the door in Spain to these new waves of music.”

In the 1980s, a new wave hit – electronic music. Amnesia, already one of the jewels of Ibiza’s nightlife scene, became the place – witnessing the birth of the ‘Balearic Beat’ and legendary Acid House nights towards the end of the decade.

While the club has expanded its offering in more recent times, collaborating with the likes of Elrow to put on around 160 nights a season, the culture of experimentation and escapism that defined its early years lives on.

“All the nights are completely different from each other. This is something that people really like because it changes the whole atmosphere of the club,” says Bea.

“The minute people are coming through the door, they feel free,” adds Agnieszka, Amnesia’s Ad Manager and Data Analyst. “We have a huge variety of DJs, a huge variety of fiestas and parties. Whatever you’re into, whoever you are, you come in and find yourself here.”

“We all have that same passion, from the owner to the last person that leaves this building,” adds Agnieszka. “It connects us all, within the team, on the dancefloor, it’s that one beat that we all have for this place.”

Digitalisation has been a process

For all that legacy, Amnesia has had to adapt to the digital world like any other business.“Digitalisation has been a process in the company and also the marketing team,” says Bea. “We’ve had to transform some of the systems and processes and embrace new technologies.”

To cement the club’s global reputation and engage fans, Amnesia have worked hard to build their social reach. The marketing team work around-the-clock to capture live content to “make the Amnesia nights go around the world” and delight their near 800,000-strong Instagram following.

Capturing the spirit of an offline experience online is something a lot of hospitality businesses struggle to do. Where Amnesia has succeeded is through replicating the energy of its club nights across its digital channels, consolidating offline and online into one seamless, multi-sensory experience.

Let’s take the website, rebranded and rebuilt earlier this year, as an example. Landing on the homepage, you get a sense of what it must be like to step onto the Amnesia dancefloor. There are gaudy colours, shapes that melt into one another as you hover over them, and bold statements that flash up and disappear in the blink of an eye. In the centre of the screen a video offers fractured glimpses of the club, spinning the viewer round into different rooms. It’s disconcerting and probably breaks a few design rules but the impression it leaves is clear: Amnesia is unusual, bold and an experience not to be missed.

CM is another department of Amnesia

In 2022 Amnesia began working with CM.com to evolve another critical area of the business – ticketing.

“We used to have paper tickets and we distributed them to the island in a manual way,” explains Aleix, Head of Sales. “After that we started to sell tickets on our website. We had our own system which was very, very simple.

“Now with CM, we have a lot of new things that our system couldn’t give us before. We have all the new tools and things that we didn’t have before. It’s given us a lot of new horizons for how to manage the club, how to manage the brand.”

Those new horizons include the ability to stay in touch with fans all year-round through CM’s built-in email and SMS marketing tools, which they use to tease new nights and segment audiences by country to create more personalised flows. Another step forward has been including merch as an add-on in the checkout process for buying tickets, which attendees can collect when they arrive. The online ticket shop itself is fully branded and customised according to the specific night visitors are looking to attend.

Crucially, with CM.com, Amnesia retain control of their data (unlike many other ticketing platforms, who make it difficult to extract) and use it to stay ahead of the game.

“Before, when we opened the doors during the day for every event, we didn't know how many people we should expect to come to the club,” says Aleix. “The reporting tools and real-time information we get now has helped us to find better solutions and take better decisions for the global management of the brand.”

So far the partnership has yielded two bumper seasons of increased ticket sales with more success to come as the two companies work closely on honing the experience for fans.

“The most important thing that we need from our ticketing partner during high-season, peak-season, is that constant contact. Full support during the day, all the answers that we need in a short time,” says Aleix. “CM.com is another department of Amnesia. They are out of the club. But the level of contact we have with them every day makes us feel like they are inside the company.”

Agnieszka adds: “All of the marketing tools help to add to whatever is already here, that true living organism.”

THE BRIEF

Jagermeister already has strong brand recognition among students. Raptor’s brief, therefore, was to reaffirm that relationship and introduce new products through a series of hype-inducing events.

The concept they devised was deceptively simple. They would host house parties in various UK cities with large student populations, stocking the fridges with the brand’s products and the bill with local DJs and MCs who were invited to bring along friends and family.

The promo took inspiration from 90s rave culture and the scene’s if-you-know-you-know parties, with distinctive brand assets and flyers that asked would-be attendees to text a secret to a mobile number. (The secrets would be anonymously displayed at the house parties, creating an interactive and highly shareable feature for guests.)

As for the precise location of the parties, these were not shared with the students until a few days before – further fuelling the sense of secrecy surrounding the events. It was a tight concept, and one Raptor knew would get students talking. All they needed to do now was make it work.

FINDING THE SOLVE-ALL TOOL

But there was a snag.

While the promotional strategy spoke to the immersive nature of the event, and the need to keep attendees guessing, it was proving complex to manage from the back-end.
After all, this was a campaign that stretched across multiple cities and campuses and relied on a series of automations to filter people to the right event and capture all of the necessary data points.

Raptor were able to find software for individual pieces of the puzzle (SMS marketing, survey tools, CRM) but they didn’t speak to one another. What they needed was one single source of truth – a platform that would allow them to send out automated SMS messages and emails, store responses, and process RSVPs, while giving them a single-view window on their attendees.

Which is where CM.com came in.

A 360 solution, CM.com equipped Raptor with an armoury of features that allowed them to map out and manage the campaign from one single platform. They were able to use the mobile marketing tool to send out the SMS’; Pages to receive and process the responses; and Workflows to put in place the automation flows and match attendees to the correct region. Underpinning all of this was CM.com’s Customer Data Platform (CDP) – which stores and unifies the data gathered across the various touchpoints and provides a comprehensive view of each attendee.

Intricate, creative and bang on-theme – Raptor had found their flow.

EARLY TO THE PARTY

The house parties brought together party-hungry students, lively DJ sets and student MCs, with light boxes and exuberant decor adding to the ambience. The uplift for Raptor and – by extension – Jagermeister was just as exhilarating.

As well as demonstrating how brands can use events to get closer to their audience, Raptor’s story offers an intriguing clue as to how ticketing is evolving.

Whereas traditionally organisers would set up shop on ticketing platforms and wait for attendees with a high level of intent to drop in, now they are meeting them halfway on the channels they already use – and nurturing intent through intuitive, omnichannel customer journeys.

You can see it in Raptor’s mechanic of asking would-be attendees to share their secrets over text, and festivals sharing exclusive tracks from headliners to tee-up next year’s pre-sale. Call it immersion or just clever marketing, it works.

Admittedly, it’s an approach that takes a bit of innovation and tech to get right, as Raptor’s story shows. And you have to be organised enough to get your promotional ducks in a row first. But if that’s the way things are heading, why not invest now and get ahead of the curve?

To read more about the event, here's the case study from Raptor; https://raptor-london.co.uk/case-study/jagermeister

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