#101. Rethink Experience | Anne Mullen

In this episode, Anne Mullen, Chief Creative Strategy Officer of Meow Wolf, discusses the immersive art and storytelling experiences created by the company. 

Meow Wolf offers large-scale, permanent installations that invite participants to explore and interact with unique and transcendent worlds. The experiences are characterized by their mind-bending art, captivating storytelling, and interactivity. Anne emphasizes the importance of embracing new technologies and diverse artistic talents to create transformative experiences. She also highlights the need for businesses to challenge the status quo and create experiences that empower individuals and ignite their creativity. 

Meow Wolf aims to open portals of possibility and inspire people to see the world differently.

Transcript

Narrator:

Hello and welcome to the EY Innovation Realized podcast series by Elevation Barn. 

Our world is characterized by more forceful changes that appear quicker, trigger more interconnected and widespread impacts, and often strike all at once. Some call this the poly crisis or perma crisis. Whatever you choose to call it, the bottom line is a business climate that has become far more complex. This environment requires leaders to rethink core assumptions, challenge to establish assumptions, and rethink best practices that no longer work. 

This Elevate series will bring you inside the 2024 EY Innovation Realized Global Summit to hear the new ways of thinking our complex world requires. Each episode is a provocative one-on-one conversation between a leader exploring these vital topics and impact leader, Will Travis, founder and CEO of Elevation Barn. 

Elevation Barn is an international community of world leaders and experts focused on unlocking a purpose-driven legacy for sustainable personal and business growth. To learn more, visit elevationbarn.com. 

And now to your host, Will Travis.

Will Travis  
Anne Mullen is the chief creative strategy officer for the immersive art and storytelling company, Meow Wolf. The first Meow Wolf experience opened in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2016 as a punk art installation with the support of Game of Thrones author George RR Martin. Now there are five Meow Wolf experiences in the US. 

Anne leads the studio responsible for cultivating this immersive, psychedelic, world-building art brand and stories of Meow Wolf and drives the development and creation of the participant-centered, connected creative ecosystem. Before joining Meow Wolf, Anne was Nickelodeon's EVP of brand, strategy, and creative where she directed strategy and execution for all creative services, and ancillary content, including brand promotion, creative advertising, franchise marketing, consumer products, games, and themed experiences. 

Welcome, Anne.

Anne Mullen
Thanks for having me Will.

Will Travis
You're very, very welcome. You’ve become quite legendary. The Meow Wolf business has blossomed and spread not just through the creative community, but it's even been highlighted, as you know, Time Out called it the number one experience to go to. For those that haven't actually been to a Meow Wolf experience, could you describe what that experience is like?

Anne Mullen
Not to frighten anybody, but only to invite people and excite them. I would say that Meow Wolfe – well, first of all, we are large-scale, immersive arts and entertainment and storytelling experiences. And they're permanent. They're quite sizable, like, including back a house like 50,000 square feet. But in an experience, I would say it is like a psychedelic experience without the substances. That may sound really surprising to you, but each one is actually incredibly different from the other. And each one has its own unique way of presenting itself. And each one has its own story. And each one has its own placemaking that invites you in. I can tell you more if you want more detail. 

Will Travis
Yeah, just even you told me that it feels like a psychedelic experience. How do you create them?

Anne Mullen
Well, we have amazing artists.

Will Travis
Yeah. You said there's a collective of you, right?

Anne Mullen
Yeah. There's an origin documentary if you want to check it out some time. But it's available on streaming and so forth. It's just called Meow Wolf Origin Story, and it talks about these artists who found themselves together in Santa Fe, New Mexico, young artists, 20-something, all very DIY, and all really interested in working collaboratively, and over a number of years, they made work together collaboratively. And they broke through with an experience that was commissioned by local arts, a local art gallery. And it was really remarkable. It was like a ship. And they realized, wow, the lines were around the door, you know, around the corner, they got a ton of press, and they realized they had something here that people really wanted. 

And so, they, with the support, as you've mentioned, George and other investors, and a lot of like scrappy fundraising, they built this experience we call the House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe. It's inside an old bowling alley. And when you walk in, there's a front of house, there's a store, there's something to eat, there's whatever. But when you walk down the corridor into the experience, it lands you in the front yard of a house, a Victorian house at night. And you hear some music and it cues you that perhaps something is a little different here. It's familiar, yet unfamiliar at the same time, which I think is one of the hallmarks of Meow Wolf. We set up what I would call an accessible unknown in the beginning. And then you're invited to participate. And right away in the house, you realize you're in somebody else's house, something has happened here, but what? You begin to snoop about, you almost become a detective, to start piecing together a story. 

And so you explore this house. And in your explorations, you might open a refrigerator door and discover there is no fridge, there's actually a long corridor into another place. And that really puts you at a moment of what we call I would say, intellectual vertigo. [You] stand there for a second knowing, I'm not supposed to walk into a refrigerator. I spent my whole life not walking into refrigerators. Now I'm going to, and so you do, and you go into what I would call an unbelievably rich cornucopia of immersive art made by this collection of artists. 

Will Travis
Wow. How did you come across it? How did you get involved? 

Anne Mullen
How did I get involved? I got involved several years ago I was with my family. 

We were taking a trip to Taos, like between Christmas and New Year's and I'd heard about it. I'd heard about Meow Wolf. I've worked in Nickelodeon for 15 years, I did experience-design, resorts, and themed attractions, as well as many, many other things you mentioned in your incredible intro, Will, thank you. And I just always tracked with new things happening in the culture. 

And so, I took my family, and it was 11 of us, from a stepmom who was 72 to like a 12 year old girl. And we went to this place called Meow Wolf and, it was just so remarkable. Every single person had their own experience. My stepmother was fascinated by the brushstrokes on the art, she could see that this was handmade work. My nephew was loving the more AVL sort of audio visual and lighting kinds of art that we had where you can put your hands through a laser and play music. My niece who is into fan fiction slipped down the rabbit hole, the story and was reading the children's diaries to understand what's happened in this house. Because what's happened in this house is a tragedy. A child has gone missing, and in an attempt to bring him back, the family breaks open time and space and portals to these other dimensions in the multiverse.

Will Travis 
And how do you approach them? Did you just come out and go I gotta go, I need to know who these people are?

Anne Mullen
I didn’t. No, I was at Nickelodeon. The pandemic happened. And I wasn’t at Nickelodeon any longer. I left, it was a good time for me to depart. And it was a crazy time. There was somebody who was at Viacom who'd become their new CEO. And I reached out to him because he was incredibly strategic person. I worked with him at Nick[elodeon]. I thought, what a thoughtful, interesting, smart man, Jose Tolosa. And he had just become the new head of Meow Wolf. They had gone through some rough times in the pandemic, and they brought in somebody to really stabilize and focus the business. And I just reached out to him because I thought there's no way Jose is going to Meow Wolf unless he had incredible ambitions, if the company didn't have huge ambitions for itself, because that's the kind of talent he is, and the kind of person that he's - he's passionate about building amazing creative businesses. So, I reached out to him, we just started talking.

Will Travis 
That’s awesome. And so, you could bring all your depth of experience understanding entertainment, you know, it's great having a bunch of artists, but they often don't know how to commercialize it.

Anne Mullen
No, that was exactly right. One of the questions was, they were very ambitious about expanding. But how do you hold on to the magic of something so unique as you expand, I, coming from a really deep brand experience, know that one of the first things that erodes is your brand, that is that magic, if you expand too fast without clear enough plans. So, I spent like, honestly, a good number of weeks, just looking at some of their experiences, I went to all the ones that were open. And then I talked to a lot of the artists, about what had inspired them, what had made them feel moved to make work collectively, what they gained from it, what was special about it to them. And I started to see that there were some components of the experience that I really started to define.

Will Travis
What did you learn? What are these aha moments that came out?

Anne Mullen
I would say they have a remarkable brand. I think the brand is really super special. And I think brands, if you've got a strong one, if everything you do burns to the ground, a great brand tells you how you're going to rebuild and what to do next. And so, I think they had a fantastic brand. They had really mind-blowing art, I mean, or mind-bending art. That's why, that's the first thing people notice about Meow Wolfe is art. But there were two other things that I thought that were really special components. One was story. They tell these stories. And I think it has really put something of a moat around their business. There are many competitors now, but I don't think anybody embraces the storytelling that Meow Wolf does. And the fourth was interactivity. Meow Wolf makes the world big again, no matter what you take out of the experience, it is incredibly playful, whether you're crawling to a fireplace and discovering a cave with a mastodon on the other side of it, and pillars that you can play that are musical, or walking through the fridge or opening a closet and it's not a closet. So, there's something enormously playful. So, there's physical interactivity, and then there's touch reactives that we have that you can touch mushrooms on a tree and they light up and they play music. Or there's gamification and some of our other experiences. 

Will Travis
I love that. Just the insights of reigniting this sort of cognitive diversity. Taking that, what would you suggest? Or what advice would you give to business leaders in organizations that are trying to bring in these new creative dimensions of experience so that their brands have more resonance, more connection, more purpose?

Anne Mullen
I would suggest that they throw out any rule book, or any expectations. I think the freedom of Meow Wolf is that we subvert expectations even of our own. And I think that's probably the strength of how we work. By working collaboratively, there is no one author of an idea. It really is a room of people, whether it be a small room, or sometimes the rooms get very large. But I think you have to, we do, cultivate the inputs for many different types of art and artists, whether they be writers, whether they be musicians. And because you're [a] musician, [it] doesn't mean that's the only idea you're contributing to, whether you work in audiovisual, whether you are a sculptor, whether you make small scale diagramas, it's a huge range of talents, and everybody's input is valued. But, of course, we have to distill and make choices. 
So, there is no rulebook. And I think if you think that there is, if you expect people to be a certain way, you are limiting what is possible. And I would highly recommend bringing in different kinds of talents and capacities because they will surprise you. Remarkably surprise you.

Will Travis
So, celebrate that diversity, and that thought.

Anne Mullen
Yes. And part of how we work is we come up with, I would say, containers, like ideas that are containers. That at every step along the process, from what we call blue sky, to concept on through, we leave room for artists to continue to enrich the expression. So, we may say there could be a sculpture here, we don't prescribe what that sculpture’s going to be. In fact, we even have a phase that differs us probably from any other entity in this space, if you can say anybody's in our space, which is that we allow several months of work after we've installed everything, we bring in what we call our Art Team Task Force. And artists are on-site for several months, adding spontaneously, added art to what has already been created and installed. So, we fill in the gaps, add more layers, more dimensions, so that it really becomes maximal and kaleidoscopic. So, there's many different perspectives present  in anything that we do.

Will Travis
Got it, so you give them this freedom within a framework. 

Anne Mullen
Absolutely. It's always freedom within a framework.

Will Travis
And so, it's commercial, and it's going it has to deliver to the final story. You don't restrict the imagination.

Anne Mullen
Absolutely not. I mean, I think if you restrict it would be, it wouldn't be Meow Wolf. It's so surprising. I mean, I sit in Santa Fe, where we have an incredible fabrication facility. Where there’s you know, 150 artists or more. And even though I've seen plans, and I've heard the ideas, when I walked the floor, when we're full on making as we are right now, for our newest exhibition opening later this year in Houston, I see things that I had no idea had been planned or considered. And they continue to evolve each day. Because each artist is bringing [something], even though it may have been sketched out by one artist, somebody else is going to interpret it their way. They, of course, they're working within a plan from materials and sizing and scope. They do bring unique expression to it.

Will Travis
You know, especially with Nickelodeon before, and as an executive, that you've got deadlines, you've got budgets, you've got a customer to engage. How do you know when enough is enough? How do you know when, alright, could you stop painting that now? For the last six months?

Anne Mullen
A day comes for sure. When we're opening.

Will Travis
I mean, is that commercial deadline of opening day?

Anne Mullen
Yes, we absolutely do. Because we lease buildings, we undergo, you know, ten-year or so agreements, and you know, we pay rent. So, you need we do have to have a discipline. And I will say it is hard for an incredibly art-driven entity to balance the commercial imperative. And so, we don't think of it in the same way as a commercial imperative. But we do give phases and deadlines. And everybody's incredibly responsible too, it isn't to say we don't run into issues, but people want guidelines, I think even artists find freedom and a certain degree of some guidelines, parameters can be very freeing, I think.

Will Travis
So, the world's changing a lot, right? As we're all experiencing, and these emerging technologies are coming out. We've got AI that is allowing not only [the] story to be kind of manipulated but perfected beyond, into a pure artistic way. Also, creative to be advanced. I love the analog element of Meow Wolf, they just make you feel [like] a child again, that touch element. But where do you see the opportunity with these new technologies, the emerging opportunities?

Anne Mullen
Lots of opportunities, I would say that Meow Wolf, especially in our exhibitions in Denver, and Las Vegas, there is a tech-driven component to the storytelling and to a lot of the creative expression. 

So, there's no question that we have always been interested in embracing new technologies and continue to like, you know, [consider] spatial computing, LiDAR [Light Detection and Ranging], etc, all of that. But with AI, I think there's a huge range of possibility. Right now, we certainly use it just to shortcut references, just mood boards, not actual art, ever. And that will mean we're interested in the individual expression of the artists. And we'll have to see as we evolve how visual artists want to or don't want to embrace it. So, I think that's going to be up to them, the individual artists. I would think in storytelling, the opportunity to have more personalized, unique experiences customized to you. You come into our exhibition, we know who you are, because we have a participant ID, we understand where else in our universe you have been, we have characters that could be more embodied in the exhibition through volumetric display. And for you to have an experience with that character that's been customized based on your experience is, to me, fantastically exciting.

Will Travis
They'll never forget it.

Anne Mullen
No, of course not. It'll be the deepest thing. Being “seen” is the most profound experience I think people can have. And we have creative operators inside our exhibitions, some of whom are amazing at that, they recognize the participant and where that participant might be at. And they can invite them into an experience. It might be a scavenger hunt, or it might be directing them to a piece of the story or if they want to go deeper into the story, all of that is possible through, it’s a human interaction. But the ability for us to know who you are, and where you've been in our world, I think is what's super exciting for Meow Wolf’s growth and potential beyond the walls of a physical exhibition.

Will Travis
I love how you've balanced all dimensions of this, you really care about the artists, you really care about the process, you're really caring about what the person that's visiting there, not only experiences, but that what they take home. And that story. Many business leaders would like to bring an experimental journey, delight, signature moments that Meow Wolf has been perfecting, but there's a capacity for what you guys can do and who you can work with, etc. How should they rethink what they're doing to not only maybe move toward a Meow Wolf experience? What steps would you suggest for them as leaders to embrace the opportunity, [in] the work that you do, [or] can give to customers?

Anne Mullen
Well, I think what has been, you know, transformative for Meow Wolf is our commitment to the artists and unique artistic vision. 

So, the degree that any business can make room for mindsets that expand or challenge the status quo, or the default sense of who they are and what they are and who they're serving, I think that could propel any business, because no business can remain as it is, every business must be looking to the future. And I think that businesses need to, or experiences today, are so much about the individual and [what] they want from, I'd say, more from experience, but even if it's a transformation, the idea that you could be a new and better version of yourself. 

I honestly believe the one thing that binds everybody Meow Wolf is this notion that we really do believe we're making transformative experiences, you're not required to have one, you can just come in and have a good time. You could slip down the rabbit hole of our stories, you can just be gobsmacked by the art. But we have people who come out of our experiences and some of them just start crying. And they don't know why. And right from the start, we got letters that this is going to this like hose down my mind and [it] totally gave me a different sense of what my reality could be. Because I think we all do really believe that if we can show you that the world you see can be different, maybe you can be different too. And I think that's the core mission of Meow Wolf to open portals of possibility into you into the world. And if we don't believe that we can take back our reality and make it ours, who's gonna do that for us?

Will Travis
I love that, portals of possibility. ??

Anne Mullen
That is our core purpose.

Will Travis
It's like Jay [Nibbe] was saying in the introduction today that 90% of leaders know that they have to change. And you're creating this space that celebrates it. So important.

Anne Mullen
And doesn't require it. I think agency is a huge part of what we do, we want you to be empowered in our worlds, to discover whatever you choose to discover, you don't get rewarded any further than you want to be rewarded. Like, if you want to solve the story, or the mystery of the puzzle, you may. If you want to spend all your time really contemplating and enjoying the art, you may do that. There's no requirements, you have full agency. And I think that's really important. And in every one of our exhibitions presents something of a mystery. We don't we don't tell you exactly what's happening here. Because we're asking you to search for meaning. And the search for meaning becomes the meaning. And that's true of your life, today, and it’s true of my life, you and I are each weaving meaning of our life, we're responsible for the meaning that we generate in our own life. 

And so, I think that Meow Wolf, as lofty as it sounds, I know, you just go have a good time, if that's what you want to do. But if you want to check in with yourself, we give you that opportunity. I think a lot of experiences [are] about checking out and putting the world behind [you]. This is about finding what's within you and making room in your own mindset and soul to expand.

Will Travis
So, it's more like a philosophy than it is just a physical experience.

Anne Mullen
I think so. We consider ourselves to be in the, honestly, in the business of mind expansion. I know  that's a heavy claim. You have to opt in. But people find it, are discovering it. And it's a delight to see people who show up with their arms crossed, and [think] this isn't for me, I'm just bringing my kids. And then like 30 minutes later, they're crawling through the fireplace or they're opening the fridge. 

There was one kid who was getting a tour early on, and he went to the fridge and then he was deep, deep into the exhibition. He's like, are we still inside the fridge? Like, actually, maybe we are?

Will Travis
Isn't that philosophical for life? Right? Oh my god. So, are you, are we, expecting an EY Innovation Realize Meow Wolf experience next time? Are we going to be going through a psychedelic journey of corporate mixes with San Francisco creativity?

Anne Mullen
I mean, are you asking about that for…

Will Travis
Yeah, no, just intrigued. It's not on the script. But I'm like, I want to be in that event.

Anne Mullen
I would love that. No, I would love that, we actually, you know, we do have a team that works actually at events. And we do things, we do activations, and they do an amazing job. A lot of it has to do with music and programming and culture. That has been a part of the ethos of this scrappy group of artists right from the start, about creating experiences wherever we might go. And we have to focus and most of our resources do go to these very large-scale physical exhibitions. 

But really, the vision is to have a Meow Wolf that can go well beyond the walls and invite people into experiences wherever they may be, whether it's film, video, pop-up experiences. We just recently launched a virtual course in a very well-known, probably one of the most successful games on Oculus, and we brought to life a world from our Denver exhibition called Numina, and the players of that experience did a bracket voting, and they voted us the most interesting course and the best design course. And it's a super surprising, really amazing VR [virtual reality] experience. And it let us bring that world to life in a different way. Because you can fly through it, you can encounter the creatures of this world, you can float these giant creatures face to face. And this world Numina as envisioned by one of our founders, Caity Kennedy, it's a six-dimensional being that wants to understand you. And you can really get more of that interplay in this course that I'm not mentioning because we're told not to mention products and service. So maybe I can [discuss] this, you can always cut it out! It's Walkabout Mini-golf by Mighty Coconuts, and they were fantastic partners and they helped us realize one of our worlds in one of their courses.

Will Travis
It's amazing. It's the extendibility of this. I mean, my youngest daughter's dyslexic. And it reminds me when you were talking about the VR thing, you know, Chris Milk is trying to help transform and he's got dyslexia, and this opportunity to celebrate journey and learning and embrace experimentation. Not only in play, but the business environment. As we start having automated systems take over the mundane elements, the creative value should increase. And so, the creative opportunity for those that are thinking differently, should be celebrated. Do you see this as an area of opportunity in leading Meow Wolf philosophy, even into education, as well as entertainment?

Anne Mullen
I don't know if we would go fully into education per se. I mean, when I was at Nickelodeon, we definitely dabbled a little bit in that side with developmentally appropriate content, there's no question we believe that what we're doing has the opportunity to ask you to shift out of your norm, and to find greater possibility in this world and for yourself, such to the degree that that's educational, maybe, but I don't think we would do learning per se. Though I think there's applications of what we do that are meaningful. And I think that children, anybody, can be woken up to a different sense of creativity in what's possible within themselves by going to a Meow Wolf, because the creativity is just mind boggling. Many people come out and they're like, I'm going to sketch, or I'm going to work in clay or I'm going to reignite belief.

Will Travis
I love that. And I'm so infatuated now with Meow Wolf. I've heard about it for years, and when I'm coming back from Bali, I will come and see you.

Anne Mullen
I would love you to, if you let us know, so that we can make sure, if you want, you should go wander yourself. And then we could give you a tour if you want to get some inside information and hear more about the amazing artists that make it all possible.

Will Travis  27:04
Well, thank you for reigniting the child in me. And thank you for the insights that a lot of the businesses here at the EY Innovation Realized event should be considering because there is such a diversity of thought that's needed to face the challenges that we all face going into the future, and the arts are absolutely part of that backbone. So, brilliant. 

Anne Mullen
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Will Travis
Yes, you're very very welcome. Thank you.

(gentle piano music)

Narrator:
We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of the EY Innovation Realized Podcast Series by Elevation Barn. 

If you would like to learn more about Anne Mullen, please visit meowwolf.com. To learn more about Elevation Barn, please visit us at elevationbarn.com. 

To find out how EY leaders are helping clients rethink their business approach to unlock value for their organizations, visit EY.com.

To report accessibility issues with this podcast, email connect@elevationbarn.com