This past weekend, I had the pleasure of meeting Jessica Berlin, the social media head from the Cirque du Soleil, the uber circus entertainment experience that just can’t adequately be summed up by being called a circus. She and I talked about how successful their Facebook group is, and about the MySpace group a fan is running that has over 40,000 very active members, without her official effort. But above all that, Jessica went further than just talking about how Cirque feels about the social media and blogging space. She participated in a giant way. In essence, she lives a trust agent move that Julien and I call being “one of us.”
Jess came to this year’s Blog World Expo, and hung out with us in the sessions, the blogger’s lounge, and all around. More importantly, she also came out to the party events as well. And that’s where we learned about what the Cirque Du Soleil thinks about we blogger types.
We were at a party that was a little too crowded. As I pushed through to leave, I saw Jess leaving as well. I asked her, “Hey, where’s somewhere we can go to stretch out a bit? Know a decent club that could hold maybe a hundred of us?” Jess said, “Why not go to Revolution?”
Revolution is a Beatles-inspired night club/lounge run by the Cirque du Soleil inside the Mirage hotel and casino. It was intimate and colorful and very much themed to match the Cirque show “Love,” which features the music of the Beatles. It also had a line of people waiting out front.
But that turned out to be no problem. Dan Kramer, the VIP host out front, had received word from Jess that the bloggers were coming. The bloggers were coming. Dan was every bit the professional, and when I arrived, gave us the most special, personal treatment I could imagine. He knew we weren’t his typical flashy, special guests, but he treated us like royalty right away. (Dan also served two tours in Iraq as a Marine scout, the guys who go out wayyyy before the main military body, and thus, are pretty much on their own in a bind).
We had a great night. Lots of folks came by the party, and everyone was treated well, as far as I know. There was a dress code, so a few friends got turned away, but I suspect had I heard about it, I might’ve been able to convince Dan to waive that, too. (But hey, it’s their place, and we have to keep by their rules. No foul there.)
I also got to attend the Cirque show Love, featuring the music of the Beatles. I’m sorry that I can’t exactly describe what I saw. I can tell you that I spent the majority of the show going “oh wow!” and “no way!” and “oh jeez” (like when this guy on a kind of swing over the top of the event kept looking like he was going to freefall plummet 40 or so feet. You don’t have to love Beatles music to appreciate the event, but it helped.
In the end, what this said to me was that Cirque du Soleil was live and active in our space, had interest in what we were doing, and were interested in doing social media projects of their own. I’m grateful for the kindness of Jessica Berlin and everyone else I encountered in their organization, but mostly, I’m encouraged that a large entertainment operation is doing good social media work both from the web side and the human side. It was a true trust agent move to have Jess there in our midst.
Have you seen one of their shows? What do you think of Cirque?
Photo credit, Erin MC Hammer
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