As The Gathery celebrates its 10th anniversary, co-founders Nicky Balestrieri and Luigi Tadini reflect on the creative agency’s evolution, from its beginnings to becoming a leader in experiential marketing. We spoke with the duo to learn about the most recent shifts in the event industry, the role of social media, and how their unique editorial approach continues to set The Gathery apart.
WSJ Innovator Awards 2023
Looking back over the past decade, what are some key ways The Gathery has evolved and grown, especially with event industry shifts and the rise of social media?
NB: The Gathery began as a creative partnership at PAPER Magazine between myself and my partner Luigi Tadini in 2008. It was there that we experimented with designing marketing experiences that would engage the evolution of what was happening with the now-ubiquitous technology in our pocket. As the power to transmit information connected camera phones to social media apps, we saw the business opportunity clearly and were some of the first to design for it.
The legendary example was from our first few years of operation, when The Gathery served as creative agency of record for Refinery 29. Their 10-year anniversary event was designed as a digital magazine brought to life, whereby we created 29 immersive experiences derived from online content wells. The key insight was that each “room” was designed with a single image in mind that the visitor would want to capture and share. It worked. 29 Rooms was the single most successful event in history on Instagram back in 2015, launched a $150M global franchise for Refinery and set in motion what seems like a million Instagramable experiences all over the world since. Most importantly, it proved that social media would be the metric for experiential marketing going forward.
The other big evolution was the natural and gradual coming of age of our agency– from an event design and production company to a full-service creative agency that leads the creation of global campaigns and initiatives. Operating at the campaign level has allowed us to push our collaborative spirit into the industry whereby the verticals – which previously had been quite independent of one another - can organically play in each other’s fields. Finding ways that specifically our clients in fashion, spirits, media and hospitality can merge their storytelling to mutual benefit has become a hallmark of our creative agency’s work nowadays.
Your work is known for having a distinctive editorial approach – how did your shared experiences at PAPER Magazine influence the way you craft campaigns and create immersive experiences for clients today?
LT: PAPER Magazine was such an important incubator for both Nicky and me. As an independent magazine, it was an environment where possibilities, while scrappy, were limitless and the idea always came first.
When we decided to start The Gathery we aimed at creating an agency that focused on the things we loved the most: storytelling, collaboration, curation – all key tenets of an editorial enterprise. So very naturally, we operated our company, in a way, like a magazine. We sought out team members, that like editors, added to our creative bank and went after clients, who like us, valued and understood the power of good storytelling.
Whenever we start a project, we approach its development through a holistic mindset. Like creating an issue for a magazine, we want to see a product through a variety of access points that make it more interesting and compelling to an audience. We look at these ‘stories’ across cultural verticals like music, fashion, art, architecture, cuisine and design more broadly to create rich and detailed experiences. I’d like to think this point of view – our approach – is what sets us apart as an agency.
H&M Coachella
How do you maintain creative excellence across such a diverse portfolio of projects, from product launches to experiential tours and fashion shows?
LT: Curiosity and passion. We are in love with what we do. And while the agency is a business, it is first and foremost the conduit for how we express ourselves as creatives. That is not only applicable to Nicky and me but also to our team. We are the types that geek out over materials, and paper stock, rigging points and a perfectly lit shot or versed campaign tagline. That’s why we do it. It’s the way in which we express ourselves. The curiosity component is how we go about curating our work. I always tell our team that it is important to input creativity to output creativity, so we are always scouring the globe – like editors – seeking inspiration. From the most mundane to the most extraordinary, inspiration can come from anything and at any time.
As a Brooklyn-based agency, how has your location shaped The Gathery’s culture, style, and the types of clients and collaborators you attract?
The other is that our history is a part of the neighborhood. Every day we look out the window at Domino Park and remember that we were the first and last designers to ever have worked inside the Domino Sugar Factory with CreativeTime’s epic Julian Schnabel and KaraWalker projects. We pass old warehouses that we turned into pop-ups for Fila and H&M that have preceded the current retail transformation of North 6th Street. We hold a Guinness Book of World Records for throwing the largest Drag Brunch in history at a nearby bowling alley. We’re very proud to have been a part of the creative output of this exceptional corner of New York – that, like The Gathery, punches far beyond its weight.
With over 400 initiatives under your belt, what are some of the most memorable or impactful projects you've worked on, and what made them stand out for you personally?
LT: Our hospitality work is perhaps some of the richest and most rewarding projects we do. They tend to blend the many things we love about creating – storytelling, image making, entertaining and hospitality. For St. Regis, for example, we have worked closely with the brand team to tell a 120-year-old luxury story and reimagine it for today’s traveler, all the while creating a global Pride campaign for W Hotels and launching a curated global marketplace for Renaissance Hotels. The diversity of the work, their visual vernacular, their audiences – it’s really thrilling. It’s also exceptional to watch these campaigns take life in all four corners around the world; to see something you and your peers have incubated with the brand eventually touching thousands of properties and customers in a compelling way is incredibly rewarding.
Lanvin
As you celebrate 10 years and look ahead to the future, how do you envision the role of experiential marketing evolving?
LT: I think it’s funny when people say print is dead. Nothing is ever dead – it evolves, it reshapes. My favorite bookstores and corner magazine shops remain just where they always have been – with new titles emerging week after week – no matter how mass or niche. I think the point I’m trying to make is that people never tire of the tactile. Humans want to experience things. We are driven towards it. While the digital universe has transformed the way we communicate, purchase, learn and even create it cannot replace the intangible peculiarities that only experiences can unlock.
NB: These things exist because humans demand experience. So where experiential marketing goes from where we started 10 years ago – as an expensive and flashy novelty – to today, is that (and this is compounded by the pandemic) people crave connection. The irony is that the more we try and digitize, the more we realize that the human connection becomes ever more valuable.
What we hope to see is the integration of experiential as an essential feature of every campaign. Marketing is about knowing your audience after all, and how do you market to people if you overlook one of their most basic needs?
