Above the seven full-size courts of New York's Basketball City sports facility, 90 strangers enjoy a six-course dinner cooked in a temporary kitchen. Nothing resembles what you'd expect from court-side dining, from the whole roasted kabocha squash to the hen-of-the-wood mushroom puree to the parsnip parfait yogurt dessert.
The diners, who provide Chef Andrew Black feedback on note cards following each course, are members of Dinner Lab, a new underground dining club. Originally launched in New Orleans in 2012, Dinner Lab is in the process of expanding to 10 cities across the U.S.
Unlike your typical fast growing startup, however, Dinner Lab puts zero emphasis on marketing; it lacks both a budget and a plan. As the young company moves into new markets, it relies entirely on its members to share their experiences with like-minded friends.
Dinner Lab is just one of many new brands forgoing the typical fight for users, focusing instead on providing a memorable experience for its dedicated fan base. These brands discovered that a unique experience is enough to drive users to share their positive experiences. And that's where the marketing strategy ends.
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"We don't give a shit about going any further down the ladder past the evangelists and early adopters," Brian Bordainick, Dinner Lab CEO, tells Mashable. "They're the type of people that go to the music festival the first year and stop going to the festival the third year because everyone else found out about it. By the time other people find out about Dinner Lab, we're filled ."
Getting a membership to Dinner Lab in markets like New York is a hot ticket. The 700 slots for members were quickly filled, and the waitlist now reaches longer that 2,000 people. The only cities with openings are Atlanta and Miami, both of which have yet to launch.
Each time the company announces a new meal, it emails members a menu. They decide whether they want to attend, though they won't find out the location until the day before. But they'd better hurry: new meal tickets typically sell out in three and a half minutes.
Dinner Labs is just one of many experience-based brands that relies on forward-thinking patrons to share its message. London-based Secret Cinema has built an underground empire, redefining movie-going since its 2007 launch.
Audience members, who dish out more than $50 to attend a film (they'll only find out which once they show up), arrive at a specific time at an unconventional location dressed in a costume they don't necessarily understand. The scene, often a decorated warehouse, includes guards and event staff in costume, ready to amplify the interactive show.
For Charlie Melcher, founder of the Future of Storytelling Summit, part of the fun of attending a Secret Cinema screening of The Shawshank Redemption were the moments of insight and discovery.
"There's a whole bunch of things taking place that are enabling people to have this immersive experience, like what Oculus Rift is doing with gaming," Melcher tells Mashable. "But to be actively alive in a world, you need to be doing something that you're really engaged in. I see this as very much a shortcoming of the digital age that we live in."
Individuals are now seeking the personally tailored create-your-own adventure style entertainment, whether it's the thrill of attending the (now defunct) speakeasy in an abandoned Manhattan water tower called The Night Heron or an immersive Sleep No More theater experience. The fact that you learn about these pop-up events via word-of-mouth versus a big-budget marketing campaign makes the thrill all the more exciting.
Image: Mashable, Zoe Fox
The desire for an immersive community experience has helped transform artist Killy Kilford's projects from unconventional exhibits into a social movement. During his first year in New York, Kilford was overwhelmed by the negative images on street signs across the city. Mimicking the signs he saw around him, he painted his first Happy Street Sign, which says, "Do Great Things Today."
His friends — and their friends who heard about the signs via word-of-mouth — soon joined Kilford in a secret campaign to hang the signs across the city. After ordering 200 signs, some 60 volunteers helped Kilford hang up the signs around lower Manhattan Tuesday morning.
The signs have spurred an underground movement, called Department of Well-Being, which encompasses much more than Happy Street Signs.
"It's a well-being project that uses the community as a vehicle," Kilford tells Mashable. "If we communicate a message to pedestrians that promotes a moment of joy, then we can collectively increase happiness. It won't make your life better if you're having a shit day, but it will give you a little moment of joy."
These Department of Transportation-grade signs, with slogans like "Big City, Big Smile," "New York Loves You" and the original "Do Great Things Today," at first glance resemble ordinary New York street signs. But these signs, are about more than spreading smiles to New York pedestrians. They signal a volunteer movement to get governments to establish departments of well-being, like the UK's National Well-Being Program.
Though hanging the signs, which were kept under wraps before going on display Tuesday, is technically illegal, the group of volunteers are not renegades tagging buildings, Kilford emphasizes. They're bankers, designers, students and investors interested in engaging deeply in their community.
"If you look at the research about what contributes to happiness in cities, your involvement in community is one of the key drivers to happiness, and also your ability to volunteer within that community," he says. "If you don't volunteer and you don't belong to a group, it will make you less happy ."
Bordainick also attributes the success of Dinner Labs to its experimental, underground community, a component that carries its marketing strategy.
"We've created a community of human beings who trust us and trust our brand," he says. "These people don't know where they're going until 24 hours beforehand. We're not trying to be trendy or cool, but locations fall through."
As Dinner Labs grows, the goal is not to create the biggest community possible, rather it's to focus on keeping the community element strong. Because members can only bring one guest to each meal, it's important for them to know they'll share interesting conversations with their dinner company.
"We're hoping to create as big of a community as humanly possible, but you can never take away the human interaction," Bordainick says. "There are little moments, like being at an event and watching members help our staff clean up. I believe that's what technology was made for — not to replace human interaction."
Image: Dinner Lab