Cirque du Soleil pro­vides a spec­tac­u­lar user expe­ri­ence. But, off­stage, how does it authen­ti­cal­ly con­nect with fans and pro­vide val­ue? One word: Access.

As expe­ri­ences grow more preva­lent in con­sumers’ expec­ta­tions and mar­keters’ exe­cu­tions, the live enter­tain­ment brand arguably has a huge advan­tage in that its very prod­uct is an expe­ri­ence. As a result, since its incep­tion in 1984, Cirque du Soleil says more than 155 mil­lion peo­ple in 300 cities have seen its shows. And, in 2015, the brand had 18 shows in pro­duc­tion and, on any giv­en night, about 20,000 tick­ets for sale. How­ev­er, at Adobe Sum­mit 2016 in Las Vegas, CMO Alma Der­ricks con­ced­ed the Cirque du Soleil prod­uct doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­late to oth­er medi­ums, which some­times cre­ates mar­ket­ing chal­lenges. “There’s noth­ing like the elec­tric­i­ty on stage,” she said. So how does Cirque du Soleil use get clos­er to its fans? Here are five mar­ket­ing insights from Der­ricks.

1. Be Ready To Ask & Re-Ask Questions

Fur­ther, per Der­ricks, the live enter­tain­ment brand isn’t the new kid on the block any­more. At the same time, it is also under­go­ing a huge trans­for­ma­tion as a result in part of pri­vate invest­ment firm TPG acquir­ing a major­i­ty stake last year. “And what’s fas­ci­nat­ing is this inflec­tion point is a chance to re-ask all the ques­tions,” Der­ricks said. “Every­thing is back on the table again. Our brand is incred­i­bly strong on stage, but where we’re chal­lenged is what hap­pens beyond the lights and how to inter­act with you.”

2. Don’t Miss The Marketing Basics

Der­ricks not­ed it’s hard for a brand like Cirque du Soleil to sim­ply deliv­er an app or the like, so “giv­en the crowd­ed mar­ket, there’s a lot of basic block­ing and tack­ling as much as find­ing the next brand new thing. Some­times it’s about being in the right place at the right time.” That means Cirque du Soleil cap­i­tal­izes on tra­di­tion­al out-of-home tac­tics like taxi top­pers and mar­quis ads, as well as videos in taxis to cre­ate aware­ness and buzz. “Some things are not spec­tac­u­lar at all,” Der­ricks said. “We have both at our dis­pos­al.”

3. Have Smaller Conversations & Tell Stories

Der­ricks said the brand is hear­ing from its fans that they want to know more about the per­form­ers and what goes on behind the scenes. “Where we’re chal­lenged is sell­ing the con­cept of the show itself,” Der­ricks said. “The most rad­i­cal thing we can do is to be more inti­mate. I don’t know if we can be loud­er, but we can be more inti­mate and [and bring you] behind the cur­tain, which is a fas­ci­nat­ing new adven­ture for Cirque du Soleil.” So instead of try­ing to one-up itself and be bold­er or loud­er to cut through the prover­bial noise and cap­ture con­sumer atten­tion, Cirque du Soleil is instead dial­ing down the vol­ume – at least mar­ket­ing-wise – to con­nect with fans. “We’re turn­ing the vol­ume down in some ways and hav­ing small­er con­ver­sa­tions and telling sto­ries, which is new ter­ri­to­ry for Cirque du Soleil,” Der­ricks said. “The thing I real­ly think about is how to cre­ate close­ness and how we bring those back in and tell those sto­ries that are as excit­ing as what we do up in the air.” And that includes lever­ag­ing plat­forms like Snapchat and Periscope to offer pre­views and spe­cial per­for­mances, as well as Twit­ter to share images of pre-show per­form­ers in make­up and hash­tags to inspire chat.

Catch more of us #LIVEatTMA over on Snapchat: cirques­nap! pic.twitter.com/GZP1JLMvbA

— Cirque du Soleil (@Cirque) April 7, 2016

The time has come! Grab a friend & some pop­corn! #LaNou­ba will attempt 2 rare trapeze tricks on #Cirque­LIVE! https://t.co/76oogpaJpY — Cirque du Soleil (@Cirque) March 31, 2016

Live from #Vegas and get­ting ready to vis­it the crowd at @TMobileArena! #LIVEatTMA pic.twitter.com/JuhJubxkEJ

— Cirque du Soleil (@Cirque) April 7, 2016

4. Bring People To You

Anoth­er part of Cirque du Soleil’s mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy involves break­ing down the shows into their com­po­nent parts and con­nect­ing with audi­ences from there. “Look at how exquis­ite each ele­ment is – the dancers, musi­cians, wardrobe and make­up artists are all at the top of their game, so we have to focus on ways to tell those sto­ries and break [a show] into its com­po­nents,” Der­ricks said. As a result, the brand has begun exper­i­ment­ing with mas­ter class­es in fields like make­up and dance. “The idea for the mas­ter class came from a dancer in the [Bea­t­les Love]. She’s 23 and a busi­ness major and brought all these insights to table – ‘There are 75 dance stu­dios in Vegas, so imag­ine the audi­ence,’” Der­ricks said. “There is space in the world for peo­ple to come clos­er to us, so now we have half-day mas­ter class­es for aspir­ing dancers. They get to come on stage and go through the chore­og­ra­phy and have their fam­i­lies in the audi­ence and watch the show in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent way, which is a new way to bring peo­ple to us.”

5. Conduct Team Building Activities

What’s more, not­ing the cir­cus itself has changed dras­ti­cal­ly as tra­di­tion­al cir­cus­es includ­ed acts in which per­form­ers were relat­ed by blood and were there­fore very tight­ly knit, Der­ricks said Cirque du Soleil, which includes groups of per­form­ers with­out fam­i­ly ties, had to con­jure up its own unique meth­ods of fos­ter­ing trust. “Cirque du Soleil brought in tech­nol­o­gy and engi­neers and cir­cum­vent­ed this entire fam­i­ly unit thing that used to be the core,” Der­ricks said. “Your rig­ger is an engi­neer. The thing queu­ing you is a com­put­er. When we talk about trust, there’s a whole lot more than just a per­son.” As a result, Cirque du Soleil cre­at­ed Spark Ses­sions, or cor­po­rate expe­ri­ences for net­work­ing, busi­ness devel­op­ment and/or mile­stones, to get oth­er com­pa­nies involved and to help teach what it has since learned about trust and lead­er­ship, Der­ricks said, adding, “Peo­ple always want to know what our workman’s comp looks like.” But there are inter­nal ben­e­fits as well. Der­ricks said the ses­sions help Cirque du Soleil breathe new life into its per­form­ers as they are giv­en a fresh look at their own shows and are remind­ed of the intri­ca­cy of what they do. Fur­ther, Der­ricks said when you con­sid­er shows like the Bea­t­les or Michael Jack­son One, some of the per­form­ers weren’t born when the show­cased artists were pop­u­lar – or even still alive, so Cirque du Soleil per­form­ers have to find their own ways into the music and sto­ries, and these Spark Ses­sions help them do that, too.