Alexis Krisay is the Founder and Owner of Serendipit Consulting, which delivers innovative brand activation and strategic marketing solutions. With over 20 years in marketing, she has advanced from on-site leasing to national leadership, mastering both online and offline strategies for clients in real estate, lifestyle, spa, and health and fitness. Alexis was honored as a 30 Under 30 in 2013 and a Student Housing Rising Star in 2014 while driving occupancy from 35% to 97%. She holds a degree in communications and marketing from the University of Arizona and is an active member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [1:43] Alexis Krisay discusses building a “Dirty Dancing” inspired fake hotel
- [3:43] Alexis’ decision to work early and its impact
- [6:17] The challenges of leasing student housing properties
- [8:32] The $10,000 giveaway campaign that revived a struggling property in San Luis Obispo
- [12:38] How Alexis crafted marketing strategies for multi-franchise brands
- [14:43] How can a gym attract customers in a crowded marketplace?
- [18:15] The process of pitching big ideas to clients
- [19:49] Insights on building and sustaining a successful 16-year business partnership
- [22:05] What challenges has Alexis faced since becoming a sole business owner again?
- [23:50] The impact of COVID-19 on the marketing industry
- [27:04] What brand activation truly means and its role in creating immersive experiences
In this episode…
How do wild ideas transform an industry? The fast-paced and competitive marketing world demands innovative strategies to capture attention and drive results. Traditional approaches like flyers or generic campaigns often fail to make an impact in saturated markets. So, how does one find fresh, bold ideas that resonate with target audiences and deliver measurable outcomes?
Alexis Krisay, a marketing veteran known for her audacious and imaginative strategies, shares her expertise in creating out-of-the-box marketing campaigns that generate buzz and drive conversions. From leasing student housing properties with immersive events like pool parties and $10,000 cash giveaways to developing unique strategies for brands like Orangetheory Fitness, Alexis emphasizes the importance of creative risk-taking and data-driven execution. She advises businesses to step outside their industry’s traditional playbook, engage audiences with experiential activations, and track ROI metrics to ensure campaigns are impactful and profitable.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Alexis Krisay, Founder and Owner of Serendipit Consulting, about crafting innovative marketing strategies. Alexis shares stories of how her creative campaigns revitalized underperforming properties, elevated franchise brands, and launched innovative concepts like OHM Fitness. Her insights take listeners on a journey of innovation and creativity that defies traditional playbooks.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Alexis Krisay on LinkedIn
- Serendipit Consulting
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO)
Quotable Moments:
- “Ideas are free, and when we’re excited about them, we’re vested and here as your partner to help.”
- “In order to enter, to win, or to come to the pool party, you had to tour the property.”
- “We make it easy for big ideas to come to life, so you can sit back, relax, and let us handle the rest.”
- “Think outside the traditional playbook in your industry. If everyone else is doing X, you need to do Y.”
- “We built digital leasing offices and invested in this digital leasing experience.”
Action Steps:
- Leverage unique promotions and events: Host creative events or promotions that stand out from the traditional marketing playbook. By offering something unexpected, like a cash giveaway or a themed event, businesses can generate buzz and attract a larger audience, addressing the challenge of differentiation in a crowded market.
- Build strategic partnerships: Collaborate with complementary brands to create mutually beneficial events or campaigns. This approach not only amplifies reach by tapping into another brand’s audience but also enhances the value proposition for customers, effectively overcoming the challenge of limited resources.
- Embrace innovation in customer engagement: Use unconventional marketing tactics, such as guerrilla marketing with visual props like orange bikes, to create intrigue and conversation. This strategy leverages curiosity and word-of-mouth, addressing the challenge of capturing attention in a saturated market.
- Focus on experiential marketing: Create immersive experiences that allow customers to interact with the brand on a personal level. This approach can foster community and engagement, addressing the digital disconnect by facilitating genuine, face-to-face connections.
- Utilize ROI tracking for marketing initiatives: Implement thorough tracking and reporting for all marketing activities to measure success and guide future decisions. This data-driven approach ensures that efforts are not only creative but also effective, addressing the challenge of demonstrating value and justifying marketing investments.
Sponsor: Rise25
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
All right. Today we’re talking about how to come up with a wild idea and then use that to grow business in virtually any industry. My guest today is Alexis Krisay. She’s going to tell us about some of those wild ideas. So stay tuned.
Intro: 00:17
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:34
Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of this show. And you know, each week I talk with interesting CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of different companies. And if you look at the archives, we’ve got Netflix and Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinko’s. Lots of great episodes. Check them out. And of course, this episode brought to you by Rise25, where we help B2B businesses to get clients referrals and strategic partnerships with done-for-you podcasts and content marketing. And you can learn about us at Rise25.com. Learn about our new podcast Copilot platform that we rolled out recently.
All right, Alexis, so happy to have you here today. And so first of all, you’ve got an interesting background. You have been doing marketing for 20-plus years, and you’re known for coming up with these kinds of crazy, wild ideas. And we’re going to be talking about that. You also have been very active in entrepreneurs organization, which is how we connected with each other. And first, I’d love to start by getting to know what people are like as a kid and you as a kid. You and your best friend decided you loved the movie Dirty Dancing, and got to love Dirty Dancing. And you, like most kids, like, just stop right there and maybe watch it 20 times, but you built a fake hotel. Tell me about your fake hotel that you built.
Alexis Krisay: 01:43
Yes, I know, it’s crazy. Our parents thought we were insane because every day after school, we would go to each other’s houses and work on, you know, the old school boxy Macs. And we decided to name this hotel. I honestly don’t remember what the name is, but we spent forever naming it and then we defined it like all these activities and it was just like the Dirty Dancing concept on steroids. And we spent about six months fully building it out every day together, like typing it up.
My stepmom worked for a paper company, and so she would bring us these fabulous paper samples that we could print brochures on. And we went from, you know, hotel brochures to menus to spa menus to the activity menus. And it just was like, so elaborate and funny for two eight-year-olds to dream up and actually make it come to life. And ironically, when my mom and I were cleaning out her storage in her attic, we found it. So wow. She’s like, see, you’ve been crazy from the beginning.
John Corcoran: 02:48
Well, it’s not that far removed from doing work in student housing, like building a property. You know, it sounds actually super similar. So it’s kind of a harbinger of things to come for you.
Alexis Krisay: 02:58
Which is funny because all growing up I wanted to say I wanted to be a pediatrician, but then I ended up in marketing. Yeah.
John Corcoran: 03:05
Go figure. Right. And you also worked at a young age, 14 years old. You were working in a coffee shop, and you basically became a manager of two different coffee shops at age 16. I don’t know anyone who was doing that at age 16, I certainly wasn’t.
Alexis Krisay: 03:17
Yeah, I just begged my dad for I wanted to work really early on, and he incentivized me by saying, you know, I will match whatever you have in the bank by the time you need to buy a car. So I wanted to work as much as I can because obviously I was like, I’m going to buy this fancy car. And it was a Honda Civic back in the day.
John Corcoran: 03:39
I had an accord. I had an accord. That was one of my first cars.
Alexis Krisay: 03:42
Yeah, it was awesome. And so I ended up working for two years really hard. Just as like, you know, the barista behind the scenes. And then at age 16 was promoted to manager and was doing coffee orders, doing scheduling, and ended up hiring. It was so fun, all my friends to work there, and it just became like the spot in high school to, you know, come hang out, get coffee, and then kind of leave and launch ourselves, like from closing the coffee shop to the next party.
John Corcoran: 04:14
Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny, when I was in high school, we had a place called Yogurt and Video. That was the name of it. Yogurt and video. It sold frozen yogurt, and it was a video rental store. And it was like the hot place that everyone worked at. And everyone wants to be at the hot place that everyone works at. The high school kids work at. Right. You know, and you. So then your work kind of came naturally to you and in college the same thing. You got into working and you became an on site leasing agent. Was that how you got into student housing? Talk a little bit about that. You eventually like traveling the country as the national director of marketing for this company.
Alexis Krisay: 04:46
Yeah. So I think just growing up, everyone told me, Alexis, you could sell water to the ocean. And so my stepdad was a real estate agent, and I always would go with him to open houses. And I love talking to people, and I loved that I couldn’t really sell because I didn’t have my license at a young age, but I loved helping him there. And so when the opportunity came up to be an onsite leasing agent at this brand new student development in Tucson, I jumped on it and it was a blast.
I mean, we weren’t just leasing apartments, we were throwing pool parties, and that was our leasing strategy. We had the fortune of the opportunity to work with the corporate office to come up with a really cool campaign. I convinced them to buy an old school Hummer. We painted it and wrapped it with the logo, and we got a bunch of cute girls, and we’re in the back throwing t-shirts out on campus. And we became known as the uni house girls.
And that property was leased up. It was again working with my best friends, but also making a ton of money because we were incentivized to lease that place up. And then my senior year got promoted and was the national director of marketing, really traveling the country to see underperforming assets and come up with a plan, a strategy to, you know, really fix it and make sure that in student housing, it’s 0 to 100 every year. It’s not like a multifamily where you’re just filling in units. It’s always you’re always starting over. So I’m really competitive and I love that piece.
John Corcoran: 06:16
Yeah. And what were some things that were holding back holding these properties back or they were run down or was it just kind of they passed the tipping point and there were so many vacancies that it was hard to get it back up again.
Alexis Krisay: 06:29
Yeah. I mean, multiple things. I mean, a couple things were just like oversupply coming into the market in certain smaller markets. The other thing is rundown properties where I would go in and I would go to Ikea and buy a bunch of new cool furniture and paint the walls kind of wild and just make it feel like more of a college atmosphere than kind of a rundown apartment. And then also, just like the lack of creative marketing campaigns, like back in the day, everyone thought, get a flyer, go on campus and flyer the campus, and that’s how you’re going to lease. And just as student housing grew, you needed to come up with bigger ideas to just really move the needle.
John Corcoran: 07:08
And then how do you make sure that that ends up, as you said, moving the needle like, you know, I think the fear would be, okay, we’re going to spend a bunch of money on a pool party. Everyone’s going to show up for this pool party, get free food or whatever, and then it’s not going to materialize into actual people renting there. So how did you ensure that it actually resulted in the impact that you wanted?
Alexis Krisay: 07:32
Yeah, I mean, well, we put certain guardrails in place, like in order to enter, to win or to come to the pool party, you had to tour the property. And when we do that, we were super confident in our, you know, team that we were closers. So we’re going to be throwing this awesome pool party they’re going to see. I mean, it was the best pool in Tucson at the time. They’re going to see the new gym, the apartments.
And they’re like, I have to live here. So and then as that buzz was building, we knew what activities would really drive those leases. But yeah, I mean, if we were doing any giveaways, it was to make sure you’re at least getting them to a point where they’re semi interested so we can move the needle. And then always tracking I mean I am a big reports and ROI person. So after every activity we would track how many tours we got, how many conversions, how many converted leases. All that fun stuff.
John Corcoran: 08:25
Yeah. And then tell us about this student housing project you did in San Luis Obispo. You had this even more wild.
Alexis Krisay: 08:32
Oh my God, so wild. So the other crazy thing is that ironically, I had a boyfriend. I grew up in Pasadena. My boyfriend in high school lived at this Mustang Village place. and when I would go visit, it was like a dump. I mean, it was, but it was the place to live. Fast forward, when I got transferred there, it became obvious that there was so much oversupply in the market that Mustang Village wasn’t cool anymore. So we toured the property, you know, figured out some things as far as like, you know, sprucing it up would help. But like, I don’t know, how are we going to lease this place? We got to come up with some crazy idea that’s going to drive traffic.
And I honestly have no clue how I came up with this idea, but this is typical of my brain. I came up with this idea of like, what if we did something totally outrageous that no student housing community has done? Let’s give away $10,000 cash. An armed guard with like, had the briefcase of the cash attached to his wrist, a film crew, a limo, and then you had 24 hours to spend that 10K.
John Corcoran: 09:37
And in San Luis Obispo. San Luis Obispo is a sleepy town like this. Seems like very out of character.
Alexis Krisay: 09:43
I know, totally out of character. And honestly, I was shocked that management bought into my wild idea. But they’re like, you know what? We got at least this property. We trust you. Make it happen. So we launched the promotion. We did a ton of radio. We would host like tours, weekends, and then the goal was to, like, throw this big party to do the giveaway, right? And you would get basically a ticket if you toured. You get a ticket if you bring a friend. And then just this buzz just built up and the property was, I mean, packed every.
John Corcoran: 10:17
How many people did you have there when you announced the winner?
Alexis Krisay: 10:20
We had about 300 people, like in the big yard, which is crazy.
John Corcoran: 10:24
All like on pins and needles. Hoping they’re the ones.
Alexis Krisay: 10:26
I need the money. Yeah. And, you know, we hyped it all up. The radio guy was there and it was so fun. So actually the property at the time when I came in was around like 35% At least. And after this campaign we fell to like 97%, which is phenomenal. Because I think if you also signed a lease, you got extra points to, you know, get entered.
John Corcoran: 10:51
Oh yeah.
Alexis Krisay: 10:52
We did the giveaway and it was awesome. This kid won. And of course, it’s like this cute college kid and he’s like grabbing all these cute girls, his dream. And he’s like, let’s go in the limo. Get in.
John Corcoran: 11:05
The limo. Yeah.
Alexis Krisay: 11:07
And they head to Santa Barbara and of course, they just party it up. The video footage was awesome. I mean, it was just a great time.
John Corcoran: 11:15
Yeah. Now, I went to college in Santa Barbara, so that’s probably where I would head to with ten grand and a limo full of girls. That would. That would be a pretty good place to hang out for a day.
Alexis Krisay: 11:23
And I think you only brought one other guy friend, which was hilarious. And just like.
John Corcoran: 11:28
All his buddies are like, hey, hey, remember us, remember us? Can we get a spot in the limo? He’s like.
Alexis Krisay: 11:34
No, no, no. See you guys when I get back. Oh that’s hilarious. Yeah. I’m out of here. What a cool idea.
John Corcoran: 11:40
And that’s not. I mean, I imagine when you presented this to them, you’re like, this ain’t going to work, but I’m going to tell them about it. So they just hear this crazy idea, and then you’re just shocked when they say, yeah, well, let’s do it.