Vinny Nicoletti, Meow Wolf’s new chief marketing and revenue officer, joined the immersive art company in May 2024. Meow Wolf currently has four exhibitions, in Santa Fe, Las Vegas, Denver and Grapevine. A second Texas location is coming in 2024, before an LA destination. Its venues house secret passageways, portals to other worlds, mixed-reality playgrounds and interactive elements.
“I’ve been in location-based entertainment my entire career. Coming out of school, I started in sports. I worked in the [National Hockey League] and then in baseball. Then I transitioned to theme park and attractions portfolios where I worked in both field and corporate roles, mainly in marketing,” Nicoletti tells blooloop.
Since 1998, Nicoletti has contributed to the success of more than 50 entertainment brands, like Dollywood and the Vancouver Aquarium. His experience spans a variety of sectors, including professional and minor league sports, theme parks, water parks, zoological facilities, performing arts venues, resorts, hotels, and family entertainment centres (FECs).
Before his role at Meow Wolf, Nicoletti spent 12 years with Herschend Family Entertainment, the US’s largest family-owned operator of theme parks and attractions. There, he led the marketing and strategic planning for all fixed-site theme parks, attractions, resorts, touring entertainment and adventure travel segments.
“Meow Wolf calls you”
“Throughout my career, I advanced up through operations with Herschend Family Entertainment, who I was with for the past 13 years in various roles in an operational and a marketing capacity. I led the Philadelphia Aquarium as executive director. Then I served as senior vice president of marketing for Herschend at the home office here in Atlanta,” he says.
“My wife, son and I had a recreational trip planned to Las Vegas. We just happened to experience Omega Mart as a guest. Being in the industry for too many years, it’s fairly unusual that something would strike me as different. When I went through Omega Mart, I was blown away by its uniqueness and creativity, and the inventiveness of something that was truly differentiating within our category.”
“A few months later, as Kismet would have it, I received a call from a recruiter. They wouldn’t tell me who it was. I wasn’t under NDA yet, but he did give me some business details. I could gather it was probably one of three operators. That evening, I said to my wife, ‘I got the call, and I think it might be Meow Wolf’. She immediately said, ‘If it’s Meow Wolf, you have to take it. I’ve never seen you that excited about an immersive experience, attraction or location-based entertainment facility.’
“We continued the conversations, and here we are. They say that Meow Wolf calls you, you don’t pursue it. That feels like a true statement for me.”
In his new role, Nicoletti leads Meow Wolf’s marketing strategies and initiatives and oversees revenue-generating activities and field-based operations within Meow Wolf’s experiences. His responsibilities include developing and implementing innovative strategies to boost brand awareness and achieve sustainable growth.
New “chief equipped”
Nicolleti deals with a “combination of all of the marketing-driven initiatives, and all of the on-site-driven revenue initiatives”, he tells us, adding: “So the disciplines under purview are marketing, all of operations, and all of our revenue streams, which is food and beverage, merchandise, ancillary revenue and private events.
“Meow Wolf has done an amazing job of creating a groundswell of affinity for the brand, for the experience. Now is the time to really look at how we can take advantage of that groundswell to continue to paint the world Meow Wolf. My job is to get more people to fall in love with what Meow Wolf has to offer.”
“To do that, we need to fuel that engine to make sure that we can continue to evangelise, expand and spread Meow Wolf in a way that our vision is calling us to do. I see myself as a chief equipper. I’m there to equip us to really grow, expand and become more missional in our drive.”
The original Meow Wolf exhibition, the House of Eternal Return, opened in 2016 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It features over 70 immersive rooms and a storyline focusing on a family who vanished after a forbidden experiment at their Victorian mansion. Meow Wolf’s second permanent installation, Omega Mart, opened as the anchor space at Area15 in Las Vegas in 2021. The supermarket-style experience combines purchasable products and art installations.
Immersive art experiences
Convergence Station, opened in 2021, is Meow Wolf’s third permanent exhibition. It’s home to Meow Wolf’s iconic art and 70 unique installations, as well as portals, rooms and wormholes. Meow Wolf’s latest immersive art experience, The Real Unreal, opened in 2023 in Grapevine, Texas. This contains a series of dreamscapes, otherworldly landscapes, and surreal environments.
Meow Wolf is already huge in the artainment space, but Nicoletti has plans to boost its brand awareness. “My job is a bit easier when the experience is so incredible. Our founders and creative teams have built depth and wonder into our experience and turned guests into evangelists. Because of that, Meow Wolf has really reverberated, not only throughout the attractions industry, but beyond,” he says.
“Even so, we want to paint the world Meow Wolf. To do that, we have to cast a wider net and infuse more sophistication into our approach. We’re shifting our media strategies to amplify that groundswell in the growth markets and we’re building up our content generation capabilities. We’re even looking beyond the four-wall experience for other consumer touchpoints. It will be very exciting to see in the next few years how we’ve been able to expand that reach.”
Here’s how Nicoletti is positioning Meow Wolf:
“While art is the very nature of who we are, it’s important to note that Meow Wolf shatters what one may think of immersive art. We’re really this kaleidoscope of storytelling, visual art, interactive play, and mystery-solving adventure. We bring together hundreds of real-life artists and creators of all types to collaborate and create these immersive and story-driven worlds,” he says.
Shifting Meow Wolf’s media strategies
“The combination of this interconnected narrative of all the unique exhibitions and real-life artists, and it’s all infused with mystery and discovery. I think that separates us from the pack.”
As above, all of Meow Wolf’s installations are connected. Nicoletti says:
“Each of our exhibitions in the various markets is distinctive, and they are all connected through a universal story. If a guest were to experience Meow Wolf in our new market in Houston, opening up this fall, and then visit Las Vegas for Omega Mart or go to Denver to Convergence Station, they’ll recognise connectivity through those stories, but each of those exhibitions has a definitive story to drive that level of engagement.”
“There’s so much story at each of those exhibitions that a guest can’t take it all in on one visit. To connect and get that level of depth of story, explore the mystery, and satisfy curiosity, guests will enjoy coming multiple times to learn all the secrets behind the multiverse.”
How is Nicoletti marketing such a unique concept? “Meow Wolf is a mind-bending, multidimensional experience that defies categorization. That serves up a certain challenge. But also, it’s a defensible point of differentiation. It gives us a licence to be uncommonly creative in the ways in which we tell our story.”
Meow Wolf “defies categorization”
“The heart of the Meow Wolf experience is safely venturing into the unknown. The more curious you get, the more you seek, the more you can discover. Within the experience, we craft these immersive stories that unfold gradually, inviting guests to become part of the narrative and uncover secrets as they engage with our content. We leverage that same art of storytelling in our campaigns: creating intrigue, appealing to curiosities, drawing audiences in to learn what happens next.
“We can create that curiosity with intriguing teasers and previews to give just enough information to spark interest but leave the full experience a mystery. Our marketing campaigns even leverage cryptic messages and visual hints that encourage potential guests to explore and discover more within the exhibitions. It’s marrying the heart of the experience to the heart of our messaging, and all of that works within a singular ecosystem.”
Artificial intelligence and other tools are increasingly used in marketing campaigns, but Meow Wolf’s visitors expect authenticity. “AI is a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to guest expectations. I would say it’s a bit off-brand for Meow Wolf,” Nicoletti says.
“In my experience, guests demand, crave and respond to authenticity. At Meow Wolf, we have hundreds of real-life artists, some of the most creative folks I’ve ever encountered. They’re building these worlds into stories with their own hands, hearts and talents. Guests can touch, hear and feel their passion inside these exhibitions. That is our sustainable competitive advantage.
“AI can replicate, source and solve, but it will never match the heart of a real artist. There’s a place for AI in some of the back-of-house marketing initiatives in terms of data analysis and segmentation. But I am confident that AI won’t make its way to the forefront of the Meow Wolf experience.”
New venues in Houston and LA
Meow Wolf’s fifth installation is due to open in the Fifth Ward of Houston in 2024. This will include a surreal dive bar in the afterlife called Cowboix Hevvven, a honky-tonk establishment with a working restaurant and bar. Here, guests will meet a “weeping grief creature”, said Meow Wolf. There is also a pool shark with a disco ball for a head and an “octogenarian armadillo spinning yarns of the bar’s numerous patrons”. An interactive jukebox will play songs by Texas artists.
“We just started launching our invasion campaign for Houston. We’ve got three phases of a campaign when we go into market. We have intrigue, we have invade, and we have invite. We’re very excited about Houston and to join the community, and we are developing a really special experience for that audience. We’ll soon be inviting our guests to change their frequency in Houston, but that’s all I can say now. We are opening in fall of this year, and then tickets will be on sale at the start of October.”
Opening in early 2026 is Meow Wolf’s sixth exhibition at the Cinemark complex at Howard Hughes Los Angeles. Nicoletti is “even more cryptic” when teasing this new Los Angeles attraction. “What I can tell you is that we are celebrating what makes Los Angeles most known, and that is cinema. There will be a very distinctive and unique look at the multiverse through the lens of cinema.”
Looking at Meow Wolf’s seasonal offering, Nicoletti is a Halloween fanatic. In 2023, he displayed over 100 pumpkins at his home and welcomed more than 1,200 trick-or-treaters.
Also, Meow Wolf launched its new annual Cosmic Howl event for Halloween across all its exhibitions last year. Highlights included spooky stories and pumpkin painting, as well as eerie drag productions and creature feature screenings. Halloween events are growing in popularity, with visitor attractions seeking to boost sales through expanded and branded experiences.
“Distinctly Meow Wolf” seasonal events
“I’m a massive Halloween fan. The reality is that seasonal offerings in this business are becoming more and more popular – and for good reason. There is a ton of upside; folks are in the mood to come out and do something fun and celebrate. Meow Wolf has a fall experience called Cosmic Howl. We are doing a smaller version of Cosmic Howl this year, which is well worth seeing,” Nicoletti says.
“But as we look to the future, we will double down on how we bring these marketing hooks to market. You can think of a traditional rhythm that you might see at other institutions with spring festivities, summer events, and fall. However, the most important thing we have to figure out is how we do these seasonal celebrations in a distinctly Meow Wolf way. So when you come to a Halloween event, how does that expand into the multiverse that is Meow Wolf?”
“We use this concept of the accessible unknown, an anchor point that most people are familiar with. For example, Omega Mart in Las Vegas appears to be a supermarket, a familiar anchor point for just about everybody. But as guests enter this supermarket, they see it’s not quite normal. That inspires curiosity, and that then inspires exploration, and exploration inspires discovery. So, as we look at our seasonal events, they will all have to be wrapped in that same ethos of curiosity, intrigue and mystery.”
Ali Rubinstein, then Meow Wolf’s chief creative officer, told blooloop in 2021 the company was looking at a “very aggressive expansion of our portfolio of exhibitions, nationally and internationally.”
Nicoletti says Meow Wolf is “absolutely no less aggressive than we were in 2021”. He adds: “In addition to continuing our search for domestic locations, we’re exploring opportunities worldwide.”
Nicoletti continues: “Our energy has not changed, and in fact, it’s even more elevated. We’re really looking to paint the world Meow Wolf. To do that, we’re relying on the ongoing and deepening fandom that we’re experiencing from our audiences. We are so grateful that the audiences and our guests love our product. I am blown away by the guest satisfaction and [net promoter scores] that Meow Wolf and the company has realised.
“We invite people to come on out and experience it for yourselves again if you haven’t or have already. There’s more depth, story and mystery to uncover than you may know.”
Images courtesy of Meow Wolf
