rin Freeman: Welcome to Sweet Tea and Strategy, a podcast by Ackerman Marketing and PR, featuring business and community leaders throughout Tennessee talking about issues and trends of importance to our state and beyond. I’m Erin Freeman, and on behalf of Ackerman, today I’m excited to be sharing our conversation and a glass of sweet tea with our guest, Mary Kellogg Joslyn, co-owner, president, and COO of Titanic Museum Attractions in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and Branson, Missouri. This podcast is also special because it’s our 10th episode. On behalf of all of us at Ackerman Marketing and PR, I want to say thank you to everyone listening. This podcast has given us the opportunity to speak to so many leaders representing a wide variety of industries, and we’ve appreciated all the insightful stories we’ve been able to share with you. And we’re incredibly proud that this momentous podcast is with one of the best marketing strategists we know. Mary, welcome to Sweet Tea and Strategy.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: I’m so honored you asked me. It’s good to see you again today.
Erin Freeman: Thank you, thank you. So, before we start talking about your background in the entertainment industry and Titanic, let’s talk sweet tea. Do you like it, and if so, where can you find the best sweet tea in East Tennessee?
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Oh gosh, that’s a good question. I think the best sweet tea in Tennessee is at the Titanic in our private dining room.
Erin Freeman: Of course!
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Yeah, so most people don’t know that the ship does have a private dining room and we serve tea.
Erin Freeman: Yes, and it is—it’s great for birthday parties and special events...
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Well, for we have groups, we’re sold out for October and November and Christmas parties, so yeah, we’re very lucky. So we call it our secret private dining room.
Erin Freeman: And it’s a gorgeous space.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: It’s beautiful.
Erin Freeman: Mary knows how to do excellent events, so I bet y’all do have good sweet tea.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: We do have some good sweet tea, as your sweet tea is today.
Erin Freeman: Yes. Okay, so let’s talk business and strategy. You’ve been an executive senior vice president for the Walt Disney Company and an executive for CBS. Live with Regis and Kathie Lee and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire became TV staples because of your influence. So, how has all of that transitioned into becoming an owner in the most successful attractions of its kind?
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Oh, you’re very kind to say that. You know, when I started at CBS, I didn’t know that I was going to end up in television. I was working for another ad agency and the CBS guys kept coming in and saying, "Hey kid, I think you’d be a great salesperson," and I went, "I really didn’t think of myself as a salesperson," but I was always a strategy on my career, where I was going and what I was going to do.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: So I went to CBS, started in the—in the sales area. But I learned real quick that you’ve got to run around with the people that you want to eventually end up with, and I wanted to be in marketing. So I ended up being with—running around with the marketing people when a job came open, I did an ad campaign on myself and I got the job.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And then I knew I wanted to be head of programming, so I started running around with the programming people. I always did my job, but I—I eventually became head of programming. And the reason I tell you that is because I planned what I was going to do and I didn’t just sit there waiting for the job to open up; I prepared myself for the job.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: So then one day, I kept saying there’s a sleeping giant out in the valley, because I was in L.A. with CBS, and I kept saying, "You know, somebody needs to wake that company up," and—and it’s just sleeping, it’s dormant, Walt had died and it kind of just sat there. And then one day I got a call with my boss, and the two of us went to the Walt Disney Company.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And it was one of the most exciting times because we actually rebuilt that company; there was 15 of us brought in to rebuild that company. So I ended up being there for 20 years, and as we started building that company, we realized that we wanted to create a division that had reality television shows in those days, so we decided that we wanted to bring Regis over.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Now, when I was at CBS, we had tried to get Regis, we couldn’t get him, he was at ABC. So we brought him into the fold and we developed a show, and it was the Regis and Kathie Lee show. And from there we developed other shows and eventually the Millionaire show became one of the hottest shows on television.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And—do you have time for me to tell you that story? So the Millionaire show, it’s the night when there actually is going to be a million dollars given away. And so we’re in the control booth and there’s the director and the AD and myself; the people who write the questions are sequestered in a different room.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And so it gets down to the last question, and Regis gives him the question and then says, "When we come back from the commercial break, um, we’ll get your answer." So we’re in the booth and now the director is telling all the cameramen, "Hey, you know, if he gets the question right, we have to capture this moment. Camera one, this is where you’re going to be," and he tells all eight cameras where they’re supposed to be.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: So we look around and we say, "Okay, is everybody ready? Okay, we’re ready." The room’s really quiet. Come back from commercial, we go to Regis, Regis gives him the question and he says, "I want to call a friend," and we all go, "Oh my god, he wants to call a friend."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Okay, call the friend. Who do you want to call? "I want to call my father." You want to call your father? Okay, so we get the father on the line. Comes back, Regis gives him the question again, he—he says, "Are you ready for the answer? To ask a friend?" He said, "I just wanted to call my dad and tell him I’m about to win a million bucks."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: So, he wins a million bucks, all the camera action happens, the balloons, everything else, and the accountants come running into the control booth and they say to me, "Hey Mary, in those days they gave a million-dollar check." He said, "Mary, here, you need to sign this check."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Well, everything is happening so fast, and I go home and I tell my husband John, I said, "John, someone won a million bucks tonight, and I—I didn’t know my signature was worth a million bucks!" And he always said to me, "I wish you would have got that Xerox copy of that first millionaire check," so it’s kind of a standing joke.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And the reason I tell you all of this is I learned so much along the way on all the jobs that I had and, you know, when we were building the Titanic... and I didn’t know I was going to leave Disney at the time when John said, um, "I’m going to build a permanent museum."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And the reason he was building a permanent museum on the Titanic is he was the second person to ever go to the Titanic and he had all these artifacts and they traveled all over the country and the first place he ever put them was Memphis, Tennessee. So after being in Europe for a while, he decided we have to build permanent ones, and the first one he was building was in Branson, Missouri.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: At the same time, my career is colliding where everybody that I was brought in with is gone. And I really truly believe sometimes you gotta know when it’s time to go. And I was the last person left out of the original team that built Michael Eisner and his team. And I just felt like, you know what, the new team had come in, Bob Iger—who I absolutely adore—I knew that team was going to do a great job.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: I just wanted something else. So I said to John, "You know what, I think I’d like to leave and I’d like to join your company." Now, I’m never sure whether a husband and wife is going to work because John’s style is so different than mine, so different. So I said, "We’re going to make a deal."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And John goes, "You always make a deal, Mary." And I go, "Well, I want everybody to report to me and I’ll report to you because there can’t be two bosses on a—what I felt was a show that we were going to do."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: So he agreed to that, and in fairness, John needs to worry about the future and where we’re going to go and all the financials. So we built this company and the first day that I brought all the team in, um, we did a one-week, uh, session of developing the team, the management team, and I brought in all the crew.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And I said, "We’re now going to go through the ship." And so we go through the ship and I said, "I want everybody here at 8:30 in the morning, dressed, ready to go." Everybody’s there but one person. And I said, "The meeting said 8:30, so we started at 8:30."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: He walks in and he’s five minutes late, and I stop the meeting and I looked at him and I said, "What just happened with that gentleman walking in five minutes late is disrespectful to everybody else. So when we say we have an 8:30 meeting, that’s when the meeting starts."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And so I talked about systems and what is important to a company. And my feeling is, when I would walk into a television show, I was always responsible for hiring the executive producer, the producer, the director. From there on, they hire the rest of the staff, and every show was about 150 people.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And I would—I would walk in and I—I would always say the same statement: "I’m going to assume you’re all creative or you wouldn’t be here on this show. But I’m also going to tell you that we have to have systems. If there are not systems in place, it will kill the creative idea. So when we build systems here at the ship, it’s for a purpose to make your job easier."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: So, um, I then decided to build a "Titanic College," and so every employee goes through Titanic College because my feeling is you have to understand what Titanic is, the philosophy of the company, why are we here? None of us would be here without John, and so it’s important they know the backstory. So I think all of that helped me to be a good manager, you might say.
Erin Freeman: Well, and those that work for you, you can tell how passionate they are about telling the stories of Titanic, and it’s because you’ve allowed them to become invested in the process that you talk about. So, speaking of a process, Tennessee tourism is a machine, as you know, and it is such an economic driver for our state. And the Great Smoky Mountains area, which includes Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg, is a world-renowned tourist destination and the Parkway is attraction famous. So what sets Titanic Museum Attractions apart from the rest?
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Great question. So when we started to build Titanic, John’s feeling was that it should be called a "Titanic Attraction." And when I went out to talk to the community, I was explaining more what we weren’t than what we were. And I came back to John and I said, "You’re going to have to accept the fact that it is a museum, John."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: So that’s when he said we’re going to call it a "Titanic Museum Attraction," because it’s more than a museum. We had to identify who is the customer that would come? In a museum business it’s 55-plus. My feeling was that we go after women 25 to 54 with children—that’s our core, secondary is 55-plus.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And by identifying that model, it helped us decide: how are we going to build this ship? Because John was thinking about a regular building, there was our designer and all of us sitting around a room and we said, "You know what, we’re going to build the ship."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And the reason we’re going to build the ship is because at Disney we had what we called the "nag factor." And the nag factor is when you’re driving down the strip and you got all this stuff going on, what—who is going to get more attention? And we felt by building a ship—which was not easy by the way—um, that that would be what we call the nag factor: "Hey Mom, what’s going on in that ship? I gotta go see it."
Erin Freeman: Well, it’s such an iconic design and when you do drive down the Parkway with it sitting up on the hill just a little like it does, it does stand out.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Well, I tell you a funny story. When we were there and we were trying to find out where we should place it, John and I originally looked where the Wax Museum is, and that’s really high up on the hill, and I said, "John, if we put it there," and he agreed by the way, "it’s going to look like Noah’s Ark."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: You know, so we gotta get a flatter land, so our contractor flattened the land that we were going to go on so we could get another acre. And, um, so anyway, that’s how that all came to be. Yeah.
Erin Freeman: Well, it stands out to say the least.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Well, she—she’s a beautiful ship. And, you know, I always teach everybody during their Titanic College, um, that we do have that this ship is to pay respect to the 2,208 that were aboard this ship. And we’ve had over 300 Titanic descendants come, and they all say the same thing: "Thank you for telling our stories," you know? So they learn the stories of all the boarding passes; you become that passenger and you find out the fate of your passenger at the end of your voyage.
Erin Freeman: You know, you’ve talked a lot about educating your staff about the Titanic story, and—and I know that your education efforts are important and noteworthy. So, talk to us about how you integrate education into your museum attraction.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Well, if you—it’s important as part of the history of not only our country, but the events that have happened, and I wanted the events of Titanic to continue on in the schools. We find that the school—we have one person that does all the educational program, we work—we have a core group of teachers that work with us, and we infil—we have infiltrated the schools.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And, um, in fact something very exciting coming up soon is, um, we’re bringing a gentleman over from Iceland who built the world’s largest Titanic Lego, and he and his mother are coming over. And he was 10 years old when he built it, it’s 26 feet long, and, um, the story is that he has autism.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And when I began working on this project, his mother—when we communicated a lot—she said, "It isn’t about the ship, is it Mary?" And I said, "No, it really isn’t about the Lego ship, it’s about your son and what he was able... he had a dream and he fulfilled it."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: So we continue that dream philosophy with all the students and—and tell them that there’s more than just history, that there’s stories to be told. I often think I always loved history as a—as a kid; if only the teachers would have taught stories instead of just dates and re—think of all the tests we had to learn all the dates of everything and it wasn’t about the stories. And I—I wonder if it would have made people more interested in history, I don’t know.
Erin Freeman: And going along with Brynjar and his—his journey with autism that resulted in—in building the beautiful Lego ship that y’all have on display, that opened your eyes up to the autistic community. Talk to us a little bit about the special day that you have for those with autism.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Um, yeah, we contacted the East Tennessee Autism Association. They came in and they sat and talked to us so that all the crew could be sensitive, um, if we had any children with challenges. And—and the more I listened I thought, "You know what, we need to open our doors early one day, 8:30 in the morning, and any family with autism—um, children—are welcome to come in before the ship opens so they can have their private moment, there’ll be a guide with them." So we do that every Thursday at 8:30 in the morning.
Erin Freeman: I’ve always appreciated the close attention to—to detail that you place on the guest experience and how they interact with Titanic Museum Attractions. So, if you could only name one, what is the driving factor behind your continued success at Titanic Museum Attractions?
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Well, sometimes when I’m out speaking and I—and I’m talking to a group, I’ll say to them, "What comes first: your guests or your employees?" And by the base of the—of the hands that go up either way, I’ll tell you um my philosophy is it’s employees.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: If you have happy employees, if they—if we set the expectation levels, if we educate them, if we nurture them, that’s my proudest moment because if I have happy crew, then I’m going to have happy guests. If they have the answers they don’t feel like, "Well, I didn’t know the answer to that."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: So we have an 8:30 meeting every day; the objective for that meeting is to go over what happened the day before, what’s happening today, what are the specials, what special groups are coming in today, and everybody knows that when a group comes in we say their name. So by educating the crew, it makes our guests have a better experience.
Erin Freeman: Well you are constantly adding to the experience. You—you always—you never cease to amaze me in your ability to find something, a new exhibit to bring in. You always, um, keep Titanic Museum Attraction relevant. So, I know that you are tremendously proactive, and it’s because of your proactive spirit that you are successful and guests keep coming back. So can you share with us any future goals or plans that you have for Titanic in years to come?
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Well, I think my biggest frustration sometimes with the tourist market is they don’t plan far enough ahead. And if we plan far enough ahead, if opportunities present themselves then we can—we can react to that.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: So, um, in 2020, 2021, 2022, that’s all done for us; we’re working on 2023. So, 2020 I have the—the most requested artifact ever coming in and it’s the Titanic violin that the bandmaster played and it sold for $1.7 million.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And in 2021, we are going to pay tribute to the Jewish passengers that were aboard and most people didn’t realize there was a kosher kitchen and there was a kosher chef aboard. And then 2022 I’m not ready to announce, but it will—it’s being worked on already.
Erin Freeman: I—I am already excited. I myself don’t know what is in store for that year, but knowing you, it’s going to be big and it will be fabulous and it will be something that everybody’s going to talk about.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: You know what, I wake up every morning excited about what I’m doing. And I’m excited because I share with the crew, "What are we doing?" and "What’s happening?" Every day we end our—our meeting with the following question: "Is there a story to be... that you want to share with the crew?" And I guarantee you every day a crew member has been touched by one of our guests and they tell—they share the story.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And so, you know, sometimes when I—people will say, "Well, share a story," sometimes I’ll tell the story of um a little girl that was on the ship with her father. She’s seven years old, she’s traveling with her father. She’s on her way—they’re on their way to Galesburg, Illinois.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: It comes time that they hit the iceberg. The father puts the child in the lifeboat but he begs the officers, "Can I go with her because she has nobody," and they said, "No, only women and children." And he begs them, "Please, she—she will have nobody."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And finally the officers turned their back and they let him in the boat. He does end up in Galesburg, Illinois, with her. But eventually they get homesick and they go back to Syria. And sometimes people will say to me, "Well do you ever get tired of telling that story?" And I go, "No, I don’t, you see the little girl’s name was Monica and she stands here with me every day, and she says, 'Mary, don’t let them forget my story.'"
Erin Freeman: Right. So beyond that, is there a guest story that stands out to you that is your favorite?
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Well, it has to do with the Lego—it comes right to mind. There was a—crew member standing there and there was a—grandfather that came in with his autistic young boy, and they were look—standing there looking at the Lego.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And the two, uh, became engaged in a conversation. And the crew member recited this story to me and he said, "You know Mary, I was standing there and the father—tears came to his eyes as his son looked at the—at the Lego."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And then he said to—the grandfather said to our crew member, "You know, maybe they’re the ones that are brilliant and we’re not. And maybe we need to take a step back and understand what they go through and appreciate what they want."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And we’ve shared that story many times, and it’s part of our training that we talk about when it comes to autism. So to be sensitive, to people to care, and yet encourage them to have courage.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: You know, sometimes sales will make a mistake and give the wrong price to um, you know, a client, let’s say. My feeling is you don’t beat them up; my feeling is we learn from that moment. And we do a lot of secret shopping because the only way to learn if your company’s doing a good job for your guest is to do secret shopping.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: You—I’ve got a story for you if you want to hear it. So we did a secret shop on our reservations department. And the report came back and it said—the woman that was doing the secret shop said, "I’m um married, two boys, a six-year-old and a ten-year-old, I believe."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And she said, "I—I couldn’t believe how great the—the reservationist was. He gave us all the information, he upgraded us, he was so engaged and and I just thought he did a perfect job. And then I asked him one question at the end. I said, 'Do you really think my six-year-old will enjoy the museum?'"
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And there was a pause and he said, "I don’t think so." Now, that’s my business! So I went to the—the manager and I said, "You know what, you’re going to be very happy until the end on the report. But we need to look at ourselves. Did we train him? Did he experience the museum?"
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: What we realized is it’s not the reservationist’s fault, it was our fault, management. We realized we had never let them work over at the ship. They’d never experienced what goes on at the ship. So we filled that hole and said every reservationist... So every day, I mean, I just had something this past week, and I said to somebody, "After 16 years, we’re still learning of things we can do better."
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: So I always start every conversation with—with the group and I’ll say, "Nobody’s doing anything wrong, but how can we do this better?" So I’ve learned never to judge. Because when I was very young in management and I had producers come in my office—they were really associate producers—they’d come in my office and they’d say, "Hey, I want to be a producer," and I would try to console them that I was going to try to work on something, knowing there’s no job open.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: So I learned early on, don’t overpromise; state the facts: "Currently I don’t have that position open and I really need you in this position. If you’ve outgrown your job, then I encourage you to move on. I’m not asking you to move on, but I don’t have what you want." So, being honest with our employees.
Erin Freeman: So what we’ve learned today about your strategy is the importance of storytelling, the importance of planning ahead and being proactive, being honest, empowering those that work for you so they can be passionate about what they do, and the guest experience is vitally important.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Yeah, without the guest experience we have nothing, you know? We rely on taking care of our guests. You know, maybe they’ve had a bad day, maybe the traffic is horrible, um, so we always say to our crew members, "Play to the child first. Because if the child is happy, then Mom’s shoulders relax, and goodness, Dad is very happy that those two are happy!" So they’re all trained every day, you know, how best to facilitate so our—so our guests can have a good experience.
Erin Freeman: Okay, well Mary, thank you so much for sharing your story with us.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: I love it, thank you. And I love the Ackerman group, they’ve been very helpful with us, you know? When we opened, I searched, "Who could help us get our message out?" and they were the perfect team. They came in, they guided me, they helped me because I didn’t know the Tennessee market.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: And if I could give any lesson to anybody: don’t assume you know a market. Go in and talk to the professionals that know the market and let them help guide you. And we’ve had this relationship for 16 years almost, I think, yeah, 15 or 16 years. So I really admire the Ackerman group and Erin, I adore you, and Cathy, and I think you guys do a great job. I pick up the phone, I say, "I got this idea," and they go, "Okay, another idea."
Erin Freeman: Well I—I like it when I get your phone calls because it’s um we have—we work very well together...
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: We do.
Erin Freeman: ...and it’s because we’re always straightforward with one another and I know what you want, the results that you want, and I do my very best to produce those results.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: Yeah, I think—I think if management would be more direct—I think women are more direct than what I’ve seen when I’ve worked for all the men—but "This is what I want, this is what I need. Push back and tell me I can’t have that," and that’s okay too, then I gotta move my bar.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: But to—to circle around the wagon, as I call it, and then not really being really clear what you want, I think is the most frustrating thing. It’s like at the ship: "This is what we’re going to do. This is how it works, you know? This is about the guest, you know? You put them in the wrong line. How—how do we make sure that doesn’t happen again?" You know, that’s frustrating to them, you know? So...
Erin Freeman: Well your—your strategic thinking never ceases to amaze us and we appreciate the opportunity to work with you and your team. So thanks again.
Mary Kellogg Joslyn: I appreciate all of you being here for our 10th episode. Thank you. It was my honor. Thank you for asking me.
Erin Freeman: Thank you. We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Sweet Tea and Strategy podcast. To hear more conversation about business strategy and communications, visit https://www.google.com/search?q=thinkackerman.com. We appreciate you listening. Cheers to the next edition of Sweet Tea and Strategy.