{"id":7113,"date":"2016-05-24T10:00:14","date_gmt":"2016-05-24T14:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/museumhack.wpengine.com\/?p=7113"},"modified":"2025-04-21T16:04:19","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T20:04:19","slug":"elizabeth-arden-storytelling","status":"publish","type":"do_not_index","link":"https:\/\/museumhack.com\/elizabeth-arden-storytelling\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Arden Case Study: How We Story-Hacked One of America’s Favorite Beauty Empires"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stories are awesome.<\/p>\n

At the heart of the vast majority of Museum Hack’s hacks is a good story. Good stories resonate with the audience in new, engaging, and sometimes unexpected ways, leaving listeners with a deeper connection to the story and the storyteller. The catch is figuring out how to tell these tales in just the right way so they deliver maximum impact.<\/p>\n

While we started out hacking museums, we’ve learned that our methods of engagement and storytelling work for more than just art. Storytelling can have an incredible effect just about anywhere – in sales, management, leadership, advertising, training, marketing, and more.<\/p>\n

We recently had the opportunity to take what we do inside the museum to the streets of New York when we hacked America’s classic beauty empire, Elizabeth Arden.<\/p>\n

\"Elizabeth<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Arden executives fell in love with the way our guides brought the Metropolitan Museum of Art to life on tour. They were especially intrigued by the way we took the complicated collections and historical stories housed in the museum and made them fun and interesting. They reached out to see if we could do something similar for their company and products. Elizabeth Arden wanted us to hack them the way we hack museums and we jumped at the chance.<\/p>\n

We planned a full day of learning and adventure for Elizabeth Arden’s team of trainers. This group is tasked with teaching beauty consultants in stores across the country how to sell the company’s products. Elizabeth Arden wanted us to bring our signature storytelling and engagement techniques to the trainers, who could then pass the new methods on to their own teams.<\/p>\n

Custom Team Building Tour at the Metropolitan Museum of Art<\/h3>\n

We started the day by introducing Elizabeth Arden’s trainers to what engagement and storytelling means to Museum Hack and our brand. We brought their team of thirty to one of our favorite museums in New York City and treated them to a VIP team building experience at the Met customized to their company’s interests and values.<\/p>\n

\"Elizabeth<\/p>\n

Our expert tour guides and researchers knew one of the main goals of the tour was to show Elizabeth Arden how we can make the Metropolitan Museum of Art interesting for just about any customer and their needs. We dove into developing our custom Women in Power & Beauty-Themed premium tour of the museum. We uncovered stories about awesome women like Elizabeth Arden and weaved those tales into the art. The tour centered on themes of beauty and powerful women in history, and we touched on surprising historical beauty treatments hidden in plain sight in the museum’s impressive collections.<\/p>\n

Along with a morning coffee stop, we brought in a surprise special guest musician who has more than two decades’ worth of experience performing Indian classical music and a magician who showed off tricks inspired by the art. A trip to the Met with us wouldn’t have been complete without several of our favorite team building activities, including a storytelling game, a competitive scavenger hunt, and a brand-new contest designed to get attendees competing to see who can put together the best sales pitch hack.<\/p>\n

\"Elizabeth
Elizabeth Arden’s team enjoys the scavenger hunt.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How To Make Museum Hack Storytelling Methods Work For Your Company<\/h3>\n

Our day with Elizabeth Arden was just getting stated after their two-and-a-half-hour custom team building experience at the museum. Once we demonstrated exactly how we use our methods inside the museum every day, we took the team back to their New York offices to show them how to put stories to work in their own industry.<\/p>\n

Our Storytelling Workshop takes our own three-month training program for our renegade guides and condenses it into a three-hour professional workshop. We focus on the principles that shape everything we do: playful activities, hacked stories and experiences, and bringing a high level of passion to whatever it is you’re doing.<\/p>\n

\"Elizabeth<\/p>\n

We designed the workshop so Elizabeth Arden’s trainers would learn how to take our<\/em> principles and methods of storytelling and engagement and make them work for them<\/em>. We broke the groups down into two teams of fifteen with two Museum Hack VIP Hosts to lead each smaller workshop for more individual attention. We taught:<\/p>\n