Turning Viral Videos into Waterpark Visitors with Alex Ojeda, TIME100 Creator & Attractions Consultant

Alex Ojeda
00:00-00:41
Everybody is swiping on social media. It doesn't matter who you are or where you are. You can have the president of the United States for sure. Everybody's swiping. The Switch is like. Traditionally, there was no, I guess, ad spend allocated outside of maybe bringing small like mommy blogger influencers to the park to reaching people where they are. And today, it's swiping on their feed. Sometimes it is writing up to 10 times. Running up and down a slide tower, I'll review it and they'll be like, Oh, wait, maybe this angle would look better or this. Michael Bailey, the CEO, was in a meeting and that they had Proposed to him some slide designs and that he was like, Would Alex ride these? They were like, Well, let's ask him. And so that's when I got brought into the project. P

Geraldine Lee
00:42-00:53
You're listening to Signal, the podcast for attraction leaders shaping the future of guest experiences. This is Signal.

Tim Samson
00:53-02:07
Today, we're joined by Alex Ojeda. Alex represents something completely new in the industry. He's not just a content creator, he creates content that doesn't just get views. Drives guests to buy tickets and visit attractions. His story started back in 2018 when he helped his grandmother amass more than a hundred thousand followers on Instagram, doing of all things playing Fortnite. You heard that right, his grandmother playing Fortnite. But what's really cool about Alex's story is not that he went viral, but that he evolved from content creator to strategic consultant, working with household brands like Royal Caribbean, where he's helping them design their new perfect-day Mexico water park. Go figure that, a content creator helping design a waterpart. With over two billion views across 14 million followers, the attractions that he works with not just see increases in followers, but also real world results. Recognized among Times 2025 Top 100 Creators list, Alex is positioned as an industry expert, and rightfully so. And more importantly, he gives back to the industry by speaking at IAP and the World Water Park Association. What makes this perspective so meaningful to tour and attractions operators is that he combines authenticity with professional production to drive results. Alex, we're excited to have you on Signal. Let's dive in, pun intended, and learn how you mastered the art of turning content into clicks. But the kind that count turnstile clicks.

Alex Ojeda
02:07-02:09
Awesome. Yeah. Thank you guys for having me. I appreciate it.

John Pendergrast
02:09-02:10
Welcome here.

Tim Samson
02:10-02:27
So let's dive in. Alex, you started by helping your grandmother build a massive following playing Fortnite. And now you're consulting for major attractions like Royal Caribbean on Water Park Design. That's not a typical career path at all. So what was the moment you realized this wasn't just about making viral videos anymore?

Alex Ojeda
02:27-02:54
Oh, so I I would say when I when I first started, it was just about making viral videos and having fun and just messing around and trying to break the internet, quote unquote. Which is kind of what we did at the time with grandma. But I would say, once I started building my own personal brand and started creating my personal content and pivoted into having an actual niche and getting away from just like Trying to make stuff that was just viral and had no, I guess, value or purpose outside of entertainment. I would say that's when that shift happened.

John Pendergrast
02:54-03:00
Did you end up learning now to play F like, do you play Fortnite as well? Or was this like just a thing that you tried with your grandma?

Alex Ojeda
03:01-03:41
Yeah, honestly, at the time my my siblings were playing a ton, and my grandma had just moved in with us, so I I just randomly at the time saw a bunch of meme pages of uh Throwing memes up and then also people posting Fortnite content. And so I was like, let me put the two together. Let me get my grandma's face and make it look like she's the one playing. did it together and then just posted it on Instagram. And overnight, it was like two hundred thousand views. And then we just quickly learned we kept making more content and all the those pages that I was actually following and so fascinated by actually Took the videos and reshared them. So it was kind of like this big virality overstrike. Then that, you know, went from Instagram over to TikTok. It was like another overnight virality. And then I built my personal brand by creating my own channels as well.

John Pendergrast
03:42-03:58
Yeah, that's really cool. You definitely built your own brand. You're on Times 2025 Top 100 creators list, but you've also evolved into strategic business consulting. How do you balance authentic content creation with the business demands of enterprise clients? What's that transition been like?

Alex Ojeda
03:58-05:05
Yeah, I mean, honestly, like, from the content I create now in the industry, like, I'm so passionate about two things, right? And that's creating content. That's what I love doing. I love. putting a piece of content together and and seeing it, you know, how it performs and the creation and all aspects of that. But then I also have a huge passion for the attractions, the water parks, the tourism travel, cruise ships, all of that. And so really what it is, is like I want to immerse myself more into those spaces. And so while I enjoy creating and my personal brand is always going to be a thing, opportunities just from having those two passions and being so good at creating content just arise. From the parks I was working with personally, and some mentors, they were just like, hey, can you come help us with our social media presence? And so it started with just one park from In upstate New York last summer, and we did such a great job that it was just like through word of mouth: hey, we saw what incredible stuff you did there. Can you come help us? And so, I just Found I love being a part of the industry more and more. And so, as an influencer, right, I may go to a park for a day and create content. And as much as I love that, the consulting side allows me to be immersed in it more and also allow my, I guess, talents and And content creation skills to be leveraged more than just as an influencer. Yeah.

John Pendergrast
05:05-05:42
So, I mean, you and I chatted about this a little bit off camera. It looks easy what you do on the surface of the cameras, what you're doing. It looks easy. You got like such an energy when you're on screen, so forth and so on. It makes it feel like it's a bit of a party, but the reality is it's a ton of hard work behind the scenes. So making content is one thing. Imagining the right content to make is another thing. How do you keep yourself motivated in all of that? Because it is I I did content like a long time ago, but I did content creation as well for for a while professionally and Is a lot of work. What keeps you kind of going and motivated? Because everyone probably thinks you're partying all the time, and that's not at all what's happening.

Alex Ojeda
05:42-07:30
Yeah, I guess like every everything I do is driven by my family story and like inspiring other people to do the same thing. In like 2012, you know, my parents were in school with three kids. They had just come over from Mexico. Yeah. And in 2012, they started, my dad started working and he won. A $5,000 raffle for a cruise. And as you can imagine, having three kids and being in both parents in school, it's hard to do vacations like that. And so when my dad won that cruise, it was like our first Kind of shared family experience. And they saw how much fun we had. And for them, it was like a switch in their head: like, hey, we got to work really hard to continue to provide these experiences for us. And so it was a big staple in my family. We ended up doing like 14 cruise vacations, and we would always go to water parks, different excursions, theme parks. And that was like our thing to do as a family. Yeah. And so whenever I'm creating, it's kind of like and I was looking to shift into what my niche was and why I wanted to do what I do. It was all driven by like inspiring other families to have that same experience. To do that thing. And so I just know, like, regardless, even the days that you know it is super hard or I feel burnt out doing the more tedious work. Things like that. I guess what keeps me going is knowing that, like, my work has a purpose greater than myself. And so I know that, like, hey, by going the extra mile, by You know, grinding 24-7, making content and never turning that kind of content switch off, I know that I'm impacting others. They're watching my content and they're going out and experiencing busy destinations, whether it is just like a day at a water park or it is going on a cruise vacation or traveling across the world to experience these crazy things. I guess I I always have that bigger vision. So it kind of like keeps me going where I know like maybe if I was more a little more selfish, then yeah, I would get burnt out and maybe feel it a lot more. But I think like that kind of like my family's beginnings kind of like is what drives me because I know other people are having those similar experiences.

John Pendergrast
07:30-07:41
Yeah, it sounds like you've been very fortunate. It sounds like you have a very close family. At least it sounds like if you say that's been a kind of a motivator for you to help other families kind of have that same experience.

Alex Ojeda
07:41-08:24
Yeah, I I mean, I I think one hundred percent. We're very you know, I come from a Mexican family, and so I was also born in Mexico, and we have a big family and everybody. So I guess I guess loving, and we're very tight, you know, and so we all want to see each other succeed. And so, the story is really like: I think my dad started working at Burlington here when he came to America, and now he's very successful in what he did. And it was all driven by wanting to give us. More experiences, and he wanted to work hard so we could go enjoy these things. And so, for seeing that kind of journey in my parents, it's very inspirational to go and try to give other people that experience. where they have fun with their families or friends, and then it motivates them to go do something bigger and kind of grow and experience things for their families.

John Pendergrast
08:24-08:45
That's really inspirational. And also like there's not a lot of families, I think, out there that have that level of connection maybe or as maybe not as common as it used to be, and that's really inspirational what you're doing there. From a strategic standpoint, how has your consulting model changed how attractions approach their marketing budgets? And are you seeing like the shift from traditional marketing spend into more of a creator partnership kind of scenario?

Alex Ojeda
08:46-10:47
A thousand percent. I think what The biggest change is like into today's world, everybody, no matter who you are, whether you're the most busy person, and even if you let's think take a water park, right? You have your water park GM who's Crazy busy 24/7 running around, running this park, even that person all the way down to lifeguard or to the guest. Everybody is swiping on social media. It doesn't matter who you are or where you are. You can have the President of the United States is for sure everybody's swiping. And so you know he's swiping. Yeah. The switch is like. Traditionally, there was no, I guess, ad spend allocated outside of maybe bringing small like mommy blogger influencers to the park to reaching people where they are. And today it's swiping on their feeds. And so I think now the kind of switch is like Okay, we're noticing everybody's on their phone. So that's where our guests are. And so we want to now invest in, you know, getting someone, maybe it's hiring a social media manager or a coordinator or someone to create content for our channels, right? And so that's a big jump because these parks or attractions have been operating for so long, and they don't necessarily know how to navigate that in a way to kind of take advantage of the algorithms because if you do it in a correct way. you create good content, you do things right, it will reach people's phones. If you do it incorrectly and you create non-engaging content and low performing content, it won't reach those people. And so I think what my kind of consulting has done is it's kind of Let people switch to be kind of social first and get on people's phone screens and doing it in the most effective way possible and making sure that every piece of content that goes out for these attractions is actually optimized to take advantage of the organic reach that these platforms do. And it's honestly very simple. It's just We're creating the best piece of content possible, making sure it checks all the boxes and then it's going live and then performing well because since it's good content and we already have guests that are fans of these attractions, these guests engage with it. good content with engagement then explodes and then we're able to kind of reach that. But it's kind of like flipped it and you know, now that everybody's going into social first, this allows them to kind of like take advantage of social at the highest level.

John Pendergrast
10:48-12:01
Yeah, and I like how you say it's very simple. That I mean, that's a very humble thing to say. The reality is that it's Complex and changing all the time, and you've spent a lot of hours figuring that process out and continue to figure that process out as algorithms change. So, I mean, really cool. There's this Kind of famous story that you've probably been asked a thousand times now that you tend to ride water slides ten times to get the perfect shot. I was watching a few of your water slide videos. And I mean, if you look closely and you're looking at the cuts, you're like, okay, yeah, I know that that's definitely a different cut, things like that. But it's really seamless. It's really time intensive. I think there was one the one in is it Norway, the one that does the it's the fastest water slide that goes and you drop into the center on like the big Spiral or whatever. And at the last one, I see you're wearing a shirt, and I'm thinking to myself, it probably was getting cold. And you're like, or you're starting to get like water slide burn or something like that. Like, it's just after a while, it just starts to wear on you. How do you convince a CFO or a GM or things like that to let you basically take over that slide for long enough to get those shots? Because they're probably thinking to themselves Get the shot, get out, burning capital, burning like opportunity. So, how do you convince them? Like, I haven't got the perfect shot yet.

Alex Ojeda
12:01-13:28
Yeah, I think we do a lot of Pre-planning. So, in my personal content, it's like it's like we're scoping out. I kind of have in my head, okay, X amount of attractions that this park are going to make for like kind of social media gold. And then I kind of pre-plan, okay, this is exactly what I'll need. And it just varies per park or per attraction. It's like whether we're coming in before hours, we're doing things during the hours, or even after hours. Or what processes they have done in the past with other shoots that they may have some sort of system in place. But it it really just varies. But yeah, sometimes it is riding up to ten times running up and down a slide tower, and it does get very time consuming because what it is, it's like You know, I'll film something, I'll review it, and then I'll be like, oh, wait, maybe this angle would look better, or this, or maybe you have a vision for something because beforehand, when I'm pre-planning, it maybe looks crazier in person if I do XYZ different angle. Maybe flying the drone from a back angle, maybe a different, you know, like you're saying, for in that example that you saw, it was actually in the Netherlands. I had taken off my shirt. Because body slides are faster without a shirt on. So I had written the slide with the shirt and I said, wait, I can go way faster without the shirt. So that's going to do better the content. There's little things like that that we're always like, kind of like playing around with and trying to see how we can make this look incredible or even more incredible than what it actually is, or bring that experience to life. Because what it is, is like. Taking the viewer on the experience. If the viewer feels like all the emotions that you're feeling on the attraction, that's what's going to make the content actually come to life and then invoke that like emotional draw and investment with a viewer.

John Pendergrast
13:29-13:35
Yeah, that's really cool. I'm going to I'm going to finally let Tim say something because apparently I'm just dominating conversations.

Tim Samson
13:37-14:36
That's okay. It was a good conversation. I was going along with that. But you you mentioned something you mentioned something a while back about hiring a social media manager And I think that that's important, and a lot of attractions are doing that. I see most of them fail because they hire someone who's good at their personal social media. And you've talked a lot about content creation and being strategic about it. and and really thinking through what that means. So I think about kind of the missteps and that other attractions have done with this. I don't know how many times I've seen an attraction that always has just images of teenagers when it's really a family attraction. Right. Because the person who's doing their social media is getting all their friends to come up, and that's the thing that they're in. So, from the perspective of working with attraction. You're twofold. You're both a consultant and a content creator. Right. What do you think attractions get wrong within that space, both doing it themselves and working with the creator?

Alex Ojeda
14:36-16:16
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is that there shouldn't be any personal preference to anything done on social media. It should all be backed by: you know, how are we making the greatest piece of content possible and how are we making the content that's Going to do two things. One, get people through the door in the attraction space, and two, actually perform and draw eyeballs. Because the way I see it is like The more eyeballs on these social media channels, the more percentage of people we can try to convert to getting people through the door. And so, what happens a lot of time that I see is there's people They're doing what they think they need to do, or they're, you know, just taking what they may know and say, Okay, this trend is really fun. I want to do that because it looks fun. Or, hey, this idea, they're doing it for personal reasons and they're not doing it. For, you know, they're doing it more because that's what they like to do and not what actually works for the park. And so a lot of times, like when I'm working with my specific clients, they'll have a coordinator that Maybe a little frustrated by me being like, hey, we need to reshoot this, or hey, we need to do this a different way. But in the, you know, I'm always reiterating, like, hey, this is not for personal preference. This is just what's going to drive the highest engagement possible. We need to film something this way, or we need to do this specific video because here's the track record. And we'll always refer back to a piece of content that's similar, or that another park has done, or another creator has done and said, hey, look, this is the track record. Here's this trend. Here are ten videos that I've done really well recently. Here's how we can integrate it and make it even better than how this person did it. And we're always doing stuff like nothing's personal preference, essentially. And so that's kind of where we see a lot of attractions kind of Unfortunately, lacking is in those areas because they do things for personal reasons, not backed by other content examples and things like that.

Tim Samson
16:17-17:02
Yeah. And I think probably the second piece that I think we see a lot, at least from a from an executive standpoint or like the GM within the park is social media is so hard to attribute to actual revenue. So you do it to get people in through the turnstiles into the gate to eat at the restaurants, to do all these things, but it's really hard to measure because most of the time you're not purchasing a ticket or you're not doing certain things like that. Going a little bit off topic here, but How do you get the stakeholders how do you get the stakeholders on board to actually allocate funds towards this that it's difficult to attribute revenue to? And then what type of metrics do you use to really convey that back to say that we're successful in this? This is really driving the needle, even though there's not a direct attribution to it.

Alex Ojeda
17:02-19:27
Right. Yeah. No, 100%. I think in traditional, or not necessarily traditional, but in the past, you know, parks are used to maybe a third-party marketing company or, um, A consultant come on and say, Hey, we're going to allocate, you know, let's say it's $100,000 in ad spend, and we're going to target these ads to your target market. And we're able to track that X amount of people clicked on our link through this ad and bought the ticket there. And then they can see that direct ROI, right? In organic marketing and social where everybody's just swiping, right? It is really difficult. To attribute exact like, hey, this video went viral, it got a million views, and out of this million views, you know, X amount of viewership went and actually purchased a ticket. It's almost nearly impossible. There are ways that, like, for example, at some of my What we'll do is like they have specific events, right? And we'll say, okay, the first time they hosted this event, we saw like 50 Seed the Past showed up for it. Then we posted this video promoting the event, and it did 800,000 views. And the next time the event came on, 850 season pass showed up. And you know, There was nothing else done differently besides that that one viral video did really well. So there's small cases like that where we can attribute to success or other things that we can attribute is like A lot of these parks and attractions have problems with staffing, right? Getting lifeguards, getting people to man the attractions. Um, and it's always short-staffed. And so, um, having these incredible videos, what it does is it not only brings guests into the park. They're seeing success in people seeing how fun the park is and seeing how fun the work environment is, and it's helping solve some of those staffing issues. And they can attribute that to not, you know, hey, last year we had this exact same issue. We didn't have this social media presence or content. And now we do. Now a lot of our staffing is kind of a Kind of helped solve itself through that. But yeah, they're really, it's very difficult to kind of attract. All we can kind of look at is like, hey, We're looking at comments. So, like if a video goes viral, right? We'll read it may have 300 comments on there. And out of those 300 comments, the people who are typically commenting are people within the area. And so So we can kind of like attribute if we did 100 million views throughout the summer and then let's say out of those 100 million views, I'm just throwing random numbers, let's say 1,000 comments, right? Then we can go in and we can assume And you can actually read the comments and say, hey, these are people locally engaging because they said, hey, I came here in the past, or hey, I live X amount away, or they're engaging with it. Maybe it's current guests, past guests, or people who didn't even know it existed. We're looking, we're measuring success. through the actual comments because we can actually attribute those to people who are in the driving markets and things like that.

Tim Samson
19:27-21:04
I mean, don't get me wrong, I think everyone knows they have to do it. Right. Like everyone knows they have to do social media. just part of the marketing landscape at this point. But it is it is difficult to kind of attribute that with it. I think as an industry again, going further off topic, so we're getting further and further down All right. But as an industry, I think sometimes on social media we want to curate things. And the story that's coming to mind is I'm sure that everyone has seen it. Probably everyone that's listening right now has seen this. The girl who's on the slingshot ride and the seagull lands directly on her, right? It hits her right in the face and goes for a ride with her up and down. So that happened at Morey's Piers, and it's when I was there. So it's kind of one of those things where it was the guest video. We waited for them to post it. But in a traditional sense, like an attraction would not post that video, right? Because it really kind of goes against everything that they're striving for. Even though it's this weird freak accident, right? So it doesn't portray it in the the best light. And where I'm really going with this is authenticity. I was having this conversation last night at dinner. With a photographer and a guy from an agency. And we were talking about the ability for the industry when they're taking photos of coasters to have everyone with their hands down. Right. So everyone has their hands in because we're safety first, and that's the thing that we do. But that's not how people ride roller coasters, right? So there's a balance between authenticity and kind of sticking to your core values And I think sometimes that's difficult to get in social media because someone can tell instantly if something's not authentic. So any words of advice to people like How do you balance that?

Alex Ojeda
21:05-23:07
Yeah, I think in my head, it's it's managing a fine line between being authentic and legal and safety. I'm always in favor of being authentic a thousand percent. And not only legal and safety, but also like upsetting guests, right? Because in my head, it's like I want to 100% of the time go out of the box with ideas. If I see a hate comment, I want to, you know, flip it around and actually make a video on it and take things. And really be as authentic as possible and just be real. But obviously, in some cases, it could upset guests and portray a negative light. And then we're having issues where guests don't want to come to the park. Or it could be a safety thing, like you mentioned, with, you know, hey, everybody throws their hands up. So we're going to do this trend where we throw their hands up, and then maybe it is a legal safety thing. And so I'm always trying to like You know, scrape that fine line and making sure we're not crossing it, but taking advantage of it as most as possible. And so, a good example of this: one of my clients is down in Mississippi, and one of their neighboring parks said, you know, it's still the same management company. But they decided not to open the other park that summer. And so, in the market, those are the two water parks in that market. And so, this is the Gulf Islands water park down in Mississippi, and the other water park in the market is Blue Bayou. And so They're both managed by the same company. But one of the things we did is we noticed Blue Bayou is not going to open this year. So we're being authentic and we made content that was like, hey, Blue Bayou's not open. But we're here all summer. And so what that did is that content went viral. It hit everybody who typically goes to Blue Bayou, and they said, Wow, okay, Blue I didn't know Blue Bayou wasn't going to open. I think that video had like seventy seven thousand likes or somewhere around that. It went crazy on so on on TikTok and Facebook and stuff. And so we reading the comments, you know, there's people being like, oh, wow, I didn't realize you're also just a quick drive away. We're going to come. And then we saw a lot of those guests converting over. And that's just. A great example of being authentic, and then, like, kind of a horror story: a park in upstate New York that I work with, not necessarily a horror story, but this is kind of where I say I'm scraping that fine line: they were open for so many years and allowed coolers into the park. You could bring one in, right? ownership came, new ownership came and changed that rule because they said, hey, actually 99% of the parks in the U.

John Pendergrast
23:07-23:07
S.

Alex Ojeda
23:07-24:27
, there's the free cooler thing is no longer thing in the neighboring parks also didn't have that rule. So they s shi switched it where like, hey, if you have a season pass, you can bring a cool order. But if you're just a day ticket, that's not something we're Going to allow there was a lot of negative comments on social media through the park, just people complaining about that. So I said, Hey, how do we use that to our advantage? And we actually made content, you know. Filming someone trying to bring a cooler in and stopping them and saying, Hey, you need to get a season pass, or stopping them and saying, Hey, check out all the wonderful food in the park. Now, in social media terms, that was awesome. We're getting a lot of views. Great attention. But when you read some of those comments, especially on Facebook, we did see a lot of negative where scraping that line actually was leaning towards hurting us, even though we were getting a lot of new eyeballs on the park and actually educating the guests. On these things, that's an example of where it, you know, we had to take that content down. So it's kind of like aligning, in my head, we want to align guests' expectations so we eliminate those hate comments. So, for example, if your wait times are super long in your park, right? And your guest is going there with the preconception that your wait times are actually not that long. They get there, they have to wait in line, they're going to go comment a hate comment. But if we make jokes about the wait times, Guests see that they still come to the park because they see how fun the video is. They're expecting to wait in that line. And so we're kind of aligning those guest expectations. But again, we're managing that fine line and making sure we're not upsetting guests or. Or doing things but using those to our advantage.

John Pendergrast
24:27-24:54
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I can imagine when you're dealing from the park, you're going to have different levels of like park ownership being like, oh, hold on, this, this, this, like, there's a bad comment here, and you're going to go through that process. How do you handle personally? How do you handle the negativity? Because there's like you're doing social media. You've got to have an enormous amount of negativity coming across your desk. I've listened to other interviews with different like influencers and they talk about kind of the impact of that negativity. How do you handle that?

Alex Ojeda
24:54-25:09
Yeah, I mean, I've never honestly never been affected by negativity. I'm not sure what it was. When I first started creating, there was a ton of it because it was more personality-based versus what I do now. I use the analogy that I'm kind of like the weatherman, where like I'm just the credible figure, you know, telling you the weather.

Tim Samson
25:09-25:13
I'm giving you kind of look like a weatherman. You could really pull this off.

Alex Ojeda
25:15-26:37
But you're never hating on the weatherman, right? You may comment on, like, for example, in my case, they're never hating on me. They may hate on the experience, like, oh, that looks super boring or whatnot. So for me, It never affected me personally. Now, beforehand, when it was more personality-based, I did get a lot of hate directly targeted towards me. You know, I was also when I first started, was still in school and peers around me. And back then, it was not a normal thing or a desired thing to be on social media. It kind of like clowned on it. So, you know, I experienced negativity in person both On social media and stuff. But honestly, I again, when I have that bigger purpose, and there's nothing you can kind of tell me that will actually upset me. And in contrast, it'll actually motivate me to do more. And so in the attraction space, though, when we're getting hate comments, like I said, in my head, it's like, How do we leverage those to our advantage? Kind of similarly, as long as we're not upsetting the guests even more and we're actually like flipping the narrative or kind of playing it off as a joke, that's where we're actually seeing more success and take using it to our advantage as opposed to like, hey, this is a bummer. Or in my client's perspective, this is a great way to like take this as like kind of guest feedback and kind of getting a lot of guest feedback like, hey, The soda machines at this location in the park are super disgusting. And the guest is posting a comment, and we're seeing that comment a hundred times. That's flagged to management. They're like, okay, we need to go do something about this. Whereas before, without social media, they may not have.

Tim Samson
26:38-26:39
Not even knowing.

Alex Ojeda
26:39-27:05
Exactly. We see a lot of that. And it also could be that there's certain things that people like, and it's not necessarily hate, but it's also their commenting. really good things about a specific thing that they like or what it might be an event or a policy in the park. Like, for example, when I mentioned the cooler scenario, you know, there was a lot of negative comments and the park can learn from those things. in those experiences. Whereas before, if we weren't creating that content or if the content wasn't as good and not reaching people, there would be no learnings to come from.

John Pendergrast
27:05-27:21
Yes. So you've got a feed you've basically built a feedback loop in some sense that maybe didn't exist before, which is Really helpful. And that feedback loop obviously allows them to make even more content because they can use that to drive the next thing they want to say. So, I've been a nerd my entire life.

Tim Samson
27:21-27:24
Definitely. If you needed to film, no one would have ever guessed. Yeah, I never would have guessed.

John Pendergrast
27:24-27:51
No, if you had to film in water, you found your camera and screw the camera lens over it. You know, I got that. That's how you did it. And then everyone started using GoPros. As I understand it, GoPros aren't the choice anymore necessarily, but at the time they really were. You have like 360 cameras So if you're a park and you're like, you know what, really appreciate working with influencers like you also want to do some more content ourselves, what's the kit that you're saying you should go and get?

Alex Ojeda
27:51-28:32
Yeah, I mean, obviously, like to your point of tech kind of emerging now, a lot of things are waterproof. So down down to the phone is water resistant. Yeah, I mean, it's honestly, you know, we're working with drones, we're working with the 360 cameras, we're working with the iPhones. We have nice microphones that we use. Outside of that, I mean, that that's really is the magic really comes from the phone and the microphones is is really where we're filming majority of our stuff. And then the drone and the three sixty cameras just allow us to B-roll or various ride shots. But yeah, really you you can you can cook with just a phone and and some microphones Does does App Do Apple and DGI sponsor you? Because I feel like that was like exactly what Apple wanted to hear.

Tim Samson
28:32-28:39
Our phone so good You can neither affirm nor deny that he did.

John Pendergrast
28:39-28:40
Yeah, exactly.

Alex Ojeda
28:41-28:50
Honestly, that's my unbiased opinion. I do work with Some of the action camera companies every now and then, but really just using the microphone and the phone is just authentically what's being used.

John Pendergrast
28:51-29:10
It's amazing how that technology has advanced. Listen, I come from a time before cell phones. I had one of the original Motorola. Blocks kind of idea. And back then I remember going, you know what would be really cool? If they could put a camera in this device, this would be really cool. And so now it's really I say I'm living in the future. But there you go, showing my age.

Tim Samson
29:09-29:37
So your background is heavier, heavily in water parks, and the strategies apply across the industries, right? Within the verticals that we serve as a company. You know, there's zoos and museums, passenger vessels, ferries, railway, observation towers, water parks, kind of that whole thing. I think it's really easy for a water park or a theme park to be like, Oh, yeah, we're going to use social media for XYZ. But what are the kind of those universal things that can cross all the different attraction based industry

Alex Ojeda
29:36-30:56
Yeah, I think the number one universal thing is that every, regardless of what attraction you are, you already have fans, you already have your followers, you already have guests. And so a lot of the times what I'm doing is I'm working with a property that has been around for. I don't know, many, many years, and they've had hundreds of thousands of guests come every year. When we start creating content, that's our audience that can engage with our content. So we're never starting from fresh. Even when there's a brand new attraction, right? Usually there's some press or stuff that goes around it before it even comes out, or people are saying, Oh, this is new in XYZ City. Those people who are exposed to it, every attraction already has some sort of audience, whether you're a water park, zoo, doesn't matter what attraction you are, there's already some sort of audience. It's kind of universal to where if you just create something, there's already going to be an audience to engage with it. So now, if you create something good and you already have that audience to engage with it, that's where you see the engagement explode. So, a lot of the times, even with attractions now who don't have some high-level consultant or anything, or they are just creating, what you'll notice is like, sure, maybe not all their content is at that high level, but they may have A few videos that do reach these massive numbers. And that's simply because they filmed the trend really well, or they did this video really, this specific trend very, very well. And that audience kind of engaged with it. And those two things kind of made it explode. So. That's something that's very consistent between, regardless of what attraction is that there's already an audience to engage with content.

John Pendergrast
30:57-31:31
If I take that a little bit further and I say, okay, so you work in a market that's Very kind of thrill-based, right? Like, it's like, check out this water slide, it's the scariest water slide you'll ever be on. I write it, I write it 10 times to get this video. But like, there's also a lot more subdued attractions. There's attractions that are like, here's a flower garden you can come walk through. It's like, you know, unless it's going to turn into plants versus zombies, you're probably not going to have a really thrill-based environment. is what you're saying here is that the same rules apply. You're going to have an audience to that already, and you need to speak to that audience in a way that engages them, and you have to determine what that's going to be.

Alex Ojeda
31:30-32:02
Is that a thousand yeah, a thousand percent and even in the less exciting or less thrilling attractions? Like, you know, what we're always working on is called I call it like employee generated content. And that's where we're working with the staff to be on-camera personalities and kind of bring things to life. So, you know, it's not necessarily like only just showcasing attractions. We're doing a lot of fun stuff and building that environment. To kind of represent the brand through the employees, and so that doesn't necessarily have to come from the attractions, it can come from just you know, it doesn't have to come from something thrilling, essentially. Yeah.

John Pendergrast
32:02-32:34
Well, and we live in a increasingly increasingly where you're hearing more and more about AI and other things and those kinds of tools and what it can do, and yet it's missing that human connection, right? Like it's it's literally not the human connection. And what you're saying is largely that you're instigating an opportunity to relate to the people that are at these facilities through the videos that you give. Or that you create, and that gives people an opportunity to go, hey, I want to experience that. That's the thing I want. Total tangent. But what do you think about the developing world of AI out there and what's happening in the market?

Alex Ojeda
32:34-33:22
Yeah, I mean, I'm not necessarily scared of AI at all. I want to use it to my advantage as much as possible. I don't see a world where AI is going to be like, hey, an attraction wants to make content or an influencer wants to make content, and AI will just Do it in two seconds. And I also see the platforms moving away from AI. Like I think YouTube just announced that they're not going to promote any content that's fully AI. So, where AI comes into my place is in like copywriting or in scripting or the pre-production and post-production. and kind of how to bring those things to life a little bit easier. That's where, you know, we're using tools like ChatGPT and things like that too, to kind of help us in the planning stages or the content ideation, things like that. Yeah, but when it comes to actually like creating the content, I think it's always going to be a success to physically get in there and be creating every day.

John Pendergrast
33:22-33:53
Well, I mean, there's Constant noise in this area. So Will Smith, I don't know, you might be are you young enough or old enough to know who Will Smith is? Yeah, so Will Smith just released his his video of his new album tour. And it very quickly became apparent that the entire audience was AI. And you're now he's dealing with all the fallout of that. So it's just interesting to watch how the market shifts. I would agree with you. I think AI is an incredible tool for things like copywriting and those kinds of things. But for the actual content creation, I don't see you're going to run into any problems any time soon from that perspective.

Tim Samson
33:54-34:26
It's just iterating, though. Like it's all iteration. With AI. Like, it can't create. And I think that's the important thing with social: you're creating. So it can copy someone else's idea or do something, but you could quickly miss that authenticity. Say the Human Rights Museum in Winnipeg, which is an awesome museum. If you're ever there, you need to go. Right. Say they were to ask about how to create a social media campaign, there's a very good chance that what it's going to come back with is not relevant to that particular subject matter.

John Pendergrast
34:26-34:26
Sure. Right.

Tim Samson
34:27-34:35
At all. I think the AI is incredible for helping with that pre-production, but it lacks the humanity. Right now. At least right now. Maybe we'll.

John Pendergrast
34:36-35:31
I kind of hope we don't, but but yeah, you know, possibility. I think the human connection thing, where AI thrives, I think, is the ability to create the content that enables human connection between humans, right? And when you skip that step and go straight to AI to human connections, we run into some really weird stories and things that we probably don't want from a cultural perspective. So cool. A little bit of an aside, but that I'm just always curious. Um I have kids that aren't a lot younger than you. Uh one of them's twenty three. And um that generation tends to really dislike AI and wants to be authentic and AI couldn't be less authentic. So it's just interesting. I was just curious about your feedback there. Kind of getting back on script: how do attractions build like sustainable content strategies? Versus becoming dependent on yourself. Now, obviously, you're building a business. You'd like them to be dependent on you, and from that perspective, but there's going to be a point where you're not scalable enough to service maybe everyone out there that way.

Tim Samson
35:31-35:33
That's where AI comes into play.

John Pendergrast
35:33-35:37
No, no. That's where he inspires people and teaches them how to do what he does.

Tim Samson
35:37-35:38
Yeah.

John Pendergrast
35:38-35:43
So what's the path to developing internal capabilities that can be augmented by people like yourself?

Alex Ojeda
35:44-37:10
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is honestly, it's what my whole consulting is is based off is building an in house system for daily content creation. And the simplest answer to that is like for any attraction to just start out by hiring that role. If it is a social media intern, a social media coordinator, whatever it might be. and just get creating as much as possible. Even if it isn't daily, it's like they they need to be posting because as we discussed before, like everybody is on their phone, no matter who it is, everybody's swiping. And so it's like, how do we reach people? How do we get in front of the people who are swiping? And that's by creating content. So, what essentially, like, where I come in is, you know, I have eight Eight to nine years of experience of just creating and really doing short-form video first and leveraging it to the max. It's kind of like making sure that every piece of content that is shared is being optimized. To be the best piece of content possible, so that we're reaching and getting the numbers that we want, which, in some clients' cases, you know, last summer we had to park to 130 million plus impressions across the summer, so it works out really well. Now, the only difference is like if a park were to just go hire a social media coordinator, again, it it's just that every piece of content, again, is not going to be done off of that kind of personal preference that I was telling you about. It may go down that route as opposed to being all done like in best practices for the algorithms.

John Pendergrast
37:10-37:58
So I'm kind of reading between the lines. And tell me if I'm wrong here. But what you're saying is you have seven to eight years of experience of Or more of trying things and determining over time what works, which means you've probably thrown a lot of things at the wall to figure out what sticks Yes. And you've learned that process. Now it's kind of instinctual. So, what your initial statement I think is to say, go start creating content, go start throwing things at the wall. Most of it's probably not going to stick, but then you'll have one that does stick. And then you can start to build those. So is what you do then from a consultancy standpoint is to try and help some of those people fast track into here's the ten things that I've learned That work at least in broad scopes. And here's how you can start to define those for yourself. So you can be authentically you, not just a copy of me from that perspective. Is that kind of what you're doing?

Alex Ojeda
37:58-39:35
Yeah, I think you, I think the analogy of throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks is a thousand percent. Yeah, Hitting the nail of, like, yes, we're it's if it's when you're doing things off personal preference, that's what you're doing. You're throwing stuff at the wall, and maybe things won't stick. So Now, you know, what I'm doing is like, okay, I've already gone through the trial and error. You know, I've done, I think, 2 billion views every single year for the last like five, six years across social media. And so it's like, now we're not doing that. It's all there's no personal preference. It's all just like, you know, these are the best practices across the board that work best. And then, you know, this is the current trends or the current content styles that are doing very well. And then how are we able to take the attraction at hand and leverage it into the trend or the content style? But you know, make it better. And so, yes, over the summer, what ends up happening is the coordinators at these parks start to learn more and more. And the teams, they learn, like, okay, this is what we have to do. Here's how we need to film things. And here's Kind of that alleyway. Now, yes, I am involved with some of these properties over a multi-year term because you know they want that consistency and they want to uphold that kind of like level of content. And I guess it's a lot more difficult to kind of like, hey, hand off the rings and, you know, go do it yourself. You know, unfortunately, it doesn't always work out that way. And they want to keep that high level of content because a lot of the times What ends up happening is that they're only open for a certain amount of time. So there are attractions that are open year-round, but a lot of the ones that I work with are they only have like 90 days or 100 days of operation. So you really need to maximize that time. And they don't have the time to be throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. They want to make sure that every day is optimized and leveraged to its full potential. Yeah.

John Pendergrast
39:35-40:15
So it sounds to me like you're kind of heading towards, I mean, the one-off sponsored content is what you Where you've kind of had a lot of your success to date. But moving into strategic consulting, it's almost like you're heading towards what I can see you heading towards is actually a program of Almost like guided mentoring or a mentoring program of: I'm going to teach you this is the way that you do these things. Here's the program that you use to do that. And you're essentially building like I'm thinking about there's programs like this inside of sales that are like predictable revenue is one of these kind of groups that does this, where you're building a training program And you're building a way of thinking for people. Is that at all accurate? Is that kind of where you're headed in the long term?

Alex Ojeda
40:15-41:30
Yeah, I just think it's obviously showing you the robots, but it's also what I do is I hold your hand and walk you through the flashlight. Exactly. So 'cause in the past, I've spoken at all the conferences. I've spoken at both industry conferences with IAPA and WWA, and I give a lot of Free value. Like, I've never, like, I've never tried to hide. I could sit here and tell you everything, just like I said, hey, everybody needs to be posting, everybody needs to be creating. But where I saw and why my consulting business actually came to life is because. People are like, this is amazing. We love this information you're telling us, but we need an accountability aspect integrated to it. And not only that, again, like I mentioned before, we only have X amount of days of operation. We don't want to be. Just floating around and sending someone to just go mindlessly make content. Like, we need this plan, we need this strategy, and we need to be milking the most amount of views we can in this short amount of period of time. And so it's kind of like A mixture of the time sensitiveness and the accountability is where I really come in and help them strive, because I can give all the knowledge in the world. Sure, as matters. Yeah. And so that's where that's where I was seeing and why there was a lot of interest in what I was doing is because you know, I gave all this free value, but then the accountability aspect and the time sensitiveness is like, wow, we really want to take advantage of this.

John Pendergrast
41:30-42:07
So how do the economics vary on that? Like the economics of economics of one off sponsored content makes sense. You're you're negotiating a a price for that. The other stuff is much more of a long term and you're holding people's hands and you're walking them through these things and you're kind of guiding them and and mentoring them in some sense. How do the economics work differently on that? Because, like, clearly, one of them has a much longer-term value to you, which is that mentoring side, of course, is going to be the long-term value. And at some point, I mean, I can only imagine you're going to make content. Until you're my age, I'm sure. Because I think it's in your blood. But also that mentoring side is going to be where you're probably going to get the biggest value. So how does the economics work differently in your head for those?

Alex Ojeda
42:07-43:14
Yeah, I think obviously like my one off sponsored post, and even even when I'm I'm also Straying away from that and trying to build more meaningful partnerships on my content on my personal brand side. So, for example, I used to do one off partnerships with the cruise line with Royal Caribbean. Now I work with them as a global creator ambassador, multi-year contracts, like I'm helping other opportunities, like designing that water park. Yeah. You know, I'm always looking for more meaningful partnerships, or even I work with tourism boards, right? In the past, they have been just those one-offs, but now it's like, hey, I'm working with them on a multi-year basis where I'll work with them this summer and the next summer. And when it comes to the consulting side of things, it's also kind of similar, I would say. Yes, it's a longer term where it's less of like a one-off visit or Yeah. No, there's there's obviously less travel involved, I would say. But I'm usually working on a three-month term with a lot of these properties or attractions. kind of like going on site once, doing the kind of the operational setups. I'm teaching obviously in person training, and then everything else I'm doing is remotely. So, you know, I'm still working every day. It's just less like on site than less travel, which is great.

John Pendergrast
43:14-43:48
I mean, travel is great until it isn't. I've done enough in my life. Yeah, no, I understand it. And we're going to touch on this yet. You kind of have the best of both worlds here because you're going to go on site, you're going to spend time at water parks, and I know your aspirations are to have your own water park someday. So it's like you're training them in something and then also kind of ancillary getting training yourself in how these operations work and what works and what doesn't work, and don't put the drink machine there, and you know, like those kinds of things that you wouldn't get any other way. So I you're kind of getting two advantages there. Tim, you have a Royal Caribbean question, which actually ties really well off of what he just said. jumping on that one.

Tim Samson
43:49-44:23
I feel like you might have answered it already, but I'll ask it anyway. So you were talking a little bit about, you know, relationship building and a Royal Caribbean CEO publicly credited you credited you with helping to shape the Perfect day Mexico waterpark vision, which is just super cool. It's huge. Right. So, like, from creator to, you know, we'll call you a social architect. That's going to be my title. You know, for attraction design. So, how did that even happen? Like, I know you said you've worked with them, but how do you build that level of trust at an enterprise?

Alex Ojeda
44:24-44:44
Yeah, so obviously it goes down to the core of my content, you know, being family friendly, being brand friendly. Being, you know, I guess follower first, where it's all value-driven. It's not necessarily about Alex Ojeda and like he's never flexing, like, hey, look at me, I'm on this cruise ship, and you're not. It's it's really all value-driven and story-driven.

Tim Samson
44:44-44:46
You're on a cruise step right now, right?

Alex Ojeda
44:48-48:17
I was yesterday, but I'm back home now. Um, but it is um It is kind of a value first thing. And so when a brand sees something like that, I feel like it differentiates me from the majority of the influencers who are maybe more personality-based. It's not necessarily a bad thing. But it provides a lot more value to the brand. And so funny enough, the story with Royal Caribbean, I was actually just an organic fan of the brand. I've been cruising all the All my life with my family. And I just happened to be, it was actually my grandma's 75th birthday. I was on a cruise ship out of Alaska, and I saw someone with a production badge. Also, ironically, a week before that, an agency had reached out to me about a cruise Partnership opportunity with Royal Caribbean via email. And unfortunately, it didn't end up working out there, but I met them on site while just being an organic cruiser. And they recognize me and they're like, oh my God, we've seen your videos. Because I just asked out of curiosity, like, hey, do you do social media? And they invited me to dinner. That one dinner then turned into, hey, we would like to invite you. I think it was Odyssey of the Seas was launching. And so I went out there, and it was just a trade partnership at the start. They were like, hey, we just want to invite you, build a relationship with you. There's no expectation for deliverables, but we just want you to come enjoy and we love your content. And so I went out there and I shared A ton of videos. I tagged them in it. I shared how much I love the brand, and I also created content even though there was no expectation for it. So I went above and beyond. And they were super happy. That content performed really, really well. And then that then turned into my first one-off sponsorship with them for Wonder of the Seas, at that time was the world's largest cruise ship. And then it just so happened that other cruise lines saw the content. They were very interested in working with me. And while I love the industry as a whole, in my heart, it was really with Royal Caribbean. And so I, just through conversations with them, they were just like, hey, we, you know, we appreciate you for letting us know. We'd love to continue our relationship. And so we then I ended up doing another one-off with them. And then on that one-off, we discussed doing a year partnership. Which they I don't think they had done with other creators. And so myself and one other creator got on this year contract, and we did a really great job. And then they renewed us for year two. And then it just so happened that in between those two, the product team had been following all this content that I was sharing with the brand and took note of me. And they loved that I, you know, kind of had that global light and also Kind of like what you were saying, is that I've kind of learned from the feedback of my audience what they like or what they don't. I heard, That Michael Bailey, the CEO, was in a meeting and that they had proposed to him some slide designs, and that he was like, Would Alex ride these? And they were like, Well, let's ask him. And so that's when I got brought into the project. I went out for a day to the Miami office and I just sat down with all the vendors and the product team. And we just went through slide by slide dissecting What makes sense to build? What doesn't? How do we think of like a social first kind of mindset? And also, like a modern and younger You know, everything at Royal Caribbean is still family first, but there's this big trend in young adults and what's trendy, and everybody's kind of moving towards that. And so It honestly just spawned off of that. And now the partnership is kind of evolving into more less of like just a typical influencer collaboration to a meaningful longer term

John Pendergrast
48:16-49:25
Yeah, that's awesome. And there's a takeaway there that I think so many people, whether you're an influencer or not, should take. And that is that you're a founder. And the thing that you did there, which is like Every time I see someone who has that kind of drive, I try and find a way to hire them because, or at least work with them. Because that point where you went, we have no arrangement And I'm going to do a bunch of work, and I'm going to do something for this company or for this thing because I think it's an investment, and also I really like the brand. But I'm going to do something. And then that in turn pays enormous dividends. But there was no guarantee that that was going to happen. Right. And that you, like you said, went above and beyond. But that's the investment part. You're investing in yourself, you're investing in the potentiality of where this could all go. And I think that's super inspiring. And I think that's the piece that I pull out of that and go, that's what makes you so special is your willingness to go and put online and  go get it done and work hard and take the bet on yourself that it's going to pay off.

Alex Ojeda
49:25-49:30
And I think if more people did that, we'd have more really cool things out there.

John Pendergrast
49:31-49:46
And so I think that congratulations, you've done an incredible job, and it's really cool watching your heel, how you've grown this thing. I mean, look, 2. whatever billion views, that's insane for the last few years. So thank you.

Alex Ojeda
49:46-49:48
Yeah, no, I really appreciate that.

John Pendergrast
49:48-49:51
Anyways, I'm sounding like my 50-year-old mentor self.

Tim Samson
49:53-49:54
Okay, that's all right.

John Pendergrast
49:54-50:01
Yeah, that's who I am. So you want to open your own water park. Now, have you picked a name?

Alex Ojeda
50:02-50:05
I have, yes. And are you allowed to say anything yet?

John Pendergrast
50:06-50:06
You don't have to.

Alex Ojeda
50:07-50:09
I haven't announced the name publicly ever, but.

John Pendergrast
50:09-50:11
Is this the exclusive announcement?

Alex Ojeda
50:12-50:40
I mean, it's not a secret by any means, but it is Ojeda Oasis Water Park is the name of the water park. Yes, and I'm not going to share. Too much more details outside of that until we're like official, just because I'm I'm one of those that like really wants to. you know, be serious and get things rolling before I make the full announcement. But that is the yeah, that is the dream and the goal here, and something that I'm working for in the next couple years.

John Pendergrast
50:40-51:11
That's amazing. You know, I wish you all the best on that. That's truly a spectacular goal. And when I think about where your family came from and What your dad did and the effort he put in, and now he has a son pushing as hard or harder going after those things. And the culmination of that is The first of what I likely expect to be many water parks, because I can't imagine you stopping at one. There'll be an empire yet before you're done. That's huge. And congratulations.

Alex Ojeda
51:11-51:13
I appreciate it. Big deal.

Tim Samson
51:13-51:15
And probably a cruise ship.

Alex Ojeda
51:15-51:16
Right.

John Pendergrast
51:19-51:21
There's going to be a real Caribbean water park.

Tim Samson
51:21-52:09
This is one water park. There's no rooms. Yeah, so you're you know, the your evolution has been pretty cool overall. I've known you for a number of years from creator to conference speaker to consultant, strategic consultant. It's really cool. You know, and if I can use the term like thought leader, like that's in my head, like that's where you are, right? And I think that most people would say. That so, and you're not just an influencer anymore, like you are, you are in a lot of ways, but as Jack Moore used to say, you know, you're more, you're more than you've become. Right. Like in general. Like there's lots of potential to do more. And I think with your water park and everything that you want to get out of life and grow this, it's really How important was the credibility shift uh on this journey? You know, influencer, content creator, speaker?

Alex Ojeda
52:09-53:18
I I think it I think it was The most important thing because I think when I first started, like I said, I was mindlessly creating. There was no end goal or there was no big end-all-be-all. I was kind of just like, hey, this is fun. Let's see where this takes me. I enjoyed creating this. And there was no like purpose or vision behind it. Right. And so I think all this credibility building just allows me to reach those bigger goals and continue my purpose and my why. Whereas, you know, if not, I would just be just an influencer and, you know, continue to reach a small group of people. and not be able to expand much outside of that. And so I think the credibility opens the doors to bigger opportunities, to bigger credibility building things. If you take the consulting with Royal Caribbean, for example, that's an example of that, where the credibility allowed me to Expand into, you know, doing consulting for a new water park. Like, that is not something that, you know, that is my dream and what I love doing, but it's not something that would have come if I just, you know. stayed as just an influencer or kind of like didn't go out outside of that and kind of build my industry expertise.

John Pendergrast
53:18-53:38
Totally. I mean, the story is a great story. And you're a young guy, so you have a lot of story left or right. So that's really cool. Okay, so we have this thing called Lightning Run, where we just ask questions and you answer them as we always say as quickly as possible. But the reality is, neither Tim nor I are able to answer questions quickly. Do as the best you can.

Tim Samson
53:38-53:44
The first time we tried this, the guest asked us questions and it took me like five minutes to answer one.

John Pendergrast
53:44-53:55
It's true. Don't ask Tim questions. That's the lesson that we're taking. Okay, Tim, kick it off.

Tim Samson
53:55-53:58
Biggest mistake attractions make with social media.

Alex Ojeda
53:59-54:01
Okay, I'm gonna have to think of these questions now.

Tim Samson
54:02-54:04
Come on, come on, chop, chop.

Alex Ojeda
54:04-54:23
Biggest mistake is just not, you know, I see a lot of photo-first content still where people are just posting stats. They have what. Photos on schedule, and they just post that all season. There's no video first. And like we said before, everybody's swiping. And when you're swiping, you don't see photos, you see video. So to me, that's the biggest mistake.

Tim Samson
54:23-54:27
Okay, let's try this again. John. These are lightning questions.

John Pendergrast
54:30-54:38
TikTok, Instagram. Wait, Instagram. Is it Insta now? Anyways, TikTok, Insta, or YouTube? Pick one.

Alex Ojeda
54:40-54:46
Oh, that's a tough one. I'm going to have to say YouTube. YouTube? Okay.

Tim Samson
54:46-54:49
Scariest water slide you ever filmed.

Alex Ojeda
54:49-55:31
Scariest water slide I've ever filmed. I don't know if there's one that specifically comes to mind, but in my head, that may not be the scariest, but I went to in Mexico, there's these slides called slip and flies. And you, it's kind of like a Nike check mark where you start on your, you're laying face first and you just fly into a pool. I think the very first time I, after doing it a bunch, I'm not scared of it anymore, but I think the very first time I did it, I was like, How is this real? Like, this is incredible. It was very scary. And it's very thrilling because you're launching crazy into the air and then you're just smacking into the water. It's so much fun. But I would say that first initial slide on that was very scary. So I think that's probably the scariest, or at least one of the.

John Pendergrast
55:32-55:52
That reminds me of this video I saw years ago of this lady going off one of those slides. And then she's late she somehow managed to stay perfectly straight and hit the water, and the entire water park turned around because the that thing went viral. Big time. Vertical or horizontal video?

Alex Ojeda
55:53-55:54
I think vertical.

John Pendergrast
55:54-55:57
What's your grandma's current Fortnite skill level?

Alex Ojeda
55:58-56:02
Well, if she was still with us, I. I don't even know.

Tim Samson
56:06-56:07
God mode.

John Pendergrast
56:09-56:32
Oh, you're going to have to fix that in post. God mode. Wow. Tad lighting round is over. Yeah, it's Oh, no, that's the tagline right now for this entire thing. Okay. Most overrated social media trend.

Alex Ojeda
56:33-56:40
Ooh, most overrated social media trend. Honestly, I don't have one that comes to the top of mind.

Tim Samson
56:41-56:42
Cruise ships or theme parks?

Alex Ojeda
56:42-56:47
If we're talking like theme park, theme park, like not water park, I'm going to have to go with cruise ships.

John Pendergrast
56:48-56:51
Drone footage, essential or overused?

Alex Ojeda
56:53-56:55
I view it as essential.

Tim Samson
56:55-57:01
Best time to post. This is a terrible question. Who came up with

Alex Ojeda
56:59-57:22
Not us. This is great. My answer to that, I get that asked a lot. It doesn't matter. My answer is it doesn't matter, but as long as people are awake. So, whatever your time zone is. If people are so if you don't go to bed till 10 p. m. , people are still awake till 10 p. m. So, or vice versa. I prefer to post in the morning because that's when everyone's awake, right? But that's my two cents on that.

John Pendergrast
57:22-57:23
Influencer or creator?

Alex Ojeda
57:24-57:25
Creator.

Tim Samson
57:25-57:28
Worst content collaboration you've ever seen.

Alex Ojeda
57:28-57:33
I've ever seen. Ooh. Communicator.

Tim Samson
57:33-57:35
Pizza Hut clone was bad.

Alex Ojeda
57:38-58:01
I don't, yeah, I also don't know if I have one. In mind. I have some good ones that I can think of. There's this little kid named The Rizzler. He's if you look him up later, he's super viral. He's just a funny little kid. He does like this funny face. And he went viral for that. And now I see like Hardy's Carls Jr. and them, they're working with him as like the face, or Arizona Ice T has him coming in as the face.

John Pendergrast
58:01-58:02
That's cool.

Alex Ojeda
58:02-58:07
Yeah, I don't know if I have any bad ones, though. I think that that's what Costa Man is like a good one that I've enjoyed recently.

John Pendergrast
58:08-58:17
I love the positivity. Because you're every question we ask you, it's a negative-based question you turn around. So, I'm going to ask you one more: one social media platform you'd eliminate forever.

Alex Ojeda
58:20-58:32
That's tough. I mean, I don't have one that I would eliminate, but I feel like I don't use Twitter enough to like in my day-to-day. So if I had to pick one, it would probably be Twitter.

Tim Samson
58:32-58:36
Most underrated attraction type. Content under any attract.

Alex Ojeda
58:36-59:03
Oh, I mean, I think it's like just going back to your core, your attractions. So, literally, just throwing up ride POVs. You know, I feel like it's not done enough, it's so underrated. Like, you know, if you go to any attraction, you won't see that most of the time. And so, I'm like, you know, why are people just going back to your core? Why are people coming back to your attraction? Like, I feel like. Is that like the most underrated, simple thing to just like immediately get good content?

John Pendergrast
59:03-59:05
Analytics or gut feeling?

Alex Ojeda
59:05-59:06
Analytics.

John Pendergrast
59:06-59:26
That's interesting. Hold on, hold on, hold on. I got to step in on this. That's interesting because you're a creator, which is very, very right brain. And then you're also very left brain. I mean, I just like to always go off of data and I always look at the analytics and see what could I have done better the next time.

Tim Samson
59:27-59:29
Water parks in the off season?

Alex Ojeda
59:29-59:33
Yes or no? You mean you're talking like outdoor, indoor?

Tim Samson
59:34-59:36
Well, yeah, there is no there is no offseason in indoor.

Alex Ojeda
59:36-59:54
But yeah Outdoor weather. Like you're s I I yeah, I would love to see it. I mean, I I don't know if the other people would would be as crazy as I am to go out in freezing cold to To write some slides, but so like polar bird water parks, like Canadian style water parks, so yeah, that would be kind of cool. I think it's about content.

Tim Samson
59:54-59:57
Would you post content in your water park in the offseason?

Alex Ojeda
59:57-01:00:20
Oh, okay. Yeah, a thousand percent. I mean, obviously, when you're talking about like feasibility, it's a little more difficult. For some people, but 100% at my specific water park, yes, it'll be year-round content coming out. Even if there is no other offerings like hotel, campground, things like that, it would still be if it's just seasonal, it would still be content year-round. Got us all those season passes in the offseason. Yeah, totally.

John Pendergrast
01:00:21-01:00:24
Biggest content creation investment attractions should make.

Alex Ojeda
01:00:27-01:00:30
I heard this really great consultant. His name is Alex Ojeda.

John Pendergrast
01:00:32-01:00:32
Love it.

Alex Ojeda
01:00:33-01:00:51
I would say that that's the biggest. I mean, in in general, it should just be you know, investing into social first thinking. And so that starts with, like I said before, like just as simple as getting an intern or social media coordinator to start working out at the park. Yeah, it's that's awesome.

John Pendergrast
01:00:51-01:00:56
I love your take, too, because I had a mentor once say to me, if you're not willing to bet on yourself, why should anyone else?

Tim Samson
01:00:57-01:00:59
What's your content creation kryptonite?

Alex Ojeda
01:01:00-01:01:02
What can you elaborate on what kryptonite means?

Tim Samson
01:01:03-01:01:04
What's the thing that you hate to do?

Alex Ojeda
01:01:05-01:01:46
Oh, the thing that I hate to do. Okay. Ooh, that's tough. I mean, I enjoy pretty much every aspect of it. I would say, like, my more favorite things are obviously being in the ground creating. The things that I am less excited about is kind of the, I guess, pre-planning and like figuring out actually where to go, coordinating the logistics of travel and things like that. That's kind of the more things where I'm like, you know, after a while, I'm like. I don't want to be doing this. I want to go create or I want to go plan out content as opposed to, like, hey, I need to fly to this destination to get XYZ or. whatever it might be, right? So I think that's a better, I guess that's again, that's the thing I like the least, I guess would be the best way to phrase that. It's also nice.

John Pendergrast
01:01:46-01:01:48
That's the thing you can hire for if you need to.

Alex Ojeda
01:01:49-01:01:50
Yeah.

John Pendergrast
01:01:50-01:01:51
Next big social platform.

Alex Ojeda
01:01:52-01:02:41
Ooh, next big social platform. I don't know if there's like one specific platform, but what I do see is that, you know, there was a time where long for longer format content was king and everybody was flocking towards that. And then Short Form kind of took over. And while I still think Short Form is still going to be at the top, I think long form is making its comeback. So if we're talking like YouTube shorts took over, I feel like YouTube long form is slowly going to start come back. You know, apparently there was some statistic that TV is a huge, huge, and even in my content, specifically, people are watching my YouTube long form on TV. It's like the biggest percentage sometimes. So I think when you talk about like. The next big thing, I think it's going to be that, you know, TV is coming back as well, and people are watching longer format content on television.

John Pendergrast
01:02:41-01:02:44
It's good. Attention spans are starting to increase again. That's good.

Alex Ojeda
01:02:44-01:02:44
Yeah.

Tim Samson
01:02:45-01:02:47
Best reaction you've ever gotten from a video.

Alex Ojeda
01:02:47-01:04:14
Best reaction. I mean, I my biggest Like what I love the most is creating like some magical video for a brand that I'm work that I'm really passionate about. And then them going just crazy about it. With Royal Caribbean, one of the my favorite videos I ever made was there was this trend going around where people would Go into a restaurant and the waiter would be like, enjoy your food. And then the person would say back, thanks, you too. And the waiter would look back, be like, me too. And then it'd cut to them. Having shots of pizza or whatever the food was in together, and then they would say, Have a great day. The person would say, You too, and the waiter would be like, Me too. And then they would, you know, then show the guest doing the dishes and waiting the tables and stuff. And so I took this trend to the water park on Royal Caribbean's Island, and I did it. It was like, have a great day at the water park. Thanks, you too. And then we montaged shots of us, having fun. And then it was like, you know, have a great day to the staff. And then, you know, I went back and I started like sending people down slides, lifeguarding and doing that. And that video, it just came out so well when I showed it. to the director of social media at the time at Royal, she started tearing up of how like crying of how good it was and how like good it made her feel. And so for me, that this is probably one of the best reactions I've had from a video. And I personally love to see because it's like that satisfaction of two awesome brands coming together and building something Or creating something magical, like that's the best reactions for sure. All right, the last question.

John Pendergrast
01:04:15-01:04:17
Content creation in five years. What changes?

Alex Ojeda
01:04:17-01:04:59
Oh, content creation in five years. What changes? Honestly, I think what changes is content is just going to continue to get better and better because there's going to be so much content and so many people are starting to create more and more every day. And there's more and more platforms and it's more and more easier to create. that when you have so much content coming out, the only content that's going to succeed is the good stuff. So I think what's going to happen is it's like that phrase they say, like the great thing about America is competition. It's going to apply to content creation where content's just going to get better and better and better over the next five years to the point where to succeed, you really have to be good at it. Yeah, it's because everyone's going to learn your system. That's why it's going to get better and better. That's good.

John Pendergrast
01:04:59-01:05:02
Alex, it's been great having you with us today.

Tim Samson
01:05:02-01:05:04
Thanks a lot for joining us. Any last words?

Alex Ojeda
01:05:05-01:05:12
No, just thank you guys for having me. I appreciate the time. Great conversations. Thank you very much. Thank you guys.

Geraldine Lee
01:05:12-01:05:23
You're listening to Signal, the podcast for attraction leaders shaping the future of guest experiences. This is Signal.