The circus is a thrill, a locus of nostalgia for individuals who keep in mind summers with relations below colourful tents, a beloved amalgam of the athletic and the absurd, the uncommon place the place jugglers and acrobats and fireplace breathers can fly free, fodder for numerous films and a Dr. Seuss guide — and, to not be a downer, a enterprise.

The circus has to earn money to maintain its clowns clowning.

Coming out of the pandemic, Cirque du Soleil was in bother. The firm had staked almost all its income in dwell reveals, with their dizzying shows of balletic grace and gravity-defying gymnastics. After submitting for chapter safety in 2020, Cirque determined it needed to be greater than only a circus. It wished to be a model, one thing that might promote perfumes, sun shades, tote luggage and video video games. So over the previous yr the circus introduced in consultants, which yielded months of conferences peppered with phrases like these.

“I think there’s a real opportunity to elevate the art of clowning.”

“Don’t focus on the Cirque, focus on the Soleil.”

“We want to think of Soleil as the building blocks of vibe.”

“We’ve thrown a lot at you.”

“Lots of Soleil!”

“So much Soleil.”

Cirque du Soleil employed a “cultural analysts” agency, known as Cultique, to reply an age-old query: Is it doable to hack recognition?

Cultique argues that it’s. Analysts there are within the enterprise of promoting cool. And their work with the circus this yr has supplied a glimpse into what it takes to alter a enterprise’s repute, to do a model makeover at a time when social media has made branding each extra vital than ever and extra fraught.

Cirque’s leaders felt assured that their firm embodied all the things Gen Z loves: campy outfits, kitschy make-up, feats of athletic daring. Sequins, spandex, being further. Yet few of that era — individuals born from 1997 to 2012, who now have $360 billion in client energy — appeared within the circus. Cirque’s greater than 40 reveals promote 10 million tickets a yr all over the world, with a concentrate on its American house in Las Vegas, however principally to a middle-age (or very younger) viewers. The common Cirque attendee is 42, in keeping with the corporate. More than two-thirds have youngsters below 18.

Cirque du Soleil turned to Cultique to grow to be related. And Cultique promised, improbably, that even at a second when tradition appears to maneuver on the velocity of (sorry) a flying trapeze, it’s doable for a savvy outdated enterprise to catch up.

“We literally help people get ahead of the curve,” mentioned Linda Ong, Cultique’s co-founder and chief govt, later including, “The secret sauce to our business is we help brands anticipate what’s going to change before it’s widely acknowledged.”

It’s not precisely apparent learn how to outline tradition. It’s all the things we put on (crochet, sheer); take heed to (Dua Lipa, Doja Cat); watch (“Real Housewives,” “Barbie”). Ms. Ong makes use of water-based metaphors to explain it. Culture is a wave. You can journey it or get pulled below.

Seemingly invincible manufacturers have proven what it’s prefer to really feel the tradition wave crash. Pepsi ended up pulling a 2017 commercial that confirmed Kendall Jenner handing a soda can to a police officer. Bud Light misplaced its standing as America’s top-selling beer after it confronted backlash for a video from a transgender influencer selling the beer this spring. If tradition is water, the floor is murky.

Enter Ms. Ong and her enterprise companion, Sarah Unger, who promise to assist firms devise enterprise methods, advertising campaigns and merchandise that enchantment to cultural sensibilities — earlier than these sensibilities are even absolutely fashioned. Cultique doesn’t rely a lot on knowledge. Ms. Ong and Ms. Unger consider that when tendencies present up in surveys, it’s too late. It’s finest to determine cultural obsessions earlier than they’re on TikTook, earlier than younger persons are speaking about them, proper earlier than anybody acknowledges they’re actual.

“There are two kinds of people,” Ms. Ong, 60, mentioned. “People who get turned on by culture and people who don’t understand it.”

The notion that anybody — not to mention a 60-year-old and 37-year-old company duo Zooming from Los Angeles — can describe cultural fixations earlier than they manifest sounds doubtful. Popular tradition, in any case, is just not all that completely different from different cultures, like cheese, yogurt or kombucha. It’s alive. It’s natural. It isn’t designed by some all-knowing authority. It simply occurs.

But Cultique’s founders swear that cultural relevance, like every aspect of enterprise, may be studied and managed. Last yr, that work introduced in $3.8 million in income for Cultique, which has simply two full-time workers and sometimes a dozen or so contractors. Skeptical, I made a decision to observe them as they took on the duty of reworking Cirque du Soleil.

‘How Do We Become the Theme at the Met Gala?’

Everyone at Cirque du Soleil was astounded to listen to I’d by no means been to Cirque du Soleil.

“It’s your first Cirque?” mentioned the corporate’s senior tour director, Michael Veilleux, throughout intermission at a Cirque present known as Corteo (theme: funeral meets carnival) in Newark. “You don’t meet many people who it’s their first Cirque.”

He actually doesn’t. That’s partly the issue.

Cirque’s reveals, as I witnessed, have pole dancers, upside-down sneakers with out toes and clowns dressed up like horse butts. They have audiences of fogeys trying harried and youngsters chucking popcorn on the ground. What they don’t appear to have is an expansive base of younger grownup followers.

It was Covid that prompted Cirque du Soleil’s existential disaster, and determination to chase a brand new cultural picture. After Cirque’s executives tended to all their rapid March 2020 calls for — sending performers house, storing hoops and silks away in warehouses — the Montreal-based firm furloughed 95 % of its 5,000-person employees. Only roughly 150 remained. After vaccines, because the circus started to rehire these employees, executives swore they’d pandemic-proof their enterprise. Cirque couldn’t be fully reliant on its performances.

Today, about 80 % of its income comes from dwell reveals. The firm’s chief progress officer, Nickole Tara, can envision a time when performances will account for simply 20 % of the income stream.

Executives at Cirque are experimenting with something an adolescent curious concerning the circus would possibly purchase. A online game known as Cirque du Soleil Tycoon set for launch on July 28, with the gaming firm Roblox, through which gamers can construct their very own circus world. A signature perfume (for the clown lover in your life) and a line of house items (assume maximalist rugs and psychedelic curtains). Corporate partnerships with firms like Motorola, which launched its new flip cellphone in an occasion in June produced with Cirque.

Cirque is engaged on a tv documentary collection, prone to be known as “Down to Clown.” It is planning a conference styled after Comic-Con, the fantasy occasions that draw tens of hundreds of individuals yearly, which it hopes to launch this yr.

“We are going to try so many new things,” mentioned the circus’s head of progress, Ms. Tara, 39, who final yr left the music competition world for a newly created management place at Cirque. “We have to embrace the Cirque of the modern era.”

Some manufacturers ooze the sort of cachet that folks wish to put on. Supreme sneakers. Kylie cosmetics. Others should assume somewhat more durable concerning the model of themselves that they may commodify — like learn how to flip a zany outdated circus right into a model individuals think about related.

On this query, Cultique has been stuffed with concepts, particularly throughout a gathering in early March, when a handful of Cirque executives joined its cultural analysts to debate what success would appear like for his or her partnership.

“How do we become the theme at the Met Gala?” Ms. Tara mused.

“It’s not a crazy idea,” Ms. Ong responded. “How do you make your events the Met Gala equivalent?”

The assembled group — which included Cirque’s head of worldwide branding and social media, Chris Bower, and the Cultique analyst Rajiv Menon — agreed that it wished Cirque to be ubiquitous. They wished individuals to surprise why in all places they regarded there was Cirque du Soleil. Roaming Art Basel. Holding courtroom at New York Fashion Week. Spotted with Jenna Ortega. Partnering with Versace.

“‘Oh my God, everywhere I turn Cirque is doing cool things with cool people,’” Ms. Ong mentioned, imagining the occasion chatter she desires to generate.

To Ms. Ong, this doesn’t seem to be an inordinately tall order, as a result of she already sees younger individuals embracing the qualities related to the circus, particularly over-the-top efficiency. They’re simply not making the connection to Cirque’s enterprise. In her thoughts, Cirque must publicly personal the themes percolating in tradition, what she and Ms. Unger consult with as “the Soleil Strategy.”

“It’s like porn,” Ms. Ong mentioned. “Everybody knows the Cirque du Soleil vibe when they see it.”

The Zeitgeist Whisperers

You’d be forgiven for considering “cultural analysis” was required studying for a humanities seminar, or a mash-up of recent artwork and Freud. But for Cultique, it’s a enterprise enterprise, which may really feel like a shock even to Ms. Ong and Ms. Unger, who’re nonetheless processing the truth that they make their residing speaking concerning the tv, artwork, style and music they love. (Their weekly Substack is known as “Culture Porn.”)

Ms. Ong grew up within the Seventies in Texas, the place she was the one Chinese American in her principally white elementary faculty class. Once whereas enjoying dodge ball, one among her classmates pointed at her and yelled: “Give the ball to that Mexican girl!” Culture made Ms. Ong really feel much less lonely. She binge-consumed “Hotel California,” “Gilligan’s Island,” Reader’s Digest and “The Brady Bunch.”

Ms. Ong moved to New York after school after which bounced round promoting jobs. She helped lead branding for Bravo. She realized she had a expertise: telling company individuals what cool individuals had been speaking about.

As a longtime marketer, Ms. Ong loves metaphors. One of her favorites compares Cultique’s work to testing the ambiance in preparation for a rocket launch. Their shoppers are constructing the ship, ensuring all of the elements are working. Doesn’t it make sense to make sure the ambiance is amenable to flight?

American Express Global Business Travel employed Cultique in 2021 to check how company journey is altering. Cultique’s white paper beneficial that firms appoint “chief journey officers,” making journey an even bigger a part of firm life. Cultique characteristically interspersed company phrases with zeitgeisty lingo: wellness, burnout, hybrid work.

Buttoned-up shoppers (together with Amex) like Cultique as a result of even its office insurance policies are playful. The firm has a four-day workweek. Ms. Ong and Ms. Unger did a boot camp to check their mind waves and decide which elements of the day they’d be most efficient.

Both Ms. Ong and Ms. Unger recurrently enter what they name the “cone of silence,” once they cease speaking with each other and as a substitute rabidly devour tradition, which may imply, relying on the day: “Love Is Blind” (Ms. Unger); “The Bear” (Ms. Ong); heavy steel (Ms. Unger); World Wrestling Entertainment (Ms. Unger); going to a wolf sanctuary (Ms. Ong); getting on a motorbike (Ms. Unger).

They preserve group chats with their shoppers going all day, sending articles, songs, movies or TikToks that relate to the work, which in Cirque’s case they name “Cirquecore.”

“Has there ever been a CIRQUE Barbie?” learn one latest textual content from Cultique.

“HERMES’ new fragrance is ‘the sun as perfume,’” learn one other.

“I also am interested to think of Cirque’s performance as religion,” Ms. Unger wrote to the group in the future. “People are more spiritual than ever, esp. Gen Z.”

Magical Mystery Tour

The phrase nostalgia got here up usually in conversations about reinventing Cirque. “Nostalgia brands are having a moment,” Mr. Menon, a Cultique cultural analyst, declared over Zoom in the future. What could possibly be extra nostalgic than the circus, with its popcorn and clown noses?

Speaking of nostalgia, generally what Cirque appears to be chasing is its historical past. Before Cirque was an organization making near $1 billion per yr — which it’s doing once more immediately, after bouncing again from its pandemic stoop — it was a scrappy group of acrobats and stilt walkers placing on a present for residents at a youth hostel in Quebec City. Cirque’s founder, Guy Laliberté, who stepped down as chief govt in 2004, got here up as a fire-breathing performer on the streets of Montreal. He cobbled collectively his artist associates to create a competition.

Mr. Laliberté has attributed a part of the present’s success, through the years, to events he threw at his lakefront mansion: Women sang opera on gondolas, a 19-piece orchestra serenaded the crowds, the host himself breathed fireplace. These raucous gatherings have attracted celebrities to Cirque’s mission, together with George Harrison, who as soon as attended randomly whereas on the town to look at Formula 1 and was so impressed that he requested Mr. Laliberté to make a Beatles-themed present. (The first enterprise assembly between Cirque and the band ended as Paul McCartney drew an image of Nowhere Man, handed the paper over and advised the Cirque workforce to “figure out what this means.”)

If the Beatles beloved Cirque’s model, why not Gen Z?

Sitting via a Cirque efficiency can be a reminder of the options that to some audiences might appear out of step with the instances.

At the present I attended, one of many longest sequences centered on somewhat individual named Valentyna Pahlevanyan, who hooked up herself to balloons and floated over the sprawling enviornment as viewers members pushed on her toes to ship her upward. The room rang out with cries of “I want to touch her!” Then she and her husband, Grigor, additionally somewhat individual, carried out a humorous model of “Romeo and Juliet” with interruptions from clowns. There had been additionally jokes about a big man leaping on one finish of a seesaw with a smaller man on the different finish.

To Cirque, it is a testomony to the present’s inclusivity. Michel Laprise, who has directed three of Cirque’s reveals, mentioned the performers assist form their very own roles. Choking up, he likened the performers’ relationship with the present to a wedding.

“I want them to be loved by the audience,” he mentioned. “It’s important that we have little people in our shows. It’s a way to say they exist. They’re not victims.”

“The show tells you that no matter how tall you are, how big you are, whatever your background is or what you look like, you can still work here and do the job that you’re meant to do,” mentioned Ms. Pahlevanyan, 60, including that she and her husband helped create their “Romeo and Juliet” sequence to seize the comedy and chaos attribute of Cirque.

Still, a part of what Cirque is searching for is a model of its model that doesn’t want the present for relevance (or for all its income).

That ambition is distilled, partly, on the corporate’s social media. On Cirque’s TikTook there are prank concepts, health ideas, Halloween costume inspiration, marriage ceremony proposals and Black History Month reflections. In one video, Cirque dancers do ballet to the saccharine strains of Michael Bublé. In another, they compete in a push-up competitors.

Since beginning its TikTook in 2021 and starting to emphasise its different social media accounts, the corporate has gathered greater than eight million followers throughout platforms. Some of its TikTook movies get three million views, and plenty of of these viewers are far youthful than the 42-year-old present attendees.

“Last month the question was raised: How do we get more of our TikTok fans to buy tickets to shows?” Ms. Tara mentioned. “I don’t know if that’s the point.”

Cirque had its strongest monetary yr in 2022. Sitting on the Ludlow Hotel throughout a go to to New York this spring, Cirque’s executives advised their cultural analysts that they’d been making a video that confirmed how Cirque’s model could possibly be translated into style and residential items.

The video cycled via photos of acrobats, trapeze artists and clowns. Then industrial gadgets appeared on the display screen — tote luggage, sun shades, pantsuits, pottery — together with the textual content “Prime for retail expansion.” It was a imaginative and prescient of what Cirque, divorced from the circus, could possibly be.

“This is what Cirque du Soleil — and the Soleil — can look like in a physical object someone would actually go and buy,” mentioned Mr. Bower, Cirque’s head of branding.

The cultural analysts had been dazzled. “We love this relationship,” Ms. Ong mentioned. “It’s like improv. Y’all take the ball and you’re like, ‘Great, OK, let’s do this!’”

Later that evening was Cirque’s occasion with Motorola in Brooklyn. Half-naked acrobats spun via purple, misted air. Eerie percussion music stuffed the room. Dancers in extraterrestrial-looking leotards leaped throughout the stage. And because the performers did acrobatic flips, Motorola unveiled its new flip cellphone, a nostalgic tackle the early 2000s accent.

“OVER THE TOP, OTHERWORLDLY, and AVANT GARDE,” Ms. Ong declared over textual content. “Totally on brand!”