SuperBlue: Building Out an Experiential Art Startup

From Gatekeeper to Gamechanger in Opening the Established Art World to Experiential Art

A top US Art Gallery turned to AC Lion to help build out a global immersive art network and open the established art world to a new generation and new models. Though a well-established company, they needed help building out a startup to turn this vision into reality. Their first venture, focusing on climate change through experiential art, was already in process, and they needed to scale fast. They needed people to help them hire, fund, drive partnerships, establish the branding—everything leading to getting people in the door.

They needed a visionary CFO, a Head of People and Culture, a VP of Marketing, and others to launch and establish the brand in the marketplace. All these people needed to not only be skilled in their expertise coming out of emerging growth companies but committed to the mission and vision of this venture. Not an easy task.

AC LION DELIVERED:

Within just two months of working with AC Lion, we hired their three key leadership roles.

• CFO: We found them a super strong CFO, in FP&A, deal structuring, PE investments, capital raising, M&A, and Joint Ventures, where she worked for high profile celebrities and executives. She had previously been in the media and entertainment industry, where she grew nascent businesses or start-ups from scratch via internal investments or acquisitions. In one month of AC Lion’s introduction, she was hired. It was a slam dunk for them.
• Head of HR – Culture, People and Education: Had a strong background in talent management and organizational effectiveness and was working at a consumer brand with a retail component and overseeing a team of HR business partners and recruitment. She was a global-minded, strategic and operational leader with experience in people management roles in high-growth environments who knew how to get things done. Her strengths were in talent management, learning & development, executive coaching, employee relations, recruitment, comp & benefits, people analytics, and diversity & inclusion.
• VP Marketing, Ticket Sales: AC Lion found them someone with 20 years of consumer marketing experience, a master mind at developing and executing audience-driven strategies and innovative marketing solutions that drive growth, ticket sales revenue, and exceptional experiences for live entertainment, sports, and events, working for major venues and looking for their next challenge.

We then continued to work with them to build out their marketing team, resulting in five hires in less than a year. This included a Director of Marketing—Audience out of a modern art museum who drives the integrated marketing strategy to meet an annual attendance goal of 1MM ticketed visitors.

With an annual budget of over $1M and a team of 5 direct reports, her focus is on building and launching multichannel advertising campaigns. They couldn’t have been happier.