Performance With a Purpose – KidZania’s Win, Win, Win Plan

Xavier López Ancona, founder and CEO of KidZania believes he has a “win, win, win” business model.  KidZania aims to teach kids about the world of work through play, at the same time providing a publicity medium for their corporate partners AND enhancing their local communities. This is an interview with Xavier López Ancona about his "win, win ,win "business model of KidZania.

Secrets of Success
What do you think are the key factors that contribute to KidZania’s success?
López: I think it’s a solid business model: a win-win situation and I really mean win, win, win, win… everybody wins.  
I think children love it because there is lots of role play.  One of our key concepts is independence and empowering kids so they can make their own decisions with no parents telling them what to do.  There is nowhere else where kids can play like this as they are always supervised and controlled by their parents or teachers so for kids, KidZania is really their place.

For parents, KidZania is a safe educational place where kids can interact with other children rather than playing on their computers. So parents are happy because their kids are socialising.  The schools are very happy: things that are difficult to teach in school children get to learn and this practical play reinforces what they do at school.  The shopping centre is also very happy.  And finally the sponsors happy because they get a showcase.

Consulting with Kids

Xavier López Ancona is "working"with kids

You say that it is “our guiding principal to have kids involved consulting them on their ideas, preferences and wishes”.  How do you incorporate kids’ feedback in KidZania?

López: We do a lot of market research.  Quite often we go into schools with say a drawing or essay contest.  For example we did a drawing contest and asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Number 1 for girls was a veterinarian so went to talk to a sponsor and showed them the research.

Staff

Staff excellence must be essential to delivering a high quality, educational, safe and fun experience for KidZania’s “citizens”.  How do you achieve this?

López: Staff are very important to what we do.  The children are going to be with the supervisor telling them what to do in their roles and getting them into the experience.  We try to put together the best teams in our communities - we pay a lot of attention to selecting the right people.  Then also training is very important, not just about the product and what they have to do, but also how to handle kids.  Some very shy and some very outspoken so we have to give our staff skills around education, safety and the activities. 

Corporate Partnerships

KidZania’s missions is to “provide the best family edutainment through fun, realistic role-playing and constitute and effective interactive publicity medium for our partners, firmly committed in the enhancement of our community.”  How do you ensure that you are delivering edutainment whilst at the same time allowing your partners access to “interactive publicity”; is there any tension between the two elements of your mission?  

López:  That’s a very good question.  We have a very strong principal that what we do is to copy real life so when you’re walking down the street you don’t have say “supermarket” or “gas station”, you have Walmart or HSBC.  We just copy everything that’s real we don’t put any more things in than there are in real life, just what children would experience every day driving to school or walking in their neighbourhood.

Our sponsors get much more than just the marketing aspect though.  We do a lot of CSR with them, for example programmes with underprivileged kids or in schools, and I think that’s what they really value.  If you went to most of the companies they are financing their contribution from within their CSR budget.  It’s more about giving back to kids and creating an environment to teach them about real life.

Corporate partnerships are fundamental to your business model.  How do you select and work with your partners to deliver your mission?

López: Well we first make sure that they are good for kids so we don’t have say coffee or cigarettes or alcohol!  Second once we know what establishments we want then we go and ask the top players to get involved.  We don’t know how to operate a bank or a newspaper so we are looking to get sponsors to help us get things right and this gives us a lot of content.

We have to customise between different cultures and backgrounds, for example in Japan or Dubai.  First we select our local franchise partner who knows how to do business locally, and about the kids and local culture and business arena.  Then we customise the establishments: in Japan they value education very much so not only do we have a school but also a university and a kindergarten - we have to target it. 

                                                 Resource from: BLOOLOOP.com 

One day in Kidzania

This time we will learn through a real experience in Kidzania.

First let's have a look at the background of the protagonist : she is a mother from China but work in Tokyo now. She has taken her 7-year-old boy Xiao to the Kidzania in Tokyo in 14/7/2011.

The following story comes from her oral, translated by me :

Kidzania, it’s a strange name, I know ‘Kid’ is ‘child’, but ‘zania’, I think it’s maybe a Latin word which means ‘Country’, anyway, ‘Kidzania’ is a kid playing country or city.

Xiao always wants to go there because of some advertisement from television. Once I took him to the front door of Kidzania, but there was no ticket for this day, the working staff told us that we should make an appointment before. So in the summer holiday, I ordered a set of tickets online (parents must to follow the children who are under 3 grades in primary school, and they need to buy tickets too.)

Kidzania here opens twice a day, 10:00-15:00in the morning and 16:00-21:00 in the afternoon, tickets for the children are 3000 yen and adults 2000 yen, the working staff tied a facility on Xiao’s arm, it’s said that it’s a ID document.

Since it is a children country, there is its own money which is called ‘Kizo’, each child will get a credit card and a bank account with 50 Kizo when they come here. 

Xiao was thinking about how to spend the 50 Kizo after he got them, his first job was to make ice creams (other boys want to be firefighters or pilots), so he used 8 Kizo to buy a ice cream which was the first time and last time Xiao spent money in Kidzania, because he began to work later.

Xiao got 6 jobs in 5 hours: ice cream shop clerk, dentist, lawyer, magician, actor and another one I forgot. (My friend says he works fast, her child finished 3-4 jobs in general.) Xiao knows how hard it is to earn money through working by himself, so he deposited all the money in the Kidzania bank so that he can use them when he comes here next time. 

Every work is perfect just as in the real world, a lot of occupations are supported by the reality companies, so they used the real name, such as ‘Mitsui Sumitomo Bank’ credit card, ‘Asahi Shimbum’ newspapers, the ‘Japan Airlines’ airplanes. There will be a 15-minute training for every job, then the children will take all kinds of uniforms; dentist wears white gown and mask to put in a false tooth for the patient, Xiao told me it was a golden tooth and he spent great efforts.

The work in the court was distributed by balloting, Xiao was a lawyer. Camera was forbidden in the court, it was a discipline, so I just sat and listened. A girl was unlucky to draw a defendant, the judging boy was easy, just sitting and having nothing to do. Xiao told me that in fact it is like this: the defendant is unlucky, the judge is in disorderly, and lawyers and prosecutors are most tired.

Xiao wanted to be an actor later so we went to the TV station, parents could not to enter the hall, so I did not see what he played. But after the programmed finished, the working staff gave us a disc. I watched the disc after coming back home, a group of children danced or did some semaphore with the help of working staff, Xiao did not look nervous.

A kid only can finish 6 jobs of the 60 jobs, Xiao said he would go there again.

Kidzania let children have a simple consciousness for the adults world, and understand simple social payment structure. Xiao knows getting money was so hard eventually. From this point of vies, Kidzania is a very nice and interesting place.

A fantastic method to create and transfer the brand experience of Six Flags

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlDFCpyAna4

Click on this link. You will see an interesting video which is about the activity of trying the new Bonzai Pipeline in Six Flags St.louis’Hurricane Harbor.

Bonzai Pipeline is the ultimate wipe out experience featuring twin, looping slides that sit side by side and the Proslide Skybox launching capsule. After reaching the top of the 6-story structure, guests will step into the enclosed capsule where the floor drops out beneath them, sending them free-falling down the slide and into a side "super loop." Riders will surf the 290-ft. slide at up to 40 mph.

But the most interesting thing is the Bonzai Pipeline's clear tubes allow spectators below to watch riders as they shoot through the 360˚ loops and splash out into the water below. So the people don’t only can try the new facility, also can share the experience with others through watching. Besides, some tourists record the process by video and share the funny experience with friends, families after going back.

As the result, there is no denying that this activity is a good way to create and transfer the experience and attract the people’s attention to the new facility and Six Flags. 

KidZania is Growing

Children love KidZania

In Cuicuilco, a southern suburb of Mexico City, is a new twist on the KidZania concept: an outdoor park, more than triple the size of the existing, eponymous indoor facilities, on a 150,000 square foot site in the early 2012.And that’s just the beginning. The privately held KidZania Inc. currently operates eight parks and is on schedule to double that over the next two years. Altogether about a dozen new KidZanias are in various stages of development around the world, including two in the US. Mark Snell is now Chief Experience Officer, and Philip Sandhaus is Vice President Global Business.

As Chief Experience Officer, Mark Snell, based at the company headquarters in Mexico, leads KidZania’s “Ministry of Culture,” focused on creating superior guest experiences through entertaining and engaging content, themes, architecture, programming, and operations. He was first exposed to KidZania about 11 years ago when he was with Jack Rouse Associates, and CEO Xavier López Ancona invited a JRA team to visit the flagship facility.

The new property in Cuicuilco will reflect an expanded concept as well as a larger facility and the first outdoor KidZania. “It is the “next evolution of the KidZania experience,” says Snell. Laid out as a scaled-down city complete with a downtown, suburbs, landscaping and architectural landmarks, and looped by a roadway for driving education, its activities revolve around the themes of driving safety, community, health, civics and the environment. “We are taking our motto of ‘Get Ready for a Better World’ and putting it into practice through the medium of leisure entertainment,”says Snell.

Get Ready for a Better World 

The backstory of the “Better World” motto is that KidZania was formed by kids who wanted to experiment with running the world and see how they could improve things. They even have their own currency: the “kidZo.”

By empowering children to try on a variety of activities and roles, KidZania seeks to build skills, nurture creativity and develop values in ways that will positively affect the real future of their young visitors and where they live. “If we can encourage this experimentation and flexibility in kids now, when they become adults imagine how they might do things better than we currently do,” explains Snell.

The outdoor setting of the Cuicuilco park accommodates an extensive driving course and fulfills an important KidZanian goal: to train better drivers for Mexico’s streets. “This will emphasize the importance of driver’s education to the kids,” explains Snell.

 “To really understand how a city works you have to have all the roles: police officers, dentists, bus drivers, cooks, clerks, judges, trash collectors, teachers, radio announcers and so forth,” says Snell. “Additionally, national, state and international curriculum standards are being built into the activities; we have strong relationships with top universities in Mexico and are building similar relationships with other US and global institutions centered on early childhood education.”

That’s heavy stuff, but it’s still “Entertainment first,” says Snell, whose professional background includes an education in theatre, the creation of attractions for SeaWorld, LEGOLAND and other major theme parks and the design of online educational experiences for school curricula. “It has to deliver a fun and engaging mix of entertainment along with the educational/ socialization component for kids and their parents to be motivated to visit and return. KidZania isn’t a school, although we host many school groups: It’s a place for kids to come and have fun, and the supervisors role-play right along with the kids.”

Snell works with a creative team of about 50 people in Mexico City covering the full range of disciplines for designing and producing themed environments. Once a site is established, it’s a rapid process: “We can turn out a park in about 18months,”he says. That is a amazing process.

From the conversation of Mark Snell , we can find KidZania is growing increasingly stronger over years .And their target “Get ready for a Better World ” has been achieved step by step , we are looking forward to a better world for children .

 watch KidZania: http://www.youtube.com/user/kidzania?feature=results_main