Many companies have tried and failed to access social media in an attempt to capture the attention of younger generations. They add things on Snapchat that no one wants to see, make posts on Instagram that no one likes, place ads on Facebook that no one clicks — because this media-addled generation isn’t interested in just being sold a product or a service.
We’re not looking to browse. We’re looking to become a part of our media and our products, imprint our identity into them, make our own brand of being. Take for example Venmo’s option to label your monetary interactions with insipid comments — it’s an attempt, on the smallest level possible, at inserting your own humor and personality.
This is an idea that Richmond’s online event curating company, OccasionGenius, has built a whole business on.
Founded by Nate Marcus in 2015, the company began as a website created to connect people planning corporate events to local businesses that could host them. In its first year, it helped 77,000 locals find unique private event opportunities.
In September of 2016, Marcus rebranded the company as OccasionGenius, and included options for birthday parties, bachelor parties, and other events.
Soon after, he was bombarded with requests for date night suggestions, restaurant suggestions, weekend plans — so a few weeks ago, he launched an interactive part of the website that suggests local events based on each person’s individual interests.
“When we took on customer discovery, we learned that people didn’t want to just be told where to go,” Marcus said. “People want to tell us what they like, and then they want us to make recommendations to them, kind of like Amazon or Netflix. They don’t want to see stuff they don’t care about.”
The mechanism, according to Marcus, is simple.
“You sign up, and the first level lets you choose from 42 different categories of what your interests are,” he said. “We can start to predict what kind of events you’ll be interested in. We pull all events from Facebook, but the problem is that Facebook doesn’t really have tags for those events.”
It’s free for users, and categories include active, boozy, foodie, romantic, creative, educational, a category for kids, the health-conscious, and those that are a little “offbeat”. From there, the event startup further categorizes the events by tagging them under a system of 92 different labels, as they pull events from Facebook and Google every 24 hours.
Wineries, dance party, yoga, hiking, and Halloween are just some of the labels that OccasionGenius uses to help discover what your interests are. The personalization part comes from an algorithm — artificial intelligence that records the user’s clicks and organizes their preferences.
“Our assumption is that if you’re clicking on stuff, saving stuff, then you’re interested,” Marcus said. “So we record all that. Say if you click on the category boozy events, but we see that 7/10 times you click on events related to wineries, we’re gonna see that you’re more interested in wine than say cider or craft beer.”
The AI will record what you click on as you use the website. Based on what people with similar profiles to yours liked, it will suggest the same events to you — and if you click on those events, it will record that too. So, for users, they can find events related to what they’re into and for local businesses, OccasionGenius works as a marketing tool for their event idea.
The online event platform earns money through a subscription service where businesses can pay a monthly fee to have their venue featured on the site for private events. According to the site, the subscription services range from $33 to 83/month.
Soon to launch, is an OccasionGenius app that draws from dating apps like Tinder.
“Some people like the browse option, but other people of certain ages like the option of an app making guesses for them,” Marcus said. “Then they just go ‘nope’ or ‘yep’ for different events, and if they really like an event, they can swipe up to save — sort of like super likes on tinder. We are working on creating that app as we speak.”
Ultimately, The goal is to create a service that curates entirely to your personal preferences. Users can save events, make lists and even share them. OccasionGenius caters to the modern desire to insert our identities into all that we do.
It is an attempt to join the ever-growing industry of business to consumer (B2C) services — unlike more traditional companies, B2C companies work to establish a direct and intimate relationship with the consumer.
“That’s the genius of OccasionGenius, no one else is getting to know you on the personal, intimate level that we are,” Marcus said. “All these big companies come out of Silicon Valley, these business-to-consumer companies. I asked myself and my investors, why not now, why not here, in Richmond? Let’s put Richmond on the map.”
