CEO: Experience Theater — The Personality Exam
Welcome to article numero two from our CEO: Experience Theatre series — article number one located here. Below, we’re going to go into detail around the part of the CEO: ET where the customer works with our highly complex and very cool system to create a … (our marketing said they’d buy us a kegerator if we used this word) bespoke customer experience putting them at the helm of their own company.
Personality Exam
The process begins with a personality exam. We’ve found that combining the customer’s stated desires during scenario design with a few pleasant surprises really gives the experience that special sauce. It’s like going to Subway. You order your usual (sweet onion chicken teriyaki), but decide to mix things up and add some spinach and mix up the bread type. Good for you — trying new things. Unfortunately, your combination of SOCT, spinach, and parmesan oregano bread tastes like shit and it ruins your whole meal. In this scenario, the customer didn’t know the flavors and didn’t know themselves. Our personality exam is there so that some dummy customer doesn’t order the CEO: ET equivalent of a disgusting sandwich. A particularly cool element of our personality exam is that the system’s questions evolve based on your answers. Custom questions for a customer customizing their experience! The customer isn’t always right, but — with our personality exam — we try to make it right for the customer.
Here’s an example video on how our personality exam works.
Exciting stuff.
Experience Customization
Once the personality exam is complete, the customer will move on to customizing their experience. The selections in this part of the process will drive the loose narrative of the experience. Not only is the customer able to build their direct experience, but also the world in which this experience exists.
Impressions of the CEO
What is at the core of the CEO’s personality? How is the CEO regarded by their peers? How is the CEO regarded by the world? Does the customer want to be a benevolent provider, a mad scientist Twitter edgelord with fuck-you money, a know-nothing ass practically born into royalty who has failed his way upwards as a tone-deaf narcissistic bigot because he gave a voice to other tone-deaf narcissistic bigots, the world is the customer’s oyster and the only limit here is their imagination.
The Company
What service does the company provide? How is that company regarded by the citizens of the world? What are the employees like? The persona and setting of the company will set the backdrop for the experience, and provide the characterization of our team of actors portraying employees.
The World
What is the state of the world? Is the CEO taking risks in a risky world, or are they riding high in an untouchable hot air balloon made of embezzlement, peak-80s Van Halen music and Cocaine?
Difficulty Level
Originally, we didn’t have this as an option. We assumed everyone would just want the equivalent of a luxurious lazy river with a corporate backdrop. Weren’t we surprised when we had current CEOs knocking down our door asking if they could cut their teeth on some difficult experiences. To be fair, we also don’t really understand this trend of paying to run an obstacle course in a mud pit while getting the shit beat out of you — just to say you ran an obstacle course in a mud pit while getting the shit beat out of you a little bit faster than other people who ran in that same obstacle course in a mud pit while getting the shit beat out of them. It did pose an interesting question. Could we alter the design of CEO: ET to provide training grounds for people looking to try this shit on hard mode? Yes. Yes we could. We had to run some known shit-business scenarios through our super computer so that we could generate realistic models for response, but we were successful and now we have a difficulty setting if you want to hit some sort of imaginary high score.
Premades
Some people are just shit at choosing from a smorgasbord of options, so we decided to create a simpler route for those looking to put themselves in the shoes of a known scenario. We created premades. Premades are scenarios that have happened in real life transposed to CEO: ET. For example, Enron (pre or post investigation and lawsuit), Apple following the death of Steve Jobs, any bank after being shitty and suffering no consequences — we’ve gone back to the East India Company to cultivate some realistic and moving experiences for CEO: ET.
Add-ons
Lastly, we have add-ons. These are essentially smaller scenarios nested within the larger CEO: ET scenario. Think of things like:
- Testifying before congress
- Being asked to join the Bilderberg Group or the Illuminati
- Fancy Cocktail Parties
- Backdoor dealings with other CEOs
- Doing a bunch of drugs with a sex worker because your money and power have made you increasingly numb to feelings of excitement or joy, the sex worker collapsing, you thinking you murdered said sex worker, but the sex worker ends up recovering shortly — waking up to hear you on the phone planning with someone to get rid of their body, the sex worker panics and there’s a loud dispute, the cops are called and you spend the night in jail before posting bail. Fun!
After the customization process is complete, we marry up the scenario with the personality exam. The personality exam is here so that we can use it to introduce elements that provide a little bit of acceptable variance into the scenario. Knowing the customer allows us to introduce some unknowns to delight or challenge the customer — making it feel more real. That’s our special sauce, we take the bones created in the scenario customization and wrap them in a warm jacket of variance derived from our personality exam.
In our next article, we’ll talk about the remaining part of the process — drafting the scenario, setting the stage, and implementing the scenario(s).
XOXO
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