[Top Agency Series] Elevating Brands With Artistic Vision With Nicolas Munn Rico of LNDMRK

Nicolas Munn Rico is Partner and Co-founder of LNDMRK, an agency connecting artists with the corporate world, and Mural Festival, an event celebrating muralism and local artists. With a passion for art and entrepreneurship, he has been influential in generating unique projects and collaborations. Through LNDMRK, Nicolas has facilitated brand campaigns that blend commercial objectives with artistic expression, working with renowned companies like Starbucks and Jose Cuervo. He envisions art as a medium for aesthetic pleasure and a powerful community engagement and brand storytelling tool.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [03:23] Nicolas Munn Rico discusses the origins of LNDMRK and its mission to bridge the gap between artists and brands
• [06:11] The youthful drive that propelled the creation of Montreal’s Mural Festival
• [07:33] How LNDMRK acquired its initial clients
• [09:35] The role of LNDMRK in negotiating and managing projects between artists and brands
• [13:28] LNDMRK’s customer success stories
• [24:27] Nicolas talks about the rapid rise and challenges of Mural Festival
• [33:47] The team behind LNDMRK and the Mural Festival

In this episode…

What does it take to bridge the gap between the vibrant world of art and the structured realm of corporate marketing? How can one create a unique event that puts a city on the map while uplifting its local artistic community?

Nicolas Munn Rico, a marketing expert, provides an intriguing narrative on navigating the intersection of art and business. He shares how his journey began by connecting artists with corporate clients to transform urban spaces, laying the foundation for LNDMRK. Nicolas discusses how he mastered the art of licensing to promote unique and limited artistic projects, further cementing how his agency acts as a crucial middleman between brands and artists. His story showcases the emergence of muralism as a vibrant channel for art appreciation and business engagement, changing how we perceive the intersection of culture and economics.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Nicolas Munn Rico, Partner and Co-founder of LNDMRK, to discuss the transformative power of art in urban spaces and corporate partnerships. Nicolas discusses the origins of LNDMRK and its mission to bridge the gap between artists and brands, its role in negotiating and managing projects between artists and brands, and the rapid rise and challenges of Mural Festival.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Nicolas Munn Rico on LinkedIn
• LNDMRK
• Mural Festival

Related episode(s):

• “[Top Agency Series] Navigating a Merger and Becoming an End-to-End Digital Partner With Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Sweet Process Series] How to Save Hundreds of Hours a Month Using Top Productivity Tools with Adi Klevit of Business Success Consulting Group” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Growth Through Acquisitions – What is Your KPI and Northstar? With Jason Swenk” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Building a Great Team and More Helpful Insights with Jason Swenk Host of The Smart Agency Master Class Podcast” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “We wanted to be the middleman who speaks the language of both artists and corporate entities.”
• “Mural Festivals not only celebrate art but also contribute to rejuvenating neighborhoods.”
• “Aside from driving sales, we’re pushing a unique narrative with every artist collaboration.”
• “The magic happens when brands dare to step outside their comfort zone and embrace creativity.”
• “Our team’s passion for the art scene is what truly transforms spaces and experiences.”

Action Steps:

1. Create a platform for local artists to showcase their work: This promotes community engagement and supports the growth of the art scene.
2. Foster relationships by bridging the gap between creative talent and commercial opportunities: Building a network of artists and brands can result in unique, memorable campaigns.
3. Embrace art as a means to rejuvenate and bring life to urban spaces: Transforming spaces with art can alter the public’s perception and create lasting impressions.
4. Curate events that resonate with the interests of a younger generation: Mural Festival’s success hinges on catering to the interests of a demographic often overlooked by traditional festivals.
5. Adapt traditional business models to incorporate the ephemeral nature of art: Recognizing and respecting the transient nature of street art can lead to innovative and environmentally conscious projects.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:15

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22

Dr Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today, is no different. Nicolas Munn Rico.

And Nicholas before I formally introduce you, he is one of the co-creators, founders of LNDMRK. It’s lndmrk.com, and also muralfestival.com. Before I introduce you, let’s point out some other episodes that are cool, since this is part of the top agency series, Nicholas, some other cool ones were Kevin Hourigan was a good one of Spinutech. He started his agency in 1995. So it was really interesting to hear the landscape of business the internet and also agency life then. And then, another good one was Adi Klevit. Adi Klevit, she specializes in creating SOPs for companies. So she comes in if you want to smooth out your onboarding from a client perspective or onboarding from a staff perspective, she’ll come in and basically help companies document all of the SOPs, which make things work to more perfection, right? Also, Jason Swenk talked about how he built up his agency to eight figures and sold it. And then a second interview where he’s been buying up agencies, we talk about the valuation space and everything like that, that and many more on inspired insider.com.

This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the accountability, the strategy, and obviously the full execution production on the back end. So Nicholas were kind of like the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the host and the company, so they can create amazing content, amazing relationships and run their business. For me, the most important thing in my life is relationships, and I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I really have found no better way, over the past 15 years, to profile the people in companies I admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you thought about podcasting, should you have questions, you can go to rise25.com to learn more, or email us at [email protected].

I’m super excited to introduce Nicholas Munn Rico. He’s a co-creator of the Montreal Mural Festival and co-creator of LNDMRK agency. They’ve been doing this thing for over a decade. Okay? They’ve served companies over the years, like Starbucks, Jose Cuervo, Chiquita Banana and many, many more. And we’re going to talk about how it all started. Nicholas, thanks for joining me.

Nicolas Munn Rico 3:00

Thanks for having me, and thanks for what you’re doing. I think it’s good. Think it’s great to support entrepreneurs and business owners. It’s always nice to have an extra push.

Jeremy Weisz 3:08

I love it. And there is a video piece to this. So as Nicholas is talking we, I’m going to pull up his website. Obviously, they have beautiful design and everything else, but talk about, just start off with LNDMRK and what you do.

Nicolas Munn Rico 3:23

Of course, of course. So I’ve been like, kind of wearing those two hats, like since the past decade. As you mentioned, LNDMRK is the first company we ever created, if I’m not mistaken, it was in 2012. It stems from the desire to connect artists and the corporate world or campaigns, etc. We wanted to kind of be like that middleman in between to speak the language of both in some kind of ways. We always wanted to do something special for Montreal, we’re big art lovers in Montreal here, we’ve been like in that world for forever, to be honest. And we went to our own company and generate our own projects. And that’s kind of where it started. And to kick-start the project. Basically it was not even commercial at first.

We just invited artists to create in Montreal, hopefully try to find them jobs. But overall, we had a space in the north of Montreal, and we gave them freedom of creation and really immerse people in their world. At the time, Yvel Rush was the gallery who gave us the space, and we kind of like used these first action to kind of like begin our company, let’s say. And at the same time, we had another big idea, which, like is, was a blessing and a curse at the same time, which we wanted to produce an event to promote the local artist base here in Montreal and invite international artists to express themselves in Montreal. So after a quick trip to Art Basel at the time, if not mistaken, 2012 again, it was the first time Alexi and I went to Art Basel, and we really got completely mind blown about like, the effervescence of art over there, a merge of, like, installation, technology, murals, graffiti, brands were showcasing gallery showcasing it was so rich and so alive. And we’re like, okay, we need something like that in Montreal.

And like, let’s build our own version of it. And Montreal is already a big festival city, so we’re like, why don’t we frame this as a festival? Invite locals, invite international create together, and we came back with our little manuscript in Montreal and proposed the festival idea to a couple people. And there was only one group of people actually were interested in the idea at the time. It was the merchant Association, actually, who saw the potential of artists who rejuvenate the neighborhood through art, and it was so interesting. So basically, we collaborated together to start the first Mural Festival.

Jeremy Weisz 6:07

You weren’t busy enough, so you needed another huge project.

Nicolas Munn Rico 6:11

At the time, if I’m not mistaken, I was 22 years old, going on 23 so, at this time, you have some kind of, like divine energy, of like, everything’s possible, and you can break down the walls of the impossible. So that’s kind of like was.

Jeremy Weisz 6:25

Right now someone asked you to start that — you’re like, I have two kids. Leave me alone.

Nicolas Munn Rico 6:28

Yeah, I would definitely think about things differently but we’re really passionate people, and we’re actually obsessed with the art scene in Montreal and all around the world, and it was the beginning of the numeralism movement, where, like, the Shepard Fairey Of This World Bank C et cetera, was like this big, like wave of numeralism that was happening at the same time. So we felt like we wanted to be part of that. So for us, it was a must to bring this to Montreal, and then to come back with a relationship with LNDMRK. So basically, these two companies were kind of born in the same year. So we kind of we had a team in LNDMRK that was a little bit more used to work with brands, and a team at Mural that’s a little bit more used to work with artists and programming, and we kind of like merge that knowledge together to get the funding for the festival, but also get the jobs for the artists that we’re representing at LNDMRK at the time. I think it’s a long answer to your question, but it gives you a little bit about where we come from.

Jeremy Weisz 7:26

Talk about with LNDMRK, how do you get your first client?

Nicolas Munn Rico 7:33

So basically, I would say the first phase of LNDMRK, and over the years, I would even frame it as three phase in the past 10 years. The first phase was mostly specializing into art production. So we’re basically people, we can produce these impossible ideas. We would tell that to the artists, and we tell that to the brands as well, you both have crazy ideas, and we’re producers, and we’re going to produce your crazy ideas. And that’s kind of how it started. And I think, the artists have already their own network. They have their own demand already. They already speaking with lots of brand and sometimes they need a company like LNDMRK. Sometimes they don’t, but when they do, that’s when we come into play, and we help in the production side of things, negotiations type of things.

So that’s where we come into play. And brands have been maneuvering in and out of art and all around art forever. What I mean, it’s definitely a very powerful tool for marketing and communicating a message. So that LNDMRK was the perfect place to be for us, because we’re like, we will build this campaign for you, we know how to speak with the artist, but we also, for the artists, know how to negotiate for the brand, or for the artists to the brand. So we kind of, like became these kind of middle man’s and producers in the middle and that niche was our niche, and that’s how we built successfully since our beginning.

Jeremy Weisz 8:58

That’s really interesting. So Nicholas, for you, these artists all have maybe a lot of these contacts with brands. Maybe they are not sure exactly how to monetize a project or wholly manage the project. They just want to do the art, and so they may have a connection. They go, hey, we got this. Can LNDMRK help kind of facilitate the whole project. Maybe it requires more than one artist, and like, so you have a network of artists, and then you help, kind of negotiate and make sure the artist gets paid fairly and help manage the project.

Nicolas Munn Rico 9:35

That’s exactly it. And we do have a pool of client we constantly speak with also, and sometimes, they have specific needs. So sometimes the needs come from the client as well. Listen, I’m building this campaign. I see right now. We’re showing Aldo, for example. We have this shoe. We want to do a worldwide campaign. We want to focus on five different countries. Help us find the artists, help us find the narrative. And then we want to do the launch event, etc. Cetera. So we kind of do the research, we do the negotiation, etc, and we sometimes produce also, I would say, in this case, we don’t produce the shoes.

We would produce the event, or we would be part of the event, and we would accompany the companies from A to Z, and support and protect the artists in the process as well. And as I said, again, sometimes most artists are entrepreneurs themselves, right? They run their own show. They run their own companies. So sometimes they have either a team or they do it themselves. But sometimes they need someone, like LNDMRK. So we kind of like to play with the artists and with the brand, and we try to create a perfect world for both, basically.

Jeremy Weisz 10:37

A dual-sided marketplace, Nicholas can be difficult. I’m curious how it started. It comes from the artist first, saying, hey, Nicholas, I’m talking to Jose Cuervo, and I’m not even sure what to do. I just want to do the art. Can you help? Or to come from a brand first, saying, Starbucks is like, I need a bunch of artists. You’re like, oh, I have a bunch of artists that we can, how did it end up starting?

Nicolas Munn Rico 11:04

It did start a little bit on the, I would say it started on the artist side of things at the beginning, because we really focus on one or two artists at a time. And would be okay, let’s find work. Okay. So that was our beginning. We take the portfolio, we go knock at every door. This is an amazing artist. We believe in Him. We believe in her. And this is the next thing, the next big thing your brand needs. It. That’s how we started. And then overall, I would say we, in parallel with the Mural Festival becoming an overnight success, we started naturally to talk to a lot of brands, and using those connections with the brands, you could transfer to LNDMRK then suddenly the needs were coming from the brands and not from the artists. And then we started already this vice-versa relationship pretty early on. And I think that was the powerful thing about LNDMRK.

Jeremy Weisz 11:55

I love this. Now I can kind of see where the Mural Festival comes in. Because initially, I’m like, oh my god, this is a lot of work to put on this huge festival ticket to coordinate all this stuff. But this ultimately gets you, it helps the community of artists, and gets you known among the community of artists. And so it really helps LNDMRK a lot as well. So I can really see that. So we’ll go to Mural Festival in a second. But for LNDMRK, if you’re watching the video here, is obviously, you can see this beautiful work here. And it takes a special, I think, type of brand to work with you that want to take chances and want to come out of the box, because not all do. I mean, you can see some of the stuff here with Chiquita, right? And even with Jose Cuervo.

I know we’ll talk about this. This is a kind of a cool project to look at, because they did these limited edition bottles, and actually sold out of them with the art. So it wasn’t obviously, it could be, I don’t know if it’s the same alcohol or maybe the special one, but the actual bottle, because of the art helps make this even more special. So that was kind of a cool case study. And then you can see Starbucks as well. But I know we were talking before you record specifically on Aldo for a second, so I’m gonna pull up there’s Aldo MX Art series, and you can kind of see these shoes. Talk about this project for a second, and what you did.

Nicolas Munn Rico 13:28

I think you put the finger on something interesting. At the end of the day, being out of the box is something important for the brands. So when they call us, that’s already their goal. So they’re already out of the box, and it could be specifically for a campaign, or it could be for a specific target. It could be for a specific product, or an anniversary or a special event, and that these are occasions for them to get out of the box and get out of their ways. And I think, for example, the MX series. MX series is already a shoe that exists, it’s already in different colors, and it becomes a canvas for this new opportunity, and the artists create the new narrative for the shoe. And that was interesting here, because they wanted to work artists from all around the world, and they give them freedom of creation as well. So it was possible to, like, write underneath the shoes, like, change the lace, like, go inside out there. That was a really, really cool, interesting project.

And it allowed us to work with artists from around the globe. And these campaigns were actually, like, really sharp, like it was worldwide. We worked on, like, prints on buses, posters that were like, shown all around the world once more. So that was a really, really interesting project. But at the end of the day, as you say, it’s of course, they want to drive sales, but it’s true a unique narrative and that only the artists sometimes can bring this to the table. They have their organic crowds, but also their unique art is pushing a message, and that’s why, sometimes brands wants to connect with artists.

Jeremy Weisz 15:10

Yeah, I could see also it kind of creates, I don’t know, a bit of a scarcity, because it’s a limited, usually these are limited edition you can’t create, like they’re not mass producing these things. And so when do people, you mentioned something. When do brands come to you? So it could be a special event. It could be anniversary. What are some other kind of triggers? Or like, we need something different?

Nicolas Munn Rico 15:33

Yeah, so I would say I was kind of mentioning a first phase of LNDMRK, but the beginning was really about art production. So the one we’re seeing right now, I consider it to be a little bit more of the second phase of LNDMRK, where we focused on licensing, but the first, in our first era of LNDMRK, it was mostly about production. So eventually, maybe you can come back and go to the Lune Rouge project, but that was a production. So first clients we were working with were clients who wanted to transform a space. Then it became a licensing later on, because we got a little bit more into the expertise and the knowhow, and now we push that second phase through the licensing. But the beginning it was, I have a space, I’m building a bar, or I’m building this new mall, or we’re transforming the streets, and we want artists to be involved. We want to work with local artists.

We have this crazy idea. And we always advertise ourselves, like being these people who can create those crazy ideas to life. And we also have the network, as you say, like you love relationship. We love relationship as well. So we have those relationship with the artists, relationship with the city, or with different clients, and we connect all those together. So if you go on Lune who’s, for example, basically they had just bought that new building. It’s an historical building, and the goal was to, so we did different floor the specific picture here is to transform a parking lot. So different floors of gray, boring parking lot. Lune Rouge is the company driven by Gila Liberty, who used to be the owner of Cirque du Soleil. He’s a really creative person. He’s a person with vision.

Jeremy Weisz 17:11

It looks like a totally different space, like I was, oh, this is indoors and this is outdoors. No, actually, it’s the same space. If you’re looking at it, you can see kind of a plain garage. And then this one here, it literally looks like carpeting, and you’re inside of a space.

Nicolas Munn Rico 17:28

Yeah, with this one, we worked with circle. It’s a collective from Los Angeles, and we really, like took these three floors of parking lot and transformed everything so you wouldn’t feel like you’re in this great, boring piece of concrete. All these this building now hosts like EA games and tons of other like entrepreneurs and people in technology, etc, and like, it’s the matter of, like, the second you’re coming to work, you’re somewhere else, you’re already in the creative space and in that scenario, they approach us as, let’s transform something, let’s create something. Let’s rejuvenate, let’s bring life to something that doesn’t have it. And that’s kind of like the way the conversation starts. I would say.

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