By Jay Wynne, Director of Secret Parties

There are many questions in life where the answer escapes us. We can spend our lives on a fruitless search for meaning where the result only yields more questions.  What is the meaning of life? To be or not to be? Why are we here? What is our purpose? Thankfully, my assignment isn’t to tackle those and it’s a rather more familiar subject that I find myself pondering today.

The Secret to Happiness

If you asked a group of ten, one hundred, one million people what their secret to happiness is, I can almost guarantee that each answer would be unique and different to all of the others. Happiness is deeply personal to each individual and is, more often than not, in context and specific to their unique situation in life. So, while the billionaire owner of Amazon, Jeff Bezos’, version of happiness might be finding an even bigger, more shinier mega yacht (to clarify – that would make me happy too), another person’s version may simply be that they were able to put food on the table for their family.

Human Connection

Something that became abundantly clear in 2020 when the pandemic hit was that the vast majority of us crave human connection and togetherness. Not only do we crave it, we need it to survive. For some, the various lockdowns were a lonely time filled with empty days and little to no human contact. It is no surprise that in the 12 month period from 2020-2021 Zoom’s revenue amounted to $2.65 billion, up more than 300 percent from just $623 million the year before.

Though many of us may have used Zoom for various work calls, it felt that connecting with friends and family was the overwhelming use for the software in this period. A number of us will have stories about “virtual” quizzes, parties, weddings, birthdays and more during lockdown, tales of dancing in your living room while loved ones on the screen were doing the same. Technology was specifically developed for the purpose of people being able to party together in a virtual setting, over the fence “gatherings” with socially distanced neighbours became the norm.

So, why would we jump through these hoops and do these things simply to connect with others? Because the secret to happiness is human connection.  And the greatest human connection is having fun together. Or in other words – partying.

Secret Parties

Our brand is parties. We exist for parties. What makes us happy…..is people, together, partying. And quite simply, we do what we do – because people love to party.

While I won’t go into the ins and outs with our own struggles of owning a party brand when partying was banned, we could not have been more certain of our purpose during that time.

So many of us can relate to the issues faced in this time, we remember going to bars with no music, sitting a metre apart, no dancing.  But we couldn’t help ourselves, could we? No dancing standing up? No problem – waist up, seated, upper body dance moves only (admit it, we all did it)!

Our events were busy, in spite of these restrictions, in spite of the unnerving time we found ourselves in. And why? People sought fun, people sought togetherness, people sought happiness. Thankfully, it transpired that the secret to that happiness was, and still is, partying!

The Party

.When we develop and concept a new event, our number one objective is delivering an excellent customer experience.  Of course, this is subjective and not everyone’s idea of the perfect day or night out is the same, but the formula remains the same. Our guests want a great party.  They want to wake up the next day still buzzing from The Party, the group chat blowing up with stories surfacing from what happened at The Party.  And then what happened at the After-Party.

Creating the perfect party is conducting an orchestra.  Everything is designed and composed to reach the crescendo. All the moves made, and elements brought in are carefully thought of to induce happiness.

To make a great party, you’ve got to think about a perfect marriage of the senses. Our senses are the gateway to a great party.

Taste = food = happiness

Sight = visuals / entertainment / venue aesthetic = happiness

Touch = dancing = happiness

Sound = music = happiness

On a weekly and almost daily basis we witness guests in what appears to be their happiest state of being. Chatting, dancing, laughing, singing, smiling, flirting are just a handful of actions occurring as we scan the room at any of our events.  Noise levels go through the roof with the sound of people having the time of their lives, laughing louder than they’ve ever laughed, creating memories with friends or loved ones they’ll remember forever.

While it would be impossible for me to generalise an entire world’s population and say we all have the same thoughts on what happiness is, I am fairly certain it is the minority that don’t enjoy a great party.

Dancing and singing are our global shared language of unity, togetherness and of course, happiness. Babies find their rhythm before they find their words. It is built within us to party.

To seek joy. To find happiness.