Towering Achievement
And ESB has a lot to say, and quite the online presence to do so, boasting 1 million followers on Instagram, 1.3 million on Facebook and 1.6 million on TikTok. On each platform, the landmark building comes alive, flirting, joking, clapping back, celebrating the beauty of New York City seen from such great heights and inviting others to do the same. Many followers take ESB up on that offer – the Manhatten skyscraper welcomes 2.5 million annual visitors into its gleaming art deco lobby and new museum before they rocket up to its renovated 86th- and 102nd-floor observation decks.
Hundreds of celebrities are among those who have made the journey, some with more flair than others. In 2023, Jared Leto physically climbed ESB’s exterior to promote his band’s world tour, and in 2024, the cast of HBO Max’s House of the Dragon joined a 270-foot-long dragon, Vhagar, atop the building in preparation for the show’s second season.
When brands interested in promotional events do the outreach to Rickards’ team, part of Rickards’ job is to push every idea to be splashier, bolder, more experimental.
“The House of the Dragon team reached out and said, ‘We want to put a banner on the building,’” she recalls. “And we said, ‘What about a dragon?’”
While Rickards was growing up in tiny Newbury, N.H., a town with no stoplights and a population under 3,000, her dreams of working in a creative field did not involve dragons. Eventually, however, they came to include Cougars.
“I wanted to go to school in a small city with a campus in the downtown area,” she says, citing Charleston’s warm weather and fascinating history as bonuses. “I loved the opportunities the College and city provided me. CofC gave me a great education and my best friends; the communication department gave me the foundation for my career.”
Through a retail job as a student, Rickards met a woman at a real estate firm who hired her as a marketing assistant. So, when she acted on a lifelong interest in moving to New York after graduating, she had two years of experience under her belt and was able to find a job with Empire State Realty Trust.
After a three-year stint as marketing manager for a different real estate company, she returned to the Empire State Building in 2018. She was excited to step into a leadership role in which she could build and develop her own teams, which sometimes requires stupidity.
“I’ll sit down with the team and ask, ‘What’s the dumbest idea you have?’” she says. “Stupid is fun. It’s great when you have a team that gives everyone the freedom to be stupid. Things flop, or they go viral, but we never get deterred when they flop, because it all helps us better understand our performance and the direction we need to take.”
Equally important is instilling a sense of what the 94-year-old brand stands for, what lines it will and won’t cross. “We have a strong identity and strict brand standards,” Rickards says. “So when we’re thinking up content, we’re asking ourselves, ‘How can we keep to those standards but still have fun?’”