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David Balfour: Redefining Brand Experiences

• W4 Podcast Studio • Season 2 • Episode 3

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David Balfour: Redefining Brand Experiences 

In this episode of EventNewsDXB, we sit down with David Balfour, co-founder of LightBlue and one of the pioneers of experiential marketing in the Middle East. David shares his desire to help redefine brand engagement in Dubai - shifting the focus from traditional activations to emotionally driven experiences that resonate long after the event is over.

From big and bold stunts to more intimate and curated brand moments, David explains why emotion is the new metric and why bravery, strategy and cultural insight matter more than ever.

We also explore the future of live experiences in an AI-driven world, why authenticity will become a brand’s greatest asset and what it takes to build strong, trust-based client relationships in a fast-moving market.

If you want to create events that inspire, engage, and truly connect, this episode is packed with ideas and insights you can’t afford to miss.

EventNewsDXB is powered by -45dB - Sound Reduction Specialists.

Production Credits:

Presented by: Ian Carless
Studio Engineer & Editor: Roy D'Monte
Executive Producers: Ian Carless & Joe Morrison
Produced by: EventNewsDXB & W4 Podcast Studio

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Speaker 1:

You're listening to the Event News DXB podcast your behind-the-scenes look at the event industry in Dubai, the UAE and the wider MENA region. I'm Ian Carlos, and each week I sit down with the people shaping one of the world's most dynamic event markets, whether you're an event planner, supplier, agency lead or part of an in-house team. I hope that this podcast gives you some practical takeaways, fresh perspectives and a deeper understanding of how things really get done in one of the world's most fast-moving event markets. And for season two, I'm super pleased to let you know that Event News DXB is brought to you by Minus 45DB, the team transforming noisy event spaces into slick, sound-reduced environments. From full-size conference theatres to compact meeting pods, minus 45dB builds modular spaces that are quiet, customisable and completely turnkey, and they're sustainable too smart design with zero waste. Check them out at minus45dbcom.

Speaker 1:

In this week's episode, we sit down with one of the most influential voices in experiential marketing in the region, david Balfour, co-founder of Lightblue. David has been in the UAE event space for over two decades and in that time he's championed a shift in how we think about brand experience not just as something to be seen, but something to be felt. We dive into why creative bravery is essential in today's saturated market, how data and emotion can work hand in hand to drive impact, and why agencies need to be more strategic partners, not just suppliers. David also shares how to balance creative ambition with commercial realities and why nurturing team culture is key to long-term success. But what really stood out for me is David's belief that emotion is the new metric, that experiences are measured not just by footfall or impressions, but by what people remember and how it makes them feel.

Speaker 1:

If you're in the business of building experiences that can move people, then this conversation is packed with lots of hard-earned insight. Let's get into it. David, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much for having me. Hey, welcome. I guess the first question is where I always start, inevitably is how did you end up in Dubai and how did you end up in events?

Speaker 2:

Well, I'm going back a long time now. So I worked in events in the UK specifically working for an agency called Brand Ambassadors. At the time they were an in-house agency for tenants' lager, so we looked after activations for T. At the time they were an in-house agency for Tennant's Lager, so we looked after activations for Tina Park, which was Scotland's biggest music festival at the time. We did the Scottish Cup rugby sailing and then, through the buyout of Bass Brewers and InBev, we moved into a lot of their brands. I'd been doing that for about five years. My dad had just passed away and he traveled the world and lived in the US and Brazil and I thought to myself you know what, it's probably a good time. Yeah, I believed at the time I was working for one of the most advanced agencies there there was in the UK from an experiential perspective. Yeah, and it wasn't even a term, it wasn't a word, there wasn't anything that we use.

Speaker 2:

It's quite a recent to experiential thing, absolutely it was just seen as events and sponsorship and there was a real merger of that and I thought you know what this is. This is cool. I like it. Originally, when I started with them, it was a one-year contract and I was going supposed to go back to uni right five years later I didn't, to the displeasure of my father, but yeah. So when he had passed away, I I thought you know what, I'm going to spread my wings and I didn't want to stay in the uk. I don't want to do the whole. Let's go to london.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I come to dubai in 97 for a schoolboy rugby tournament and I really enjoyed it. But also had an opportunity in New York for Glenn Fiddick, and Heineken was the other job that was looking for a brand manager at the time. So I applied for both. Heineken flew me out and I just thought this is great, I love it. I was quite young at the time. Heineken were like you've got five years worth of experience in delivering exactly what we want to do, and they offered me a role. Basically, by the time I got back to the airport I got an email with an offer letter and I went back and within a month I moved out, and it was. You know. I thought in my head and I know what you're gonna say.

Speaker 2:

Like everyone else, it's a common story two years, and then I'll go back somewhere, I'll travel and go somewhere else. And you've been here how long? 21 years in August. Yeah, it goes quickly, doesn't it?

Speaker 1:

it goes quickly, yeah, so fast forward, because I mean I really want to dig into the whole experiential side of things. Let's fast forward to Light Blue. Yes, how did Light Blue come about, and what sort of gap in the market had you seen in order for you to embark on that journey?

Speaker 2:

So I was working for Momentum. Momentum came into the market they're part of the IPG network and their vision was to replicate what they do in london, new york and asia in this market. Uh, they rebranded one of the promo seven agencies called seven below, who actually was my agency at heineken. So I knew the team at promo seven and mcn and I got offered to go in as event director there. It was a very different time where the in this market it was still not quite what they wanted in terms of. I didn't think clients were ready not all clients, but a lot of clients just didn't understand what experiential was. So I felt that momentum were pushing water uphill.

Speaker 2:

So the projects that we were getting wasn't the experiences that we were known for globally yeah and myself and ian, who was my creative managing director at momentum, my boss at the time we decided, you know what, instead of having these brands coming to us expecting a certain kind of delivery and we were then having to do we were doing it at home.

Speaker 2:

We were doing pushing media digital radio at the time and then the experience bit was this tiny little execution at a mall space. So we decided, you know what, let's do ourselves. Let's go out into the market with a true belief of connecting the consumers with the brand, taking them through this journey. And the journey was an experience and for us that was the key. That was always where we believed we had this sweet spot, where there wasn't anyone in market at that time doing what we were wanting to do, anyone in market at that time doing what we were wanting to do. We had event agencies who were delivering music events or brand activations to a certain level, but what was missing was the narrative, the storytelling, the emotional element, and that's what we were trying to bring to the table.

Speaker 1:

You talk a lot. I mean, I did a little bit of research not too much, but a little bit of research and I think in a few of the interviews with you over the past that I managed to read, you talked a lot about creating culture through experience. Yeah, what does that mean for clients and audiences?

Speaker 2:

We do a lot of data analysis and research. You know we look at the audience segmentation. How do we make them feel as a brand? So we have to put ourselves in the brand's shoe first, and I've said this many times. You know, the brand sometimes feels as if they're the king of the castle because they're in their hq offices. They believe everyone knows who we are, they believe our ethos, they believe everything that we push out. Then there's a reality drinking their own colite absolutely, yeah, absolutely you know.

Speaker 2:

So then we have to put ourselves in the consumer, who has a number of brands saying the same thing. So our vision is really about how we can connect the dots between the brand and the consumer to ensure that the journey that the brand wants to go on, the client and the consumer can also go through it. So it's, how do we bridge that gap between that narrative, that storytelling, the emotion, and that's the culture bit? So, understanding what is happening from a cultural perspective aligns yourself with a brand and the brand. It's not that we're asking them to change the brand, but we need to find sweet spots and these nuggets of insights that allows the consumer to understand. That's for me. So how do we do that? And a lot of it's emotion when we look at metrics.

Speaker 2:

Metrics at a very, very early stage, there wasn't, it was a gut feel, feel. So emotion became our metric. You know, when you go to a concert and you meet your partner for the first time, that's that's emotion, that's a story, that's a moment that you'll never forget. What we try to do is bring the culture element, art, entertainment, technology into the storytelling, the narrative that allows them, the brand, to tell its story to that consumer Because the brand doesn't own it. It's the consumers that own the brand. That's the reality.

Speaker 1:

We talked just a little bit before the podcast started, didn't we, about the whole term experiential being relatively new. When do you think this really sort of the whole experiential thing really took off? I mean, I remember I used to work in television video production and I remember I think it was around, I'm going to say, somewhere around 2012, 2014,. Around that period, and I noticed a big drop-off in the branded content that we were doing with brands around that time and that, for me, correlated very much with a rise in events and experience. Yeah, was that a similar experience for yourself? Where do you think that came from, that that shift?

Speaker 2:

I think, especially in this market it was. We had a huge amount of live events, from rugby sevens to the big music concerts that were happening from. You know, the likes of Live Nation or Redfest Brands were buying into that because their audience were there, yeah, and for us it was about creating the experience that resonated with the clientele. So what we were doing was creating a narrative and using content to drive that experience. Creating a narrative and using content to drive that experience so even the experiences that we would design was very much based around the content that we could pull out, and I think we were one of the first agencies in this market to actually use content as part of the experience. So not only were we creating, you know, unbelievable experiences for the brands, you know real standout moments and you know executions that sold the XB as an example. You know big, big spaces and big experiences that we were creating for the brands where visually it was appealing. You know people are looking at going, wow, that's cool. Yeah, this is only here for three days.

Speaker 2:

You know the money they spent on this and they're three days. You know the amount of money they spent on this and they're smoking mirrors. You know, because we can build things very, very smartly here, yeah, but the finish, the quality and what was actually being delivered from an experience, every touch point had an experience. But we filmed it all and at the time, we were bringing out guys from the UK to come and film because we didn't have that type of content producers in this market. So we were flying out guys from the UK to come and film and shoot because we'd seen what they were doing. So we used that as inspiration and we brought it out. And then that's when Facebook was the big platform at the time and we were pushing through content through that or paid ads yeah, so we connected the live experiences with content, which is now really fast forward into everything that you do is content based, and you mentioned content and you work across a number of formats, don't you?

Speaker 1:

digital, hybrid, physical. How do you decide which experience is right for a particular brand story? Is that something that you engineer, or is that more organic, that has to come from the client, from an existing experience that you can then either extraplicate or expand upon?

Speaker 2:

it does vary, you know. Sometimes we get a very clear brief.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, sometimes we get a whatsapp brief we've all had a few of those, aren't we it brief, I do remember getting one that said we'd like to do a television commercial. How much, no brief, that was just it how much?

Speaker 2:

pluck a figure out there, absolutely so for us, it then it's the onus is on us, yeah, to create whatever the concept, the way that we always look at it is, do we want to experience that ourselves and I think we're probably one of the hardest audience to please. When you work in the experience of delivering experiences, you become really, really picky. You know you turn up at events and you're looking around, you're touching walls. My wife's like what are you doing? You know I'm like, oh, that's quite nice, take a picture of that, keep that for later. So for us, you know we want to experience. We put ourselves in.

Speaker 2:

You know, not all brands that we work with. You know, from finance to automotive, to giga projects, we're not necessarily the audience. So we have to audience profile. What does that audience want? What are they looking for? What's the engagement? How does that fit in with the brand essence of what they're looking to do?

Speaker 2:

Or the product. You know, getting the product in the consumer's hands. How do we connect those dots? That's really important. So we really start with the consumer first, what's right for them? And I think that was this big switch from why we went and started Lightblue. It was always about the consumer, what they want, how do they want to feel about the product, the experience that they're in. If we can get that right, that's the KPI, that's our metrics. If they walk away with they do two posts, three posts by themselves, organically, or they're all walking around going this is cool, this is unbelievable. You know we can see the clients. They're looking at this and they're going this is impressive. You know we've had at the end of events. You know clients are buying champagne. You know clients are buying champagne. You know we had clients crying at the event end of the event and we're like this is cool that's a winner.

Speaker 2:

It's a winner right because you know, our job is also to make them famous. That is the job of the agencies. Make your client famous, make them need to use you because of what you've delivered. Everything's about delivery. It's really, really simple. If you, you might create an unbelievable experience. You have the strategy, you have all the insights, but if you fail in delivery, you're done. That's the last time they'll use you. Yeah, and you've wasted everything.

Speaker 2:

Because for us, it's about partnerships. We want to keep those partnerships, we want to keep those clients on the long-term basis, because then we understand the brand better, we understand the client better, we understand their kpis and that allows us to have fun. You know, because that's what we want. We want to turn up at our events and have fun with it. You know. So life's not as serious or it shouldn't be as serious as what it is but if you have everything in order that allows you to actually enjoy what you're delivering as well, and you can see it in the clients, you can see it in the consumers faces, and that's what we want.

Speaker 1:

We want to have fun. We'll come on to the topic of long-term partnerships in a minute. I had paul berger on recently from the arena group talking about basically how difficult he'd found to establish long-term relationships in this market versus the UK and the US, where they also operate. Before that, though, I wanted to ask you this I think it's fairly safe to say we live in a region that's fairly risk averse, yeah, so how do you find brands when it comes to their attitude towards experiential briefs and taking a risk? Are they for it? Do some jump on board wholeheartedly and say, david, do what you want, and do others go no?

Speaker 2:

Look, I think I wholeheartedly believe that most of our clients are brave and that's why they come to us. Right, you know we've had some unbelievable moments branded moments with clients but where we've had senior directors signing off on things that legal in the us or in europe have gone against you know. So, you know when we're. You know playstation and we launched playstation 5 and we were throwing two guys off the burj khalifa flying around at night tandemly and then flying through the address hotel, landing on shakeside road.

Speaker 1:

Legal we're like no way I'm not gonna happen, especially in the us, especially in the us. It's just, it's not gonna happen they're a bit litigation, happy, aren't they?

Speaker 2:

it's like, yeah, I mean, I had tickets to panama ready for me just in case. But we have brave clients and our playstation client, you know, robert and may are unbelievable. You know, visionaries they're. They always want to push things to the next limit, which is the ethos of playstation. So for us having these type of clients you know even mashrick we've got a wonderful client that's been a client of mine for, I'd say, about 15 years Suaj. He's very senior now. You know we had the French Spider-Man climbing up Bershklyfa with his protégé. It was a six-hour climb. He's a tiny, wee guy and we were like, is he going to be okay?

Speaker 1:

climbing this. He's the one that does it like totally freestyle, isn't he? Yes, no, safety, nothing, no.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but the concept aligned with what the brand wanted, you know, and that's the main thing. So it's not just about an experience, you know, coming up with something wild and crazy all the time. It has to make sense. There has to be a reason why we're doing something. You know, is it part of a kpi perspective? You know, we, when we launched the bmw not too long ago, we had it flying in in the helicopter through, you know, palm java alley and blue waters and then landing on Sky Dubai for the launch. That was a pure content piece as well. As you're one of the hungry people there watching this arrive. It's impressive, rather than the usual kabuki. There's the car, so it's. How do we take that to the next stage? How do we change things around? And that's what we try to work on. You know it's. It's.

Speaker 2:

We've had, you know, since all these experiences or stunts that we've pulled off, we've had clients come to us. What have we got? What we got, and we've never worked with them like can you give us five ideas? It's like, no, it's not how it works. Yeah, you know, we need to really understand everything. We you know. Have you got a brief? No, I just I've been asked to do a stunt.

Speaker 2:

Okay, come back with a brief yeah and then let's sit down and talk and talk.

Speaker 1:

It has to be part of a much bigger picture it has to connect, otherwise it's useless and I, and I'm sure the longer you're with a client, the more the trust builds, obviously, and then they're more willing to relinquish some of that handholding and let you take some of those punts that perhaps others wouldn't. So, on the long-term relationships, I mean, how have you been able to manage those? Because I mean, obviously we live in a very transient region. You know, I mean I'm the same. You know you have a client and then you leave it 12, 18 months. You call them up and you're like, oh right, they've moved on. Now, in the best case scenario, you think to yourself oh, that's great, they've moved to another company, we've potentially got another client, but in many cases they leave the country. So how are you able to navigate, maintaining those long-term relationships? I mean, obviously, like you say, if you get lucky and somebody stays with an organization for a long time.

Speaker 2:

Obviously great, but I'd have to guess that people jump around a lot here in this region, especially in the last four to five years We've seen a huge shift where we had clients staying in their roles for a number of years, a bit like the UK at this stage. Now they're moving. We've had one brand that we work with. I've had two marketing directors, three group sales directors in nine months. That's tough Challenging. So you're constantly rebuilding that relationship. I mean, thankfully we're kind of embedded in the conversation and they look at us as the mainstay of the project and you know. So in that sense we're good.

Speaker 2:

In another sense, where you might not have a long-term contract with them and you are part of the roster, so every so often you have to go back in represent. This is what we've done, this is what we do, this is how we do, this is our approach. And then it's procurement briefs. The relationships have really moved, especially, I would say, in the last two years procurement driven, which means the relationship with a client is only after you've won the project. So to actually understand the client, understand what their wants and requirements are for them, the business, the business KPIs, it becomes defunct. And for me that then shows a lack of real business marketing decisions and why we're doing something. Because from my perspective you should be able to look at a full brand plan for the year and then be able to work everything out, what needs to happen throughout the period of time, and I feel that doesn't work anymore.

Speaker 1:

no, it seems to come a little bit more down to sort of like you're ticking boxes on an excel sheet, doesn't it?

Speaker 2:

that's it so your conveyor belt. We try to get away from that. We only want to work with a number of clients that we understand. We get them, they get us. You know we're trying to get away from pitch cultures. We have a quite stringent qualifications sheet internally that allows us to really dial into how much time we want to give on a project on the pitch. You know, do we have that capability, do we have that scope? Do we want the team to actually have a bit of downtime? Because, I mean, you could be pitching every day if you, if you took everything on, and from a business perspective that makes no sense. From a team culture perspective, that isn't fun either. No, because then the ideas aren't there, because you're constantly just what's next, what's next, what's next. So let's reduce that and that's what we found, you know, by reducing the number of clients. I think before covid we had 52 clients.

Speaker 1:

In the past couple years we're averaging around 20 to 25 clients a year, right, which is much easier to handle I want to talk a little bit about um, success and how you measure success, because obviously some of our conversation so far has been about the sort of touchy-feely elements and the emotional side of things, and brands are very used to having very defined KPIs, aren't they, and very defined ways of of whether or not they've got ROI on whatever it is that they happen to have put their money behind. Yeah, how do you manage that in the field of experiential, then, when, like you say, so much of it is about the emotion side of things and how you make people feel, how do you measure that?

Speaker 2:

we always look at and we talk to the clients a lot about this what we're selling because then they were selling something you know. So tom ford as an example a number of years ago we launched their fabulous and ood product range. It wasn't even a kpi of ours, it was a pure brand awareness play. Within two weeks we sold out across Dubai Mall and Mall of Emirates. That, for us, was unbelievable and it was unbelievable for the client as well. We worked with Fixed Chocolate.

Speaker 2:

And again, how can we sell out? What's the opportunity? How can we make this? Put the brand in danger of not having anything by day three? That's, that's Nice problem to have.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know so for us, that's how we'll look and approach. You know it's they want to sell. How do we make that the best opportunity for consumers to come and buy? And that's driven by the experience. But our job is to put the brand in danger of being sold out. If we can do that, we've. We've also hit the kpi of sellout right. So we, we try to connect both right?

Speaker 2:

Not every brand is there's a requirement for it, yeah, but we look for it because that's that's how we change the relationship between the agency and the brand into our partnership, because we're now asking the questions of what's your kpi, what's the master objective of the brand for this year, how can we engage with that, how can we move forward with that? And a lot of clients will be like, ah, okay, well, actually, here you go. This is, this is what we want to do for this year. So it's breaking those barriers down and it's just it's relationships, you know, and I think when you look back from that covet period, we're still talking about covert five years later.

Speaker 2:

I know it's crazy, isn't it? It's purely because we didn't really think about zoom calls team and whatever platform that you may use. We went to their offices, they came to our offices, we went and had coffee in the morning, we had lunch, we had dinner. That doesn't happen anymore, or very, very rarely, you know, to actually go and see the client. I was in a meeting three days ago with a client of ours for five hours. It was a one hour meeting. That was what was scheduled in and we just rolled on because the opportunities, the conversations, everything you know and you're for want of a better word you're getting shit done. Yeah, we're moving the needle yeah you know.

Speaker 2:

So that's, that's our job to help the client to move their needle. So we can do that and spend time with the client. I much prefer that than having the team in the office sitting around, you know. So spending time with client is so important and you know, over the last couple years look, my finance director would be it's great having zoom, because you don't need to fly somewhere, you don't need to drive somewhere, you don't need a part somewhere travel bills went down you know, so it's claims went down absolutely yeah, you're not paying for their coffees, their lunches, their dinners coffee, yeah, so it's.

Speaker 2:

It's um. So from a finance perspective, great. From a relationship perspective, terrible yeah you know, I like to see people. I like to go and meet my clients face to face and I always believe, once you look at someone's in the whites of their eyes, you know you're going to work with them or you're not.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think there should be. I mean, for me, I think there should be an expectation, certainly when you're doing business development, that you need to put in that face-to-face time in those initial stages. I think once you've built that relationship and once you've established a bond and trust, sure that you can then sideline some of those face-to-face meetings and replace them with Zoom or WhatsApp or whatever it is. But initially there really has to be that face-to-face contact. Listen, which kind of dovetails into my next point.

Speaker 1:

I'm sure you've been across some of the trade papers recently and will have seen Mark Cuban's recent predictions, shall we say.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to read it out for the benefit of the listeners that haven't seen it. I mean, I'm guessing that everybody knows who Mark Cuban is, but in relationship to events and where he's putting his money over the next few years he said this quote within the next three years there will be so much AI, in particular AI video people won't know if what they see or hear is real, which will result in an explosion of face-to-face engagement, events and jobs. Unquote. What's your reaction to that? I mean, he talks about a millivanilla effect, which is quite cute as well, and again I'll explain that. So what he was saying was I mean, obviously it's a reference to that, to the 80s pop group that got found out for miming, and I guess what he's saying is that you know same thing, that you know people will get found out with all the fake stuff and they want to see it for real. What do you think to his statement there? I thought that was quite an eye-opener, absolutely I I actually agree 100.

Speaker 2:

I think there's gonna be a real shift. Because of the way that social amplification works, content works, people start doubting it, is this real? Like? We've kind of gone, went through that little phase of uh, the cgi's, the floating shoes driving around the city, the balloons coming up from wherever they're coming up from, or things dropping from the sky big bed with a north face jacket on great easy content to push out. That's done.

Speaker 2:

Ai will improve, it will get better. It will allow design agencies, creative agencies, to come up with ideas much shorter yeah, in terms of, you know, from an agency time frame, which ultimately saves money for the clients because you're you're spending less time. But everything has to be rooted on insights and strategy. So, whatever you do, from an ai perspective, it might be quick, easy, cheap. Let's go, you know, when you don't have time to do something. But I think a lot of brands will hold off and rather do something in person in a either a boutique scale, 30 hundred people to a 30 000 consumer event.

Speaker 2:

People want experiences, people want to remember, they want to take family time, they want to spend time with their friends at events, not on their phone, and we can see it now with you know the gen zeds and what they're wanting to do and how they want to engage. Yes, their phone's always in their hands. My kids, it's exactly the same thing. Yeah, but they also want to go to a concert. They also want to go to a football game. They want to experience it.

Speaker 2:

My 12 year old loves football. I took her to the arsenal man united game in la when they were doing pre-season. She half the time she was just looking around and not even at the football. I. I don't blame her, it wasn't great football, but it was the experience of being in the stadium with 70,000 fans. For her that was unbelievable. The football by the by. Trying to get her to watch football on the TV impossible, unless it's YouTube versus Sidemen that she knows all these, you know influencers. So from our in real life experience and we've seen, you know the boutique dinners, even the projects that we've delivered of late with Gucci, dior, tommy Hilfiger, burberry it's intimate moments that are curated experiences. For that selected group that means a lot more than anything else.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. I mean, I noticed a shift. I mean, obviously we have Warehouse 4, which is an event venue, and I noticed a big shift from pre-COVID to post-COVID just in the size of events. And some of that, yeah, okay, admittedly, is budget concerns, but I think what I saw was a move towards much smaller, much more intimate events and I'd like to think that, as well as budget, that was also a realisation from clients that actually, you know, that face time that you get with a smaller number of people is a lot more valuable than just a quick handshakehake to, you know, amongst a few thousand people. I mean, you're always going to have your banner events your big, huge ones.

Speaker 1:

Are you seeing that that?

Speaker 2:

shift, absolutely, yeah, we're seeing a lot more of these and more frequently. Yeah, exactly so. It's not the same audience, and that was a phase that we were going through a while back. Used to turn up to four events in a week, same faces. Dubai, the ues, got bigger, you know I think I read the report the other day there was a thousand new residents moving to Dubai a day. Yeah, I could see them all on shakeside road. Yeah, you got stuck in traffic. So the, the demographics, so the demographic's changing. The audience is changing. It's getting bigger. We're attracting a lot more millionaires and laborers and everything in between.

Speaker 2:

Dubai, the UAE, is booming, so brands have got to evolve on how they engage with the new clientele, and it's not always the same people now. So people are getting let off lists at the moment because there's so many more people to engage with. So for a brand, it's like okay, we've got a new audience to talk to. We want to talk to this new audience rather than the same faces constantly. So there's a real shift towards that, which I personally love, because it's curated experiences specifically, so it's designed experiences for 30 people, for 100 people, perfect. So, which means the level of delivery has to be perfect every time? Yeah, because you get one shot now I'm conscious of time.

Speaker 1:

I know we could go on and on. Well, I can certainly go on and on about the whole experiential thing for a long time, but we do try and keep these to around 30, 35 minutes. So before we wrap up, I've got a couple of quick fire questions for you. Three or four Biggest on-site challenge you've ever faced and how did you overcome it? Oh, traffic, we've had other ones being weather.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, traffic. We've had other ones being weather. Yeah, well, yeah, weather was. I remember rugby sevens, when we had the floods, of course, years and years ago, yes, and we had painted everything green and obviously the paint isn't it was roller paint. Yeah, I mean, from a heineken perspective, it was great.

Speaker 1:

Everyone's walking around, absolutely yeah turn a negative into a positive. Yeah, so that that was a good one okay, next one, one thing you'd ban at events, if you could you said we've got 35 minutes one thing okay, do you know?

Speaker 2:

do you know those? I don't even know what they're called. It's like the thing that you stand in the middle and the camera goes round.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah the photo booth, the photo booth, yeah, 360 photo booths, the 360.

Speaker 2:

Oh my God, get rid of that, get rid of that, Go, gone All right, that's gone, that's out of here.

Speaker 1:

Okay, next one Most underrated job role event role oh, the permit man. Good one, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Permits.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

If there's no alcohol in your event, that should have alcohol or permit for the live DJ entertainment. If we don't have the permit guy, we're done. Yeah, we are done, but no one thinks about that and no one wants to pay for the permit guy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, true, okay, slightly more. No one thinks about that and no one wants to pay for the permit guy. Yeah, true, okay, slightly more serious one for you now, one thing clients should do before they look to work with you Understand the business.

Speaker 2:

I think that's really important to understand the agency that you're working with, their capabilities of what they can deliver and that's you know. When you look at procurement versus brands team, the brands team should be the ones telling procurement. This is the agency we want, not procurement going out on Google and events agency experiential Getting 27 quotes and picking the cheapest, and picking whatever it is.

Speaker 1:

Last one and again, this is probably a topic we could dedicate a whole podcast to, but one message for the next generation of event professionals or people wanting to get into experiential it's an interesting one, isn't it to see? Whether you know people actually want to come into our industry now that I, you know, want of sounding a little long in the tooth. Uh, you know there's a lot of the younger generation that don't seem to want to put in the hard yards. Well, I was going to say that work ethic.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know that little four-letter word.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know, my first job was working in a bar. Yeah, and I was collecting glasses, ashtrays, doing the ice. You know everything in between that you had to do for a bar and a nightclub. You know everything in between that you had to do for a bar and a nightclub, that graft of making sure that whatever has to happen at the event needs to happen. And it's tough because you know we've got we've got an unbelievable team and the work ethic is unbelievable from from what they deliver day in, day out.

Speaker 2:

But that next generation that's coming through, that see all the shiny elements of the events but not realize what it takes, that blood, sweat and tears of being on your feet for 18 hours a day and then driving home or having a kip in the car because it's not worth going home because you're up in the morning to go back. So it's hard work, experiences, experiential is not an easy gig and being live on site for me is the most fulfilling part of the job, seeing it from day one to delivery, standing back. And I always say this stand, stand back, be proud of what you've done. You know, take that moment and it's. It's a bit like you know, when you get married, that you know everything's happening at the same time. Everyone wants you.

Speaker 2:

Everyone wants a bit of action from the time to savor the moment savor the moment, enjoy that, you know, and I think that's the key thing, and we try to make sure that there's a moment within each of the events we do that there's a celebration moment, you know when it's deserved, which most of the time it is.

Speaker 1:

And then last one. A little frivolous, but I've asked all the guests this, so I'll not make an exception here. I'm guessing you're a music fan. I know.

Speaker 2:

I am.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what's on your playlist at the moment?

Speaker 2:

This morning was Bossa Nova.

Speaker 1:

Oh, there you go.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm off radio. I've not listened to the radio for about six months. I just got bored of switching from all the channels, which is terrible, because I really enjoy radio in other markets. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

It's got a bit stale here, hasn't here it's got?

Speaker 2:

stale music, you know, and anyway. I could go on a bit for this one, but I've now got my playlist set. You know from. Yeah, this morning was Bossa Nova. Brilliant yeah it was really nice.

Speaker 1:

And then finally, what's next for yourself in Light Blue Good question.

Speaker 2:

We're opening up in london, oh is this public knowledge? It is now we we've been spending a lot of time in london and we've been talking to a lot of our partners, a lot of brands that we have been working with for a number of years.

Speaker 2:

We've picked up we've picked up three projects already on the pnq and we will be going live. Actually, something went live yesterday, the day before right, that will come across our social channels pretty soon. And uh, yeah, so we we've got our business director. We're recruiting for the team in london and uh moment, I'm flying to London a lot, which is great, it's good fun.

Speaker 1:

Get your air miles up.

Speaker 2:

Air miles are going up, which I need it because it's tough right now to get my air miles up, isn't it?

Speaker 1:

funny how things come full circle. You mentioned at the very start of the podcast how you know when you were looking to move away. You didn't want to make the move down to London.

Speaker 2:

No, instead of from Scotland. And now I'm setting up scotland, you've covered. You're going back there from dubai. Yeah, I mean it's. It's so.

Speaker 2:

Originally the plan was to set up a creative studio to service the work that we do in the middle east. You know, we've got offices here. And then riad, and then, quite quickly, the conversations that we're having with a lot of the brands there there seems to be, especially at the time, there was like this doom and gloom, rinse and repeat, you know, the government, what was happening, and with pensions, and it was just everyone was just like, oh, and we were going in and we were actually downplaying this whole. We're from Dubai and Riyadh, this is all the kind of stuff that we do flying cars around, right, and we were like really playing it down. And then we accidentally showed one client the wrong video, the showreel, which had everything in it, and he was just like that is unbelievable. And then we want some of that, yeah, and he started slagging off his own agency. I'm like, oh, awkward. And then we had another client who took us to a premiere of one of their events, saying so this is what we're doing right now and I want you guys to do the next one. So that was awkward when our names are in the list of getting into this event, this premiere. But it's a great series series and we were standing there and we're like you know it's yes.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I mean the series is great, I loved it, but it it was like the event itself was a bit formulaic. And maybe it was formulaic because we're here in this market and we've seen it and we've done it and it's's like how do we take it to the next level? And I think that's what our clients in the UK are really excited for. It's how we can move the needle without preconceptions of the market. Of course, we're not flying a car around London, we never know. But yeah, I think it's for us. We want to go in. We want to change the narrative. We're going to be brave, clients us. We want to go in. We want to change the narrative. We're going to be brave. Clients are loving the bravery. They're matching that for us.

Speaker 1:

So yeah, lots to come. Great, look forward to it. Well, david, thank you very much for coming in and talking to me on the podcast, and best of luck with your ventures, both here and in london. Thank you very much. Event news dxb is brought to you by minus 45 db, the team transforming noisy event spaces into slick, sound, reduced environments. Check them out at minus 45 dbcom. This episode was presented by myself, ian carlos, the studio engineer and editor was roy de monte, the executive producer was myself and joe morrison, and this podcast was produced by W4 Podcast Studio Dubai. And if you haven't done so already, please do click that follow or subscribe button. See you next time.