EventNewsDXB

Ben McDonald: Purpose Driven Tech & The Art of Meaningful Engagement

• W4 Podcast Studio • Season 2 • Episode 8

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When Ben McDonald returned to Dubai to join Purple Glow, he wasn’t chasing shiny objects or the flashiest tech. He was chasing meaning.

In this episode of EventNewsDXB, Ben shares why success in event technology isn’t about who has the biggest screens, it’s about creating moments that truly connect. For him, the metrics are simple: engagement, dwell, conversation.

He also talks about designing self-guided brand journeys, using data to give clients real value beyond event day, and how to foster a creative culture that empowers young talent. Ben’s honesty about what works and what doesn’t in the world of event tech, makes this conversation a must-listen for anyone serious about elevating experiences in the Middle East.

EventNewsDXB is supported by Warehouse Four and -45dB

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, some 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 Warehouse 4, probably Dubai's best independent event venue. Minus 45 dB, the team transforming noisy event spaces into slick, sound-reduced environments, from full-size conference theatres to compact meeting pods. Minus 45 dB 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:

Before we dive in, a quick scene setter, my guest today is Ben MacDonald from Purple Glow, an immersive tech agency that sits right in the sweet spot where technology meets human storytelling. Ben talks about blending the digital with the physical, because stacking more LED doesn't equal a better experience. The simple brief he chases is this design for engagement and the conversation that happens after Measure what actually moves people and not what looks impressive on a floor plan. We also get into practical takeaways for team working in the Middle East right now why budgets are more disciplined than outsiders think, how collaboration over competition can raise the bar, and why the region's growth demands agility, local understanding and cleaner, more purposeful activations. There's smart guidance, too, on choosing the right tech for your goals, building self-guided journeys that don't need hand-holding, and using data to give clients something valuable after the event.

Speaker 1:

We also touch on talent creating pathways for younger event people who want purpose as much as a paycheck, and building cultures that keep people in the game. If you're an event professional here in the region, I'm sure you'll find this refreshingly honest and immediately usable. So let's get into it. Listening, you probably have gathered already my other business, besides doing the podcast, is warehouse four, which is an event venue. You were with sweetwater at the time, weren't you?

Speaker 2:

and you guys were our very first clients yeah, that was for the axe thing, and we had martin youth martin glover, yeah from um. Is it killing joke? Yeah, killing joke the bass player.

Speaker 1:

That's right.

Speaker 2:

I remember it well yeah, it was good, and we did a few other bits there as well Adidas Tango League, I think it was at the time. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it was a great venue.

Speaker 1:

Let's go back a little bit. What was it that got you into events in the first place?

Speaker 2:

I stumbled into events, I'd worked in sports, I'd coached tennis. I come from a sporting background and actually came out here after a stint in Malaysia where I was working for a company called Technogym we were doing the Athletes Village and Gym for the Commonwealth Games in 98 and I landed in Dubai after that contract finished because my dad had been in and out of the Middle East since I was yay high. I'd done summers in Saudi and all of that jazz and I've always had a love of music. I've always DJ'd everything from like 80s electro hip hop into breakbeat and then sort of later on into sort of rave, hardcore drum and bass and I started a night here called Global Funk in fact, 22 years ago, last Saturday.

Speaker 1:

Oh my god, yeah, giving your age away there, yeah exactly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was interesting because it was a boudoir of all places and it grew in popularity and I got some sponsors in and then those sponsors were like, oh, could you do an event for us, could you put this on, could you promote it? So I have no formal training in events at all and early clients were the likes of A&E and MMI. I used to do a lot of work with the alcohol brands and then, yeah, that's kind of just stumbled on events and met some really good friends who are still friends to this day, and we started an agency called 9714 which was a little bit of a combination of sort of events and some fashion retailing and all sorts of things. Yeah, it was good, but it was at the time where you could do that in Dubai.

Speaker 1:

Now, I know you took a little time out from Dubai, didn't you? You went and moved back to the UK in 2018. And now you find yourself out here again with Purple Glow. Yes, tell us a bit about Purple Glow. Tell us a bit about your role.

Speaker 2:

So firstly, I never thought I'd be back here Not full time, you know, I left in 2018, as you say, went back to the UK and one of my first jobs was to fly back out here for the Dubai Air Show. For the agency I was working for the irony yeah, exactly Busman's holiday Purple Glow. So we are an immersive tech agency. Our remit is to be the tech partner to agencies, brands, direct companies. We have in-house tech solutions, whether that's rental, custom design, we do content, we do software production, we build innovation centers and we also have a thing called Glow 360, where we do offer a full service solution, but generally that's direct to brand, because we work a lot with agencies, event agencies. We've been in operation for 14 years. I have been in as MD for nearly yeah, nearly a year in September, and really the first sort of this first year is really sort of assessing the business, realigning it, repositioning it, rebranding, and that kind of rebranding and repositioning was launched at Mies this week.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic. Now, obviously, I had a quick look at the website before I did a little bit of research. Website's terrible at the moment. That's again. Well, one thing I did take away was your tagline, which is where tech meets art. Yeah, so I'm not sure whether you're going to keep that with the new rebranding, but anyway, that's what I picked up on. Yeah, so how do then the technical innovation side of things with just the plain storytelling Because, let's face it, events are all about storytelling.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think you've got to be knowledgeable about your consumer, because tech frightens a lot of people off. Okay, so you've got to blend it with the physical and something they understand. So when we look at a brief or we're given an idea by somebody, it's about making that a tangible experience that they can take something away from. So you know a lot of events and stands. I mean, I was at Leap this year in Saudi great event but I don't think there was a single panel of LED left anywhere in the kingdom. It was, but it was overloads. It was overload, it was. It was a little bit too much.

Speaker 2:

So I'm very much a protagonist of blending the digital with the physical for purpose-driven outcomes. Right, we try and sort of analyze the opportunity and see what tech works for that. The art side of it comes into elements like the content what's the aesthetic, what does it look like? But there's also an art to the interaction that you have with the product or with that experience as well. It's got to be generally for us. I like, uh, user, user generated journeys. We'll always have promotional staff if necessary, but these kind of self-perpetuating journeys where people discover you know a brand or a message from a brand through technology needs to be self-serving.

Speaker 1:

So, when you get the briefs through the door, what are you looking for and what are you?

Speaker 2:

not looking for yeah, that's a lot of the time I say Opportunity to be creative. Yeah, opportunity to tell a story, yeah, an opportunity to put technology in the hands of people that might not necessarily come into contact with it. Event companies and agencies work with all and every brand there is around and some of them sell cooking implements and others sell very highly technical pieces of equipment. So it's looking for an opportunity to be creative and really, as I tell a story, but get people to connect with the brand through technology. What we're not looking for is briefs that are very guided or linear and stick to this, this, that We'll still deliver it.

Speaker 2:

I'm not saying we won't do that, but we thrive on loose briefs, if that makes sense, where we can take it, and instead of being that kind of us and them, where we go backwards and forwards, it's very much collaborative the approach. We try and involve the client or the other party as early on in our ideation process as well. So we'll do a tissue session early on where you'll just peel off some top line ideas and then sort of drill it down into what they want, and then it's really looking at the outcomes. You know, what do they want to get from it. What we want to do is use data to start with, but give great data at the end of an activation that the client can then use for purpose afterwards, whether that's in their sales process, their marketing funnel channels or whatever they're using it for. So it's not just a oh wow for the moment. There's got to be longevity in it as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, now you mentioned data. Obviously, look, tech experiences a lot of the time are about sort of grabbing attention and, unlike most events, taking people on a journey as well. But how do you measure the impact of the events that you do? I mean, does data come into that? What are the KPIs that you sit down with a client to establish before you do the activation?

Speaker 2:

So generally, because we are part of a bigger event, we don't tend to get super embroiled into that, which is great, actually, at times.

Speaker 2:

I'll tell you why Because ROI is still the most difficult thing to measure. I'll tell you why because ROI is still the most difficult thing to measure. You know, measuring the data and the outcomes. The KPIs that you want to set in advance are, you know, a lot of the time. They're driven around interaction. They're driven around dwell time as well. So if you have something that someone interacts with for 30 seconds, generally what that will be is someone walking at me, sees a great activation, takes a photo of it. Second part of dwell time is someone that gives you up to two minutes where they'll come, they'll interact and they'll get a takeaway from it.

Speaker 2:

Your ideal solution with dwell time is that it extends that and when they finished, they want a conversation about it as well. So it's about using that opportunity to further the conversation with someone and generally, if that's on an event, you want to have the right people there to be able to talk about the brand. We can only, as a tech partner, take it as far as we know the brand, but what we try to do with these, these kind of immersive engagements, is get the people interacting that are either guests, consumers, visitors, whatever with the brand people you know and that's how they do their business. I think ROI is impossible to measure from a financial perspective these days because there's usually a lot of different stakeholders in there. But the general KPIs is to get engagement, dwell, leads and contacts that you can then take into the sort of wider business space afterwards.

Speaker 1:

How difficult are those conversations with clients? Because I'm guessing there's still a lot of clients that are a little bit more conservative and expect ROI to be a major KPI. Yeah, and it's not.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they are a major kpi. Yeah, it's not. Yeah, they are. But I think now budgets are driven by sort of global impact and what's happening and, contrary to popular belief, the middle east, as much, as there's a lot of money that comes out of it budgets here. This is also seen as an emerging market, so people are very diligent about how they spend their budgets here and people from the outside will say, oh, you did an event for Adidas or whatever. You must have had a huge amount of money to spend on it, you don't. So what they're looking for is value for money and that extension afterwards. I think that's really important. A lot of the focus, I think, on events 10, 15, 20 years ago was get the people in. It's a great experience and then it's a bit kind of tumbleweeds afterwards what's your brand recall from that particular event? So it's about how you make people feel, how they engage with it and you know, and how they re-engage with it afterwards. You know there's it's all sales driven at the end of the day.

Speaker 1:

Now, just going back a step. You've obviously spent some time away. I'm curious to know if you've noticed what's changed in the time that you've been. You're away what? Five years, I think? Yeah, six years, six years. Yeah, close to six years. What do you think has changed since leaving in 2018 and coming back A?

Speaker 2:

lot of the agencies, companies have diversified a little bit. You know Sweetwater has diversified away from purely experiential. You know there's obviously been growth in Saudi. That's a big topic at the moment. Obviously, I think people have learned from COVID and how to survive and how to work. There's a very much more emphasis on the freelance population here as well. You know, this place is not cheap. You know, and as somebody running a business overheads cash flow, all of those. So we're really diligent. We have a great base of staff. We will freelance out. But I think there's a much more measured approach to business. People aren't just throwing huge amounts of money into staff because they win an account, because that account might only be there for a year. So I think from an internal perspective, what I've seen from talking to other people that I still know within the industry there's a little bit more risk averse at the moment, but that's been a I mean, I think that's been common for the, you know, since I got off the plane, which was 22 years ago.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think that's a regional, regional thing.

Speaker 2:

Um maybe is, you know, maybe a slightly off off key is more collaboration. One thing I noticed in europe is that agencies that might technically be competition are much more open to collaborating with other agencies that might have better skill sets in certain areas. You know, and I can see that being beneficial, and I've seen it firsthand that it can produce better outcomes, but it takes bold leadership to be able to do that, and here, for example, there's a lot of other great tech companies out there. We might have certain USPs that someone else doesn't have to someone in the Far East or Poland or wherever you know a content house, whereas it would benefit the industry here to collaborate a little bit more. If it happens, let's see. I would definitely be all for a little bit more collaboration between what are traditionally seen as competitive agencies.

Speaker 1:

And also based on again based on the sort of past five or six years that you spent in the UK and also again based on the past five or six years that you've spent in the UK where does this region stand in terms of the level of quality and also innovation? I mean, obviously, in your industry you're providing the technical side of things, all the tech events, but also just events in general.

Speaker 2:

I think it's right up there now. I think we've got some great venues, which helps a lot of the time, way back when it was, like you know, the Rugby 7 Stadium, which is still there, made a scaffold, etc.

Speaker 2:

And that works you know it just works. It's part of the furniture, right, but now you've got venues like the Coca-Cola Arena, which are world-class venues. So if you're comparing this to the event market in London or Berlin or Barcelona, we're not there yet, but we've got the infrastructure coming and you've got great locally grown companies as well as the big agencies are opening offices over here as well. That is a marker for me that shows that you're up there with the rest of the world. I came from GPJ in London, so George P Johnson, and about a year before I joined GPJ they'd opened here. Dp World is one of their major clients. They were my client when I was at GPJ, and so if agencies like that that have 29 other offices globally are coming and setting up here and being serious about it and then going into Saudi, that tells you something.

Speaker 1:

You mentioned your old firm, GPJ. How much of their eye is on the UAE and how much of it is on our neighbours across the border in?

Speaker 2:

Saudi. Most of these larger agencies that are coming here. They won't go straight to Saudi because it's still got that unknown factor to it. As I, I'm comfortable with it because I was here and I worked there when you know we'd get picked up by the mataua for do it, for like looking in the wrong direction, you know, and bundled in the back here and then released with your camera taken or whatever. But I think their business model is to establish in the UAE, because it's the most open of the Gulf states, and then monitor it. But they're super astute, the global agencies. They know what they're doing and they will have done their research. But it's like Fischer Appel, who are a big German agency. They established in Qatar for the World Cup or even before that, but then now they're moving into Saudi, but it's a much slower pace.

Speaker 2:

I think when Saudi exploded, probably just before I left, people were just like, right, let's get in there. And it was how Dubai was 20, 25 years ago. It was cowboy city. Come in, make your money off, you go. And that's not how you build an industry. You need to have long-term opportunities, long-term securities as a business. So I think they do view it as a massive opportunity, but they will always have Dubai or the UAE rather, as a hub.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, going back to obviously, your new role now with Purple Glow, you showcase work with AR, vr, projection, mapping, interactive installations. What's the process for, I'm going to say, choosing which one of those or multiple ones of those that you work with with a client?

Speaker 2:

on. Firstly, we have an incredible in-house team of experts. We have a technical director, we have developers, we have a great creative team and a great operations team. Some of the best ideas come from the most unusual sources. So I can send a brief into the tech team, but it might be that someone in ops has seen something, so we never sort of write.

Speaker 2:

We know that this brief is coming for this. We know what we're going to use. The way that we choose it is as I said earlier. It's based on what are the outcomes, what's the best outcome.

Speaker 2:

And a client might see a product and say, oh, we saw your robotic AI booth at Mies. You know, love it. We want to do it for this. We won't just sell a product or bill a client because they like it. We want to challenge the brief and say you know what? It is cool, it's really cool and people will stand around and look at it. But for your particular event, you are trying to do x, y and z with the brand. It's not what we would suggest. We're happy to do it for you, but maybe, maybe you know holographic AI or something else or a gamification of something works better and you know it's more than a one way conversation. So it's we don't just look at an opportunity and think, yeah, we've got it or we've got lots of that. We need to get that out out the warehouse. It really is case by case.

Speaker 1:

Now, obviously, a lot of what you do you could call cutting edge. You're really on the edge of a lot of technology In a region where, you know I don't think I'm going out on a limb by saying that we're often sort of risk averse how easy or difficult are those conversations with the clients to take a bit of a chance, you know, to really go for something a little bit different.

Speaker 2:

A lot of our business is inbound, so they already look to you, have a look at the website so that. So they know they're not back in my days working for sweetwater. They're coming with an overall brief and tech would be a bolt-on or an add-on or, you know, still quite new in those days. So I think before people come, they have a an idea of what we do. I think, because you know and this comes with age workforces the younger people in that workforce have been tech adopters since they were young and you've got very high-end people within business now that are in their late 20s and early 30s. You know, I didn't even decide what I wanted to do until I hit 30 kind of thing, you know. So I'm already playing behind the eight ball or whatever it is behind the nine ball.

Speaker 2:

So I think there's a lot more influence within companies to the older guard that tech can be beneficial. But back to a point I made earlier. I always want to try and blend the digital with the physical, because there's so much digital consumption. We're on our phones, which you know are great, and a hindrance at the same time. But I think it's not just the leaders at the top, because we're not from. We've had to learn to adopt technology into our businesses and our lives. But the younger generation, they're born with it, you know, know.

Speaker 1:

So they can be influenced internally before they come to us, give us an example of something that's worked well for you recently, that you that you've you've worked obviously on with with your client yeah, I want to start with the image nation who are based in abu dhabi, their ua production house.

Speaker 2:

They do films and direction and all manner of things around the film industry and they approached us for comic-con. I was like, okay, interesting, obviously it's film and comic-con, but everyone sort of looks at it as everyone dressing up as superheroes. Now they have a huge amount of content, but how do you display that in a way that you can interact with it rather than it just being on 27 screens and you can't focus? So we have this idea of creating what we call the brand hub, so it's navigated by a circular touch screen but a wrap around led screen so it immerses you in the content. It's what we call touch and throw, so you select and you could select the trailer, you could select the film and you could look at this and visualize it on a much bigger screen. Now you can do that with vr, but vr is tricky in this region, you know, especially with the cultural dress here. People I don't like put in headphones or think vr sort of goggles on myself.

Speaker 2:

But this was a massive hit because you could stand there and you could choose different content you could. You could look up directors. You could look up different themes. They have like horror. They had alchemy, which is like an army based one as well. So it was just this amazing portal that wasn't just a single screen. As soon as you chose it, it was up and it was in a sort of wraparound LED environment, so you felt like you were there in the movie. So it's taking how you push content in different mediums as well. End of the day, a screen is a screen is a screen. It's what the content is and how you interact with it.

Speaker 1:

Are you seeing any trends emerging since you've been back, or even things that are coming through from the UK and the US?

Speaker 2:

Obviously, AI, I have a love-hate relationship with.

Speaker 1:

AI, they don't have a conversation. No, exactly.

Speaker 2:

Someone will be looking around. I think it's overused inside people's lives. In terms of writing, I think the art of copywriting, and I can tell, I can tell, and sometimes the guys will put together a pitch, you know, and it's last minute because that's the nature of the beast and I can tell if it's just been AI. But and it's last minute because that's the nature of the beast, and I can tell if it's just been AI, but it's using it to your advantage as well. So that's the negative side. I'll stop there now. I want to be positive about AI, because we have to be.

Speaker 2:

It can be used for so many good things. It can open inquisitive minds, you can challenge, in essence, the world, as it were. It's all linked in and it's all. It's all pulling. So ai is a massive trend, and other trends again, I think it's that moving away from it being purely digital to having some physical interaction with it, because otherwise you know what are you doing with yourself physically as well. So if you go and I say when we went to leap, it was like whoa, it's like overload of screens, but you couldn't focus, you couldn't concentrate on it. So it's also condensing the ideas down so that they're a bit more compact, you know, and flexible and they can pivot and you can change the content as well. So I think, yeah, more sort of compressed engaging activations and less of the kind of piccadilly circus on steroids.

Speaker 1:

I find it quite interesting the whole ai thing, because I mean we've had a few things in the press recently. I mean we had mark cuban come out not too long ago and say you know the rise of ai, and certainly you. You know AI in video will drive people back towards real experiences and you know, in in-person events. And then we also I also read an article on Forbes by the CEO of an AI company that said exactly the same thing that as AI grows, it will push people back into the realm of real personal experiences. What's your take?

Speaker 2:

on that. Again, I think it might just be a generational thing. Like I love digital, you know I wouldn't be back here and I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing with Purple Glow if I didn't. My take on it is that you've got to be careful, because I think you know and again I see this a little bit on YouTube, but this is looking over my daughter's shoulder and they're watching videos of people playing videos and commentating on it and they've got an ai comment. It's like you know where does it end when, where does it stop? And I just I don't know that. There are enough.

Speaker 2:

You know you get sort of software that can block malware and things like that, and there's obviously parental controls and things like that, but I don't. I don't know where it ends in terms of its usage. I think some of the best usages are in, obviously, things like medicine. You know anything to do with research as well, but I use it as I need to use it. You know you're probably asking the wrong person on that as well, but I'm always amazed when the team work with it, though I have to say, like when the development team use it to better an outcome for content or we enhance an image, using it in a presentation. I still want that kind of original like a photograph. But how can we make it better? But not how can we change it? So I think, yeah, it has its place in society, but, yeah, where does it end?

Speaker 1:

It's a very good question, but you know, on a similar note and speaking of the younger generation and I hate saying that because I just found- that sounds so old every time I say it, but there you go.

Speaker 1:

I probably am, and I'm curious again on your perspective of having just spent the last five or six years in the UK as well and to now coming back out here. Are you seeing young people come into the event industry and if not, what do we need to do to encourage them? Because obviously you know, we're only as good as the people, aren't we, despite AI? But AI still needs prompting, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Yes and no. I worked for a sort of short-term contract with a more advertising-driven agency and you get a lot of young designers come into there, but we were struggling to find event managers and operations people because maybe during COVID they'd retrained. So I think there needs to be a bit more of a push. But today you can study it. You know it was never an option back in the day. Now you can. You can study events with a specialism in back in the day. Now you can study events with a specialism in experiential or digital or probably AI now. So I think it comes from an education perspective and you know universities offering engaging courses. I think a lot of the youth of today have seen getting into trading and FX and things like that. You know you've got very smart kids making huge amounts of money. You know just soaking up information.

Speaker 2:

I think a lot of the people that we're seeing in terms of freelancers are more experienced and maybe a little bit older, and I do think there needs to be a drive to sort of re-engage. I might be wrong, because I don't work directly in the coalface of event management anymore. I'm talking more from a tech side of it what we find in terms of the people and our ambassadors that work on our activations is they want to do it. There's a real love for the technology side of it and these guys might have come out of a design course or they might have come out of a software course. They might have just done a course in Unity. Unity, which is a gaming program for building games. So in our side of the industry I think it's it's quite healthy. But I don't know so much about the, the larger scale events I think look for in relation to this region.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I read recently that, uh, middle beast have got a whole load of courses now for particularly the youth in saudi to actually get a career, to get a foothold on the ladder and start a career in the events industry. I made a bit of a disparaging remark again probably showing my age about Gen Z on a recent podcast, saying that you know, if you look, anecdotally, there's been a lot written about the appetite for younger people wanting to work hard. And my guest pulled me up on it, you know, and I'm very glad he did, because he had a very good point and he said you know, it's not just about working hard these days, they want purpose. Yeah, absolutely, and I thought that was a really, really telling point.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they want to work smart as well, because outside of their work, they have these big social networks via social media and things like that. Just just back to the, the staff and that topic, we are really big on interns as well, because you can get some really enthusiastic people. So we're we're really big on interns in terms of our development and creative sides as well. So, uh, we are pushing, you know those, the graduate generation, to come into the tech side of things.

Speaker 1:

Moving on, how do you define success on the projects that you've done?

Speaker 2:

Repeat business. We have a very high retention rate as a business in the 90s. Now that's not to say that everything they do comes through us all the time, but we have people that are coming back to us over and over and over over these last 14 years and with this new sort of client-centric approach. We are not getting into contracts or retainers, because people always want choice, especially in the creative side of it, but we are finding that we will get their business for that year and then we'll get, you know, building those stronger relationships. And again, this is has. The company has grown? It's less focused on oh, this has come in. What do we do? It's client centric. So now the teams look after the clients that come solely to us, the ones that keep coming back to us. So success is business retention. Success is a growing workforce, a healthy, happy workforce.

Speaker 2:

We like to balance what we do. I mean honestly, during the season. I came in september, so I came at the start. I've not been here for seven or eight years and working in europe. It's seasonal to a point, but there's stuff going on 12 months a year. Yeah, because you've got great indoor venues, you've got the festival season, whatever it might be here, it's still governed by the weather, ramadan, etc. I came in and I have not seen a team work as hard as the team at purple glow did for those first three months during the season, and without complaint or moan or groan, and I think that's testament to Christine who built the business, to the culture that we have within there. You know we expect but we also give back, and giving back is not always financial. You know there's other things that we do to the staff. So, yeah, success is a combination of that client success, but also internal success as well what does the rest of 2025 and 2026 look like for you guys?

Speaker 1:

I mean, you mentioned a rebrand. Is that right?

Speaker 2:

yeah, so we just we just rebranded our new tagline immersive moments, lasting connections. It is consolidating with clients that we were working with, creating sort of longer term partnerships with them. It is moving into more non-event sort of industries using technology, because there's a lot to be done just outside. Events will always be there. It will always be the kind of bread and butter of the business, but there's other areas that we want to diversify into and we're moving into that already. Some expansion on the horizon, potentially in 2026, but everything done at a sustainable rate as well.

Speaker 2:

One thing that I did when COVID hit and I was made redundant was I went back to the books. I did a digital marketing diploma and I did a course through Cambridge University Institute of Sustainable Leadership. It was great. So I learned about sustainability and it's you know, throughout a business, you know, and throughout the different functions. So we want to build that into the company a little bit more as well. So, yeah, it's super exciting, really really exciting, exciting, and for me it was a great move to come back. Gp day is a great company, but to really further my career I had to take another risk yeah, which is often the case and coming back here was a risk.

Speaker 2:

You know I've left my daughters in the uk so there's that sort of challenge around that. But for the here and now it is absolutely the right move and the next three to five years here, I think are going to be very exciting for the industry in the region. You know exciting times.

Speaker 1:

And finally, Ben I mean you mentioned it at the start of the podcast You're obviously a music fan, so I've asked all my guests this question. It's quite amusing what answers you get, but what's on your playlist?

Speaker 2:

what's on my playlist? Foo fighters, radio heads, lots of jungle, drum and bass, because that's my kind of my main passion musically, but my dad's. My dad was a musician and so I was brought up he his, his band. He had a hit in the 60s and toured with the Rolling Stones back in the day, Still living off the royalties is he no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 2:

He's living off the beer vouchers he was given afterwards, probably. So I was brought up on anything from 10cc Jean-Michel Jarre, so my playlist is really varied, I think. If I'm just sitting down and chilling out, I can listen to an orbital album, or if I'm driving and my what's amazing and I you know I love this is that my daughter's picked up on that. She, my daughter's autistic, but she has picked up on music through her grandfather and myself. She is grade three piano now and she collects vinyl. So when I'm back in the UK, my weekends are spent lovingly not going around the Disney shop, going to record fairs in Manchester, and she's like have you got the Cocteau Twins EP from 1984?

Speaker 1:

No, there's a name from the past. There you go Cocteau Twins. Absolutely so mic drop no exactly.

Speaker 2:

Like dream pop stuff like that. I love bands like Ride like no, exactly Like dream pop stuff like that. I love bands like Ride, like the whole Shoegaze scene. So it's really varied. It's really varied. But yeah, I think music plays a big part in my life and I'm glad it plays a big part in my daughter's life as well.

Speaker 1:

Now, Brilliant Well, ben. It's been absolutely fantastic to reconnect after the region.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely Welcome back to the region. I know you've been here for a year and a bit already.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, thanks very much for joining me on the podcast. No, thanks for having me. It's been a pleasure. Event News DXB is brought to you by Warehouse 4, probably Dubai's best independent event venue, and Minus 45 dB the team, transforming noisy event spaces into slick, sound-reduced environments. The podcast was presented by myself, ian Carlos, the studio engineer and editor was Roy DeMonte, 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. We'll see you next time.