What I Learned When… I Pivoted with the Tide of Change

It all started for me at Uni. As part of a four year events management BA at Leeds Beckett University, I decided to do something different with my placement year. Flying out to Australia to assist a family contact who was at the time the CEO of Diabetes New South Wales, my entrance to the industry set me up for life.

I lived in Bondi beach, organising sponsorship and awareness campaigns with celebrities to support sufferers. My role was junior but I was thrust into a KPI-based world where I had to own my role, from arranging a topical speaker at the Sydney opera house to briefing creative on all campaign comms, I learned quickly that the event professional is a master of agility.

I won’t focus too much on my first full time job. It was in recruitment and safe to say it told me all the things I didn’t want to do, unearthing dead databases and resurrecting data. When a role came up at Mask Events on London Bridge, I was off into the world of big Christmas corporate parties as site manager at Truman Galleries. At the time, themed production involved big budgets and it was interesting to see how large corporations invest in their staff, and how far they’d go with theming. For me, I learned that a good event professional knows how to form a creative response beyond function.

The fun then really began. I went to work for a student marketing agency, Campus Group, who engaged uni campus audiences for brands via activations. From Smirnoff and Bacardi, I worked on very campaign-led activations, including sampling, field marketing for some of the biggest FMCG industry brands and took away one of my key learnings, a top level event professional knows how to run a end to end, results-driven campaign.

I moved to the staffing division and found myself organising the staff for all the main festivals Uk-side, including Lovebox, Big Chill Festival, Field Day, Global Gathering. I had to show true initiative as the database was outdated and I had a huge roster of bars to fill with staff. There was no choice but to pivot and get the people in. This was both stressful and eye opening, especially the challenge of keeping the bars going. I did, however, have an access-all-areas pass, getting on stage with Prodigy and I learned that live events can be transcendent and life changing. A wise event professional leans into the fun.

My passion was, and still is, brand sponsorship in events. Particularly sport, following a reasonably successful youth in Rugby playing in the First XV, I still love sport and play football every week. When I got the role at Brand Experience agency RPM, I found a place where my two loves merged. There I worked on some of the biggest brands in true experiential formats:

The FIFA interactive World Cup 2010 was right at the start of the e-gaming trends and marked an important turning point in experience marketing. I hired football tricksters, beatboxers, DJs and worked with festival producers and musicians, for a final on the Barcelona beach that hosted 4000 people.
My biggest account was Sky, who I supported at the Ryder Cup. To be there on the first tee box in Gleneagles at 6am was a life-check moment
I hosted an event for Umbro and was Pele’s chaperone.
Working with Sky, I ran Skyride, the mass- participation cycle from London and Manchester with 30,000 people attending. From route-planning, coordinating activations and working with stakeholders like the London Mayor. This was the highlight of a series of truly experiential rides that featured Kelly Brook, Boris Johnson and Sir Chris Hoy, tiered with hero cities throughout the country and including the Nightride in Bournemouth. Now this was a learning curve as there are many hazards when running a cycling event on a Saturday night with the general public!
A career highlight was working with the English Cricket Board to create fan experiences for their test matches and one day internationals within the bowl at Oval, at Lords and at Old Trafford. From shooting T-shirt canons, flying flags over stadiums and pyrotechnic shows, I learned that an engaged event professional recognises the power of the superfan in building brand loyalty.

After 6 years of B2C activations, I wanted to broaden my horizons and test myself in the different and growing environment of B2B. Mainly I wanted to work on larger scale campaigns and lead larger accounts with bigger marketing requirements. I wanted an objective I could get my teeth into, and have more of an impact on the brand I worked with. I wanted to work globally and with M-IS agency, I got a chance as the senior account manager on the RAF account, leaning into my passion for aviation within a very different landscape. I loved being the nature of lead on one client, able to grow and invest in their success over a series of marketing campaigns. I also learned a lot about myself, and that to be happy as an event professional, you need to push the boundaries of your own learning.

With the RAF, I realised the untapped scope for innovation offered great opportunity, especially for live events. The RAF VR experience was one of the first big tech innovations I delivered at scale. 12 concurrent participants could explore the world of RAF, from the edge of space to the cockpit of an F35. The quality of the content and storytelling improved recruitment through inspiration and became an award winning campaign for the RAF with over 600 going through the experience daily. I loved working alongside this government institution, understanding how contracting with MOD and crown commercial service works, learning how an event professional needs a solid team to run big multinational contracts.

My career has been full of highlights and I recognise I’ve also enjoyed some amazing experiences. When I needed to understand what a Chinook was like while building the sensory experience, I went to RAF Odiham and flew on the helicopter. I visited the typhoon sections in Coningsby, always on alert and took a full-scale Hawk jet facsimile though Central London to position outside of No 10 for the RAF 100 event. I’ve worked for the Department for International Trade, delivering business forums in China as part of the Great Campaign, looking after the Prime Minister of Uk and President of China and their entourages. The wonderful thing about being an event professional is that you never know what the next day will bring.

And now I am here with 2Heads, having delivered the cross-agency, three year international Customer Innovation Center programme for Belden. This might be the most exciting time yet as expanded and evolve into a completely new world, outside of exhibitions and events. Working with large corps in tech, I found I have become more connected to their business than their individuals as most don’t have true global insight I’ve been afforded. We are involved with lots of stakeholders and are bridging the information gap between departments. I’ve had to upskill quick, becoming a specialist in lasting and consistent experiences with a beating heart of the very latest technologies. Everything I have learned to date has prepared me for delivering such a large and complex project globally, I realised to be successful, every event professional should be on a constant learning curve.

About Tom

Tom is a Global Client Account Director, responsible for key accounts across the globe. An expert in experiential technology and innovation, Tom is also the key stakeholder for the our creative technology departments. Partnering with brands like Belden, Nikon and Qualcomm, he has been responsible for creating some of our most cutting-edge, award-winning events and experience of recent years.