Managing Director, MGN Events
Published on 18/07/2017
How did MGN Events come about?
I set up MGN Events with my brother Neil back in 2008 when we were both freelancing in the events industry across the UK. I was working in the late night entertainment industry and Neil in the corporate events world, specialising in lighting. We had a vision to bring both our unique sets of skills together to create an exciting and fresh events company that put excellent service at the top of the list.
MGN events went Limited in 2011 and the company has seen consistent growth each and every year, through continued reinvestment in personnel, products and services. We now have a team of eight professionals and we recently moved to larger premises where we are continuing to work with leading brands in the sector.
What makes your job exciting?
I love the fact that every day is different and fast paced, as a team, we get to work on some incredible projects and exciting briefs. We are always pitching or working on unique and diverse live events which is great fun.
What work do you do within the brand experience industry?
We love working with companies in the brand experience sector that want to engage their people. We’ve run a number of internal experiential marketing campaigns, similar to our recent work with AB InBev, which are designed to drive change and improve employee engagement. We have also supported bigger brand agencies through our production arm where we provide specialist production services to bring their ideas to life. For example we worked with Sense on a Tog experiential pop up event in London and also on a brand experience at a festival installing all things technical; power, lighting, rigging and dressing for a VIP tent.
What has been the highlight over the last 12 months?
The highlight for me has to be an employee engagement event we ran for trainline last month. The whole project, which was fully designed and executed by us, involved 10 months of planning including bringing staff from three different office locations into London for the event. Part of the brief was to provide an element of unforced networking so we devised a unique and ingenious bit of RFID technology that used peoples’ name badges to reveal details about them that their colleagues wouldn’t necessarily know. Each individual was awarded points every time they spoke to somebody new at the event and tapped their name badge on an Ipad nearby. The Ipads were located in different locations around the venue in order to encourage people to circulate and explore new topics of conversation with a range of different people. The idea was to spark new conversations and get people chatting through gamification. 99% of attendees rated the event very good or excellent which made all that hard work and planning worth while.
What can we expect to see from MGN Events over the next 12 months?
We will continue with our planned growth strategy which includes a forecast to take on more staff as our workload continues to grow. We are gradually moving more into the experiential marketing sector so we expect to be marketing and pitching for more experiential work over the coming year.
Are there any brands/agencies you would love to work with?
I would love to work with Salesforce because I see them as a really cutting edge tech marketing company who give back to their staff and are always looking to do exciting things and push boundaries within their industry. I would also love to work with Google because they are real thought leaders and constantly striving to break boundaries in the technology sector.
What do you love most about working in this industry?
I love the range and diversity of what we do. There is always something new and different to look forward to and I also love seeing the genuine enjoyment people get from our live events after all the planning comes to fruition on the event day. It is a great feeling when you can see that your planning and hard work has made a difference.
Who inspires you?
It has got to be Richard Branson. He has achieved so much in so many different fields of business. I also love the fact that he doesn’t stop trying to make a difference and make the world a better place.
