Meet the team: ExCeL’s Media Sales Manager

Research shows that on average, every single one of us is exposed to around 5,000 advertisements per day. Factor in the average daily social media time of 147 minutes, and that is a lot of competition for your attention. 

That’s where ExCeL’s dedicated media team come in. Throughout the venue’s 100-acre campus and 100,000sqm of hall space (soon to be 125,000sqm) are a wide range of digital and print placements available to event organisers and their partners to enhance their visitor experience… 954 static poster sites to be exact and 84 digital screens!

But this process is far more complex than just ‘hanging a banner’; the ExCeL media team boasts years of experience between them (72 to be precise!) to help conceptualise, create and manage innovative, emotive and sometimes immersive media, branding and wayfinding content.

One of those team members is Laurie Perfect. “For me, it’s about sitting down with every client and understanding their vision for their event, as well as who is the audience and what they want to achieve,” says Laurie who grew up in Essex and has been with the team just over 18 months now. 

“We can then go away and bring their vision to life in whatever scale they want. Some events might just want functional messaging or branded signage, whilst others – such as the recent Pokémon World Championships – want to create an immersive, branded experience from the moment the visitor books their tickets, to stepping off the train at Custom House and logging into ExCeL’s wifi.”

Laurie will often help storyboard the visitor journey for the client together with illustrative mock-ups, as well as bringing ideas that they may never have thought of, in order to maximise their event.

“Often organisers will just focus on the in-hall experience, but much of a visitor’s time can be spent outside of this – be it in the commute, meetings, coffee breaks, lunch etc – so it’s about continuing that experience throughout. For example, for Jurassic World: The Exhibition, we printed scaled replicas of dinosaur footprints as fun directional signage to the entrance. A simple but creative touch to ensure the guest experience began as soon as they arrived.”

Laurie’s background stems, as you’d expect, from a media sales background, with his father working as a Procurement Director for a global engineering business. After leaving university, Laurie moved into his first sales role himself, and before long was running £100 million-accounts for a renewable energy business. 

Shortly after this he moved to London where he worked for the Daily Mail’s advertising team, before branching out to various agencies which saw his work don Piccadilly’s famous electronic billboards. He’s now been making a real impact at London’s largest event venue in a role that he loves.

“I really enjoy working at ExCeL and being able to show my creativity. It’s a great environment. It can be frustrating when some clients don’t always take you up on all your ideas, but when they do it’s so rewarding to see them in practice.”

And what of the future? “For sure, using media placements to create a captivating and immersive event experience is certainly the direction things are heading. It’s amazing what you can do to bring your event to life.”