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When Two Become One

 Experience marketing super-group hits Auckland February 2016

Auckland based event producers Soirée and Uno Loco are joining forces to become New Zealand’s largest experience marketing company. The new super-group boasts specialist offerings across all experience marketing and event platforms with extensive design and media production support in house

Uno Loco (formerly Madant Productions) has built its reputation over the past 20 years - specialising in event management, media production, experiential marketing and incentive programs. With owner operators driving the business and long term retention of senior staff, Uno Loco has become the safest pair of hands in the business. Their portfolio includes the world’s biggest brands, heads of industry, royalty, and presidents of super-powers.

Today Uno Loco has a team of 20, located in Auckland, Shanghai and Sydney.

18 months ago Uno Loco owners Craig Muller and Troy Sugrue identified live experiences as the focus of their future growth. They recruited experienced marketer and strategist Blair Glubb as CEO and tasked him with growing a new business that could dominate the experience marketing sector. Blair has reinvented Uno Loco internally and has explored a range of acquisitions to support the development of an Experience Super-Group Blair Glubb, CEO, “In a marketing world increasingly dominated by digital channels, live human experience has never been more compelling. This is what Uno Loco is all about, and for that reason I am delighted to announce that we’ve reached agreement to acquire event management company Soirée”.

Soirée owner Sue Duncan and her team (the Soirettes) are famous for “going the extra mile in high heels” and making their clients famous. According to Bayleys owner Mike Bayley “their ability to plan and deliver large scale conferences and events from idea to execution is, I believe, unmatched in the New Zealand marketplace”.

Sue Duncan, Soirée Managing Director: “This is an extremely exciting time to have realised my vision; to have created a business from scratch, to have grown it over the past 12 years and now sell it with the Soirée soul and all the Soirettes becoming part of the new Uno Loco ‘super-group’. I honestly couldn’t be happier”.

The Soirée team will join Uno Loco in late January, and will be based in Uno Loco’s CBD offices in East Street, off K Road.

Blair Glubb, “Bringing Soirée and Uno Loco together, not only creates New Zealand’s largest experience marketing company, it also extends our ability to leverage these experiences across a range of digital and content platforms. Most of our competitors simply don’t have the scale and expertise to do this”.

Craig Muller, Executive Producer, “We’re delighted to bring Sue and her team into Uno Loco. Both of our organisations live for the energy and adrenaline of a live audience. Great events and live experiences move people deeply. They affect people more profoundly than any other medium. But you only get one shot. That’s why clients come to us, and it’s why clients come to Soirée.” The new merged organisation will have a team of 26 people looking after clients including; Fonterra, Coca-Cola, Bayleys, Vodafone, IBM, VERO, Lion and NZTE.
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