Handmade, small-batch Mermaid Gin, produced by the Isle of Wight Distillery, has been proving highly popular among passengers at Gatwick Airport thanks to the presence of a pop-up tasting experience run by Blackjack Promotions.

Throughout August, Blackjack’s Mermaid Gin brand ambassadors have been spreading the word about the craft spirit to Gatwick passengers, explaining how it’s made using 10 botanicals sourced for quality and carefully blended to create the gin’s smooth, fresh flavour. These include elderflower and rock samphire foraged locally on the Isle of Wight, with the latter giving the gin its unique essence of the island’s coastlineand a tag line ‘Hint of Sea Air’. Passengers have also been able to sample Mermaid Gin’s invigorating flavour for themselves.

Malcolm McClellan, Sales Director at the Isle of Wight Distillery, said: “Working with Blackjack on our Gatwick promotion has been an outrageous success. Due to our exceptionally busy sales team, we needed outside help to make the most of our Gatwick opportunity, which helps take our product across the globe. Blackjack has been the perfect extension to our team. Its staff are highly professional and presentable, and thoroughly understand the Mermaid Gin brand.”

The Gatwick campaign is going so well that it has been extended until the end of September, while Blackjack has also been asked to run a number of out-of-airport Mermaid Gin activations and events.

Malcolm further explains: “The Blackjack team has been incredibly supportive. They visited our distillery to get under the skin of Mermaid Gin and this has shown in their superb presentation of our product. They have also been incredibly flexible, putting together exceptional promotional teams at relatively short notice. It’s like having a team we can switch on and off when required, which has enabled us to react to new opportunities quickly and effectively, driving invaluable sales and awareness of our product.”

Vicki Folly, Senior Liquor Account Manager at Blackjack Promotions, said: “We pride ourselves on the professionalism and performance of our teams and understand the importance of immersing them in any brand they represent so that they are able to present it in the best possible way. Mermaid Gin is an incredible product and we’re delighted to be working with the Isle of Wight Distillery to spread the word, and look forward to representing the brand more in the future.”

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Hamilton Sargent, Contentainment & WDFG Account Manager at Blackjack Promotions explains why great storytelling works so well in the airport retail environment.

Great marketing is all about telling stories that resonate with your target audience – and that’s why successful brands focus so much on their origin and history. Storytelling is not just a key vehicle for communicating brand values, but also for driving engagement.

Arguably, storytelling is even more important in the travel retail environment than it is in other spaces.

That’s because air passengers are in a uniquely heightened emotional state; some are stressed by the thought of flying with adrenaline and hormones running through their system, while just as many are in a holiday mood. If they’re waiting to fly off somewhere, whether it’s on business or for pleasure, then they want something to do before heading for the boarding gates, so they tend to browse the duty-free shops and other retail outlets. If they’ve just arrived, there is an element of relief at getting their feet back on the ground and escaping from the confines of the plane.

If you want air passengers to stop and pay attention to your brand and your product, then you need to invest some time and effort into creating a story that resonates with them, attracts them and stops them in their tracks.

What you should be doing is getting passengers into the realms of play, imagination and creativity, which is fundamental to building rapport, and appealing to their emotional side.

That’s why stories, particularly featuring characters, settings and themes from familiar tales, work so well in the airport retail environment.

Of course, many brands don’t need to plug in to fairy tales, films, books and the like in search of good content; they already have great origin tales they can build on. Some have been making a business out of stories for decades. Disney, for example, is brilliant at creating multi-generational engagement through its films and other properties. Then there are product and even service brands which can call on their own heritage – that’s particularly true of high end toiletries, cosmetics and perfumes, spirits brands and speciality food brands, but there are very few brands that don’t have great stories, if someone does some digging.

Even retail outlets can have their stories to tell about what the store is all about and what’s happening there that day… For stores, though, it is likely that the real impact will come from using brilliant themes and characters that come from a shared cultural heritage.

“We’re all mad here”

We recently ran an activation for World Duty Free, which was themed around Alice in Wonderland. When you use a mascot or a story like Alice in Wonderland, you’re reaching into the consumers’ creative mind and they become more receptive to your messaging, because of the familiarity of the scene and the characters – and even quotes.

Our Alice in Wonderland experiential activation was all about relaxing travellers and calming them down. It was also particularly effective with families – if you relax the children, you relax the parents. And don’t forget, the parents are the ones who are going to be spending.

It’s important, though, that you make an effort when you are using any kind of experiential brand storytelling. With Alice in Wonderland, World Duty Free became Wonderland, and all the language and the set up had to be true to the world of Lewis Carroll. The actors also had to be properly in character, and their actions and words had to be true to

the original creation, while still delivering key messages for the client. For example, Alice couldn’t be seen to be directly promoting anything – so she had attendants (other brand ambassadors) who handed out leaflets with offers.

Lights, camera, action

There also has to be a purpose to any experiential storytelling activity, beyond simply getting the attention of shoppers and passers-by. There has to be a strategic marketing justification for it, beyond just mobile window dressing, as it were. What does the retailer or brand want to achieve?

You also need to put effort into delivering the best possible experience for travellers, with high quality costumes, props and sets, and professional actors. It has to be a piece of theatre! So, for example, when we were casting for the Alice in Wonderland activation, we had potential actors come in for workshops to see which worked well together. It’s a proper production!

Alice is a great character, as are many of the other people and animals from Lewis Carroll’s books – and there is something fundamentally British about her. You only have to look at similar characters (with their supporting environments) like Paddington Bear or Peter Pan to envisage the potential.

Be careful, though – what resonates with a British audience may not work with an international one. You have to be obvious, not obscure.

World Duty Free has been using costumed characters for so long now that it has almost built up a generational loyalty — if you have families with kids who frequently fly, then often the kids will demand to stop off to see the mascots.

You also need to remember that travellers who engage with experiential activity are investing their time in you, and are not just there to be milked for cash. Build rapport through having non-sales related conversations that establish that both the shopper and the brand ambassador are people. The biggest secret to selling is to create a relationship with the customer first…

Blackjack Promotions is the leading staffing solutions, travel retail and experiential specialist, with operations in the UK & Ireland, and the Middle East. Everything it does is committed to connecting consumers with brand experiences that are exciting, engaging, immersive, and that ultimately provoke a real emotional response. Its core service offering falls under three headings: travel retail, experiential and logistics. It also works hand-in-hand with agency partners and media owners using its experiential expertise to bring brands and briefs to life.

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When it comes to travel retail, train stations are rapidly catching up with airports, high streets, shopping malls and festivals, says Fiona Tindall from Blackjack Promotions.

When it comes to brand experiences targeting consumers, what marketers need is high-value, high-traffic, marketing-friendly locations – so they tend to think of venues like airports, shopping centres, High Streets, festivals and events.

But an increasing number of experiential-savvy brands are now deploying activations at train stations, which have really taken off as venues to engage consumers, both with mass activity and also with highly targeted campaigns.

Over the past decade or so, UK train stations have undergone a metamorphosis, with massive new commercial developments and a total reinvention of how they are marketing themselves.

Many stations now feature major retailers, as well as a selection of boutique shops. They are becoming destinations in their own right; places where locals and office workers, as well as tourists and travellers, can enjoy whiling away some time. Plus, major stations are usually at the heart of a busy community and see huge amounts of passing traffic.

Stations are no longer places you go to just to catch a train to somewhere else you’d rather be or have to be.

You will certainly find holidaymakers, business travellers and commuters; but now you’ll also find people on their lunch hour browsing the retail outlets on offer or eating and even local people who use the station as an extension of their High Street.

Stations aren’t dark and dirty places any more. The best of them are light, bright and enticing, mixing a retro appeal based around ‘The Age of the Train’ with the most modern technologies. Just look at the new retail spaces at King’s Cross/St Pancras, Waterloo and Victoria… under-utilised space in old ticket halls and booking offices is now home to chic new restaurants and shops.

Many stations are increasingly putting investment in their retail offering at the top of their commercial agenda – and with good reason.

The British used to be called a nation of shopkeepers. Today, though, we are a nation of shoppers, and retail therapy is the preferred past-time for many of us. Stations are brilliantly positioned to take advantage of the growth in shopping as entertainment.

Statistics just released by the transport regulator, the Office of Rail and Road, show that last year 1.7 billion passenger journeys were made. By comparison, the latest figures (from 2016) for total arrivals and departures by air for UK airports (venues which so many brands use for experiential) were 286.4 million.

Granted, air travellers tend to have more money at their disposal; but train stations can offer six times as many opportunities to get a retailer or a brand in front of the public. That’s just the people who actually use stations to catch trains: it doesn’t include all the people who now drop by at lunchtime, at weekends or when they just happen to be passing.

Management teams at key UK stations are hard at work actively encouraging a wider audience to view their local stations as a place to hang out, creating special events and marketing campaigns to get across the message.

Take London’s Paddington Station. It has been industriously leveraging its association with a certain bear from deepest, darkest Peru which shares its name and who is now celebrated with a statue on the concourse.

So in the run-up to Valentine’s Day 2017, we worked closely with Network Rail, which runs Paddington. Partnering with service operators GWR and Heathrow Express, plus design agency Magnet Harlequin and the licensors of Paddington Bear, we created a series of events and activations to help spread love around at the station where the much-loved children’s character first met the Brown family and embarked on a series of adventures.

Under the banner ‘Love Paddington,’ a range of festivities saw Network Rail, GWR and Heathrow Express celebrate recent improvements to the station. These included the restoration of Brunel’s original 1860 roof, a new ticket office and the opening of The Lawn area at the station, which boasts 40 retail and dining units.

Three days of activity ran from February 8th through to February 10^th, kicking off with the distribution of 40,000 copies of a retail discount booklet containing a range of offers from 18 different retailers at Paddington.

On the 10th, Paddington hosted a full day of activities, led by an interactive social media experience Consumers were incentivised to share their messages via social media with the chance to win a range of prizes donated by Paddington’s retailers.

During the day, Paddington’s passenger lounge area on the main concourse, the Lawn, saw food and drink retailers, including Leon, Starbucks, Accessorize, Patisserie Valerie, Savannah, Kiehl’s and The Cabin taking part with sampling activity for passengers, while passers-by were treated to live music all day.

King’s Cross, of course, has its own literary super-star in the form of a certain bespectacled wizard, and has been working with various brands to leverage the appeal of Harry Potter and Platform 9¾ (there’s even now an official Harry Potter shop…).

Figures from Network Rail for the last quarter of 2017 showed that total retail sales across the 17 stations it manages grew by 3.5% between October and December 2017, more than triple the average 1.1% growth seen by the UK retail industry as a whole.

Between April and December 2017 over 630 million people travelled through or visited Network Rail managed stations, spending more than £594m in its retail stores. Between October and December 2017 over 66 million people – more than the entire population of the UK – visited a retail outlet in a managed station, spending almost £206m, with the festive season causing retail sales to spike in the gifting (+9%) and stationery (+6%) categories.

Network Rail stresses a direct link between investment in stations and an increase in sales and satisfaction. Four of the top five stations for total sales growth in the last quarter of 2017 had seen significant recent investment, with Paddington (44%) London Bridge (40%), King’s Cross (11%) and Birmingham New Street (11%) appearing in a top five that also includes Cannon Street (12%).

So the message for retailers and brands is clear: don’t dismiss railway stations in your strategic plans for experiential activity and face-to-face marketing.

They are increasingly a key space to engage the shopping public, with more and more people visiting them not just because they “have to” catch a train, but also because they are clean, safe environments which offer an increasing range and variety of exciting retail and dining experiences.

Fiona Tindall is head of domestic retail at Blackjack Promotions, where her role is focused on growing the travel retail and domestic retail divisions within the business through delivering truly exceptional retail and experiential experiences for Blackjack clients across the UK & Ireland.

Blackjack Promotions is the leading staffing solutions, travel retail and experiential specialist, with operations in the UK & Ireland, and the Middle East. Everything it does is committed to connecting consumers with brand experiences that are exciting, engaging, immersive, and that ultimately provoke a real emotional response. Its core service offering falls under three headings: travel retail, experiential and logistics. It also works hand-in-hand with agency partners and media owners using its experiential expertise to bring brands and briefs to life.

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Multi-award winning independent brand experience agency ignis has appointed Asha Kanhai as Business Development Manager.

Kanhai has worked in the marketing industry for 15 years. Her experience covers time at agencies including Field Day (formerly Arnold KLP), The Marketing Store and Summit, as well as a previous stint at ignis. She has worked on brands including 7UP, Fruit Shoot, Mars, Mattessons Fridge Raiders and Bordeaux wines.

Stephanie Whitaker, Managing Director of ignis, says: “We are absolutely thrilled to have Asha back.  Her role is to continue nurturing new business connections across a client portfolio she is already familiar with as well as developing new client relationships.”

ignis is a multi-award winning independent brand experience agency based in Fulham. Over its 29-year history, it has worked for a wide range of clients ranging from Jameson Whiskey, Sheraton Hotels and Fuller’s to Betfair and Cuticura. A member of the Institute of Promotional Marketing, ignis won two Gold trophies and a Silver for its #JamesonBeOriginal360 experience work for Pernod Ricard Travel Retail and Jameson in the IPM Awards 2017; the same campaign then went on to win a Silver and a Bronze in the pan-European IMC Awards.

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Blackjack Promotions, which specialises in airport staffing, travel retail and experiential marketing, has seen massive growth in demand for market research services during 2017, as clients focus on understanding how passengers use airports and their feelings about the service they receive.

In recent months, Blackjack has been awarded new contracts or had existing contracts extended with a number of airports, including Stansted, London Luton Airport and Dubai – the world’s busiest international passenger airport.

Fiona Tindall, Head of Domestic Retail at Blackjack Promotions, says: “Airports can be incredibly challenging locations to carry out face-to-face research. Travellers can be tired, distracted and stressed, while there may be restrictions on how and where staff can deliver marketing activities and what they can say to people, particularly when you’re working air-side, beyond the security barriers.”

Blackjack has a large database of experienced brand ambassadors who are security cleared to work ‘airside’, in the areas beyond the security gates and passport control.

Tindall adds: “It’s vital that brand ambassadors working within the airport environment understand how travellers think and how to approach them in a way that reduces stress levels, rather than adding to them. Staff need much higher levels of diplomacy and general customer service skills than they would need, say, in a traditional retail environment, public space or festival or event.”

At Stansted, Blackjack staff worked over the summer (the airport’s busiest period), monitoring the quality of user experience, including queue lengths, passenger traffic flow, congestion points and other issues relevant to the journey through the terminal. This is the second year running Blackjack has delivered face-to-face research services at Stansted.

At Luton, Blackjack was appointed in 2016 to provide field agents to support an airport quality survey programme. London Luton Airport (LLA) constantly monitors all aspects of the passenger experience and was also keen to understand how passengers feel about its redevelopment programme, launched in 2016. That contract has now been extended for three years.

At Dubai, Blackjack was appointed to deliver research services during 2016 to understand more about the passenger experience and how they could improve passenger satisfaction. The data delivered by this initial programme was so useful that Dubai has extended it to run until May 2018, and has also added a ‘mystery shopping’ function.

For Dubai, Blackjack had to source multilingual research staff to cover 32 passenger interaction points across four terminals, 365 days a year. Staff have to have airside access. They input questionnaire responses onto tablets and upload the data in real time for Dubai Airports to access.

Blackjack Promotions is a leading staffing solutions, travel retail and experiential specialist. A subsidiary of US company ABM Industries, a global provider of facilities management services, Blackjack is based at Heathrow, where it employs approximately 1,000 staff, in addition to its database of 8,000+ field staff. Blackjack is a member of the IPM agency.

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Tiffany is marking the launch of its new signature fragrance to the UK market with experiential activity in one of the busiest areas of Heathrow’s Terminal 5.

The campaign will allow passengers to personally experience the brand-new Tiffany perfume, crafted to reflect the diamonds for which the legendary jeweller is famous. The scent itself is described as ‘elegant and light’, with a bottle designed to reflect light and a cap showcasing a ring displaying the Tiffany & Co. hallmark.

Passengers will be able to test the fragrance at the stand. The diamond-inspired perfume bottle comes nestled in the famous Tiffany blue box and passengers will exclusively be able to have theirs engraved before it is then beautifully gift wrapped.

The site is located in Terminal 5 Departures, home to a range of prestigious and premium retailers, which means it should attract passengers actively seeking entertainment from high end brands such as Tiffany.

Tiffany designed the stand, which was manufactured and installed by Emerald House Associates. BlackJack Promotions is providing the staff.

With over 3,400 fragrances available to buy at Heathrow Airport and £122 million spent on scent alone in 2016, the experiential stand provides a unique and effective way for Tiffany to cut through and ensure the brand is front of mind when passengers are considering their fragrance purchases.

Tiffany’s campaign was booked by JCDecaux OneWorld through JCDecaux Airport and will run for one month at Heathrow Terminal 5. The experiential campaign is supported by bookings across digital screens in Terminal 5, Terminal 2 and across the Digital Totems in T5.

Steve Cox, Marketing Director for JCDecaux Airport, says: “An experiential site such as this provides the perfect platform to launch a new fragrance.  Tiffany has recreated the essence of their brand, and can both engage a highly receptive audience keen to spend on the product, and propagate their message far beyond the airport environment.”

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Ballantine’s Hard Fired whisky variant – matured in charred American oak barrels – has introduced multisensory charred bars to Paris airports to highlight the bespoke distillation process.

The Ballantine’s Hard Fired multisensory bar will be a new engagement launching in the travel retail environment, giving passengers the opportunity to ‘fire up’ their journey with a taste of whisky while sitting at a bespoke charred bar, smelling hints of wood smoke and vanilla.

Passengers are also being offered the opportunity to ‘fire up’ their mobile devices for free via charging points built into the bars.

Brand activation agency ignis worked with Ballantine’s to develop a bar that appears to have been constructed from the charred wood of the whisky barrels, which has gone live across airports in Paris Charles de Gaulle, Paris Orly and Nice airports.

The double charred barrels will feature in each activation to highlight the unique way in which the smoky taste of Ballantine’s Hard Fired develops during its resting phase.

Emily Ho-Ng, Brand Manager at Pernod Ricard Travel Retail EMEA, says: “The activation not only explains the process behind Ballantine’s Hard Fired, but also instils an emotional connection with the brand through the drama it brings to Paris and Nice.”

ignis is a multi-award winning independent brand activation agency based in Fulham. Over its 29-year history it has worked for clients including Jameson Whiskey, Sheraton Hotels, Fuller’s, Betfair and Cuticura.

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Jameson Irish whiskey is celebrating St. Patrick’s Day 2017 with a campaign centred around the phrase ‘to chance your arm’, in tribute to the brand’s motto Sine Metu, which means “to be without fear”.

Jameson has launched a new Limited Edition 2017 bottle to mark the occasion. Designed by Dublin-based artist Steve McCarthy, the label illustration depicts a historic Irish tale based around an incident where the leader of one clan, besieging the forces of another in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, is supposed to have offered to make peace and showed his good intentions by reaching through a hole in the cathedral door, risking the defenders cutting it off. The leader of the defenders took the hand of peace, according to the legend, and the door, with the hole still in it, is now known as The Door of Reconciliation.

Running in travel retail at Amsterdam and Frankfurt airports throughout March, the promotion offers passengers who buy a Limited Edition bottle of Jameson gift-with-purchase rewards – and then immediately challenges them to try and win upgraded prizes if they choose to live fearlessly and risk their original gift.

The campaign was created for Jameson by communication agency ignis. Using a Jameson Irish whiskey-inspired replica of the Door of Reconciliation, passengers will need to reach into the door and work together with other passengers to find matching Chance Cards. If two matching cards are drawn, the purchasing passenger wins the corresponding upgrade prize.

Nick Peters, Executive Creative Director at ignis says: “This activation is the perfect opportunity for Jameson to have genuine consumer interaction in travel retail, whilst educating air passengers on this year’s limited edition bottle in a fun and relevant way.”

Mike Wilson, Brand Manager at Pernod Ricard Travel Retail EMEA, added that the brand “wanted to relate the Jameson Limited Edition bottle to an activation that would disrupt the duty-free environment and capture the spirit of Sine Metu”.

The Jameson “Chance Your Arm” activation will be live until March 30^th 2017 in Amsterdam Schiphol and Frankfurt airports.

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Blackjack Promotions, one of Europe’s leading airport staffing, travel retail and experiential marketing agencies, has promoted two members of its team to senior positions – both within a year of joining the business.

Andy DeVito has been appointed Head of Experiential while Fiona Tindall becomes Head of Domestic Retail.

DeVito returned to Blackjack last year as Account Director. He has extensive experience in travel retail marketing, having joined Blackjack initially in 2010, leaving four years later, but returning to the fold to focus on the integration of creative, design, planning and logistics, along with the agency’s award-winning staffing service. In his new role as Head of Experiential, DeVito will continue to oversee this work, while also managing Blackjack’s entire experiential operation.

“Experiential activations are a key part of the overall marketing mix and with more and more new exciting technology coming to market, the potential for brands is incredible,” said DeVito. “This is a fantastic opportunity and I’m truly relishing the challenge to drive our experiential activity forward.”

Previously working on the expansion of Local Market Retail at Blackjack in her role as Account Director, Tindall also joined the business in 2016 from World Duty Free, where she was Customer Service Manager at Heathrow Terminal 5.

In her newly-created role as Head of Domestic Retail, Tindall will draw on her considerable retail expertise, which includes working for leading fashion retailer Gap, to oversee the growth of Blackjack’s Domestic Retail division.

Tindall was recently accepted on the IPM’s 30 under 30 scheme, a year-long programme designed and delivered to enable personal and career development for the best emerging talent in the promotional marketing industry.

“Retail is my passion and being promoted to head up our domestic team is a dream come true,” said Tindall. “Using my extensive experience in this space, the new division will focus on securing new retail contracts and working in collaboration with Andy and the experiential team to deliver exceptional events and experiences for our clients.”

Sally Alington, Managing Director, Blackjack Promotions, said: “I’m delighted to be able to acknowledge Andy and Fiona for their fine work since joining Blackjack. The appointments show the depth of talent we enjoy across the business. I wish them both every success in their new roles.”

Blackjack Promotions is the leading staffing solutions, travel retail and experiential specialist, with operations in the UK and the Middle East. Its core service offering falls under three headings: travel retail, experiential and logistics. It also works hand-in-hand with agency partners and media owners using its experiential expertise to bring brands and briefs to life.

The company was founded in 1995 and acquired by OmniServ Limited, the European division of Air Serv Corporation, owned by ABM, in 2013. Blackjack is a member of the Airport Promotion Agencies (APA), of which Blackjack MD Sally Alington is joint-chairman, and the Institute of Promotional Marketing (IPM).

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Blackjack Promotions, a leading UK and European provider of brand ambassadors and travel retail and customer service specialists in airports, has acquired Irish company Casey Recruitment, based just outside Dublin.

Founded in 1998 by Managing Director Mary Kelly, Casey Recruitment is Ireland’s leading provider of temporary and permanent staff to Ireland’s retail industry, with a particular focus on luxury brands and the travel retail sector. Current clients include L’Oréal, William Grant & Sons and Estee Lauder.

Following the completion of the deal on December 31st 2016, Casey Recruitment is undergoing a rebrand to Blackjack Ireland and will be led by Norma Murphy as Head of Blackjack Ireland.

The acquisition marks a significant step in Blackjack’s European expansion plans by extending its reach into Dublin, Shannon and Cork airports.

“We are a dynamic and ambitious business, constantly focused on growth and expansion by providing elevated service levels and innovation for our clients,” said Sally Alington, Managing Director, Blackjack Promotions and Director of Retail & Experiential Services for Blackjack’s parent, OmniServ, an ABM Company. “This latest acquisition presents a really exciting opportunity for us to develop ABM and Blackjack’s presence in Ireland, as well continue to build upon existing excellent relationships with Aer Rianta, DAA and Heinemann.”

Mary Kelly, Managing Director, Casey Recruitment, says: “It was very important to me that the business we built up over the years with our wonderful staff and premium clients would continue to develop and flourish. I have known Sally and Blackjack for many years and am confident of great things to come. My staff are looking forward to a bright future ahead with lots of opportunities. Our clients can be assured of continued excellent results with Blackjack offering their vast expertise in the customer services industry.”

Casey Recruitment was the sole Irish member of the Airport Promotions Agencies network (of which Blackjack is also a member), an association of retail solutions companies which collectively provide staffing to over 80 Airports across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Blackjack MD Sally Alington is joint-chairman of the APA. Blackjack is also a member of UK marketing industry trade body, the Institute of Promotional Marketing (IPM).

The Casey Recruitment acquisition comes on the back of a hugely successful year for Blackjack in 2016, which has seen its travel retail sector income increase by +40% YOY.

The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Blackjack Promotions is the leading staffing solutions, travel retail and experiential specialist, with operations in the UK and the Middle East. Its core service offering falls under three headings: travel retail, experiential and logistics. It also works hand-in-hand with agency partners and media owners using its experiential expertise to bring brands and briefs to life.

The company was founded in 1995 and acquired by OmniServ Limited, the European division of Air Serv Corporation, owned by ABM, in 2013. Blackjack is a member of the Airport Promotion Agencies (APA), of which Blackjack MD Sally Alington is joint-chairman, and the Institute of Promotional Marketing (IPM).

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