Yahoo Finance Entrepreneurs: How the queen of razzmatazz put showbiz into events
Can you spot me?” asks Nadia Raibin. We’re peering at a photograph of the England cricket team celebrating their momentous 2005 Ashes win in Trafalgar Square.
Close examination of the framed shot finds Raibin to the left of the open top bus, signalling to the confetti cannon operators. “I’m saying keep going, going,” she explains, pointing to the cloud of ticker tape.
Raibin is one of that elite group of Londoners who quietly pull the strings to make the world’s biggest events happen.
You won’t have heard of her, but will have watched something she’s been involved with: a Champions League final, arena concert or Strictly Come Dancing show.
Her business, Mass Movement, is in the entertainment game.
Together with her team of creative directors and choreographers, Raibin is responsible for producing huge spectacles for TV shows, live performances, award ceremonies and corporate events.
Over 30 years she’s brought a showbiz touch to every industry from telecoms to fashion, brushing shoulders with George Clooney, Kylie and Bruce Spingsteen among a cast of thousands. A decade ago, she formed her own business.
“Events organisers use our expertise specifically to produce the ‘live’ for their events — as they know we have this unique ability,” she explains of the huge dances which are her trademark.
We’re sat in her office, which takes up the basement of a grandiose house on Warwick Avenue, where her firm was birthed on the kitchen table of business partner Barbara Mason.
She may be the queen of razzmatazz, but Raibin is refreshingly direct. There’s no hint of the “daaarlings” and air kisses often seen on the edge of fame. “There’s no messing about, a lot of people talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. You’re only as good as your last event.”
The origins of her life’s work are somewhat unlikely. Back in the Eighties and working on conferences for sports fashion brands such as Adidas and Nike, she’d noticed that matches had precious little pre-match entertainment.
Aside from the bellowed Abide with Me, the FA Cup Final had nothing to pump up the atmosphere and get the punters in early.
She convinced Wembley officials of her vision and was handed the 1991 Rugby World Cup closing ceremony with just a week’s notice.
“The audience weren’t being entertained before the main event, even boxing was doing that. The biggest sport on the planet wasn’t. I was petrified, very sick … but we delivered a remarkable ceremony with Diana Ross, about 500 members of the army making the Halifax X on the pitch, Notting Hill carnival floats for hundreds of children with flags … the kitchen sink basically.”
Mass Movement
Founded: 2007
Staff: Six permanent
Turnover: £2m (last year) Business idol: Simon Cowell —“He changed the entire music industry, which was in the doldrums”
A torrent of sports events followed: FA Cup finals, Twickenham matches and 20/20 cricket. It didn’t take long for large corporate sponsors of the sporting events to ask Raibin to organise their internal events at the start of an era where pop stars began playing for the suited masses.
“Sponsors said, ‘would you look after our events and produce us a spectacle that’s not going to bore the pants off or just be a jolly for the sales force who are going to come up to Billericay for three days and get drunk. We’ve got to wake ’em up, shake ’em up and entertain them’,” she says. Her contacts book was subsequently bursting with showbiz contacts.
Raibin’s career is so packed with big nights that asking her to pick out highlights feels daft. She recalls Muhammad Ali’s 60th birthday, which coincided with a huge sports awards at the Royal Albert Hall featuring Damon Hill and John McEnroe in an all-star band.
Raibin talked nervous astronaut Buzz Aldrin through giving out a prize. “He kept asking me to run him through what was going to happen ... In the end I said ‘Buzz, you don’t have to worry, after where you’ve been this is a walk in the park’. Also, we lost Lennox Lewis that night, and he’s big, to lose him was quite something!”
Raibin’s life is dominated by thousands of queries about each event. When the Phil Collins and K-pop fanatic gets a moment, there’s a second home in Spain, two grandchildren and a dog, Bentley, who “runs the company in my absence” to keep her occupied.
She owns the business with Mason and fantastically named creative force Christian Storm. She’s been approached to sell up before by “somebody who wanted to get into the events industry. The offer wasn’t big enough!” If she ever did sell, that’d be a celebration party worth going to.
