For over 45 years, TAIT has been a trusted partner to the world’s most influential musicians, businesses, and brands. The company‘s growth journey, which saw the acquisition of experiential agency productionglue in 2016 and global experience design and production firm Thinkwell in 2022, has now culminated in the unification of these entities under the TAIT brand.
TAIT creates moments that move audiences through its work in live, brand, placemaking, and location-based experiences. The company’s international, multidisciplinary teams have brought Olympic opening ceremonies, World Expo pavilions, Super Bowl halftime shows, award-winning theme parks, and much more to life.
The unification of Thinkwell and productionglue under a single brand marks a significant turning point. This move reflects how TAIT has worked to build a dedicated team of technologists and storytellers, bringing together a wide range of capabilities to create an unparalleled global force. With this combination of strategy, innovation, and execution, TAIT is ideally positioned to realise ambitious goals.
Following this milestone and the recent acquisition of a majority stake in TAIT by the Private Equity business at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, blooloop speaks to members of the TAIT leadership team to learn more about what it means for TAIT. We also gain insights into their vision for the future of experiential entertainment. This includes leveraging cutting-edge technology, pushing the boundaries of creativity, and creating immersive experiences that engage and inspire audiences like never before.
TAIT: a leader in live experiences
Founded in 1978 by Michael Tait, TAIT made a name for itself in rock ‘n’ roll. It quickly became a leading supplier of touring staging, scenic, and automation for live events. Since then, “It’s staggering when you stitch together everything we’ve been involved with,” says CEO Adam Davis, who has been with the company for over 27 years. “What started as a lighting company and then a staging company, we saw a need to morph into a live experience company.
“I think about it as technology-enabled storytelling. In essence, it’s creating these amazing moments that people will remember forever. I had the luxury of working closely with Michael. He believed it wasn’t about achieving 99% but the full 100%. We’re constantly striving for that last 1% of perfection.”
Turning ideas into magic
The company’s work, he says, is all about putting the artists or brands that it works with on a podium and letting them shine:
“When we’re at our best, no one knows we exist. We think of ourselves as the elves helping Santa deliver presents. We’re working behind the scenes to create extraordinary moments across corporate lobbies, public places, theme parks, and concert touring, making these experiences unforgettable.”
TAIT comprises creatives, engineers, and delivery teams, creating a space for these groups to collaborate and turn ideas into magic. As the company has evolved, it has continued to bring together new capabilities. Doing so allows it to work with clients on strategy, ideation, and engineering, turning seemingly impossible ideas into reality. This, in turn, led it to Thinkwell:
“Thinkwell’s expertise and global scale were perfect for our location-based experiences and placemaking needs. This transition allows us to help clients achieve their business goals. Thinkwell was a cultural match and shared our vision, fitting perfectly into our puzzle since the 2022 acquisition.”
Thinkwell’s global expertise
As part of the brand unification, former Thinkwell CEO Joe Zenas moves into the role of TAIT’s executive vice president of global development and strategy. Zenas, who previously worked for both the Walt Disney Company and Universal Studios, built the company alongside fellow Universal alumnus Craig Hanna and Cirque du Soleil veteran Francois Bergeron. Reflecting on what brought the firm to this point, he says:
“We were just three guys with a lot of passion who wanted to do excellent work. We quickly went from being a bespoke, boutique design company to having our clients trust us to oversee the production, too.”
The firm grew to over 200 employees, “but it was all to serve our clients,” he continues. Many of those clients, including Warner Bros. and Google, have been loyal since the early days.
“It was always our goal to do great work and be creative,” agrees Hanna. “We also never wanted two projects to be alike. We don’t have a studio style. Everything we do morphs for the client’s needs, and we become the solution for those needs. It is incredible to think about the hundreds of millions of people who have been touched, moved, transformed, or forgotten about the bad stuff going on in their lives because of something we did.”
Thinkwell joins the TAIT family
Following its acquisition by TAIT in 2022, Thinkwell has expanded the creative expertise within the wider TAIT organisation. Bergeron says that at the time of the acquisition, Thinkwell leadership had been on the lookout for a strategic partner for a while:
“We were looking for third-party investment. As private individuals, there’s a maximum growth you can achieve, and then you need someone much bigger. We met with the leadership and thought, ‘We talk the same language’. They’re good people who are in it for the right reasons. The cultural alignment and shared values made the merger work, although mergers are often hard to pull off. It’s crucial to have that fundamental connection, which we found with TAIT.”
“The acquisition of Thinkwell by TAIT couldn’t have made us happier. From the moment we began our conversations with Adam, we felt a kinship and a perfect connection into their business ecosystem,” adds Hanna.
The merger has enabled the teams to deliver end-to-end service for clients, especially given the growing desire for clients to find a partner capable of going all the way through. In his new role, Zenas will focus on communicating these new opportunities to clients. This includes explaining how TAIT can help them anywhere within that project cycle:
“I’m now focused on global development and positioning the TAIT organisation as a long-term partner for our key clients, ensuring they see us as more than just a one-time service provider.”
Levelling up experiences
The merging of the two companies brought significant benefits to the attractions industry and beyond.
“Thinkwell has always been on the creative, strategic side, early at the table,” says Bergeron. “TAIT was more on the engineering, construction, and delivery side. Now, TAIT brings that technical expertise to our creative ideas.
“This collaborative approach helps us push the envelope on guest experiences while staying realistic about what can be achieved. It’s about balancing innovation with practicality, ensuring our creative visions can be realised within budget and technical constraints. Having TAIT in the background to say, ‘Let’s send it to the engineers and come back with a consensus’ is invaluable. It allows us to make informed decisions early on, aligning creative aspirations with technical feasibility and budget considerations.”
“Because they’re so prototypical, the projects that we do are often high-risk,” says Hanna. “And clients are always looking at how their risk can be mitigated.”
A seamless end-to-end service
TAIT can now support and partner on projects from start to finish, strategising, designing, and delivering the impossible, ensuring the guest journey meets the brand’s aspirations, expectations and budget. Clients can enter the pipeline wherever they need, whether they already have a concept or strategy. TAIT will provide a seamless end-to-end service.
Davis says: “We have all the business acumen to put together a business plan and the imagination to turn that kernel of an idea into something, and then the engineering and the expertise to deliver it and turn it into what sometimes looks completely impossible. We can defy physics to make it happen and then, in the real world, integrate, commission, and operate it.”
“Now clients have a single point of contact rather than dealing with multiple firms for feasibility, design, engineering, and construction,” says Bergeron. “This integrated approach reduces complexity and also ensures continuity and coherence across all project stages.”
Benefits of a unified TAIT brand
Uniting under one brand simplifies things:
“A unified brand makes it easier to communicate that we have the expertise to help deliver any project,” says Zenas.
“Most of the clients that we deal with, aside from a few sophisticated owner-operators already in the business, have never done a project like we do before,” says Hanna.
“As we lean into that end-to-end delivery capability, you can see from the scale of the organisation, the acumen of the work done, and the number of engineers and designers and creative people we have that we are, by far, the leader in being able to do that end-to-end delivery successfully.”
Jennifer Kurland, chief brand officer at TAIT, adds:
“Unifying as TAIT will reduce confusion in the marketplace. It will make it easier for our partners to benefit from our industry-leading experts around the globe at any point in a project’s lifecycle. The boutique and bespoke service clients expect will remain, augmented by the global scale of TAIT, with access to a full, end-to-end offer with production.”
Early successes post-merger
While the types of projects that TAIT works on can span years, the teams are already seeing the fruits of the merger.
“Warner Bros. Studio Tour Tokyo – The Making of Harry Potter was a big success. It was one of the first projects of size that required all the components to align,” says Bergeron. “We had a lot of things to communicate, like realising that certain industry terms mean different things for different teams, but we worked through it. We had to communicate with the engineering minds, understanding that when I put pen to paper here, it translates to a piece of steel there and someone in the field trying to weld it on-site.
“The robustness and rigour of the TAIT process, with its engineering mindset and construction reality, put us into shape.”
That project successfully combined creative and technology teams across Orlando, Montreal, and Los Angeles: “It demonstrated how the different strengths of our teams could come together to create something truly remarkable.”
Zenas gives another example:
“Luna Luna is a great example of cross TAIT collaboration that has already been taking place. We were able to integrate our creative team to look at the guest journey early in the process, while our producing team was involved with the event execution and delivery.”
He adds that some of the successes that the teams have seen quickly are around the level of discussions they are having and the type of projects where clients look for experienced support all the way through:
“This demonstrates the enhanced value we can provide post-acquisition.”
Brand activations with productionglue
productionglue is an award-winning experiential agency that started in 2006 and was acquired by TAIT in 2016. It is an integral component of TAIT’s global producing capabilities, converting brand stories and moments into never-done-before activations and international events.
The team’s inventiveness is demonstrated by its collaborations with some of the biggest brands. For example, Bloomberg, Live Nation, Nike, the NBA, and Frieze. The company has helped elevate Snapchat’s NewFront and has been chosen as the producing partner for SXSW London’s inaugural season in 2025.
“We have laid the foundation for the future of global producing at TAIT. This announcement is more than just branding; it’s about the growth in the offering to our clients. The capabilities we now have are unprecedented,” productionglue founder and former CEO Tom Bussey, now executive vice president of global producing and partner strategy at TAIT.
“Thinkwell and productionglue coming together under the TAIT brand represents a significant milestone for the company,” says Kurland. “With a history of partnerships with some of the biggest names in the industry, Thinkwell and productionglue bring unprecedented creative and production capabilities to TAIT.
“The merging of these brands within TAIT sets the stage for the next level of unique, memorable and transformative experiences. It also demonstrates our relentless pursuit of innovation in bringing our partners’ visions to life. The combined TAIT brand stands ready to make the impossible possible through unforgettable moments that inspire and connect audiences like never before.”
Meeting emerging trends at TAIT
As TAIT continues to innovate, it is well-placed to stay ahead of the emerging trends across the industry. Davis says there is an insatiable demand for higher and higher levels of spectacle and entertainment.
“Over the last couple of decades, we’ve witnessed and ushered in a global demand to see and experience this incredibly high production value anywhere in the world. Now, we’ve built a platform where we can take customers from the east to the west and vice versa, and we see that expansion continuing across Asia and the Middle East.”
“More and more public places will continue to be augmented with our technology and storytelling to make them exciting and get people off their phones and into the real world. As part of that, we’re passionate, to say the least, about creating an operating system for that experience. We’ve been developing this technology platform for 20-plus years, which allows us to, in essence, create a sandbox for storytelling.”
TAIT’s platform enables it to take any piece of data and connect it to any other piece of data:
“I believe we are the world’s experts at connecting data in the physical world for storytelling.”
Personalisation and connectivity
The next evolution he sees is this happening in a highly personalised way:
“In the future, and we’re doing it already in small test cases, as you go into these experiences, whether it’s a theme park or a world’s fair or a museum, the storytelling that you’re receiving and how you interact with the physical world and the data that’s driving that is going to be different from the people you are with.”
Bergeron agrees:
“Theme parks, for example, are exploring video game-like, multi-layered, personal experiences. We’re looking at this multi-layered experience and how we, as a company, can facilitate that, combining creative and technical expertise.“
Zenas adds: “The integration of holistic experience design is essential for our future. It’s about everything we do for the guest journey and then how that ties into TAIT’s suite of software and control systems.”
New investment
It was recently announced that the Private Equity business at Goldman Sachs Alternatives will acquire a majority stake in TAIT from affiliates of Providence Equity Partners. Explaining how this move will unlock move opportunities, Davis says:
“Providence Equity Partners, which we hand-selected five years ago, has been an exceptional partner. However, it became clear to the company’s leadership that for us to achieve some of the things we are working towards, it was time to think about a new partner. Goldman differentiated itself. What I want in a partner is really one thing. I want someone who asks, ‘What can we do to help?’ And Goldman’s ability to answer that question was bar none.”
In this relationship-driven business, achieving long-term partnerships is critical for TAIT:
“Goldman’s ability to connect us at the relationship level and to have the right strategic conversations is unique. I’m incredibly excited about this next chapter as we continue to push forward as technology-enabled storytellers, driving solutions for our clients and exploring what’s possible and what that last 1% is.”
Delivering extraordinary experiences at TAIT
The team is excited about this new chapter for TAIT and its possibilities for levelling up guest experiences worldwide:
“Thinkwell was always about solutions and helping a client achieve their vision,” says Hanna. “But now, in this transformation of TAIT, the ability to do that far exceeds anything we dreamt of before.’”
TAIT’s legacy has always been innovation and quality, rooted in the challenging live entertainment world. “This foundation has prepared us to tackle any project, whether a halftime show or a live Las Vegas performance,” says Zenas. “The ethos of striving to do things better and ensuring reliability translates well into all our markets. It’s an essential company value that helps build successful businesses for our clients.”
“As we expand, it’s also crucial that people across our network of subcontractors, consultants, and experts in various fields see us as a partner and solutions provider. Whether we’re working on a nighttime spectacular or the next immersive pop-up experience, we have specialists who can support any part of the project pipeline. Making TAIT the first phone call to find a solution is a key part of our vision.”
Moments that move people
Davis adds: “We will continue to be the best in the world at what we do. We aim to set new standards in the live event industry and location-based experiences. With this brand unification, we’re poised to redefine what’s possible. We’re committed to creating moments that matter, delivering unparalleled experiences that leave lasting impressions.
“We’re excited about the future and the opportunities that lie ahead. TAIT aims to continue delivering extraordinary experiences and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the live event and themed entertainment industries. Under the unified TAIT brand, we’re ready to take on new challenges and create magic for our clients and audiences worldwide.”
Finally, Kurland says: “As the TAIT brand officially comes together, we know we are more than the sum of our parts. We are uniquely positioned to bring ambitious visions to life through seamless strategy, creativity, and execution for our partners. Our growing list of capabilities, techniques, markets, and mediums are all driven by the same motivation.
“Together, with our partners, we create moments that move people – every single day.”
