Learn About Alex Smale
So who is Alex Smale?
Alex Smale is an entrepreneur, developer, marketer and educator.
He has a wealth of experience across a wide range of sectors including online business development, digital marketing, online coaching and consulting, digital marketing agencies and leisure and tourism, as well as photography, computer game development and virtual reality.
Alex has always had a strong desire to help people to succeed.
Be that in business, or in their personal endeavours.
With the help of his friend, John Jackson over many hours of deep conversation. Alex was able to discover that his real purpose in life, is to inspire and empower awareness and action in people to create their best lives.
So that they can feel fulfilled by achieving those small differences that have significant positive impacts on the lives of others.
Which in turn can make the world a better place.
Alex is happily married to his wife Amina, who is a leader in the development and international charity space.
She has been a human rights lawyer for the United Nations, and a project leader and director for organisations such as UNICEF, Save The Children, BRAC and Muslim Aid.
And together they have three young children who they are raising in Hertfordshire in England.
Meet Alex Smale
Computer Games Developer
Alex Smale began his working career developing computer games as a graphics artist for Sega, Sony, Take 2, Codemasters and many others. Working for a range of developers, including the illustrious Bitmap Brothers, where he was Head of Art.
Alex worked mainly across the UK, but also in Montpellier, France. It was here that his interest in marketing began to develop. As he became increasingly involved in producing the marketing assets for the games he was working on.
But as the computer games industry grew from a niche industry into the commercial behemoth that it is today. After 10 years of making games, Alex Smale decided to explore other careers that he was interested in.
Alex Smale In Pub Management
His next adventure took him to become a pub manager for Wetherspoons. Which was something he had wanted to do for a long time after a brief stint working in a pub in London many years before.
Alex worked at the Union Rooms in Plymouth. Which is one of the biggest pubs in Europe. There he learned a lot about running a commercial retail and catering outlet.
It was an extremely high pressure environment. Constantly full of conflict with difficult customers and very long hours.
For Alex Smale, these were formative years that really helped him to build resilience and perseverance.
Alex Smale, The Photographer
Photography had long been a hobby, which had developed from his need to take photos in order to create graphics for games.
And over time, this grew into doing some paid work here and there, and eventually he launched his first business, a photography studio named You Look Gorgeous.
This was around the mid 2000’s when Facebook was in its infancy. But Alex saw the opportunity that the emergent social media platform presented, and he used it extensively to promote his photography work.
This helped him to grow his photography business from odd jobs here and there, into the biggest photography company in Plymouth over the space of around 18 months.
Alex Smale won several awards for his photography and his unique art-piece style, leveraging his graphical skills from his days making games.
You can see some of his work at: alexsmale.co.uk
Alex’s You Look Gorgeous photography studio was based in a department store in the town centre of Plymouth.
Unfortunately, as the Credit Crunch bit, the department store chain began experiencing financial difficulties, culminating in the closure of the store and taking Alex’s business down with it.
He continued to work as a photographer for a long time afterwards. As recently as 2019, specialising in horror photography for scream park attractions. But after the closure of his studio, it became a side project.
We Bought A Zoo – Dartmoor Zoo
During his time at the department store, Mr. Smale’s business was also responsible for running their Santa’s Grotto leisure attraction.
Each Christmas they would welcome over 12,000 people during a six week period. In a bid to make the grotto a more engaging experience for the children, he partnered with Dartmoor Zoo (famous as the real zoo behind the story of ‘We Bought A Zoo’ by Ben Mee, which was turned into a Cameron Crowe movie starring Matt Damon).
The idea was to build the grotto in a way that enabled the children to meet some real animals, to learn about conservation, and to help Dartmoor Zoo to promote themselves at a quiet time of year.
It worked brilliantly. Giving many underprivileged children the chance to meet animals that they wouldn’t normally be able to.
Alex loved working with the zoo. And after the demise of the department store, Alex was looking for a new project to get behind.
After a coffee and a chat in the restaurant at the zoo with the general manager, George. Alex Smale became the Business Development Manager for Dartmoor Zoo.
Over a two-year period, Alex used all of his experience to turn around the restaurant to become a big income-generator for DZP. He built relationships with local businesses who sponsored the zoo. He launched their animal experience program, Christmas parties, and many other projects.
Paradise Wildlife Park
(Hertfordshire Zoo)
Through his growing network in the zoo community, Alex Smale was head-hunted by Paradise Wildlife Park (now Hertfordshire Zoo) to work at both their Hertford-based attraction, as well as the magical Big Cat Sanctuary in Kent. Which is a private refuge for one of the largest collections of rare cats in the world.
He worked for them for several years, which he says, were the best years of his career. In terms of an incredible experience every single day.
Alex did a lot of work on the marketing for the two locations. Developing pioneering and highly-successful digital marketing strategies for zoos and aquaria.
After speaking at the prestigious World Association Of Zoos and Aquaria marketing conference on the merits of social media marketing, Alex Smale was approached by the marketing director of Bristol Zoo (one of the ‘big five’).
The MD said to Alex, words he will never forget, “This social media is good for awareness, but you can’t make any money from it.”
Granted, this was still early-on in the life of social media. But still, astounded by the absurdity of the statement by someone so prominent in the industry. Alex realised that if an organisation as big as Bristol Zoo wasn’t using social media to its full potential. It was very likely that most if not all other zoos were not using it effectively either.
Leisure Marketing Agency
This conversation inspired Alex to launch his marketing agency, to help and support leisure attractions with their marketing and conservation efforts.
Alex Smale’s agency went on to win awards and worked with many of the big attractions in leisure, including London Zoo, Dreamland, Tulleys Farm and many others.
Having had a passion for games and development for many, many years since he was four years old. Alex had kept a close eye on the new developments in virtual reality with the launch of the Oculus Rift and Valve VIVE.
And when Facebook (now Meta) purchased Oculus in 2014, he realised that VR was coming of age and was about to go mainstream.
Alex imagined that if Facebook had bought Oculus, sooner or later there would be a Facebook VR. And if there was a Facebook VR, there would be Facebook VR adverts!
As a social media marketing agency, Alex saw this as a unique opportunity to get ahead of the game and immediately started developing VR ads.
Alex Smale’s first client was Volkswagen, developing a virtual reality experience of the new Tiguan that could be launched and viewed from the newsfeed of Facebook on a mobile phone.
A revolutionary idea that was well ahead of its time, even today.
This enabled potential car buyers to walk around and experience the new car, several months before they arrived in showrooms.
Alex Smale Speaking At The Login Conference, Lithuania
April 2023 At The Warehouse
Dance Music Festival Organiser
For many years, Alex Smale has helped to organise and run a dance music organisation and music festival.
Started by David Green in 1992. The event was created as a reaction to the rising popularity of jungle and breakbeat music that was becoming popular at that time.
There was a strong need for house music in Plymouth, and the movement was born in the Quay Club to service that need.
The event went from strength to strength, hitting number 2 in the Club Country Top 10 in DJ Magazine. With many famous names coming to play including Judge Jules, John Digweed and Farley Jackmaster Funk to name but a few.
Many years later, a Facebook group was spawned to bring back the community of 3000 happy people who used to love the nights so much.
This in-turn led to a reunion night being organised at the original venue, the Quay Club, with the help of Alex Smale. Which was soon followed by a weekend event in Cornwall.
Since then, there have been several events organised by Alex and David, including a huge night at the main venue, The Warehouse, in Plymouth in 2023.
Virtual Reality For Dementia
Alex Smale developed an award-winning virtual reality software platform to help people with the symptoms of living with dementia.
He had long been interested in VR since the days of Virtuality in the early 1990’s.
And following an illustrious career in game development, he was well-placed to take advantage of the rebirth of VR in the early 2010’s with the launch of Oculus. Followed by the subsequent acquisition by Facebook.
Initially, Alex worked in virtual reality to develop VR social media adverts for Facebook, as part of his service offering in his marketing agency. Working with brands such as Volkswagen to demonstrate new cars before they arrived in showrooms.
But this later evolved into building applications in healthcare using VR. Creating a whole new use case for the platform.
Alex Smale used VR to help people living with dementia and cerebral palsy with astonishing results, which you can see for yourself in the videos below.
He then went on to win multiple awards, including the very prestigious international award for the best use of VR in healthcare at the International VR Awards in London, 2017.
It’s a fascinating story, and you can read it in full here.
Winning The International Award For VR In Healthcare