Some partnerships feel like a match made in advertising heaven. Certainly, that was the feeling when Catherine Ferguson, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Pearl & Dean, took a call last June with a chance to pair up Emirates and Everyman Cinema. Contacted by Emirates’ media agency Universal McCann, Ferguson was faced with an intriguing proposal. “Emirates were going live in September with a brand new campaign all around business class, and they wanted to explore Everyman as a potential partnership opportunity,” she explains.

Ferguson, who has worked at Pearl & Dean for 14 years, has a wealth of experience partnering cinema chains with luxury brands like Jaguar and Range Rover. “We had previously proposed Everyman proactively to the agency in the previous year, but the timings weren’t quite right,” she adds. Yet now the flight times were spot on. As part of its ‘Fly Better’ campaign, the premium airline Emirates was looking to align itself with another quality brand.

“Essentially, Emirates was looking to shift perceptions so that people could think that Emirates was worth paying more for,” says Ferguson. “It’s all about quality perception. They wanted people to really feel the difference in quality. And you can see these things in advertising, but to really shift that consideration, they wanted people to really feel the difference.”

Shared Values
A partnership with Everyman seemed just the ticket, with Ferguson stressing the brands boast “shared values”. “They’re very much experience-led. It’s all about attention to detail, luxurious surroundings, customer focus.” After initial conversations, Pearl & Dean was presented with a budget, target audience and timings. “Really the brief was: How can we get Everyman customers to see and feel the quality of Emirates and believe that it’s a brand worth paying more for?” Ferguson notes. “That was essential.” 

Emirates is no stranger to sponsorship – whether it’s a long-standing relationship with Arsenal Football Club or as the Official Airline Partner of the Wimbledon tennis championships. Yet aligning itself with the world of movies, and a boutique cinema like Everyman, was a natural step. “They’re very renowned for their in-flight entertainment system. It’s award-winning. It’s exceptionally great quality,” notes Ferguson. “And if you think about when people fly long haul flights, for a lot of people, the way that they experience travel is they’re just watching films back-to-back at 30,000 feet.” 

Still, why did Ferguson feel like cinema was the perfect medium to tie with Emirates? “Cinema…it’s such a special thing, isn’t it? If we think about cinema as a medium, it’s a place that we go to spend time, not waste time. Our phones are stealing our attention every day with the internet, but actually, cinema is a place where we go, either solo or with our loved ones, and for brands to be part of that experience, it can be a very special thing,” she says. “There’s so much you can do to take the brand off the screen and really bring them into the experience for the audience and add value and enhance it.”

After an eight-week period of initial consultation and exploration, Ferguson joined forces with Adam Reynolds, Head of Brand Partnerships for Everyman, to pitch to the Dubai-based Emirates an idea geared around the upcoming awards season. Titled ‘World-Class Cinema’, the concept was to offer Everyman audience members the chance to enjoy nationwide preview screenings of awards-worthy films with an added touch of Emirates-style luxury.

Key to this was the offer of a complimentary glass of Moët & Chandon champagne upon arrival, echoing the experience of stepping on board an Emirates aircraft and into business or first class. “We always have to think with a partnership, how can the brand enhance the audience experience?” says Ferguson. “We don’t want to interrupt it. We want to enhance. So people going to an Emirates screening and having a glass of complimentary Moët is just a really nice, simple, elegant thing to bring into the mix.”

The Right Priorities
In a first for Everyman, a 48-hour members-only presale was also introduced, a nod to priority boarding that gave loyal audiences early access to tickets. “Sometimes it doesn’t need to be all singing or dancing. It can be quite subtle,” says Ferguson. Audience members were also presented with their own bespoke popcorn in a bright red Emirates-Everyman co-branded box.  The finishing touch was a premium competition: the chance to win two nights at The Grove hotel in Hertfordshire, complete with spa treatments and fine dining. 

“Everyman has been partnered with The Grove for several years now,” says Ferguson. Previously, the cinema has staged its ‘secret garden’ pop-up inside the hotel’s walled garden, a blend of films, dining and entertainment held over the summer months. Here, the lucky prize winners would be collected by the Emirates chauffeur service, wherever they lived in the UK, and whisked to The Grove. “Just like you would if you fly Emirates business class.” Once there, they would enjoy complimentary meals and spa treatments.

As this brand partnership began to take shape, Ferguson and co. needed to create a bespoke campaign identity. With awards season fast approaching, the time crunch was felt by all. “Ideally we’d have twelve weeks. We did it in five,” she says. Emirates was presented with three potential routes to go down. The first was an illustrative look, using what Ferguson calls “a “Catch Me If You Can”-Saul Bass look”, with graphics recalling the renowned visuals created by Bass. The second was showcasing beautiful interior shots of both Emirates aircrafts and Everyman venues. “And then the third route was a bit more co-branded, a bit safer,” she adds.

Ultimately, Emirates went for option two, “bringing the two worlds together in terms of the interiors”. Meanwhile, the search was on to find the right films to complement this partnership. “Everyman had discussions with the distributors,” explains Ferguson, who notes how the choice of movie was crucial to the success of ‘World-Class Cinema’. “It’s not about filling seats,” she adds. “It’s about picking films that Emirates want to be associated with and shining a spotlight on those films as well.”

The first nationwide preview screening took place on November 19, 2025, with those that booked treated to a preview of the Netflix-made, Noah Baumbach-directed comedy “Jay Kelly”, starring George Clooney. Given the film sees Clooney play a Hollywood A-List star, the film’s baked-in luxury was perfectly tailored to the experience. “It felt very fitting,” says Ferguson. “The assets for that, it just made so much sense. ‘World Class Cinema’…you’ve got the lovely image of George Clooney…it looked really, really classy.”

Added Value
The second preview arrived in December, with Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” being selected to screen for audiences. Already a winner at the Cannes Film Festival, where it received its world premiere and claimed the Grand Jury Prize, it dovetailed perfectly with the awards-season theme. The day after negotiations with the film’s distributor MUBI were completed, the film received eight nominations at the Golden Globes (and later won Best Supporting Actor for Stellan Skarsgård, who plays a celebrated film director).

A special launch event was organised at Everyman at The Whiteley in Bayswater, London, with the film screened and guests greeted by not only complimentary champagne but also something else to reflect the Emirates experience. “Emirates sent all these amenity kits… just like you get on board in Business class. You opened it, there was Bulgari soaps in there and things like that. So it was a very nice touch,” says Ferguson, who would love to expand that idea in the future. “I think, budget-depending if we continue the partnership, maybe we could look at doing more of that.”

In the run up to Valentine’s Day, the third act of the Emirates-Everyman partnership comes on February 11^th – an invite-only “special screening” of Emerald Fennell’s anticipated take on Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights”, starring Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie. This one has the feel of something ultra-exclusive. “Everyman have sent invitations to some of their members for that,” says Ferguson. “And then Emirates have an allocation for Emirates VIPs and some media.”

Undoubtedly, it’s a unique way for a premium brand like Emirates to reach new heights, although Ferguson is careful to add a caveat: “I definitely don’t want to downplay the impact of normal cinema advertising, because it definitely is very effective. It can do a lot.” For Pearl & Dean, it’s a continuation of work in this arena, what Ferguson calls “these deeper, more involved partnerships”, bringing brands together. “We’re always looking to do more. And we’re really proud of this partnership. We think it’s been a really great team effort.”Although Emirates has since switched media agencies to Havas, Ferguson is hopeful the partnership with Everyman can return. “We’ll have to see what 2026 holds. But we would love to continue working with them in some way.” Could there be a chance to take the Emirates-Everyman partnership into the skies, with an on-board experience? “That would be a great thing to ladder up to,” she says, noting that “integrating the partnership and Everyman in the sky would obviously be a dream going forward”.

For the moment, the teams are concentrating on shepherding the World-Class Cinema season into the world, although with one eye on the future. “We’re conducting a second wave of research next month. So we did an initial dip pre-Christmas, and we have some quite good results, even just from having been live for a month,” reveals Ferguson. “I think Everyman and Emirates does feel like a very natural fit. And so hopefully there’s potential to do more.” Or to quote from “Casablanca”, “I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.”