Creative Partner

SAAB isn’t a big agency with account managers standing between you and the work. It’s a small, senior team with an extensive network of global creative partners — giving you direct access to decision makers, and the right specialist talent for every bespoke experience.

After decades spent inside the industry, Brett Royston Annable and Alun John Sullivan founded SAAB Creative, working with resorts, hotels, cruise lines, theme parks, entertainment and destination venues, aviation and other experience led businesses — helping them find the opportunities hiding in plain sight.

It’s an approach Annable and Sullivan have already put into practice at scale. During their senior leadership careers with P&O Cruises Australia — Annable as Head of Entertainment and Director of Guest Experience, and Sullivan leading fleet entertainment operations shoreside — the pair were instrumental in shaping entertainment and guest experiences that challenged traditional thinking about what a cruise holiday could be.

Innovation became the hallmark of their approach. They introduced bold, contemporary, premium pay for entertainment concepts that challenged the traditional all inclusive model, giving guests the choice to experience a new generation of edgier, high end productions while creating a new revenue opportunity. At the same time, they reimagined live music with The Blue Room, an inventive venue concept that brought world class musicians from Australia and New Zealand to sea, transforming the onboard atmosphere through authentic, high calibre live performance.

Annable and Sullivan also helped redefine the traditional cruise ship production show, challenging long held conventions and working alongside leading creative producers and production companies to bring a new generation of entertainment to life. Their vision embraced contemporary dance, circus and high energy, concert style experiences that broke from the expected and helped achieve some of the highest Net Promoter Score results in the industry.

But their thinking went well beyond entertainment. The entire guest journey mattered — every touchpoint was part of the experience. Annable and Sullivan worked across the operation, including food and beverage teams, to connect entertainment, music, lighting, atmosphere and programming with restaurants, bars, check-in spaces and the wider guest journey. From the ambience of a celebrity chef restaurant to background music that evolved from morning coffee through to sunset drinks and late night cocktails, the aim was consistency — every element working together to shape how the guest felt.

That holistic thinking now sits at the heart of SAAB Creative — looking beyond individual departments to understand the whole operation, and finding the ideas hiding in the gaps between them.