‘I have gifted Jennifer Love Hewitt a baby elephant and luxury watches to Spike Lee,’ says Nathalie Dubois, selecting just two examples from the myriad celebrity interactions she has had at her luxury gifting suites. For the CEO of brand strategy execution platform Dubois Pelin and Associates this is nothing out of the ordinary, and with close friends including Sharon Stone and Viola Davis, how could it be? Beau Monde Traveler caught up with Nathalie to discuss her unique career and the stories she has collected along the way.

Dubois Pelin and Associates (DPA Group) – celebrating their 20-year anniversary in 2023 – is perhaps the most successful global brand execution platform in the world. Between Los Angeles, Paris and Tokyo (and a host of other locations), the DPA Group delivers prestige and glamour while increasing business performance and value. Their most famous service is the invitation-only DPA Gift Suite. Alongside award shows and film festivals, including the Grammy Awards and the Cannes Film Festival, you will most likely find luxury lounges brimming with hand-selected products to be enjoyed by the famous faces attending the event. From designer fashion to extravagant holiday packages, there is all to discover at Dubois’ world-famous gift lounges.

Before her success with the DPA Group, Dubois was a journalist with an interest in event production. It was on her living room floor – ‘eating cheese with my husband’, Dubois says with a chuckle – that she decided to create the company and give it a name indicative of a law firm: Dubois Pelin and Associates was born in 2003. ‘That’s how everything started, just as the company’s name’, she says. The DPA Group’s first event was the result of Dubois’ trip to Tahiti where she discovered a jewellery company that insisted she do its PR, although ‘I said, I don’t do PR, I do parties’, Dubois laughs. Nonetheless, she took on the client and showcased the jewellery on the carpet of the Golden Globes in 2005.

The DPA Group’s gift lounges follow the success of that first event, which now seems serendipitous. After the Golden Globes, everything snowballed for Dubois. ‘I did a suite at the Oscars. I then went to Miami and met with Nikki Beach where we decided to form a partnership for Cannes. From Cannes, I went to the Venice Film Festival, from Venice I went to Dubai and then to Hong Kong and all around the globe.’ At the beginning, Dubois didn’t really have a vision of where she was going with the company. ‘I only realised the power of it maybe seven years ago,’ she explains. She took the concept of the gift lounge worldwide and partnered with major corporations in the United States and with influential companies such as Warner Brothers. The impact her events were having on the brands she represented put her success into perspective; ‘I realised that this was huge’, she recalls.

Dubois runs a suite each year at the Grammy Awards called the Music Lounge. One year, she was promoting, among other companies, a Kenyan brand featuring bags made by local artisans. One of the award nominees chose a small red clutch to wear on the red carpet. The BBC decided to write about the nominee and her success and, all of a sudden, the small company from Kenya was in the spotlight and gaining exposure. ‘A lot of the time, when companies receive attention like this, their products can become sold out, they can find investors and perhaps their metrics on social media will double.’ The DPA gift suites certainly benefit the brands they represent.

Dubois wasn’t the first to come up with the concept of a gifting lounge. However, what sets her brand apart is ‘being worldwide’. Dubois is French-American and believes she is ‘already touching two markets, which is not the case for a lot of these companies’. She is always on the move, searching for ideas as she travels; ‘I go to trade shows, to fashion weeks, I invest money in media and tickets to events.’

She also prides herself on her integrity. Dubois won’t compromise for anything, whether that is money or securing a big-name brand. ‘If I don’t think a brand meets the standards of my guests or I don’t think it has potential in the media, I won’t take it’, she says. ‘It has to have a story and it has to have potential for these celebrities.’ Even if it’s a bottle of water, Dubois will only settle for the very best quality. She explains that her products don’t have to be expensive – although most of them are – for it is the stories that set them apart. ‘You’re dealing with major stars who have everything, including all the biggest brands.’ Dubois likes to surprise her clients with exciting new products before celebrity stylists get their hands on them. The most popular item of late has been the holiday to Tahiti; ‘we only gift around 10 trips per event so there is definitely some competition for these.’

 

When it comes to choosing the gifts for her suites, Dubois explains that ‘I do everything personally.’ While she has a team of people that she directs, Dubois has the final say on the brands they represent. ‘I’m definitely open to proposals but everything we gift, I like. I buy things, I like them, and then I go after them.’ She explains that ‘years ago I was approached by the creative team of Episodes’, the BBC sitcom with Matt LeBlanc. The actor was up for an award and his publicist asked whether Dubois could accommodate him in a gift suite. ‘I said yes, of course, and the publicist said that he has to come with the writers of the show, David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik.’ The trio was impressed by Dubois’ event and told her they would ‘be in touch’. Six months later, they called from London and asked whether she would consult on the next show because they wanted to create a whole episode about the DPA Group. ‘I placed six brands in the episode, and they created a fake Nathalie, a fake DPA.’ It was fantastic publicity for both the company and the brands that Dubois had hand-picked for the job. 

Each suite takes four to five months of production. It is a process that Dubois has down to a tee. Firstly, she’ll go after her former clients to see whether they want to continue, or the team will research new brands to include. ‘We have 30-50 brands for each event either in the suite itself or sometimes in gift bags,’ she explains. Next comes the invitations. ‘Either it’s an award show and we’ll invite presenters and nominees; or maybe it’s the Cannes Film Festivals and we’ll invite actors, producers and writers.’ The celebrities have to make sense for the brands represented in the gift suites. The final step is the event itself. ‘I have a staff that tours people. The majority of invitees have an appointment, and the tour lasts around an hour.’ Celebrities choose gifts such as clothes, accessories, and holiday packages. ‘If I’m in France, I will have more French products. If I’m in the Middle East, I will have more Middle Eastern products. When I’m in LA, I have a lot of American brands, and so on.

In 2007, Dubois was working directly with the office of the president of Kenya to promote tourism to the African country. Via her suites she gifted safaris during which celebrities were given the opportunity to visit charitable organisations in Kenya. Dubois collaborated with a charity in Nairobi that rescues baby elephants and made Jennifer Love Hewitt the godparent of one of them as part of a sponsorship programme. This made the actor cry with delight.

‘Sharon Stone was my first big star,’ Dubois recalls. The actor came through a gift suite in 2005 and became firm friends with its organiser. ‘She’s very respectful towards our brands. She’s lovely.’ Isabelle Adjani also made a wonderful impression; ‘she listened to the information on every single brand and will often talk about them when she does an interview.’ Famous faces such as Terrence Howard, Matthew Weiner, Danny Glover, Viola Davis and Angela Bassett have also been supportive of the DPA Group’s events. Kate Capshaw, married to Steven Spielberg, enjoyed Dubois’ suite so much that ‘maybe a few hours after, Spielberg’s butler knocked on the door with a bottle of wine from their winery to thank me for taking care of his wife.

Dubois certainly does a lot of travel of her own. She goes to Paris for the fashion week and to various spots around France throughout the year to search for products for her suites. ‘I dig for cool little brands that I can either put in my US events or at least in my France events because sometimes the companies are too small for the States; they can’t travel all that way. She often visits French Polynesia having worked with three resorts there in the past and ‘I’m always looking for new hotels that are coming through.’ While her current target is Mexico, Dubois and her husband are travelling to Hawaii for the first time in September in search of brands and to meet clients. ‘I clip magazines when I travel, I won’t even show you my desk,’ she says. Either on her iPad or using print magazines, she flicks through the latest stories and screenshots ideas or cuts out segments for inspiration.

Because of the current strikes in Hollywood, Dubois is uncertain whether her planned suites will take place. She has just had to cancel two events and is waiting to hear whether the next Emmy Awards are going to go ahead. Otherwise, the DPA Group will soon start production on the pre-Grammy Awards suite. Also in the works are the pre-Golden Globe and pre-Césars suites. ‘I always have a lot on my plate, I like to keep busy.’

The DPA Group isn’t the only job Dubois has to balance. A few years ago, she ‘decided to attend this school where you can learn how to be a health coach. I did a year of study every morning, waking up at 5am to do my class and then switch to DPA when the working day started.’ She now works as a health coach for Maeva Wellness alongside her other commitments. Dubois is also the CEO of Platinum Synergy PR which, ‘again happened by accident. I needed a PR firm and I decided to create it myself.’ She created a fake publicist by the name of Scarlett Fairbanks – inspired by Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind – to run the company, and ‘for years, nobody knew Scarlett was me and vice versa,’ she explains. ‘People used to complain about Scarlett to me or they used to complain about Nathalie to Scarlett’, she laughs, ‘it was really funny.’ It is only now, for the 20-year anniversary of the DPA Group that Dubois is telling the story.

Nathalie Dubois is constantly after new ideas. The CEO operates with an integrity that sets her company apart and she only features products that she has tried and tested herself. Her events are well attended by celebrities – many of whom have contacted Dubois for an invitation – and she draws repeat clients each year because of her excellent service and exciting gifts. Dubois chases opportunity and has founded (and runs) two companies as a result. With many projects in the pipeline, we are excited to see more of Dubois’ gift suites at the next hot events.