What we talked about
Aaron Gaeir is the CEO and owner of GDX Studios in San Diego. In this conversation, Aaron explains how GDX Studios operates in the experience business and why he believes the future is “fidgital” where the physical and the digital become seamless. He shares the idea that people see thousands of ads a day, but decisions are driven by emotion, and the best way to evoke emotion is through real experiences that create strong memory and recall.
Show notes
Aaron Gaeir built a $47 million agency called Grand Design, sold it to a London-based private equity firm, and then started over with GDX Studios, this time organized entirely around a single conviction: physical experience is the engine that drives lasting digital engagement, not the other way around. He says that two to three years ago, brands would have called him crazy for saying that. Now they’re calling him to help them do it.
What we covered
- Aaron coined the term “fidgital” to describe the convergence of physical and digital into a seamless spatial web. He argues that people see over 10,000 ads per day, but decision-making is driven by emotion, and that emotion is built through lived experience, not impressions. Every other medium tells people what to buy; an experience creates a conversation and lets people choose how to participate.
- GDX Studios built a floating island in Mission Bay in San Diego for Brawl Stars, a roughly $3 to $4 billion gaming brand based in Finland, where players competed in a physical version of the game during Comic-Con. The activation generated over a billion social shares worldwide, and Aaron describes events like that as gasoline, the physical experience forms real relationships among people who then carry those bonds back into online communities.
- Aaron tracks serotonin levels, heart rate, and dwell times at GDX activations to understand how environment shapes emotional receptivity. He used the example of airport advertising to make the point: AI would recommend the security line because dwell times are long, but people in the security line are stressed and thinking about their passports, the food court after clearing security is when they’re actually open to messaging.
- He described his wife’s stated preference for Mexican food as a case study in the gap between survey responses and real behavior, she doesn’t like Mexican food, she likes margaritas. That kind of deeper behavioral truth, he argues, only surfaces in authentic environments, not traditional market research. Brands that build experiences can uncover these insights and then target digitally based on what actually drove each person’s emotional state during the experience.
- Aaron cited Dr. Paul Zak, a neuroscientist at Cal Northridge who has published extensively on trust and behavior, to explain why people give socially acceptable answers rather than true ones, and why creating an environment of trust is the only reliable way to access what people actually think and feel.
- His advice to agency and studio founders was to get out of their own way and stop waiting for the right moment: the number one factor in entrepreneurial success is timing, and timing is not something you can fully plan for. He believes the actual business model almost never resembles the original plan, and that the role of the founder is to hire free thinkers who recognize opportunity when it appears and move toward it.
About Aaron
Aaron Gaeir is the CEO and owner of GDX Studios in San Diego, named best experiential company in the world by Ad Age. His previous agency, Grand Design, grew to $47 million in revenue and was sold to a London-based private equity firm.
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-gaeir-82b97666
- Website: https://gdxstudios.com
Episode 117 of the PreVetted Podcast.