In May, I stepped away from my desk to attend Experiential Marketing Summit for the first time. Many of the industry events I attend are geared towards event organizers, so it was particularly illuminating to spend several days exploring experiential marketing through the lens of our partners, the brands and agencies bringing activations and experiences to our live events.
While the sessions covered everything from behavioral science and attendee engagement, community, creativity, measurement, and everyone’s current favorite buzzword, AI, one theme surfaced again and again: The most successful experiences start with a clearly defined outcome. No matter the topic, the conversation kept coming back to the same question: what are we actually trying to accomplish?
Designing for Emotion
The closing general session “Brand Storytelling that Delivers Emotional Impact: Lessons from Cirque du Soleil” stuck with me. They shared research showing a direct relationship between emotional experiences and Net Promoter Score. The takeaway wasn’t that organizers should manufacture emotion. It was that they should intentionally design the conditions that allow it to happen.
As experiential marketers, we’re constantly thinking about acquisition, retention, referrals, and community growth. The session challenged me to think differently: are we intentionally designing for how attendees feel, or are we assuming those moments will happen on their own?
It got me thinking about some of the experiences we’ve produced over the past year.
One that immediately came to mind was Flavors of Kapwa, a Filipino culinary experience created as part of San Diego Food + Wine Festival. The idea for that dinner started with something personal to my colleague – a deep pride in Filipino culture and a desire to create a space that celebrated it authentically. While the talent and the food mattered, what guests talked about afterward wasn’t the menu or the wine pairings; it was how the experience made them feel – shared identity, culture, and connection.
That’s not accidental. That’s design.
Measuring the Right Thing
Another theme that followed us throughout Experiential Marketing Summit was measurement. One speaker put it simply: Don’t measure the activity. Measure the impact.
It’s easy to count registrations, impressions, and foot traffic. It’s much harder to measure whether someone left with new relationships, frameworks, or perspective that change how they do business. Yet those are often the outcomes that matter most.
When we look back on our most successful events, those are usually the stories we hear. Not how many people attended, but what happened because they did.
A few years ago at San Diego Food + Wine Festival, Chef Marcus Twilegar met the “Barracuda Boys,” a pair of up-and-coming chefs behind a ceviche catering concept, at one of our industry events. A little over a year later, they opened Alchemy together. Today, all three continue to participate through Alchemy and their other ventures, and Alchemy took home Best Bite at Taco TKO last year.
That’s not a KPI you’ll see on a report, but it’s exactly the kind of outcome we’re hoping to create.
The Common Thread
What connects these conversations for me is intentionality. Whether we’re talking about attendee experience, measurement, or partnerships, the most successful events begin with a clearly defined outcome.
How do we want people to feel? What do we want them to do? What should change because they were there?
Those aren’t questions to answer after the event. They’re questions that should shape every decision long before the first guest arrives.