Ankush Gupta (0:14) Hi, I’m Ankush. I’m the founder of eventible.com and the host of Building Awesome Events, a podcast where we speak with senior event marketing leaders. Our guest today is the lovely Erin McElroy, former Program Director, Executive Programs and Events at IBM and currently founder of her own agency called Adhesion.

Welcome, Erin. Welcome to our show.

Erin McElroy (0:34) Thanks, Ankush. So glad to be here. 

Ankush Gupta (0:37) Lovely to have you here with us. Erin, I know we’ve been wanting to do this with you for a while and I think I’m just going to jump in. Our podcast is usually formatted to only run for about 20 – 25 minutes. So I want to make the most of the listener’s time. And I know that we have some questions for you. I’m very excited to sort of get your take on a few things. So allow me to sort of just jump in right here.

Erin, you and I both seem to have dipped our feet into the workplace around the same time.Tell me a little bit more about how you made the move into the event space about a decade into your career with IBM. 

Erin McElroy (1:12) Sure. I actually was a consultant by trade. I came through university in the area of government. I was actually recruited by a government consulting agency. So I started in large enterprise resource planning, implementations and data became a really big focus in terms of converting very large systems and handling taxonomies and data analysis and content and also on the side, I actually started acting, producing, writing and doing screenwriting and film production on the side. 

So, about a decade into my career, I thought maybe I could do some of this creative stuff in IBM as part of what we’re doing to serve clients and it was really nice because I was one of the few marketers that actually had the consulting background and knew how to implement a lot of our products. So, really the creative and the technical came together quite nicely. 

Ankush Gupta (2:06) Lovely. I love hearing these backstories about the different ways and I guess and how they really come into the event space and the event marketing space. It never ceases to sort of fascinate me. And every time I think I’ve heard it all and there’s a new one that you just give us right there.

Tell me a little more about your role at IBM. Sort of what did the own third party and the executive portfolio and the split amongst these look like? 

Erin McElroy (2:31) Sure. You know, pre-pandemic, there’s actually a consolidated events team that started about 10 years ago. And the  leaders that formed this really consolidated all of the corporate and larger scale events down to the smaller events that happen in the geographies. And pre-pandemic, we did about four thousand events a year. Now, at this point, they’re at about two to three thousand and that’s anywhere from there’s a, they segment by the the Think Flagship Conference and franchise in the localities, which is a proprietary conference. The main conference is put on. Then there are, I’d say, anywhere from a dozen to twenty large scale third party sponsorships that happen and then there are just many others that happen in the geographies across industry, some smaller sponsorships. 

Ankush Gupta (3:24) So that’s a very, that’s a very bullish stance on the event space. And what are some of the objectives that they’re really trying to meet here? How would you say the split is between lead gen or meeting branding objectives? 

Erin McElroy (3:38) I think for the most part, it’s lead gen. There are some I would say there are very few just brand awareness type of events that happen and it’s very specifically each event is specifically tailored and strategized to hit a particular audience. And the content, in turn, is really tailored specifically to that audience, whether it be business leaders, line of business leaders or a technical audience. There is also a tech exchange that’s very technically focused. There’s a franchise as well that is supplementary to the other thought leadership type events but, everything really is in the service of driving demand.

Ankush Gupta (4:20) OK. Erin, let’s try and unpack a little from a career that otherwise, is going to take ages to dissect. But, for our audience listening in, what really are experiential event programs and sort of how do you approach these? 

Erin McElroy (4:31) Experiential event programs are really all about allowing someone to actually, really, all of the senses to be engaged in terms of your site, your audio, your emotions so that it’s memorable enough to, I really understand this and I really want to take in this type of technology or the solution to bring either to my customers from a B2B standpoint or from if you’re serving consumers to bring to your consumers, which are your audience.

So, the experience aspect is I’m not just reading about it, I’m not just advancing the screen. You know, sometimes when you say interactive they go, well, I’ll just put the information up there and if they’re actually advancing it, they’ll remember it because there’s that sensory driving of the conversation. We’re talking a different level that really helps someone understand the solution in a unique way, really affecting their senses and also that it’s so memorable that they think I’d really like to use that.

Ankush Gupta (5:30) And what are the different components, Erin, that play a role in building that experience? Is the focus on the speakers and what they’re bringing to the table? Is it the venue? Really, how do you sort of start to think about these different elements and what is really the most important? 

Erin McElroy (5:45) I don’t have a great answer for that other than it depends. This is where the creativity comes in. This is where understanding your audience comes in.

One of the things I always try to say, I speak on this topic very frequently. In fact, I was just teaching a masterclass on AI and experiential at the Experiential Marketer Summit in Vegas. And the thing that isn’t very exciting to hear, but is the truth, the experience is great and differentiated if you do these things: focus on your audience, understand what they need, understand what makes them tick, understand what their pains are and creatively come up with something that they haven’t seen before.

That’s seems so nebulous, but it’s so important to get back to because there’s so many technologies, especially with AI right now exploding. Everyone is saying do this kind of, do a chatbot, do a GPT, your own GPT, do this, do that and there’s all these solutions that are being thrown out but, the real way to drive that differentiation is getting back to the basics. Understand your audience, do something that’s really going to resonate with them.

So, you mentioned sessions, you mentioned maybe an immersive experience, it depends on your audience. If you’re dealing with an executive audience, for example, a large session where you’re talking about general thought leadership, you’re going to lose them like that. What you need for that situation is you need peer interaction, peer time, a very well respected thought leader where they can have that unique time with maybe, maybe ten, fifteen other executives because that’s going to tailor to how they like to receive what they value. If you’re dealing with very technical folks, workshops where you can show them exactly how the solution works, how they can give them a chance to get them, themselves hands-on. So, it really does need to be tailored specifically to that audience. 

Now, the things that are trending in terms of activations and experiences, everything around AI. Personalization, AI, how does AI really fast track results? Whether it be sites, whether it be creation. AI is not creative. It enhances and gives you more tools to create what’s in your mind, quickly and create, but it’s not created in and of itself. I think that’s a deception in market. 

Ankush Gupta (8:16) Yeah, it’s amazing.

Erin McElroy (8:18) Because AI is going to do it for me. No. 

Ankush Gupta (8:20) You mentioned your interest in acting early on.

And I think with a lot of actors that we see on screen, they either have that X factor or they really don’t have it that can really switch the audience on. And sometimes it’s the same with a large conference. I’ve been to a couple of Dreamforce conferences in San Francisco, put up by Salesforce and sometimes I’ve just been like, wow, look at this place and, you know, I’m meeting some great people, I’m having such a fantastic time and sometimes it’s just hard to get that sort of feeling. It’s a very tough ask from an event marketer to sort of pull it off and get the audience to be engaged and walk away saying, oh, wow, I really love that conference, can’t wait to go back.

Erin McElroy (9:05) Yeah, it’s so many different factors, but definitely there’s a production value that’s there. You know, we all know the major components of an event. You’ve got sessions, you’ve got meetups, you’ve got networking, you’ve got special touch. It makes such a difference. But if you notice, think of your favourite actor?

Erin McElroy (9:22) Can you think of a film that they’ve been in that’s really horrible? I mean, everyone has a stinker of a film they’ve been in. You know, every major great actor, right? 

Ankush Gupta (9:32) Right. 

Erin McElroy (9:32) The difference there, it’s the storytelling. 

Ankush Gupta (9:35) Right. 

Erin McElroy (9:35) You definitely need great actors or great experts to put on a session but, it’s the storytelling that makes the difference – the storytelling, the set design. So it’s really true. I started out actually in small theatre and did absolutely everything. You know, it was such a great experience because there’s nothing like the live experience that you create for someone. The moment they walk in the door, what does it smell like? What does it feel like? Are they embraced? Do they feel like they’re a part of something? Is there excitement? Is there actually the promotion ahead of the event? Is there anticipation that this is really going to make a difference for me? And that storytelling starts from the moment you tell them about the event, through a walk in the door, through what they experience, and also after they leave. 

Ankush Gupta (10:26) Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that’s really important. You brought out a lot of fantastic points over there and you mentioned now AI a couple of times, so, I’ve been waiting to ask you this. I know that you’ve long developed an interest in AI to better event experiences. How does an event marketer listening to this podcast start to think about this? What are some of the areas AI can be brought in to make processes, operations more efficient? You know, study the data patterns perhaps from your conferences and deliver those significant improvements.

Erin McElroy (10:59) In terms of the actual AI capabilities, there’s so many out there. And again, this gets back to what kind of, what are you trying to accomplish? I’ll give you an example. Ten years ago, we were the World of Watson was a proprietary event that we were producing and we really wanted people to understand the different components of AI because it wasn’t known. Like most people think that AI started a year and a half ago, it’s been going on for a while. You know, with Jeopardy, the blue computer that beat the chess champion, we had. 

Ankush Gupta (11:34) I was just going to say that. You know, that’s the first thing that comes to my mind is that whole chess game with Kasparov.

Erin McElroy (11:40) Yes, yes. And then also Jeopardy winning Jeopardy. But we’ve actually been building large language models and IBM has, I should say. It’s hard, 25 years, it’s hard to not say we anymore.

IBM has been working with AI with clients for a very long time in our research area, our research arena. So, I was producing activation and experience at the World of Watson event and we really wanted people to understand and kind of demystify the components of AI.

So speech, sentiment, visual and so, we did an experience where we basically mined information from Twitter, from the web, from X from the web and we displayed this data in a visual way that people could understand those different components. It was relatively interesting. They played a part in it and our goal was we want people to understand this. 

What we realized is that it was moderately successful. The next thing we did at the next event was do a robot concierge focused specifically on natural language. Okay, speech, and we set up 10 different robots and we called it a conversation with Watson. 

There was some concern that, well, the robots don’t hear exactly, especially in a large conference environment. You have to repeat. Can I tell you, no one cared about how long it took the robots to speak or understand. Right. And they got the fact that we were basically mining their conversations and we’re reporting back to them and responding. And so, it was one of the most successful things that I was a part of and it gave me an understanding that the experience was more important than the fact that I wanted to teach them all of these different attributes of AI.

They got one attribute of it, of the natural language, enough to where it exploded and we had so much interest. Tell me more. And so, it really set the stage and the basic foundation for the types of experiences we wanted to create. We want people to, it’s a short experience, it’s sensory, and it’s something that’s memorable and different and it doesn’t have to be comprehensive of everything you want them to come away with.

It doesn’t have to be comprehensive of the solution you’re selling. It has to be a teaser with enough depth that they want to come and find out more and actually apply it to their business. I don’t want this to be misconstrued as the idea that you do something that’s flashy because this was real and it was real in terms of we didn’t fake any of the conversation so sometimes the robot would be like, I don’t understand or look off and not so it gave them a real sense, but it was so dazzling and interesting. People just kept coming back. They would just stand there. I had people stand there for half hour, hour, just wanting to monopolize the product. 

Ankush Gupta (14:39) Yeah, that’s great. I think you nailed it when you said people think that AI has been around for a year and a half and I was in New York recently and I was at the Whitney Museum and I specifically went there to catch an exhibition by an artist called Harold Cohen, who in the 70s actually built the first AI program to make his art. It’s fantastic.

So if you’re ever at the Whitney in the near future, go check it out and he had his little computer connected to a printer that he had programmed with his own code and algorithm and it was actually with the brushes were attached to the printer and it was actually going around and painting on the canvas, and it’s beautiful. And this is like in the early 70s coming out of California. It’s crazy. 

Erin McErloy (15:22) Yeah. Well, you pointed out something I want to say is so important in this career is you’re fascinated. You know, here you are. You’re at the Whitney Museum and you’re just fascinated. Stay curious. Stay fascinated in the new things. I never feel like I know everything. I never feel like I’ve learned everything I need to learn and I’m constantly interested in the new things that are being created and this is so important in this era. I’ve had the fortune of working in technology from the early 90s and so I saw things completely transformed with mobile technology, completely transformed with the Internet and this is bigger than anything else that we’ve seen so far. It really is.

Ankush Gupta (16:06) Recently, the CEO at OpenAI, Sam Altman, in an interview, he mentioned that due to the prevalence of AI, perhaps human centred activities and opportunities to connect in person would now take centre stage. What’s your take on it? Will the rise of AI make us value person to person experiences even more? Are we heading into the golden age of conferences and events? 

Erin McElroy (16:27) I think that events, the time around the campfire back in the caveman days, cave person days, that will never change. OK, people are always going to want to come together.

And, I heard during the pandemic that, oh, we’re going to go all digital now that people know they don’t have to pay to get on a plane. We’re never going to look how quickly we got back to in-person events. So, the digital is definitely part of everything that we do. It’s part of life. When you approach an experience, it needs to be AI first, not as an add on and that will always be a component now because we’ve crossed over into that. However, I think that what will be the premium is the really valuable analog and in-person experience. 

Because we’re already at a saturation so I think it’s going to balance out. The pendulum is going to swing a little bit. I don’t think that in-person events and just even that human connection. Everybody put your device down, we’re not going to do anything with this right now. I think those kinds of activities are going to become kind of an icing on the cake of the digital type of events that we have now.

Ankush Gupta (17:39) Sure. Erin, now tell me transitioning from IBM to now running your own agency. How did that come about and what specific parts of your experience are you looking to deploy for the benefit of your clients? 

Erin McElroy (17:51) Yeah, I’m just starting out. I’m a month old here and I have several key partners that I’ve worked with over the years that I’m going to market with. The focus is really, it came about just from 25 years of a wonderful career and really wanting to start out on my own and expand my wings creatively and so many different clients that I really wanted to work with and try different things.

So, it’s really kind of my new area of greater creativity and innovation so I’m really excited for that. Focusing in on event experiential strategy. Focusing on executive events because I feel, I mean, we’ve seen from an IBM standpoint, we’ve seen a 10x or more impact on engaging executives in an effective way. And so, and I drove the programs at IBM for the executives so I really love that kind of business. 

And then lastly, this hasn’t been an intentional plan, but I’m starting to see so many opportunities relating to event experience that is fan engagement or customer engagement using AI. So there will be some of that work as it’s appropriate because you do it at events and then brands are interested in embedding that into their core business. So those are the areas I’m going to be focusing on. 

Ankush Gupta (19:05) Fantastic. Look forward to seeing some of that. 

For those looking to follow in your footsteps in event marketing, what is the advice you would give them, especially in terms of embracing AI? How does really one stay on top when so much rapid innovation and change is happening all around us? What is the right mindset to have? I know you said stay curious, is that just good enough or is there something else that you do? 

Erin McElroy (19:27) Well, you can never, as I mentioned earlier in the podcast, you can never get around knowing your audience to knowing exactly what you want to try to achieve so the why is so important and being very explicit about that. Not just I want everyone to have a better understanding. No. What exactly do you want to achieve with this audience? That’s so important. Staying curious and open, but also savvy at the same time. There’s some people throw out, some agencies will throw out. Oh, this is the best thing.

You have to do this because they’re excited about it. So really evaluating that, staying curious, but also very focused and try experimenting in a low risk situation with some prototypes. Get your hands dirty. You have to with this. You can’t just take anything at face value anymore. And then I’d say also just be relentless. Don’t give up.

I can tell you most of the major accomplishments that were of note that showed up in the IBM annual report that were shown through all of our PR and known achievements that I’ve had and I all were with 10 to 15 to 20 no’s before I got a yes.

So I have a permanent like callous right here from beating my head against walls. OK, so be relentless, especially when you have done your homework. Make sure you have the plan, be relentless and find the leaders that will get in that initiative with you. But don’t give up because you might have an idea that no one else has that will lead to something great and I’ve been in that situation before where I thought sometimes, am I crazy? Like, why am I so passionate about this? But I found other partners that were passionate and we accomplished things that people didn’t think were possible. So, don’t give up. 

Ankush Gupta (21:18) That’s wonderful advice, Erin. And, as a startup founder, I go through some of that roller coaster with those emotions on a daily basis. You know, thinking, am I crazy? What am I doing? So, I know it’s real. 

But finally, Erin, a final question for you today is a little bit of ourselves as well. You know that we are a conference review platform and our goal is to help event marketers further their brands through the power of social proof and community marketing. You know, what really has social proof meant to you? How important do you think it has been to the success of your conferences, your events, the executive programs even? 

Erin McElroy (21:52) Yeah, I think it’s imperative because the opinion of those experiencing, whether it be an activation or it be a brand experience, trumps everything now. In fact, if you think about it, why did you buy the last thing you bought? I mean, advertising has almost subserved, you know, substandard to the impact of social proof of customer reviews now and, you know, being a founder, I’ve really been studying a lot around professional services and consulting and, you know, that’s really the gold that C-suite leaders are looking for. How can I drive the sentiment in a different direction around this product, around my brand? 

So social proof is the holy grail. It’s the gold. It really is. In terms of just how you see all of society purchasing and engaging, whether it be travel, whether, I mean, every aspect of life, your doctors, I mean, everything is reviewed and you’re almost taking the word of someone you don’t even know versus advertising and versus brand positioning and so, it all really has to drive into that. That’s not to say that your strategy for brand and your strategy for marketing doesn’t have an impact. It does but, you’re influencing that social proof versus trying to influence other aspects of business that we have done in the past. 

Ankush Gupta (23:23) Absolutely. I think, you know, we live so much in a review economy now where we really followed around continuously being asked to provide reviews, consume reviews and a few months back we were having a chat with the advertising guru, Sir Martin Sorrell from the UK and he very simply, the way that he put it, you know, he said, in my generation, what was a word of mouth is now an online review and you can’t escape the pull of that.

Well, Erin, thank you so much for sharing your time with us today. I think we would love to get back together because there is just so much to unpack. It’s really not possible in the short time that we’ve had but I hope the folks listening in have found some inspiration, have found some value, have found some nuggets to really get started, to really start getting curious, being curious, finding the inspiration to go about, do great things in their careers. 

Thanks a lot, Erin. It’s been really lovely having you. I really enjoyed this. 

Erin McElroy (24:16) Thank you. Me as well.