Event Experience

In this episode, we welcome back Nicola Kastner to the show to talk about the power of data to define event strategy and how to start to rethink the 'why' behind events.

Nicola Kastner is a multidimensional event trailblazer, Nicola has led from both the brand and agency sides of the business. She is the Founder of The Event Strategist, a boutique consultancy firm that offers event strategy advisory services to global brands to help them successfully optimize their event experiences to drive bottom-line results.

Before launching her consulting practice, Nicola held various roles on both the brand and agency sides of the business, including most recently as the Global Vice President of Event Marketing Strategy for SAP, where she was responsible for designing and optimizing event strategies for events ranging from 25 to 25,000 people.

Here's what you'll hear about in this conversation:

• Utilizing data to define event strategy
• Focusing on data in the future of events
• Rethinking the 'why' behind events

In this episode, we talk with two of the three authors of the new book, Event Success: Maximizing the Business Impact of In-person, Virtual, and Hybrid Experiences. They also happen to be two of the three founders of Bizzabo, Eran Ben-Shushan and Alon Alroy!

Eran Ben-Shushan is Bizzabo’s Co-Founder and CEO. For three consecutive years, Eran has been recognized as The Software Report’s Top 50 SaaS CEOs. In 2021, he was named to Goldman Sachs’s “100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs,” Business Travel News’s “25 Most Influential” executives, and BizBash’s “Most Influential Event Professionals.”

Alon Alroy is Bizzabo’s Co-Founder and CMO. He works closely with thousands of event executives and CMOs to deliver world-class event programs. Alon was just named to Connect and BizBash’s “40 Under 40 List.” He’s also been recognized as one of Business Insider’s “Most Important Marketing Tech Executives” and Eventex’s “100 Most Influential People in The Event Industry.”

Here’s what you’ll hear about in this conversation: 

• The three components event professionals need to focus on to achieve event success
• How to identify and overcome the Event Impact Gap™ 
• How to achieve a meaningful Return on Event (ROE)
• The four major areas that make up data maturity and how they factor into event disruption

Eran (guest speaker), Megan Murphy (guest speaker), and Devin (host) discuss the Event Experience category and its origins in the evolving expectations and challenges of event organizers.

Kim Darling (Vice President & Executive Producer, INBOUND) shares how HubSpot is thinking about the hybrid future, from sponsors and budgets to inspiration, all with an audience-first lens.

Kim leads the global event team at INBOUND, one of the most well-respected B2B events in the industry. Since 2014, Kim has grown the Global Events team from 2 to 20+ people and grown INBOUND registrants from 7,500 to 26,000+ and many more virtual attendees in 2020.

Under Kim's leadership, ticket and sponsorship revenue have grown exponentially and the team launched a media branch of the INBOUND experience that has achieved up to 1M views per week at its height while putting a spotlight on stories of company and personal growth.

Richard is the President and General Manager of Superfly. Richard oversees Superfly’s agency services business and drives the development of award-winning strategic and creative marketing solutions for leading brands by leveraging Superfly’s unparalleled expertise in cultural storytelling, community building and experience creation.

With over 25 years of experience, Richard has held a variety of executive roles within global agency networks. Most recently, Black was Chief Growth Officer at Momentum Worldwide where he achieved unprecedented growth for the agency’s New York flagship office, greatly increasing client acquisition year-over-year and modernizing the agency’s brand across all communication channels. Throughout his career, Black has excelled at fostering innovation and collaboration with an inclusive leadership style that brings out the best in those with whom he works.

Rex Serrao is the Senior Director of Marketing Technology at Salesforce. For years, Salesforce has successfully led the way for in-person events with household name event brands like Dreamforce and the World Tour Series. More recently the Salesforce team has pioneered the virtual event space, and are now paving the way for the hybrid models of the future.

Rex has held IT roles across a variety of industries for more than 10 years. Starting as a remediation consultant bringing troubled projects across the finish line, he went on to run application development, PMOs, product organizations and Technology strategy functions in financial services, insurance, and healthcare domains.  As the Senior Director of Marketing Technology, Rex currently runs the global event and brand technology capability at Salesforce.

Keyana Kashfi is the Global Director of Experiential & Content Production for Spotify where she acts as the Executive Producer, bringing Spotify’s brand to life through events and experiences across the globe. Keyana spearheads production for Spotify’s largest executions at industry events such as Cannes Lions and other global tentpoles, as well as major owned events like Stream On.

Keyana has spent her career in event production with a focus on media and entertainment brands, executing both B2B and B2C activations. Prior to joining Spotify, she served as a producer and led production and video content teams for organizations such as NBC, Vevo, Discovery Communications, and CNN. 

Sean Doyle is an experiential event marketer who has leveraged his passion for events to tell brand stories and amplify their messages. Since graduating from the Cannes Lions School, Sean has worked in multiple different creative capacities and has helped many clients and companies successfully connect with their audiences through event marketing.

As the Experiential Marketing Lead at Pinterest in Europe, Sean creates live events and experiential marketing campaigns that engage their community of advertisers and creators. With over 30 years of experience, he consistently finds creative ways to tell the Pinterest brand story and drive comprehension of how Pinterest inspires hundreds of millions of people to build the lives they love.

Brad Ehrlich, (General Manager, Markey’s) shares his experience helping clients shift to virtual events and how he and his team are already supporting the technical aspects of hybrid.

Brad joined the Markey's team in 1994 as a driver/rental technician and quickly learned all facets of the event industry. He was soon promoted to management and took over Markey’s in-house services at multiple hotel facilities in the Indianapolis area.

Now as the General Manager at Markey’s Rental and Staging, Brad oversees corporate strategic and operational initiatives at the Indianapolis headquarters.

Joey Graziano is the Senior Vice President of Global Business Operations and Global Events at the NBA. Joey leads strategic planning, business development, data analytics, and process improvement for the NBA's marquee global events, including the NBA All-Star Game, NBA Finals presented by YouTube TV, and NBA draft. He and his team also orchestrated the NBA Bubble.