Latest / Event Industry News Podcast / The Agency of Tomorrow: Storytelling, AI and Global Events

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The Agency of Tomorrow: Storytelling, AI and Global Events · Event Industry News Podcast

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The Event Industry News Podcast is sponsored by Present Communications.
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Hello everybody and welcome along to the Event Industry News Podcast with
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me, James Dixon, wishing you all a very good morning, afternoon, or evening whenever
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or wherever you tune in to today's podcast from. And it's afternoon
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for me, but it is very much good morning to my guest today who joins
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me from their base in New York. And on today's episode,
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we're going to be talking about the agency model of the future.
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Um, I dare say a lot of people who tune in regularly to the Event
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Industry News Podcast will either work for or work with, work alongside,
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have had experience with an agency, and there is no
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bigger a global agency that works within the events industry than
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the company from which my guest today joins us from.
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She is the Global President of InVent, and I'm delighted to say joining
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the Event Industry News Podcast this afternoon for me and this morning for her is
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Christina McCoubrey. Christina, a very warm welcome.
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Thank you, James. Lovely to be here. Um, and, and in New
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York, of course. And, and again, for— I always like
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to give context to our listeners because you never know when people are going to
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listen to podcasts now. But we're the day after the World Cup final,
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so New York, home of, home of the World Cup final, very much
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a huge hub for the tournament that just ended yesterday. Indeed.
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And what a match it was. Uh, as I said to you in our preamble,
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Certainly some disappointing news given our presence in
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London as an office. Absolutely the
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horse that we had in the
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race, especially once the US was out. But incredible match and certainly a testament
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to what a live event can bring to
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any brand or location, city for that matter.
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Hey, without a doubt, I'm a huge football, you know, slash soccer
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fan. And, you know, I've been recording a few episodes today, so I've been referencing
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the fact that that the World Cup ended yesterday. But, you know,
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it's in some respects, it's a great thing to reference because there is, you know,
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arguably no bigger an event, uh, for the events industry than
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something like a global or arguably the biggest sporting tournament in the world.
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Um, so, you know, all sorts of stuff we could reference out there. Before we
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get into the sort of the, the real sort of nitty-gritty of today's conversation,
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Christina, I always like to give our, our podcast, uh, followers a chance
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to sort of get to know the guests a little bit, find out a little
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bit about you if they've not encountered you before. Would you mind just giving us
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a, you know, a bit of potted history, know, who are you? What is InVent
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for people who may not be aware of the company and the brand?
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Sure, of course. And again, thank you for having me.
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So yeah, a little bit background on me. I've been in the
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event industry for over 30 years.
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I actually started— my background's in theater here in New York.
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I studied theater in university. I went
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on to be an actress. I did some directing, found that The
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world of theater and being an actor, while exciting, presented some challenges.
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You know, even when you're employed, you're unemployed. But it did lead me
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to this space, which I could not be more fortunate to be
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a part of. I'm thrilled that I have found a career and an industry
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where I get that same adrenaline rush that I found in the world of theater,
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with an accompaniment of incredible brand strategy, which I
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also have discovered is a real passion of mine. So I started
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out at an agency called William Sherrod Productions back
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in '99. And that is where I met Scott Cullither,
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who became my business partner, co-founder,
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and now husband. So quite the trifecta there.
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He and I left that agency in 2008 and
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started nVent. We started
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with 4 clients and $4 million in revenue in 2008
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and ended last year well above $150 million,
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countless global brands that we've serviced for over the past 18
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years. We've had quite a journey. You know, we started
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out quite small in New York, expanded quite quickly in the US,
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landed in London only 2 years later in 2010,
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and have since expanded globally with offices all
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around the US, APAC, EMEA. And yeah,
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here we are. So it's been quite a journey. nVent is
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a live events agency. We call ourselves the global brand storytelling
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agency. We really believe in storytelling as the
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primary vehicle for live events and the best way for brands to express
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themselves, especially in today's day and age. It fascinates
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me. Straight away, I'm going to disregard my notes and go straight
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to the theatre background and the acting, because, you know,
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an event of any description needs a beginning, a middle,
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and an end. You know, it needs, you know,
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it is, it needs to be well structured, well scripted. It needs to
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be well planned, well rehearsed. All of those things that we associate with filmmaking,
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with theater, with live music, you know, come into
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whether they're brand activations, it's regardless
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of what type of event it actually is, all of those things
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come into play. But more often than not, it's the thing that I see actually
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disregarded the most and not given any attention.
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It's a strange kind of paradox, isn't it? It is, it is.
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I— and I can't tell you how many times I draw on my theatre
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background, um, as does our, our Chief Creative Officer, uh, Paul Blerton,
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uh, a Brit, uh, uh, based here in the US. Um,
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his background is also in theatre. He grew up in the theatre, uh, in the
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UK. So I, I think it's a tenet of our industry,
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um, but more importantly, a tenet of invent. So we do
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believe in storytelling, to your point, a solid beginning, middle, and end.
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And it really is taking attendees on a journey, which any good
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play, film, show will take the
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attendee on a journey. And it's often an emotional journey,
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one that the audience becomes genuinely invested
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in. And so I think if we start, when we
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start the creative process, and to truly take into consideration
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what the attendee and audience experience needs to be,
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we will always start with telling a good story.
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When you tell a good story, or when you go and see an incredible play
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or see an incredible film, you then continue to
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share what that story was with other people. It takes on a life beyond
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the event or play itself. And that's always been— that
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was a passion of mine. In fact, a lot of my theater background was in
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improv. So that has been an incredible tool in
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saying yes, saying yes to our partners,
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whether they be our clients or our colleagues,
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and, you know, moving the story forward, which is obviously an
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improvisational skill and primary goal.
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Yeah, I don't think there's anybody who works in the events industry at any level
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who hasn't had to improvise at some point in
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their career. Does the ethos
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that you just referenced there, the story storytelling, the narrative.
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Has that become more relevant as time has progressed than
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it even more so than when you founded the company on those
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principles, given the advancements in technology,
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given how much easier it is for people to connect in a non-face-to-face
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way? How has that ethos developed and
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shaped itself as you find yourself and sit here today? It's a
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great question. I think, you know, we started
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using that word storytelling, brand storytelling quite early in
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its— now it's used quite a bit. We did
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discover it quite early because we saw how much it impacted the
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work, how it impacted our growth, frankly, because of the impact it had on audiences
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and brands. But I will say now, and I, you know, you can't
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talk about the in-person impact without referencing the pandemic and
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having a screen between an attendee, an audience member, and the experience
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itself. And I think certainly something that
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came out of that period of time is just how incredibly valuable the in-person experience
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really is. It's no secret that the industry itself catapulted
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coming out of the pandemic because there was an obvious observation
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and need for that in-person event.
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And so we saw such an incredible— we had an incredible growth period
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following that as an agency. And I think, I think that,
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you know, certainly with the, with the onslaught of AI,
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the reality is, and I mean, it's one of my favorite quotes, it's from Mark
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Cuban, who said, it's about a year and a half ago, who said,
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you know, with the onslaught of AI,
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particularly in video production and what we, you know,
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see on all of the different, you know, screens that we have in
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our, in our lives, he predicted that there would be a massive,
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you know, hockey stick growth in the live event space because
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in reality, it's the only place you can go where, you know, it's real.
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Yeah. And that really resonated
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with us and I think continues to resonate with us and our
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clients because, you know, 20 years ago,
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the live event, you know, the launch moment, the press conference,
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it was a piece of the marketing strategy, but it was not really at
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the core. And now we're discovering and learning and also guiding, frankly,
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our clients that that live event, that in-person event,
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that moment where you have your constituents, your stakeholders,
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your, you know, customers all in one place,
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has a value that is unmatched now. Yeah, and not
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just— well, yeah, obviously value, that there's value in an
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economic sense, but there's value in an emotional sense as well. Absolutely.
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And as I've said many times on this podcast, you can't you cannot
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replicate the, uh,
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unexpected feeling of euphoria when you're sat
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in a keynote speech or at the start of a
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concert or at the start of a play when the curtain, you know,
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the lights go down and the curtain goes up, or, you know, that the first,
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you know, drumbeat that you hear when a band hits the stage,
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or, or when, you know, all of the production elements of a big keynote
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speech come together and the light, the sound combine to give that audience member or
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that delegate that unexpected rush of adrenaline,
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the hairs standing up on your arms, and that feeling of euphoria— very,
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very difficult to replicate using any form of technology.
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Uh, you are speaking my love language. That is so spot on.
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It is. Um, uh, and I couldn't agree more. Uh, you know,
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and I, I think even now, having, having, um, you know,
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been a part of this industry for such a long time and, um, you know,
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being in the room, whether I have a headset on, uh,
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or more likely in these days, less, less likely. But in my
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early days as an executive producer, you know, that adrenaline rush,
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that, that feeling or anticipatory excitement that
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happens before an event starts, or at the— when
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you can feel the, the sort of arc
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of a story hitting a crescendo, it's, it's absolutely something
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that I couldn't agree with you more is, is unmatched, certainly on
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on a platform where you are not in a space with other people
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feeding off of them having that same visceral response.
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Sure. And I don't want for one second people to sort of maybe misinterpret
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that I'm disregarding the use of AI or suggesting technology
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doesn't have a place in the event sector because it does. And I
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know for a fact that InVent, you know, you're developing your own
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tools and your own AI that's actually being utilized within there. So it's
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about utilizing the tools that are available and that you can develop yourself.
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Now in order to further enhance the
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ethos that we've been referencing so far. That might be an interesting next
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step because I'm fascinated to learn a little bit more about this. I don't know
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if you can call it an AI engine or the developments that you've actually been
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progressing yourself in-house. Tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, of course.
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And I will say that, you know, it's— AI is
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another tool in the toolbox. It's a big tool.
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Let's be honest. It's not a small advancement. In a
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cool, like, video, new video technology. It's big. And it is significantly
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moving the dial in how we work. I will
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say, like, as an agency, we've leaned into it for internal efficiencies,
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both creatively and operationally, for quite some time.
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So we are not shying away from AI by any stretch.
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What we are not doing, though, is relying solely on AI to
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do our job creatively and strategically. We truly believe human-first,
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human-led strategy, creative concepting is
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still at the forefront of how we operate as an agency.
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With that said, it's a pretty powerful tool, and it is making us
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more efficient. It is helping us provide more
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value to our clients. And so we made
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the move in the beginning of this year to hire a chief AI officer.
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So while we were exploring and utilizing a lot
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of tools internally, we have an innovation division that's headquartered out of our Singapore office.
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So we were very much along the ride, but really felt
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the need to have someone on the team that was solely dedicated to this.
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And his name is James Kinney, and he is
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leading the efforts for our creation of what's called
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Orbi. And Orbi is a product, an AI product that will
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help our clients with everything from predictive analytics to
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onsite analytics. And it is an AI engine
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that is going to help our clients utilize AI again
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as a hyper tool in how to better events,
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not only the current event that they're doing, but I think more importantly events moving
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forward. You know, what gauging audience reactions, gauging audiences,
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you know, level of engagement,
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time spent, all of those things that I think we can
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kind of do right now, but to put it in a
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real supercharged format that can help our clients,
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again, make better decisions. And serendipity is a
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wonderful thing sometimes, because I've been recording episodes of the podcast today.
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And my guest just an hour or so ago, Kieran Garlick,
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from a company called Present Communications, who are our podcast sponsor,
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I was talking to him about sort of training and development and personnel within the
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events industry, and we were actually talking about how the
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advancement of technology is actually ultimately going to create new roles potentially,
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because we will need people who are skilled in utilizing those
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tools. So it's weird and wonderful and coincidental
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and serendipitous that you mentioned that you've now got a Chief AI
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Officer, because that's exactly what we were talking about on a previous episode of the
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podcast, is, you know, having somebody within a
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kind of high-tech-based role within organizations who
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really understands specifically how to utilize some of these new tools,
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not just for the benefit of the business, but for the benefit of the clients,
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which has a knock-on effect to the business. So it's— how,
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how quick was that decision made? How long ago did you start
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discussing about possibly having somebody in that role to do exactly
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what James is doing? Um, so it happened quite quickly,
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as has the advancements and evolution of AI
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in our space. So You know, one thing over the past 18 years
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that we have not been is slow. We move quite quickly.
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We're a hypergrowth agency, constantly seeking
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out the next best thing that will help, again,
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help our clients, help our audiences, help our employees.
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So we started certainly
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diving into the world of AI, you know, couple years ago,
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and then that started gaining traction. And it was my
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co-founder Scott Cullifer who came to us one day and
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said, I think it's time that we really put our money where our mouth is,
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bring somebody in who's an expert that can really help guide us, because I think—
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and also service our clients, because our clients are seeking it too. So I think
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it's really important for us as an industry to recognize that we need
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really well-educated, very smart people in the world
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of AI that we can bring into a room with us and help guide our
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clients as well. They're looking for the answers also. And so I think we
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knew we needed to be legitimate and have a strong perspective
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and point of view on it so that we can help guide our clients.
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And so within 2 months of
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recruiting and having lots of discussions, we hired James. So the
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conversation really gained traction in Q3,
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Q4 last year of 2025.
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And James started January 1st of this year. So it
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moved quite quickly. And all of our clients want to hear from him. And,
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you know, we'll bring him to their strategy discussions. Some clients have
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a, you know, a really strong appetite to incorporate AI and others
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are really looking for guidance, like help us use
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AI to move the needle in our space.
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So he's doing all of that. So he's creating internal efficiencies. He's helping
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our clients navigate. It's been a great add. Yeah,
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and when I think about, you know, the tools, the information,
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the data, everything that's available to organizers
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now, to clients that you'll be working with, you know,
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even if, even in its most basic sense, having somebody who
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can guide them on an AI thing might just be to help
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them understand the metrics of their event a little bit better, the data that's
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been generated from it. You know, that's before we get into any of the kind
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of operational production efficiencies that, that you can generate. Just being able to
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actually extract something a little bit more meaningful from the data that you've got,
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you know, archived over the last 5, 6, 10 years,
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however that may be. These tools can do in 5 seconds what
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it might take somebody 5 months to look at. That's right. Create the lake.
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Let's see what's in there. I mean, it's, it's, it is incredible too. And I,
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the other thing I think that we have found as well, you know, we have
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about 250 employees now that we've
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just completed our merger. We have 250 employees globally at nVent.
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So you have your people that have really dived in and like,
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let me wrap my head around AI and they're super users already
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of Claude and they're really driving
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efficiencies. And again, a lot of that's coming out of our Singapore office, but a
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lot of it here in the US as well. And then you have you know,
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are some members of our team that are a little reluctant and maybe,
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you know, don't want to lean into AI to help,
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you know, design a set or, you know, come up with something
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creatively. And so I think, you know, one of the words we use a
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lot in the agency now is curator. So while
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AI is there, right, and it is a— it
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is— it's just such a powerful tool unless you have really
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strong strategy and really strong trajectory
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of the brief and the plan,
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it's really just gonna be a lot of information. So having— we're really focusing
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on training our teams to become very strong curators of
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what comes out of AI and help curate that to best serve
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our clients. And in terms of curation, I wanna go back
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to the actual sort of the storytelling aspect, those fundamental
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elements of how you described sort of founding Invent and what it's based
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on in terms of telling stories, has the task of telling that story
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on a global level and tying— you've
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obviously got the different offices that you've mentioned a couple of times, but no doubt
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you'll be working with clients who work on a global level now and
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have done probably since the day you started. So I guess it's not just about
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telling story in one place at one time, it's about telling a story
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there that also connects with the story that you told for the same client there
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and the same client there. And the same client there,
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and that all matching together? Yes. Were you
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in our leadership meeting last week? That's exactly what
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we were talking about. It sounds simple, right?
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And it certainly, you know, we were, we were so,
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we had such high hopes, you know, growing globally
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and being able to service our clients globally. The fact of the matter is,
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15 years ago, That honestly didn't,
21:19
the uptick wasn't as fast as we would have guessed. We were like, oh,
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you know, we're working for Pepsi in the US, of course Pepsi in the UK
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is gonna wanna work with us. And fact of the matter is, globally, the brands
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and the brand stories and the teams were very localized,
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call it 10, 15 years ago. That has changed. We are now seeing
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some of our largest clients, you know, Amazon, Samsung,
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Oracle, we are activating for them globally. And when I say globally,
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I don't just mean like we have attendees coming from
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other regions here to the US. We are producing those
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events in the US, in London, in India,
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in Sydney, in Singapore. Um,
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a lot of the content, um, strategy, all of
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that, the efficiencies of being a global agency that can tell a global story is
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so powerful right now. And yet you still have
22:11
to take into consideration that culture. There are nuances.
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We see the nuances in our teams globally. But if
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they all ladder up to that same ultimate strategy, you just
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have to, you have to tweak, got to tweak it a bit in that region
22:27
in order for it to land as effectively as it would say, for example,
22:31
here in the United States. So we see it, we do see a
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flattening of it now though. More accessibility, more,
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more interest, more appreciation, frankly,
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for stories to run the gamut globally.
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And that's something that I'm incredibly passionate about because it's
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what we're doing in our agency as well, culturally, that, you know,
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having those local, those local priorities
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and things that really truly matter in that local.
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But ultimately, at the end of the day, we function as one agency.
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Which is unusual in our space. A lot of our competitors who have offices
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around the world, they operate in silos and
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that works for some. For us, we found that that was not how we
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were going to grow and not how we were going to best serve our clients.
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And so we really do, like, we just brought our entire organization together
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from around the world here in New York a couple of months ago. It was
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absolutely incredible. And so we we draw on
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those strengths and cultural nuances and differences to
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make us better. There's a, there's a great
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phrase we use in our, in our company called chasing the sun. So we
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are, we are constantly bringing in people
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from other regions into any given project.
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So we just, you know, we did a big launch for Samsung in Sydney and
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there were people from the US involved in that. So there's
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cross-pollination of our teams, both culturally and geographically,
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and there's efficiencies in that as well. We'll hang up as
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we prepare for, you know, Oracle AI World, and there's lots of changes
24:08
that need to be done graphically. We will hang up with that client at 5
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o'clock East Coast time, get on the phone with our Singapore team, and we'll wake
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up in the morning and all the changes will be there. So we're really using
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it as a strength. It's a true muscle of nVent, I think, that we do
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operate as one as one global unit. Well,
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I guess, you know, thinking about it logically, if you're trying to support
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a client in telling a global story that has joined-up thinking across multiple different
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territories and borders and continents, then if
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you're not joined up yourself, if you're not operating to the same principle
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internally, how are you going to do a good job of telling that story that
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the client wants to deliver? Thank you, and we'll put that on our
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website. That is spot on. That's spot on.
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Yes. Yeah. In terms of the development of tools on
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a more day-to-day level, you know, there's a huge discussion about
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AI, and sometimes, I'll be honest with you, I sometimes feel like,
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oh, I want to stop talking about AI for a minute because people are going
25:05
to get bored of it. Actually, I, I don't think they are because there's so
25:09
many questions that are still unanswered.
25:12
Um, on a more sort of day-to-day operational level, are you seeing
25:17
the tools are available, and maybe going back to the tech side of things,
25:20
that are helping you, even down to things like— I'm just thinking of visuals,
25:23
you know, client visuals, when you're wanting to render up what a room
25:27
or a stage is going to look like, you know, presumably all of these things
25:31
that again might have taken hours or days to produce for clients,
25:34
the tools are there to turn them around quicker, which means decisions can be made
25:38
quicker, which means your lead into events is going to be
25:41
a little bit better, you're going to buy yourself some days back, you know,
25:43
are all of those things applicable now? Oh my gosh, yes,
25:47
that is. Um, and every day getting,
25:50
getting better. I mean, it's moving so fast. Uh,
25:53
we just have, uh, we just posted— we have a, uh, a general— we
25:57
use Slack, uh, as a great communication tool in our, in our agency,
26:00
like many. Um, we have a, we have a general channel where we'll post work
26:05
that's happening globally. And, um, not that long ago, our team,
26:09
uh, out of Singapore and Sydney posted the fly-through
26:12
of the expo floor for XeroCon. So Xero is a large
26:16
client of ours. XeroCon is affectionately known as the Coachella for accountants.
26:20
It's a great, it's a great show. Yep, we just did, um, XeroCon London.
26:24
The fly-through of that expo space that
26:28
was posted on the Slack channel generated more, uh,
26:32
conversation and comments and how did you do that.
26:36
And it was because it wasn't it was so,
26:40
um, layered and rich with content and
26:44
creativity. And of course, the fly-through— not the, not the design itself,
26:47
the concept of the design was done by our creative team— that fly-through which brought
26:52
it to life, and to your point, helped our client sign off super fast because
26:56
it was like being in the room, was all done in AI. And it was
26:59
extraordinary and done in a fraction of the time that
27:02
that would have taken. And so you are spot on, it's helping clients make decisions
27:06
faster. It's also helped setting their expectations,
27:09
right? So AI can really, if it's done right, can give
27:14
you a true snapshot and what that preview
27:19
experience of the attendee is really going to be. Instead of
27:23
imagine if you will, you hit play and you're like, this is what it's going
27:27
to look like and feel like for your attendees as they move through it.
27:30
And we're also using it in just your basic stuff, onsite agendas,
27:34
production schedules, you know, case studies,
27:38
so much where it's at our fingertips now that, to your point,
27:41
used to take quite a bit of time. So I don't see it necessarily like
27:45
replacing any role within our company, but it's certainly going to
27:48
make the jobs of our production coordinators and our
27:52
producers so much more efficient that they will be able to
27:57
move quicker through those tasks that sometimes frankly seemed quite tedious.
28:02
Yeah. And I found something really strange about AI, and I wonder
28:06
if anybody else has had a similar, uh, experience, is that,
28:10
you know, for every person that worries that, oh no,
28:13
it's going to take a job away or it's going to make somebody redundant,
28:17
um, I found when I was— you— I used AI as
28:21
a, as a tool for a job not so long ago,
28:24
for an event job that I was planning. And I'll not go into the specifics
28:28
of how or why I use it, what for, But it saved me
28:32
about 4 hours on a task, and it did it perfectly.
28:36
I was really, really happy with the result. And rather
28:40
than thinking, oh great, well, that saved me a load of time, I can kick
28:43
back and relax and everything, it actually made me more enthusiastic that
28:46
I'd use this tool to do something so quickly and so productively.
28:50
It actually had the opposite effect. It drove me on. I thought, great, what else
28:55
can I get through today? Oh right, well, I've done that job, I'm going to
28:57
do this. I've actually had a positive experience in the sense that it's
29:01
actually made me more enthusiastic because it's almost— it's given me a sense of reward
29:05
that I've achieved something so quickly. And I think for everybody that's worried about
29:10
it, there's actually this opposite effect that I'm really curious to know if anybody else
29:13
has had a similar sort of feeling. Absolutely. I just, just had
29:17
it yesterday. Plug something in. I needed a quick calendar made for a
29:22
project that I'm working on. I gave very general dates and timeframes and Now,
29:27
now you just said something very interesting though, right? That it gave— that
29:31
AI produced something that was perfect. Yeah. If you didn't
29:35
have the skills and the knowledge and the experience
29:39
to know it was perfect, then you run into a problem,
29:42
right? So the only reason why you knew it was perfect is because you have
29:46
the skills, the experience, and the knowledge to recognize that it was perfect. So again,
29:50
I think that's why, that's why I'm not I think the live event space
29:55
more than any is quite AI-proof. You know,
29:58
we need to be in the room. And so there's all that stuff we were
30:01
talking about, you know, early on in our conversation that, you know, that live experience,
30:05
people in the room is just so irreplaceable.
30:08
It's certainly irreplaceable by AI. But what I'm saying is like the skills
30:12
of the people are still so needed. Like, how do you know that what,
30:15
you know, I mean, if you didn't look at it and like just sent it
30:19
off to you, team and there were tons of mistakes in it, then not
30:22
such a great experience. You've just reminded me of something
30:26
that I, I, uh, witnessed on Friday night.
30:29
Uh, very quick story. I was, I was out for dinner with some friends,
30:32
my wife and I and another couple. We're in a really, really great, uh,
30:35
Italian restaurant, um, in Leeds. Big place,
30:39
and they have live, live act on every night
30:42
of the week. And after the live entertainment had finished
30:46
They had a big projector screen that dropped down and they were showing like a
30:50
cycle of their forthcoming events. Okay, so all pretty standard
30:53
so far. It was obvious which ones of the slides had been
30:56
generated by AI because everything looks the same when you're
31:00
lazy with AI, uh, in terms of generating images. Everything looks
31:04
the same. And they were promoting a country and western, a country kind
31:08
of live act that was coming up. And on the thing that they did,
31:11
graphic that they generated it should have said the words saddle
31:15
up. Oh no. But AI had missed out a D in the
31:20
middle of saddle, so it actually said sadle up. And it
31:23
was so small, it was right at the bottom of the screen, but I caught
31:27
it on the cycle of these things and I saw it. I thought, there we
31:29
go, there's a prime example of somebody— they've used AI clearly to
31:34
generate that graphic. Yeah. And nobody has checked it. Nobody's gone into the detail
31:38
of checking it. And it said sadle up. AI had missed a D out of
31:41
the spelling. So, yeah, you know, there's a lesson to us all there if you're
31:46
going to saddle up with AI. Point taken.
31:49
A lesson for us all. Tell me, just before we wrap up today's episode,
31:53
Christina, I'll bring it back to sort of a
31:56
maybe a more sort of personal level. For you working in the industry,
32:01
you know, you've helped to build and shape a global
32:05
organization. Are you still as enthused
32:09
today as you were when you started? How does it feel on a personal level
32:12
getting up every day and working in this industry?
32:15
Such a great question because the answer is,
32:18
you know, more than ever. I think we
32:23
talk about this quite a bit as a culture, but our industry is having a
32:26
moment. There's no question about it. There is a focus
32:30
on live events, there is a level of respect and
32:34
appetite and creative
32:39
energy around the space that I frankly have not seen
32:43
in, in my career that I'm incredibly excited about. And I know our clients are,
32:47
and I know our teams are. It's easier
32:51
to explain what we do because it's everywhere now, right? Like,
32:54
there it's— it again, it's become, you know, people's time,
32:56
people's presence in any space is a currency,
33:00
more so now than it ever has been. So I'm more enthusiastic now
33:04
about our industry than I ever have been. Fabulous. It's been great speaking to you
33:08
today. Thank you very much for taking time out, you know, at the start of
33:11
a week as well. I'm always— I tend to record these on a Monday,
33:14
and I'm never not grateful for the fact that people are joining me,
33:18
generally speaking, on their busiest day of the week when their inbox is the
33:22
fullest. So yeah, I'm very grateful for you to
33:26
sort of take a bit of time out of your diary, Christina, and join us
33:29
today. Thank you, James, it was a pleasure. Um, my guest today,
33:32
uh, is the Global President of Invent, Christina McCubrey,
33:35
talking everything global events agency, the ethos behind it.
33:39
Um, some great stuff here, but really, if you want to find out more about
33:43
this great, uh, agency, please do head over to their website.
33:46
Um, I'll pop that up now, it's invent.com. And, uh, for anybody not
33:50
familiar with the brand, I-N-V-E-N-T.com.
33:55
Invent.com is where you'll find out more about
33:59
Christina and all of her colleagues and all of the things that we talked about
34:02
today, and probably a lot more besides. Some great case studies,
34:06
information on the work that they do. So yeah, do go and check those guys
34:09
out. And whilst you're doing that, and once you've checked out everything that Invent have
34:13
got to offer, please do make sure that you have a little look around the
34:15
rest of the Event Industry News website. If you've started your journey today
34:19
by watching today's podcast, on the podcasts page of the website.
34:23
Make sure that you go and check out all the special news features, supplements that
34:27
are on the website, as well as the supplier directory. If you work in the
34:30
events industry and you're looking for a product, service, or supplier, the chances are you
34:33
will find it on the supplier directory around this website. Of course,
34:37
you may have started your journey today by listening to today's podcast via your
34:41
audio podcast platform. If you've done that, thanks very much for listening today. Make sure
34:45
that you like and subscribe to the podcast wherever you get it from. So that
34:48
you get the regular updates on the new episodes. And please do make sure that
34:51
you do also take a few minutes to head over to the website and check
34:55
out all the things that I've just mentioned. Thank you very much again today
34:58
to my guest, Christina McCoubrey. My name is James Dixon, and we'll see you on
35:01
the next edition of the Event Industry News Podcast. Goodbye,