Are Events the New Marketing? (With a Higher ROI.)

We’re living in something close to Don Draper’s personal dystopian nightmare.

Business creatives — the marketers, designers, strategists, the fun side of the office — are under pressure. The perceived nemesis? Artificial intelligence. As AI barrels through copywriting, design, analytics, and automation, the work that once required teams, timelines, and billable hours can now be done in minutes. Faster. Cheaper. Cleaner. Increasingly… interchangeable.

Here’s the real tea: any company not integrating AI into its marketing workflow probably won’t be around in twenty years. Efficiency isn’t optional anymore — it’s table stakes. Speed, optimization, and output at scale are no longer differentiators. They’re the baseline.

Everyone has access to the same tools now. Everyone can sound smart. Everyone can look polished.

Which is exactly why, when I re-engaged in entrepreneurship, I knew opening another generalized marketing agency wasn’t the move.

I’ve built agencies before. I know the model. Visibility campaigns. Content calendars. Top-funnel strategies designed to generate awareness, clicks, and just enough interest to justify the spend. It worked — until it didn’t. Because the more marketing became about volume, the more fragile it became. And now, with AI in the mix, many of those services aren’t scarce anymore. They’re promptable.

That doesn’t mean agencies are obsolete. But the problem they’re meant to solve has shifted.

We used to believe attention was the prize. If you could capture it, you could convert it. Today, attention is everywhere — and it’s cheap. We scroll past hundreds of brand messages a day. Ads follow us from platform to platform like a bad date who won’t take the hint. Content is optimized within an inch of its life.

And still, brands struggle to build trust, loyalty, or anything resembling a real relationship.

People aren’t starved for content, impressions, or click-through rates. They’re starved for connection.

You can feel it in how people talk about the things they remember. They don’t reminisce about ads. They remember the dinner where they met someone unexpectedly. The panel where a conversation felt honest. The pop-up that felt like it was made for them. The night they stayed longer than planned because something in the room felt alive.

That’s where the conversation changes.

Because events don’t behave like traditional marketing. They don’t live quietly at the top of the funnel, hoping to be nudged downward by retargeting. They don’t rely on algorithms, timing hacks, or fleeting attention spans. They ask for presence. They reward curiosity. They create memory.

You don’t “consume” a good event. You experience it. You talk about it. You text friends about it the next day. You associate that feeling — the energy, the care, the intention — with the brand that brought you into the room.

That’s the part AI can’t replicate.

An algorithm can write your invitation email. It can’t recreate the feeling of walking into a space where you feel welcomed instead of sold to. It can’t manufacture trust in real time. It can’t replace the subtle power of a brand that shows up as a host, not a pitch.

In a world where everything is optimized, events are deliberately human.

They slow people down. They introduce friction — the good kind. The kind that asks someone to show up, to participate, to be present with others instead of scrolling past them. They turn brands into environments instead of messages.

And in doing so, they do something most modern marketing struggles to achieve: they build belief.

Belief that this brand understands its audience.
Belief that it stands for something beyond selling.
Belief that there’s a reason to come back.

This is why events aren’t a tactic anymore. They’re a response to a cultural shift. A counterweight to digital saturation. A way for brands to move from being noticed to being felt.

So are events the new marketing?

Not exactly.

They’re what marketing becomes when attention stops working — and connection starts to matter more.

When brands stop asking, “How do we get seen?”
And start asking, “How do we gather people in a way that feels intentional, memorable, and human?”

That’s the work I’m interested in now.

Not louder marketing.
Not more content.
But better reasons to show up.