Have you ever wondered how AI can make your next event truly unforgettable? Imagine turning your guests into the stars of the show, with personalized experiences that reflect their preferences, all in real time. This is exactly what Geoff Thatcher, Founder and Chief Creative Officer at Creative Principals, shared during our recent discussion. With a career spanning over two decades, Geoff has led the creative charge on world-class projects, from the College Football Hall of Fame to the grand opening of Warner Bros. Studios. His work for global brands like Mercedes-AMG, Palo Alto Networks, and Lockheed Martin has set the bar high for creating impactful brand experiences. As the author of The CEO’s Time Machine, Geoff is known for combining storytelling with leadership, making him a trailblazer in the world of experiential marketing.
In our conversation, Geoff offered powerful insights on how AI is revolutionizing event experiences and shared some of the practical applications he’s already implemented. Here are some of the key takeaways from our discussion, filled with actionable steps you can apply to your own events.
Expert Insights:
Using AI to Personalize Experiences: The College Football Hall of Fame Example
One of the most compelling ways Geoff and his team have used AI is at the College Football Hall of Fame, where visitors don’t just watch the exhibits—they become part of them. This integration of AI technology creates a personalized experience from the moment guests enter. Through a series of simple questions—about their favorite teams, game-day foods, and personal attributes—the AI curates a tailored narrative for each visitor, making them feel like part of the football legacy.
“Visitors scan their faces and answer questions. Then AI creates a personalized experience where they might see themselves as cheerleaders, mascots, or even legendary coaches. It’s about turning them into the star of the show.” - Geoff Thatcher
This level of immersion goes beyond traditional exhibit interaction. AI technology uses the data collected from visitors to dynamically generate stories, images, and even videos, placing attendees into the exhibits as if they’ve always been a part of the college football world.
What Geoff’s work illustrates is that AI can do more than just personalize—it can enhance the emotional connection between the attendee and the experience. By allowing guests to see themselves within the exhibit, you turn passive participants into active contributors. This increases engagement and makes the experience more memorable.
Actionable Steps:
Use AI-powered kiosks that ask personalized questions and adapt the event experience in real-time based on attendee preferences.
Leverage AI to create custom content—videos, images, or even stories—on the fly, placing your audience into the narrative.
Focus on how AI can enhance emotional engagement by making the experience deeply personal for each attendee, rather than generic.
The Five-Step Experience Model Framework: Structuring Unforgettable Events
Geoff covered the Five-Step Experience Model, a framework designed to create lasting impressions by guiding attendees through a structured journey. Rooted in the hero’s journey, this model captures attention, builds trust, informs, internalizes the message, and drives action—key elements for any impactful event.
The process begins by grabbing attention with a striking visual or display that sets the tone.
“You have to attract their attention right away with something that stands out. The next step is building trust and making attendees feel comfortable and connected to the story. After that, you inform them by sharing key information that enhances their understanding of the experience. The critical moment comes with internalization, where attendees emotionally connect through visuals, stories, or immersive moments. Finally, you prompt action, whether it’s making a purchase, signing up, or sharing the experience.” - Geoff Thatcher
This model is essential for event marketers, providing a clear roadmap that keeps attendees engaged and ensures the experience resonates long after the event ends.
Actionable Steps:
Whether it’s a standout display or an interactive installation, your event’s entry point should capture attention immediately.
Use elements of storytelling to guide attendees gently into the experience, ensuring they feel comfortable and informed.
Always end your event with a clear call to action—whether it’s buying a product, subscribing to a service, or participating in future events.
Finding the Right Story for Your Audience
No matter the industry—whether it's entertainment, education, or product marketing—the biggest challenge Geoff sees when working with brands is finding and simplifying their core story.
"The hardest part is always getting a very simple story from the brand and refining it down to something that’s clear and easy to understand. Once you have that, the challenge becomes translating that story into a physical experience." - Geoff Thatcher
Geoff shared a striking example of FM Global, an insurance company that focuses on engineering resilience. Their story revolves around protecting their clients’ purpose and building structures that withstand natural disasters.
“When a hurricane hits, and one building is left standing while everything around it is destroyed, it’s not a miracle—it’s engineering,” Geoff explained.
Their narrative of resilience had to be woven into the design of their corporate spaces, from their lobbies to their research campuses, showing clients how their engineering solutions literally hold up against nature’s toughest challenges.
To ensure your event or brand’s message translates effectively into an experience, it’s crucial to first distill the core story. The simpler and clearer the message, the easier it is to build something tangible around it.
Key Questions to Help Find Your Story:
What is the one key message you want attendees to walk away with?
What emotion or value does your brand evoke? Is it resilience, creativity, innovation, or something else?
How can you show, not tell, this story through physical or digital elements?
How does your story solve a problem for your audience? Why does it matter to them?
Actionable Steps:
Refine your core message by asking the questions above. Ensure the story is simple, compelling, and tied to an emotional value.
Design experiences that reflect the message—whether it's through interactive displays, storytelling, or physical environments.
Create a journey that mirrors the story: Align every touchpoint of your event to reinforce this core narrative.
Leveraging Diverse Perspectives: The Role of Empathy in Design
One of the most intriguing insights Geoff shared was how his wife’s involvement in projects often adds a valuable empathetic perspective. As a mother and former nurse, she offers insights on how experiences might resonate with a broader audience, particularly women and parents.
“She gives us feedback from a mother’s perspective, which is incredibly valuable because a lot of decisions about experiences are made by moms.” - Geoff Thatcher
This perspective helps ensure that experiences resonate not just with one targeted group, but with a wider, more diverse audience.
Incorporating empathy into event design goes beyond intuition. This is where empathy mapping becomes a powerful tool. Empathy mapping helps teams understand their audience by breaking them into different segments and creating detailed profiles. These profiles explore what the audience is feeling, seeing, thinking, and doing—guiding designers in crafting experiences that truly resonate.
For example, when designing an experience for families, an empathy map might reveal that parents often feel overwhelmed by too much information in chaotic environments. Understanding this, you can design a streamlined, easy-to-navigate space where they feel more in control. By mapping these feelings, needs, and behaviors, you tailor the experience to be more intuitive and inclusive, ensuring that it speaks directly to your audience’s emotional and practical needs. In experiential marketing, empathy isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a key tool for designing experiences that connect with diverse groups. By incorporating different perspectives and using empathy mapping, you can create events that are not only impactful but also emotionally resonant with your target audience.
Actionable Steps:
Create empathy maps to segment your audience and explore their feelings, needs, and challenges.
Test your designs with diverse focus groups to ensure the experience resonates across different demographics.
Integrate empathy mapping throughout the design process to ensure your decisions are aligned with the actual experiences of your target audience.
By integrating AI into event marketing and structuring experiences with a clear framework, Geoff Thatcher demonstrates how to push the boundaries of what’s possible. From personalizing experiences in real-time to balancing creativity and operational efficiency, his insights offer a roadmap for event marketers looking to innovate and engage like never before.
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