RED VELVET in Vegas: Our Takeaways from Experiential Marketing Summit (EMS) 2025
This April, two of us from RED VELVET, myself, Lauren Coull (Senior Marketing Manager), and my colleague Sara Dellinger (Head of Business Development), attended the Experiential Marketing Summit in Las Vegas (#EMS2025). We went in with a clear intention: get a pulse check on where the industry is heading and determine what still holds up.
Here’s what we brought home.
Events Are No Longer Moments. They Are Mechanisms.
We’re past the era of one-and-done. The smartest brands are treating events as ongoing brand ecosystems, live content streams that feed their audiences year-round. Sony’s “Kando” philosophy captured this best: events aren’t content drops; they’re community infrastructure.
Sony’s 2024 Kando Event. Source: https://www.sony.co.uk/alphauniverse/stories/kando-2024
TLDR: What resonated for us: success is cumulative. The real value of an event isn’t in how loud it is. It’s in what continues afterward. If there’s no “what’s next,” the strategy was incomplete from the start.
Co-Creation Is the Standard Now. Not Innovation.
This year made it clear: creators aren’t just amplifiers. They’re partners. The most forward-thinking brands are actively inviting communities into the strategy process. Visa with small businesses, Canva with internal teams turned external playbooks, and e.l.f. with their move into overlooked arenas like women’s wrestling.
TLDR: If your activation still treats the audience as the recipient, not the collaborator, you’re already behind.
Personalization Is the Floor. Not the Ceiling.
There’s a clear shift toward “omakase” event thinking: bespoke, selective, and intimate. Mass events built for everyone are starting to collapse under their own weight. Personalization now applies not just to agendas, but to space, rhythm, and energy. Perhaps this is the best use case for AI in our industry.
TLDR: As said during one of the sessions: when you design for everyone, you design for no one. Attendee-first isn’t just a lens. It’s a requirement.
Events Must Justify Their Business Value
Sara noted a hard truth from a session: over half of the events reviewed from 2021 - 2023 generated zero pipeline. In a post-COVID world where every dollar is tracked, soft metrics like “brand awareness” don’t cut it on their own.
Effective events now integrate account segmentation, sales enablement, and message clarity from the outset.
TLDR: Return on Experience (ROE) is being weighed as heavily as ROI, but it needs to be defined and measured with that same precision.
Creativity Without Risk Is an Expensive Way to Waste Time
Multiple sessions reaffirmed a belief we already operate by: safety is expensive when it leads to being ignored. Constraints like time, budget, and format aren’t barriers. They are creative drivers.
Great work comes from teams that know how to pitch the big idea early, pressure-test it hard, and align fast.
TLDR: That means taking calculated risk is not a box you check. It is a mindset.
Brand and Experience Can’t Be Separated
Cisco, IBM, and Dreamforce all emphasized the same principle: your event isn’t just “on brand.” It is the brand. Visual identity, tone, execution - every layer is an expression of brand evolution, not just brand consistency.
One strong model we saw was evergreen event identity with localized execution.
TLDR: In other words, coherence without sameness. Adapt to the local market.
AI Is Here, but It’s Not the Answer
AI has real utility in our workflows. We’re already using it for prompt simulation, visual concepting, and pattern recognition. But the takeaway from EMS is that AI doesn’t and should never replace human thinking. It replaces legwork. It’s up to us to know when to turn it on, how to push back and deliver feedback and ultimately when to shut the laptop and grab a dry erase marker.
TLDR: The agencies that win won’t be the ones who lean on AI. They’ll be the ones who ask better questions and keep their edge.
Emotional Precision Outperforms Flash
The most effective “wow moments” called out at EMS during the Ex Awards weren’t the largest or loudest. The award-winning work demonstrated restraint, focus, and insight. Jack Links hosting a live tattoo truck. Visa turning a sponsorship into an immersive Louvre concert. AmEx embedding small businesses into Formula 1 cars. Creative strategy can’t be bought, it takes true unconventional thinking.
TLDR: We’re asking a different question now: not “how do we surprise them,” but “how do we make attendees feel seen?”
Final Reflections
A few key themes stuck with us:
Don’t overproduce what should be personalized
Don’t assume more is better than meaningful
Don’t let tactics dictate strategy
Build with the audience, not just for them
Invest in emotional resonance with the same rigor as lead-gen mechanics
TLDR: EMS confirmed what we’ve been seeing. The next generation of experiential isn’t defined by spectacle. It’s defined by intent, intelligence, and human-centered systems that scale.
We’re already applying these insights across our work. And helping out clients do the same.