The Authenticity Advantage: How AI is Driving the Future of Experiential Marketing

By: Holly Owen, FestForums | October 30th, 2025

Image taken by Claire Hart, FestForums 2025

At FestForums, we're always exploring what's next in the festival industry, connecting organizers, brands, and innovators who are shaping the future of live experiences. That's why we sat down with Kerry Smith, President of Chief Marketer Network. In this conversation, Kerry shares his perspective on why face-to-face experiences are more valuable than ever in the age of AI, how festivals can unlock stronger brand partnerships, and the strategic shift that's transforming live events into powerful content platforms for social amplification.

Leadership & Vision: As President of Chief Marketer Network, you reach 1.6 million marketers. How do you see experiential marketing's role in today's marketing mix?

As humans, we are social animals and we react to sensory cues that trigger emotional responses. Marketers have known this for decades and have used this characteristic to elicit emotions in TV commercials and general advertising. In today’s fractured media environment, experiential marketing, which I define as face-to-face interactions designed to create business impact is one of the most effective ways to capture someone’s attention and create true brand engagement. The challenge has always been to figure out how to scale these live engagements in a way that allows marketers to justify the high costs of live marketing. The proliferation of social media platforms and targeted digital marketing is serving more and more as amplifiers of these live engagements and we’ll see more marketers using their event and experiential programs to drive social engagement, thereby creating the scale they need to deliver their messages directly to event participants and virally to those in their social networks. Even more significant right now, is the rapid rise of Artificial Intelligence, which is making all of us question the authenticity of nearly everything we see on a screen. The rise of AI is the best thing that ever happened to the event industry, because while we’re going to increasingly question what we are served on a screen, there’s no faking a face-to-face interaction and the emotional engagement that it can create.

Industry Changes: What's the biggest change you've seen in experiential marketing recently, and how are brands responding?

I think we’re seeing the coming together of live events and social/digital in a more intentional strategy than we saw even a few years ago. Marketers have discovered that events can be used not only to impact the attending audience, but can serve as content sites for extending their brand messaging to larger audiences via social or even traditional advertising. Look at events like SXSW or Coachella, where marketers are spending huge sums of money to create unique activations that are also used to create content that they can utilize in multiple ways. This is a way to optimize their investment in the experiential activation to reach a wider audience. A few years ago, in many cases, the content that was derived from a live event was incidental; today, it’s intentional, and that live-viral combination is changing the way marketers are approaching their event activations. Today, the primary objective of event activations is to drive earned media and social sharing, which is why we are seeing more traditional PR firms expanding into the event arena.

Festival Marketing Connections: For FestForums readers working in festivals and live events, what opportunities do you see for brands to connect authentically with festival audiences?

When approaching brands directly or via their agencies, it’s important that you know your audiences inside and out – not just their demographics, but their passions, social media behavior, purchase behavior and so on – and that you position the power of your audience in a way that is relevant to the brand’s business objectives. A complaint I often hear from marketers is that they are inundated with sponsor solicitations from festivals, many of which demonstrate a lack of knowledge or insight into what the brand may want to achieve. They see a big Fortune 500 brand name and assume they have money to throw around. The reality is that marketers want scale or very targeted reach into smaller, hard-to-reach communities. This is the value of festivals, because in most cases the people attending are super-passionate. I think the opportunity for festival organizers is to find creative ways to work with brands to create unique activation opportunities that leverage a festival’s access to and credibility with passionate consumers to enhance brand acceptance and authenticity. It has to be done right and it requires creative collaboration among the festival, the brand, and its agency partners. It is not easy for festivals to break through the barriers to these kinds of strategic conversations, but it’s the approach needed to appeal to more brands.

Brand Partnerships: What makes a successful brand partnership in the experiential space? What should event organizers and brands both bring to the table?

Surely, it’s understanding and communicating the power and “fit” of your audience with whatever brand you’re talking to; but it’s also finding a balance between the constraints of your festival and what some of the larger brands want to do at your event. You want to protect the integrity of what’s made your festival successful and authentic with your audience; the marketer wants to create as much attention as they can get, and sometimes there is conflict where these goals clash. But, having an open mind and finding ways to say yes can unlock stronger brand-festival relationships. We know of one festival organizer who requires that they handle all brand sponsor activations and they can’t figure out why they are having a hard time securing brand partnerships. Brands are reluctant to hand over activations to anyone other than their event agencies and other partners who understand their brand strategies and who they trust to execute their event activations.

What's Next: Looking ahead, what trends or technologies will have the biggest impact on experiential marketing?

What will continue to drive the growth of experiential marketing will be the continued use of live events as content feeders to social sharing. This means festival organizers and brands should build their events and activations with social sharing in mind, including the use of influencers to amplify the event experiences. In addition, the integration of live and digital technology is creating exciting innovations that are allowing marketers to better track consumer behavior and even incentivize it based on their engagement at events. All of this creates ways for marketers to better capture the true power and benefits of live events to drive purchases.