Do More With Less Using AI (Issue 04)

THE PROBLEM: It can be difficult to get your C-suite executives to understand the value of events. You're stuck defending budgets instead of positioning events as strategic revenue drivers, and your expertise gets reduced to "logistics coordination" rather than recognized as marketing leadership.

THE SOLUTION: The Strategic Event CMO Consultant helps you think, plan, and communicate about events. Create a strategic advisor that speaks the language of growth, build business cases that CFOs approve, and position yourself as a revenue driver rather than an expense center.

HOW TO USE IT:

1. Start with Strategic Context - Input your company's OKRs, revenue goals, and current event challenges (along with the resources I’ve provided) to establish the business framework for all recommendations

2. Build Your Business Case - Use the consultant to generate ROI projections using CMO-level metrics like Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER) and Customer Lifetime Value impact

3. Develop Stakeholder Strategies - Get specific frameworks for managing cross-functional relationships that position you as a strategic partner to sales, product, and executive teams

4. Optimize Your Portfolio - Apply the 70/20/10 framework to balance proven strategies (70%) with promising innovations (20%) and experimental initiatives (10%)

KEY FEATURES:

Blue Ocean Strategy Application: Identify uncontested market opportunities through your event strategy

OKR Alignment Methodology: Connect event outcomes directly to company-wide objectives and key results

Pipeline Attribution Models: Demonstrate event impact using sophisticated multi-touch attribution

Competitive Differentiation Frameworks: Position events as strategic advantages rather than industry table stakes

The goal of this tool is to help you think about the role of events in the marketing funnel, answer any burning questions you’re afraid to ask your CMO, and better communicate your team’s needs to executives.

Richelle's Strategic Implementation:

Starting with performance reviews over a year ago, Richelle has built what she calls "this crazy baseline relationship" with AI that now touches nearly every aspect of her work. Her systematic approach demonstrates how event leaders can move from basic automation to strategic AI integration.

She uploads past event data (session ratings, attendee feedback, performance metrics) and asks AI to identify themes, patterns, and optimization opportunities that manual analysis might miss. AI also handles comprehensive venue research with specific criteria and generates real-time budget scenarios.

Richelle also uses AI to tailor communication strategies for different stakeholder group, crafting the same message differently for CEOs versus VPs to get alignment across leadership levels.

"I use it for a lot of just clarifying my own communication," she notes, leveraging AI as an unbiased thought partner for strategic decisions.

Her team implements tools like Parmonic for webinar content processing, automatically generating highlight clips, micro-sites, and transcripts. This reduces dependency on creative and operations teams for routine tasks, enabling what Richelle calls game-changing speed.

The Strategic Advantage:

Rather than adding headcount, Richelle's approach demonstrates how AI enables smaller teams to operate at higher capacity while focusing human energy on the irreplaceable aspects of event experience.

As Richelle puts it: "The future belongs to event leaders who use AI not to replace human creativity, but to amplify their strategic impact while preserving the essential human nature of exceptional events."

Reframing the AI Workforce Conversation

Gary Bolles, Chair for the Future of Work at Singularity University, challenges the conventional narrative about AI's impact on employment. Rather than accepting inevitable job displacement, he argues for a fundamentally different approach to workforce transformation.

Three Strategic Frameworks for Leaders:

1. Tasks vs. Jobs Distinction 

Instead of viewing AI as job elimination, Gary suggests focusing on task automation that frees humans for higher-value work. The key is intentional decision-making about how to redeploy human capabilities.

2. The Mismatch Problem The real challenge isn't job scarcity, it's workforce mismatches. With nearly 10 million open jobs in the U.S. alongside 5.6% unemployment, the issue is helping people develop skills that match market demand rather than assuming work will disappear.

3. Building Balanced Business Models Gary advocates for business models that factor human impact into core design, not as an afterthought. Companies can "do well and do good" by building systems that help humans continuously adapt to technological change.

Watch Gary's Full Framework:

In this talk, Gary outlines his strategic approach to AI and workforce transformation, challenging leaders to think beyond automation toward human amplification.

As a sought-after speaker at leading conferences like UNLEASH, Global Skills Day, and Singularity University events, he delivers thought-provoking keynotes that help audiences navigate the future of work and organizational transformation. Book him through Speak About AI or reply to this email for details.

🚀 Live & Virtual Events Manager @ Robbins Research International (Remote + 50% Travel) – Lead end-to-end logistics for high-scale events (1,000–50,000 people). Manage budgets, vendor coordination, and production for transformational live experiences. $85,000–$90,000. Apply here

💼 Senior Events Manager @ Fortune (New York, NY | On-site) – Lead audience acquisition, email marketing, and digital advertising for executive-level live conferences. Manage CRM & MarTech stack with focus on performance analytics. $90,000-$100,000. Apply here

🎯 Tradeshow & Events Manager @ ZEISS Group (Dublin, CA | On-site) – Plan and execute national trade shows and ancillary events with $1.5M+ budgets. Lead medical industry activations, booth design, and cross-functional teams. $87,600-$109,500 + bonus. Apply here

🌟 Corporate Events Planner @ Omada Health (Remote) – Lead end-to-end execution of internal corporate events including executive offsites and leadership retreats. Manage budgets up to $500K and coordinate across teams. $88,000-$115,000. Apply here

Check out the full spreadsheet with 100+ up-to-date event jobs here.

Are you hiring? I can spread the word. Reply to this email with any job opportunities and I’ll add it to the sheet!