Event Industry News speaks with INVNT Co-Founder and Global President, Kristina McCoobery, about our global agency model, brandstory roots, responsible AI adoption, and the renewed value of in-person events.
The Agency of Tomorrow: Storytelling, AI and Global Events
James Dickson:
Hello everybody, and welcome along to the Event Industry News Podcast with me, James Dickson, wishing you all a very good morning, afternoon, or evening, whenever or wherever you tune in to today’s podcast from.
It’s afternoon for me, but it is very much good morning to my guest today, who joins me from their base in New York.
On today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about the agency model of the future. I dare say a lot of people who tune in regularly to the Event Industry News Podcast will either work for, work with, work alongside, or have had experience with an agency. And there is no bigger global agency working within the events industry than the company from which my guest today joins us.
She is the Global President of INVNT, and I’m delighted to say joining the Event Industry News Podcast this afternoon for me and this morning for her is Kristina McCoobery.
Kristina, a very warm welcome.
Kristina McCoobery:
Thank you, James. Lovely to be here.
James Dickson:
And in New York, of course. I always like to give context to our listeners because you never know when people are going to listen to podcasts. We’re speaking the day after the World Cup final, so New York was home of the World Cup final and very much a huge hub for the tournament that just ended yesterday.
Kristina McCoobery:
Indeed. And what a match it was.
As I said to you in our preamble, certainly some disappointing news given our presence in London as an office. We were very sad England was not in the final.
James Dickson:
Absolutely. The horse that we had in the race, especially once the U.S. was out. But an incredible match, and certainly a testament to what a live event can bring to any brand, location, or city, for that matter.
I’m a huge football — soccer — fan, and I’ve been recording a few episodes today, so I’ve been referencing the fact that the World Cup ended yesterday. But in some respects, it’s a great thing to reference because there is arguably no bigger event for the events industry than a global sporting tournament like that.
Before we get into the real nitty-gritty of today’s conversation, Kristina, I always like to give our podcast followers a chance to get to know the guests a little bit and find out about you if they’ve not encountered you before.
Would you mind giving us a bit of a potted history? Who are you, and what is INVNT for people who may not be aware of the company and the brand?
Kristina McCoobery:
Sure, of course. And again, thank you for having me.
A little bit of background on me: I’ve been in the event industry for over 30 years. My background is actually in theater here in New York. I studied theater at university, went on to be an actress, and did some directing.
I found that the world of theater and being an actor, while exciting, presented some challenges. Even when you’re employed, you’re unemployed.
But it did lead me to this space, which I could not be more fortunate to be a part of. I’m thrilled that I found a career and an industry where I get that same adrenaline rush that I found in the world of theater, accompanied by incredible brand strategy, which I’ve also discovered is a real passion of mine.
I started out at an agency called William Gerard Productions back in 1999, and that is where I met Scott Cullather, who became my business partner, co-founder, and now husband — quite the trifecta there.
He and I left that agency in 2008 and started INVNT. We started with four clients and four million in revenue in 2008 and ended last year well above $150 million, with countless global brands that we’ve serviced over the past 18 years.
We’ve had quite a journey. We started out quite small in New York, expanded quite quickly in the U.S., landed in London only two years later in 2010, and have since expanded globally, with offices all around the U.S., APAC, and EMEA.
So, yeah, here we are. It’s been quite a journey.
INVNT is a live events agency. We call ourselves the global brand storytelling agency. We really believe in storytelling as the primary vehicle for live events and the best way for brands to express themselves, especially in today’s day and age.
James Dickson:
It fascinates me. Straight away, I’m going to disregard my notes and go straight to the theater background and the acting.
An event of any description needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. It needs to be well structured, well scripted, well planned, and well rehearsed. All of those things that we associate with filmmaking, theater, and live music come into play, whether we’re talking about brand activations or any other type of event.
But more often than not, it’s the thing that I see actually disregarded the most and not given enough attention. It’s a strange kind of paradox, isn’t it?
Kristina McCoobery:
It is. And I can’t tell you how many times I draw on my theater background, as does our Chief Creative Officer, Paul Blurton, a Brit based here in the U.S. His background is also in theater. He grew up in the theater in the U.K.
So I think it’s a tenet of our industry, but more importantly, a tenet of INVNT.
We do believe in storytelling — to your point, a solid beginning, middle, and end. And it really is about taking attendees on a journey, which any good play, film, or show will do.
Often, it’s an emotional journey, one that the audience becomes genuinely invested in.
When we start the creative process and truly take into consideration what the attendee and audience experience needs to be, we will always start with telling a good story.
When you tell a good story, or when you go and see an incredible play or an incredible film, you continue to share that story with other people. It takes on a life beyond the event or play itself.
That was always a passion of mine. In fact, a lot of my theater background was in improv, so that has been an incredible tool in saying “yes” to our partners, whether they be our clients or our colleagues, and moving the story forward, which is obviously an improvisational skill and primary goal.
James Dickson:
I don’t think there’s anybody who works in the events industry, at any level, who hasn’t had to improvise at some point in their career.
Has the ethos that you just referenced there — storytelling and narrative — become even more relevant as time has progressed than when you founded the company on those principles, given the advancements in technology and how much easier it is for people to connect in a non-face-to-face way?
How has that ethos developed and shaped itself as you sit here today?
Kristina McCoobery:
It’s a great question.
We started using the words “storytelling” and “brand storytelling” quite early. Now they’re used quite a bit. We discovered it early because we saw how much it impacted the work and, frankly, how it impacted our growth because of the impact it had on audiences and brands.
But you can’t talk about the impact of in-person experiences without referencing the pandemic and having a screen between an attendee or audience member and the experience itself.
I think something that came out of that period of time is just how incredibly valuable the in-person experience really is.
It’s no secret that the industry itself catapulted coming out of the pandemic because there was an obvious need for that in-person event. We had an incredible growth period following that as an agency.
And certainly with the onslaught of AI — one of my favorite quotes is from Mark Cuban, who said about a year and a half ago that with the onslaught of AI, particularly in video production and what we see on all the different screens we have in our lives, he predicted there would be massive hockey-stick growth in the live event space because, in reality, it’s the only place you can go where you know it’s real.
That really resonated with us, and I think it continues to resonate with us and our clients.
Twenty years ago, the live event, the launch moment, the press conference — it was a piece of the marketing strategy, but it was not really at the core.
Now we’re discovering, learning, and also guiding our clients that the live event, that in-person event, that moment where you have your constituents, stakeholders, and customers all in one place, has a value that is unmatched.
James Dickson:
And not just value in an economic sense. There’s value in an emotional sense as well.
Kristina McCoobery:
Absolutely.
James Dickson:
As I’ve said many times on this podcast, you cannot replicate that unexpected feeling of euphoria when you’re sitting in a keynote speech, at the start of a concert, or at the start of a play when the lights go down and the curtain goes up.
Or the first drum beat you hear when a band hits the stage. Or when all of the production elements of a big keynote speech come together and the light and sound combine to give that audience member or delegate that unexpected rush of adrenaline — the hair standing up on your arms and that feeling of euphoria.
It’s very, very difficult to replicate using any form of technology.
Kristina McCoobery:
You are speaking my love language. That is so spot-on, and I couldn’t agree more.
Even now, having been part of this industry for such a long time and being in the room — whether I have a headset on, or more likely these days don’t, although in my early days as an executive producer I certainly did — that adrenaline rush, that feeling of anticipatory excitement that happens before an event starts, or when you can feel the arc of a story hitting a crescendo, is absolutely unmatched.
Certainly, it’s unmatched on a platform where you’re not physically in a space with other people, feeding off of them having that same visceral response.
James Dickson:
Sure. And I don’t want people to misinterpret that as me disregarding the use of AI or suggesting technology doesn’t have a place in the event sector, because it does.
I know for a fact that INVNT is developing its own tools and AI that’s actually being utilized within the agency. So it’s about utilizing the tools that are available, and the ones you can develop yourself, to further enhance the ethos we’ve been referencing so far.
That might be an interesting next step because I’m fascinated to learn a little more about this. I don’t know if you would call it an AI engine, but tell us a little bit about the developments you’ve been progressing in-house.
Kristina McCoobery:
Of course.
AI is another tool in the toolbox. It’s a big tool, let’s be honest. It’s not a small advancement like a cool new video technology. It’s big, and it is significantly moving the dial in how we work.
As an agency, we’ve leaned into it for internal efficiencies, both creatively and operationally, for quite some time. So we are not shying away from AI by any stretch.
What we are not doing, though, is relying solely on AI to do our job creatively and strategically.
We truly believe human-first, human-led strategy and creative concepting are still at the forefront of how we operate as an agency.
With that said, it’s a pretty powerful tool, and it is making us more efficient. It is helping us provide more value to our clients.
So we made the move at the beginning of this year to hire a Chief AI Officer. While we were already exploring and utilizing a lot of tools internally — and we have an innovation division headquartered out of our Singapore office — we really felt the need to have someone on the team solely dedicated to this.
His name is James Kinney, and he is leading the efforts for the creation of what’s called Orbby.
Orbby is an AI product that will help our clients with everything from predictive analytics to on-site analytics. It’s an AI engine that’s going to help our clients utilize AI as a hyper-tool to create better events — not only the current event they’re doing, but, more importantly, events moving forward.
Gauging audience reactions, gauging audience engagement, time spent — all of those things that we can kind of do right now — but putting it into a supercharged format that can help our clients make better decisions.
James Dickson:
Serendipity is a wonderful thing sometimes because I’ve been recording episodes of the podcast today, and my guest just an hour or so ago was Kieran Garlic from Present Communications, our podcast sponsor.
I was talking to him about training, development, and personnel within the events industry, and we were discussing how the advancement of technology is ultimately going to create new roles because we’re going to need people who are skilled in utilizing those tools.
So it’s wonderfully coincidental that you mentioned you’ve now got a Chief AI Officer because that’s exactly what we were talking about on a previous episode: having somebody within a high-tech-based role in an organization who really understands specifically how to utilize some of these new tools, not just for the benefit of the business but for the benefit of clients, which then has a knock-on effect for the business.
How quickly was that decision made? How long ago did you start discussing having somebody in that role to do exactly what James is doing?
Kristina McCoobery:
It happened quite quickly, as have the advancements and evolution of AI in our space.
One thing we have not been over the past 18 years is slow. We move quite quickly. We’re a hyper-growth agency, constantly seeking out the next best thing that will help our clients, our audiences, and our employees.
We started diving into the world of AI a couple of years ago, and then that started gaining traction.
It was my co-founder, Scott Cullather, who came to us one day and said, “I think it’s time that we really put our money where our mouth is and bring somebody in who’s an expert who can really help guide us — and also service our clients, because our clients are seeking it too.”
I think it’s really important for us as an industry to recognize that we need really well-educated, very smart people in the world of AI who we can bring into a room with us and who can help guide our clients as well. They’re looking for the answers too.
We knew we needed to be legitimate and have a strong perspective and point of view on it so that we could help guide our clients.
Within two months of recruiting and having lots of discussions, we hired James. The conversation really gained traction around Q3 and Q4 of 2025, and James started January 1 of this year.
So it moved quite quickly.
All of our clients want to hear from him. We’ll bring him into their strategy discussions. Some clients have a really strong appetite to incorporate AI, while others are looking for guidance: “Help us use AI to move the needle in our space.”
He’s doing all of that. He’s creating internal efficiencies and helping our clients navigate. It’s been a great addition.
James Dickson:
When I think about the tools, information, data, and everything that’s available to organizers and clients now, even in its most basic sense, having somebody who can guide them on AI might simply help them better understand the metrics of their event and the data that’s been generated from it.
That’s before we even get into any of the operational and production efficiencies that can be generated.
Just being able to extract something more meaningful from data you’ve archived over the last five, six, or ten years — these tools can do in five seconds what it might take somebody five months to look at.
Kristina McCoobery:
That’s right. Create the lake. Let’s see what’s in there.
It is incredible.
The other thing we’ve found is that we have about 250 employees now that we’ve just completed our merger. We have 250 employees globally at INVNT.
You have people who have really dived in and said, “Let me wrap my head around AI.” They’re already super-users of Claude and other tools, and they’re really driving efficiencies. A lot of that is coming out of our Singapore office, but there’s a lot happening here in the U.S. as well.
Then you have some members of our team who are a little reluctant and maybe don’t want to lean into AI to help design a set or come up with something creatively.
One of the words we use a lot in the agency now is “curator.”
AI is such a powerful tool, but unless you have really strong strategy and a really strong trajectory for the brief and the plan, it’s really just going to be a lot of information.
We’re focusing on training our teams to become very strong curators of what comes out of AI and helping curate that to best serve our clients.
James Dickson:
In terms of curation, I want to go back to the storytelling aspect — those fundamental elements of how you described founding INVNT and what it’s based on in terms of telling stories.
Has the task of telling that story on a global level changed?
You’ve obviously got the different offices that you’ve mentioned a couple of times, but no doubt you’re working with clients who operate globally.
So I guess it’s not just about telling a story in one place at one time. It’s about telling a story there that connects with the story you told for the same client somewhere else, and somewhere else again, with all of that matching together.
Kristina McCoobery:
Yes. Were you in our leadership meeting last week?
It’s exactly what we were talking about.
It sounds simple, right?
We had such high hopes growing globally and being able to service our clients globally. The fact of the matter is that 15 years ago, the uptake wasn’t as fast as we would have guessed.
We thought, “We’re working for Pepsi in the U.S. Of course Pepsi in the U.K. is going to want to work with us.”
But the fact of the matter is that globally, brands, brand stories, and teams were very localized 10 or 15 years ago.
That has changed.
We are now seeing some of our largest clients — Amazon, Samsung, Oracle — and we’re activating for them globally.
And when I say globally, I don’t just mean we have attendees coming from other regions here to the U.S. We are producing those events in the U.S., London, India, Sydney, and Singapore.
The content, strategy, and all of the efficiencies of being a global agency that can tell a global story are so powerful right now.
And yet, you still have to take culture into consideration. There are nuances. We see the nuances in our teams globally.
But if they all ladder up to that same ultimate strategy, you just have to tweak it a bit in each region in order for it to land as effectively as it would, say, here in the United States.
We do see a flattening of it now — more accessibility, more interest, and more appreciation, frankly, for stories to run the gamut globally.
That’s something I’m incredibly passionate about because it’s what we’re doing in our agency culturally as well.
We have those local priorities and things that truly matter locally, but ultimately, at the end of the day, we function as one agency, which is unusual in our space.
A lot of our competitors that have offices around the world operate in silos, and that works for some. For us, we found that was not how we were going to grow and not how we were going to best serve our clients.
We recently brought our entire organization together from around the world here in New York. It was absolutely incredible.
We draw on those strengths, cultural nuances, and differences to make us better.
There’s a great phrase we use in our company called “Chasing the Sun.”
We’re constantly bringing people from other regions into any given project.
We just did a big launch for Samsung in Sydney, and there were people from the U.S. involved in that. There’s cross-pollination of our teams, both culturally and geographically, and there are efficiencies in that as well.
We’ll hang up as we prepare for Oracle AI World, for example, and there may be lots of changes that need to be made graphically. We’ll hang up with that client at 5:00 East Coast time, get on the phone with our Singapore team, and wake up in the morning with all the changes there.
We’re really using it as a strength. It’s a true muscle of INVNT that we operate as one global unit.
James Dickson:
Thinking about it logically, if you’re trying to support a client in telling a global story that has joined-up thinking across multiple territories, borders, and continents, then if you’re not joined up yourself — if you’re not operating according to the same principle internally — how are you going to do a good job of telling the story that the client wants to deliver?
Kristina McCoobery:
Thank you. We’ll put that on our website because that is spot-on.
That’s spot-on.
James Dickson:
In terms of the development of tools on a more day-to-day level, there’s obviously a huge discussion about AI.
Sometimes, I’ll be honest with you, I feel like I want to stop talking about AI for a minute because people are going to get bored of it.
Actually, I don’t think they are, because there are so many questions that are still unanswered.
On a more day-to-day operational level, are you seeing tools becoming available that are helping you with things like client visuals?
When you’re wanting to render what a room or stage is going to look like, presumably all of these things that might once have taken hours or days to produce for clients can now be turned around quicker.
That means decisions can be made quicker, which means your lead-in to events is going to be a little bit better. You’re going to buy yourself some days back.
Are all of those things applicable now?
Kristina McCoobery:
Oh my gosh, yes.
And it’s getting better every day. It’s moving so fast.
We use Slack as a great communication tool in our agency, like many others do, and we have a general channel where we’ll post work that’s happening globally.
Not that long ago, our team out of Singapore and Sydney posted a fly-through of the expo floor for Xerocon.
Xero is a large client of ours. Xerocon is affectionately known as the “Coachella for accountants.” It’s a great show. We just did Xerocon London.
The fly-through of that expo space that was posted on the Slack channel generated so much conversation and so many comments asking, “How did you do that?”
It was so layered and rich with content and creativity.
Of course, the design itself and the concept were done by our creative team. But that fly-through, which brought it to life and, to your point, helped our client sign off super-fast because it was like being in the room, was all done in AI.
It was extraordinary, and it was done in a fraction of the time that it would have taken before.
So you are spot-on. It’s helping clients make decisions faster.
It’s also helping set their expectations. AI, if it’s done right, can give you a true snapshot and preview of what the attendee experience is really going to be.
Instead of saying, “Imagine, if you will,” you hit play and say, “This is what it’s going to look and feel like for your attendees as they move through it.”
We’re also using it in the basic stuff: on-site agendas, production schedules, case studies — so much that is now at our fingertips that, to your point, used to take quite a bit of time.
I don’t necessarily see it replacing any role within our company, but it’s certainly going to make the jobs of our production coordinators and producers so much more efficient.
They’ll be able to move more quickly through tasks that sometimes, frankly, seemed quite tedious.
James Dickson:
I’ve found something really strange about AI, and I wonder if anybody else has had a similar experience.
For every person who worries, “Oh no, it’s going to take a job away,” or “It’s going to make somebody redundant,” I recently used AI as a tool for a job I was planning for an event.
I won’t go into the specifics of how or why I used it, but it saved me about four hours on a task.
And it did it perfectly. I was really, really happy with the result.
Rather than thinking, “Great, that’s saved me a load of time. I can kick back and relax,” it actually made me more enthusiastic.
I thought, “Great. What else can I get through today? I’ve done that job. I’m going to do this now.”
It had the opposite effect.
It gave me a sense of reward that I’d achieved something so quickly, and I’m curious to know whether anybody else has had a similar feeling.
Kristina McCoobery:
Absolutely.
I just had it yesterday. I plugged something in because I needed a quick calendar made for a project I’m working on. I gave it very general dates and time frames.
But you just said something very interesting: that AI produced something that was perfect.
If you didn’t have the skills, knowledge, and experience to know it was perfect, then you run into a problem, right?
The only reason you knew it was perfect is because you have the skills, experience, and knowledge to recognize that it was perfect.
Again, that’s why I think the live event space, more than any, is quite AI-proof.
We need to be in the room.
There’s all the stuff we were talking about earlier in our conversation — that live experience, people in the room — which is simply irreplaceable and certainly irreplaceable by AI.
But the skills of the people are still so needed.
How do you know that what AI has given you is correct?
If you didn’t look at it and just sent it off to your team and there were tons of mistakes in it, then it’s not such a great experience.
James Dickson:
You’ve just reminded me of something that I witnessed on Friday night.
Very quick story.
I was out for dinner with some friends — my wife and I and another couple. We were in a really great Italian restaurant in Leeds. It’s a big place, and they have a live act on every night of the week.
After the live entertainment had finished, they had a big projector screen that dropped down and they were showing a cycle of their forthcoming events.
All pretty standard so far.
It was obvious which of the slides had been generated by AI because everything looks the same when you’re lazy with AI in terms of generating images.
They were promoting a country and western live act that was coming up, and on the graphic they generated, it should have said the words “Saddle Up.”
Kristina McCoobery:
Oh no.
James Dickson:
But AI had missed out a D in the middle of “saddle.”
It was so small, right at the bottom of the screen, but I caught it on the cycle of these things.
I thought, there we go. There’s a prime example of somebody clearly using AI to generate a graphic and nobody checking it. Nobody had gone into the detail of checking it.
So, yeah, there’s a lesson for us all there if you’re going to saddle up with AI.
Kristina McCoobery:
Yeah. Point taken. A lesson for us all.
James Dickson:
Tell me, just before we wrap up today’s episode, Kristina, and bring it back to a more personal level.
You’ve helped build and shape a global organization.
Are you still as enthused today as you were when you started? How does it feel, on a personal level, getting up every day and working in this industry?
Kristina McCoobery:
Such a great question, because the answer is: more than ever.
We talk about this quite a bit as a culture, but our industry is having a moment. There’s no question about it.
There is a focus on live events. There is a level of respect, appetite, and creative energy around the space that I frankly have not seen in my career.
I’m incredibly excited about it, and I know our clients are, and I know our teams are.
It’s easier to explain what we do because it’s everywhere now.
People’s time, people’s presence in any space — it’s a currency more so now than it ever has been.
So I’m more enthusiastic now about our industry than I ever have been.
James Dickson:
Fabulous. It’s been great speaking to you today.
Thank you very much for taking time out at the start of a week as well. I tend to record these on a Monday, and I’m never not grateful for the fact that people are joining me, generally speaking, on their busiest day of the week, when their inbox is the fullest.
So I’m very, very grateful to you for taking a bit of time out of your day, Kristina, and joining us today.
Kristina McCoobery:
Thank you, James. It was a pleasure.
James Dickson:
My guest today has been the Global President of INVNT, Kristina McCoobery, talking everything from global events and the agency model to the ethos behind INVNT.
Some great stuff here.
If you want to find out more about this great agency, please do head over to the INVNT website, where you’ll find out more about Kristina, all of her colleagues, and all of the things that we talked about today — and probably a lot more besides — including some great case studies and information on the work that they do.
Whilst you’re doing that, and once you’ve checked out everything INVNT has to offer, please make sure you have a look around the rest of the Event Industry News website.
If you’ve started your journey today by watching today’s podcast on the podcast page of the website, make sure you check out all the special news features and supplements on the website, as well as the supplier directory.
If you work in the events industry and you’re looking for a product, service, or supplier, the chances are you’ll find it in the supplier directory.
Of course, you may have started your journey today by listening to today’s podcast via your audio podcast platform. If you’ve done that, thanks very much for listening today.
Make sure you like and subscribe to the podcast wherever you get it from so that you get regular updates on new episodes.
And please do make sure you take a few minutes to head over to the website and check out all the things that I’ve just mentioned.
Thank you very much again today to my guest, Kristina McCoobery.
My name’s James Dickson, and we’ll see you on the next edition of the Event Industry News Podcast.
Goodbye, everybody.
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