INVNT Global President Kristina McCoobery sat down with Micebook’s Susie Harwood for a candid conversation covering the INVNT’s origin, recent merger with Nth Degree, and where the experiential industry is headed next.
Susie Harwood: You’ve always positioned INVNT more in the brand storytelling space rather than events or experiential. Why has that distinction mattered, and what led to it?
Kristina McCoobery: When we started the agency almost 18 years ago, we wanted to stand apart from established event production shops. We also saw a gap in the market for something focused on the brand’s story itself, not just what happens in the room, but the narrative attendees carry out with them. Good stories get retold, and that’s what actually builds traction with consumers and stakeholders over time.
Susie Harwood: How has the industry evolved around that idea?
Kristina McCoobery: Events used to be treated as one isolated moment. Now they’re part of a much wider, integrated ecosystem, from how someone first hears about an event, to the on-site experience, to how it extends into social media and beyond. Attendees are savvier and their expectations are higher, so we have to meet and exceed that.
Susie Harwood: INVNT has grown into a global business quickly. How do you scale that fast without losing what made the culture distinct in the first place?
Kristina McCoobery: Our culture and values matter enormously to us, and part of how we’ve protected them is by refusing to operate in regional silos. We function as one company, one culture, with real cross-pollination between teams, what we call “chasing the sun,” handing work between regions so it keeps moving around the clock. Leadership also travels frequently between offices, and we gather everyone together in person, like our recent New York gathering, so the whole global team stays genuinely connected rather than operating like separate companies. That said, culture isn’t static. It’s evolved a lot since 2008, even as core things, like our “Challenge Everything” ethos, have stayed constant.
Susie Harwood: INVNT recently announced a major merger with Nth Degree. What made this the right move?
Kristina McCoobery: We knew we wanted to keep scaling after some significant growth over the past couple years, and we went actively to market, evaluating a number of potential deals. We landed on Nth Degree, backed by Shamrock Capital, largely because the fit was complementary rather than overlapping, they brought capabilities we didn’t have, with minimal client crossover. Clients want a single point of contact instead of having to piece together general contracting, event management, and sponsorship sales through multiple vendors. Now we can offer all of that under one roof, and the response from clients has been enthusiastic.
Susie Harwood: What are you most excited about in this next chapter?
Kristina McCoobery: The opportunity to offer clients a more complete, full-service capability, and honestly, getting to collaborate with the leadership talent now joining from the Nth Degree side. I’m also excited about the career growth this creates for people on both teams.
Susie Harwood: How is the branding working, does INVNT stay the core name?
Kristina McCoobery: Yes, the INVNT brand stays, and Nth Degree Events is merging into INVNT. We’d already started working on joint projects even before the deal closed.
Susie Harwood: What do you see as the biggest opportunities and challenges facing the brand experience sector right now?
Kristina McCoobery: AI is an obvious one, we’ve hired a Chief AI Officer and are building our own internal platform, both to use ourselves and to bring value to clients. But honestly, the bigger challenge for me is talent retention. With this much growth happening industry-wide, making sure our people feel valued, well compensated, and see a real career trajectory is what keeps me up at night. I think we have the best people in the industry, and I want to keep it that way.
Susie Harwood: With a merger, communication matters so much because people are naturally afraid of change. How do you reassure your team?
Kristina McCoobery: We approached it the same way we handled COVID, with as much transparency as possible. There’s no question we won’t answer, and leadership stays accessible. We’d also been telling the team for a while that we were looking for investment to grow, so the news wasn’t a surprise to anyone internally.
Susie Harwood: How has the way audiences interact with brands changed, and what does that mean for the experiences you build now?
Kristina McCoobery: The bar keeps rising. We’ll see something a competitor did and think, that was smart, look at the brand loyalty that generated, and it pushes us to raise our own bar. At the core, an experience has to be memorable and on-message, and there has to be a real reason people are brought together beyond networking. It’s not just about what happens in the room, it’s about what happens after: does brand loyalty increase, does engagement increase, does press coverage improve. Our job is to make sure the experience has legs beyond the moment itself.
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