AI Makes Scale Cheap. Human Connection Becomes the Events Moat.
Phil Thomas's RevvedUP 2026 keynote was not about better vibes. It was about better economics.
The events industry has spent two decades selling scale: bigger audiences, bigger floors, bigger sponsor packages, bigger databases.
AI is about to make much of that less defensible.
Reach is getting cheaper. Content is easier to produce. Matchmaking, sales enablement, audience segmentation, and customer support are becoming more automated. Efficiency still matters. But efficiency is no longer enough.
The harder question for media and events CEOs is this: what becomes more valuable when scale is no longer scarce?
At RevvedUP 2026, Revenue Room™'s executive gathering for media and events leaders focused on growth, profitability, AI, and value creation, Phil Thomas gave a clear answer: human connection. Thomas, Chief Creative Officer of Global Brands at Informa and Chairman of Cannes Lions, argued that the next competitive advantage in events will not come from simply adding more booths, badges, or content tracks. It will come from designing experiences people remember, trust, and return to. That is not soft. It is commercial.
The best event businesses will use connection to drive sponsor renewal, premium inventory, executive access, first party data, audience loyalty, and community lifetime value. The weakest will keep selling floor space while customers quietly reallocate spend elsewhere.
Why Phil Thomas's view carries commercial weight
Thomas is not speaking from the sidelines. He works inside one of the largest global event operators. Informa describes its events, digital products, and academic research services as connecting specialists with knowledge, and its Informa Festivals division as focused on "experience led events" with immersive content and deep community connections.
Image source: Cannes Lions Festival: https://www.canneslions.com/festival His examples also matter. Cannes Lions is not just an event in the South of France. Its official positioning centers on creativity, awards, learning, networking, and global community; Cannes Lions says its 2026 festival will bring the creative marketing communications industry together in Cannes from June 22 to 26, 2026. Money20/20 positions itself as "The #1 Fintech Show" and "Where Money Does Business," a useful reminder that even heavily regulated B2B markets can become community driven platforms when the experience is designed well. Thomas's sharper point was that these models cannot be copied by changing the signage.
"People rename things. They just call it a festival and just hope it'll happen."
A DJ in the lobby is not community.
A Ferris wheel outside an expo hall is not a strategy.
A bigger floorplan is not a moat.
From selling space to selling outcomes
Thomas described a shift from transaction to emotion, from event organizing to experience curation, and from venue management to using the city as the canvas.
That sounds like brand language until you translate it into the P&L.
Traditional event monetization is built around booths, badges, sponsorship inventory, and access. Those still matter. But the growth curve is shifting toward products that package connection more deliberately:
What gets productized?
- Executive access: private salons, hosted buyer programs, VIP roundtables, CEO dinners
- Better meetings: data backed matchmaking, curated introductions, account based networking
- Content adjacency: podcast studios, sponsored editorial moments, live interviews, creator stages
- Community status: awards, invite only councils, member cohorts, leadership clubs
- Sponsor outcomes: lead intelligence, onsite engagement data, post event nurture, attribution reporting
- City scale experiences: offsite activations, partner takeovers, customer gatherings, cultural moments
This is where the keynote becomes a CEO operating agenda.
A smaller booth does not always mean a smaller wallet. Sponsors may still spend. But they may want a different product: content, meetings, executive intimacy, data capture, podcast integration, offsite experiences, or branded moments that create measurable commercial impact.
Thomas put it plainly:
"The need for just a booth and a transaction is diminishing… The value is not really my real estate on your show floor anymore."
That is the revenue warning. It is also the opportunity.
The three tests before adding any activation
The strongest operating framework from Thomas's keynote was simple: evaluate experience innovation through three lenses.
1. Customer desirability
Will customers value this enough to change behavior? Will they stay longer, bring more senior people, meet better prospects, renew earlier, or advocate publicly?
2. Commercial viability
Can it be monetized through sponsorship, membership, data, content, hosted meetings, VIP access, learning, awards, or advisory services?
3. Operational feasibility
Can the team deliver it without destroying margin, distracting leadership, or creating one off showmanship that cannot scale?
Thomas said Informa scores new ideas against those criteria before committing. That discipline matters because "experience" can become an expensive excuse for poor product strategy.
The neutralizer to the skeptical CEO objection is this: connection is only empty spectacle if it is not measured.
The talent model has to change
Here is the uncomfortable part. Selling integrated experience is not the same as selling booths.
Thomas was blunt:
"Finding salespeople in the events industry to sell a booth is quite easy. Trying to find a team who can sell an experience and a sponsorship and multiple layers is really quite difficult."
That should hit every CEO, CRO, and private equity operating partner.
If the commercial team is trained to sell floorplan inventory, it will struggle to sell advisory style packages. If the product team is organized around logistics, it will struggle to build repeatable experience products. If the data team is not connected to sponsorship, renewal, and audience engagement, the company will struggle to prove value.
This is where media companies may have an edge. They already know how to bundle audience, content, data, influence, and brand. Event operators that learn that motion can grow sponsor ARPA without simply adding more square footage.
Metrics and Instrumentation
Human connection only becomes a moat when it is designed, packaged, sold, measured, and renewed.
Track:
- Sponsor ARPA by package type: booth only vs. integrated experience
- Sponsor renewal, expansion, and pre event rebooking rates
- Executive meeting volume and show rate
- Attendee dwell time by zone, stage, lounge, activation, and offsite experience
- Qualified meetings created
- Pipeline influenced and closed won attribution
- Post event content engagement
- Repeat attendance and community participation
- NPS by attendee segment and sponsor tier
Data Sources
Registration, CRM, event app, badge scans, session check ins, meeting platforms, sponsor lead systems, marketing automation, web analytics, CDP, post event surveys, finance, and sales pipeline reporting.
Ownership
The CEO owns the strategic shift. The CRO owns monetization. The CMO owns audience and brand experience. The COO owns delivery and margin. The CPO or head of product owns repeatable packaging. The data leader owns instrumentation and insight quality.
The Revenue Room™ CXO takeaway
This is exactly the operating question Revenue Room™ CXO exists to pressure test: where does connection turn into revenue, margin, and enterprise value? For CEOs and CXOs in media and events, Thomas's keynote was not a call to make events more theatrical. It was a call to make them more valuable.
The future will not belong to companies that rename their trade show a festival. It will belong to companies that know exactly where experience creates pricing power, sponsor expansion, audience loyalty, first party data, and renewal momentum.
As Thomas put it:
"Humans are basically humans no matter what."
In an AI scaled market, that may be the most durable strategy in the room.
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