Don’t miss “AI Revolution in Event Marketing: Strategies and Insights,” 15 May 3-3:30 p.m. at IMEX Frankfurt, Hall 9, The Valley, powered by MPI & ICCA, Stand 9014

With much of the early fear around artificial intelligence (AI) taking all of your jobs now mostly abated, event professionals can talk a more logical, less panicked approach to evaluating how exactly the developing technology can actually improve our work lives. With the Wednesday, May 15, session, “AI Revolution in Event Marketing: Strategies and Insights,” MPI’s chief brand officer, Drew Holmgreen, will share how he and his team have embraced AI and how it can benefit the marketing efforts for planners and suppliers. We caught up with him to get some early thoughts on AI and his upcoming IMEX Frankfurt session.

What was your “aha!” moment regarding the potential of modern AI?

Its utility in making the lives of marketers, and professionals in general, more efficient AND effective. The generative tools available to us have become sophisticated to the point where it’s not simply enhancing our daily tasks but replacing some of them. Take, as example, crafting simple emails. Generative AI provides a wealth of draft tools to help take out the legwork and drive efficiency.

Can you share one or two best practices for the use of AI by event marketing professionals?

The first one is pretty simple: toy around with it. Take some devoted time to really explore the tools available. Whether web-based like ChatGPT or Gemini, or hardware-based like Microsoft Copilot. This isn’t a cliff-jumping scenario. You need to approach each tool and really find how it or they can work best for you and/or complement one another. As example, I find that ChatGPT is really good at generative text, such as press release drafts, breakout session descriptions, etc.; whereas, Copilot is fantastic at creating actual PowerPoint decks!

The second is somewhat of an internal joke we have here at MPI, “don’t let your AI show.” Each of these tools are great at providing a starting point, but they shouldn’t be taken verbatim. When that happens, and there are lots of examples of news outlets getting busted for this, it is really obvious and can look like sloppy work on the person putting verbatim results into their work. Generative AI content needs to be humanized and needs to be expressed by the individual in their voice.

Overall, what do you hope participants take away from your session?

Confidence – the only thing to fear about AI is not using it. Like any new revolutionary tech, those who don’t accept or use it will be left behind. My hope is that I can provide sense of confidence in the available tools and each individual’s ability to make them beneficial in everyday practice.

What are you most looking forward to during IMEX Frankfurt?

I LOVE connecting with colleagues and meeting new people at IMEX Frankfurt. MPI has such a great community of exceptional people and personalities, and our EMEA folks are incredibly passionate. Also, I can’t wait to have some really good German beer and go for a run along the river—though, not necessarily at the same time!