Name: WHERE AI-NATIVE EVENTS HEAD NEXT
Uploaded: 2026-08-25T19:33:23.324Z
Duration: 42 min 16 s
Description: WHERE AI-NATIVE EVENTS HEAD NEXT

Transcript for "WHERE AI-NATIVE EVENTS HEAD NEXT": Mondays in person are chaos. I am late to the one webinar I actually wanted to check out, and I somehow managed to double book it. Well, let's make the best of it. Here we go. Welcome folks to today's session. We're gonna be talking about I have your food outside. Shoot. I forgot I ordered lunch. Phew. Bag secured. Okay. What did I miss? Let's use ketchup to see. Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. Got it. Let's talk about human in the loop. How can I set up automation while keeping a human in the loop? Right. My double booked meeting. Hey, all. And done. Alright. Back to the webinar. Where did we leave off? Yep. Okay. All caught up. And what about my question? Oh, that's exactly what I wanted to know. These three things will save you hours every week. Wow. Wow. Wow. This webinar was unbelievably helpful. Helpful. I wonder what other miracles I can pull off today. It was a joke, Paul. Hi, everybody. Welcome. My name is Kelly Chang. I lead marketing at Goldcast and at Cvent, and I'm really glad to have all of you here. A few quick housekeeping items before we get into it. This whole day, tomorrow and Thursday is gonna be recorded, so the replay will land in your inbox afterwards. Please make sure to drop any, chat messages or questions that you have in the chat panel and the q and a panel to your right anytime. We're gonna save the last ten to fifteen minutes of the session for q and a, and please do use the chat throughout. Let me know where you're joining in from. I'm hosting live just North Of Boston, and I'll be monitoring the chat the whole way. So here's why we put this session together. Almost every event team I talk to right now, digital events, in person events, field events is layering AI into a workflow that was built completely for a different era. Like a little automation there, a little recap summary there. And the question I keep coming back to is what happens when you stop layering and you actually design the whole thing for a for AI from day one? And that's what we're gonna get into for the next forty five minutes. And I could not have been luckier to have this next person that I'm gonna introduce to, join the stage with me. Peter Isaacson has spent more than twenty five years building brands, scaling marketing organizations, and shaping entirely new categories across both b two b and b two c. He is the CMO at Invoca today. And before that, he led marketing at Replicant, at Demandbase, Castlight Health, Adobe, and MicroStrategy. Peter's probably best known for helping turn account based marketing from an emerging idea to a defining category in b two b. I mean, he literally wrote the book on ABM. So when we talk about what happens when a new operating model shows up in marketing, he's actually done this before. And he also just ran an AI hackathon inside his own marketing team, which we are gonna get into because I do think it's one of the more interesting things a marketing leader can do right now. So, Peter, welcome. Join me on stage, and thank you so much for being here. Hey, Kelly. Good to, good to connect with you. Thanks for having me. Hopefully, Thanks. I tried that to maximize the drama for the big reveal. Peter, tell us a little bit about where you are joining us from. am, South Of San Francisco in San Mateo. Invoca is a fully remote, company, so, I can kinda dial in anywhere, but right now, just South Of San Francisco. K. That's awesome. Are you guys enjoying good weather right now, or is is that Indian summer coming to you, like, a month later? It's always good weather. My son just got here from New York, and he's, he's loving California weather again. It's, like, 75 degrees and sunny, just like it's been for the past, like, four weeks. Sorry for the rest of the country that's hearing that. Peter, before we get into it, can you maybe give us I'll tell us a little bit more about Invoca, and, you know, what you guys do as an org. Yeah. This will come as a big shock to everyone. We are, we've we've, heavily into AI. But what, Invoca really does is connect the buyer journey, as it transitions from kind of digital over to offline. And whether that's offline, someone picking up a phone call to finalize a purchase, or engaging in text or chat or whatever. But we connect all of the digital activity that's going on prior to that final outcome, the appointment if you're in health care or the sale, if you're in telco or, you know, lots of other other industries. There's there's AI throughout the platform, but we're we just introduced an AI messaging agent and AI voice agent that help with the lead conversion. So more of the demand that's generated on the digital side gets converted on the other side to the outcomes that you're looking for. Very interesting. So there we're gonna go into a segment where I definitely wanna lean into your ex your kind of area of expertise because there's a lot of, like, automation and, like, human handoff with AI, and I'd love to kind of dig into your perspective of that. But before Yeah. you know, I wanna start wide before we go deep. So, Peter, you've lived through a few major shifts in b two b marketing. So there's, you know, digital transformation. There's automation. There's account based marketing, and now there's AI. Right? Does this moment feel different to you? Thank you. That that's just another way of saying I'm old. So thanks for not going back to, like, big iron and mainframes and the transition away from that. Does this feel different? It's so different. It is completely different, and it's different for two really important reasons, I think. One is just the existential dread that marketers are feeling with AI. Some of it's legitimate, some of it's maybe overblown, but this idea that AI has the potential to actually obviate take their jobs, right, that they've been doing and doing well and building a career on, and and suddenly they're in fear of losing their job, not to someone that, you know, is getting paid less or is doing a better job or whatever, but to an actual machine. That didn't happen with ABM, marketing automation, like any of these things. Right? There was no there was no fear that, like, oh, this is gonna cost me my job. So that's a big difference. This just this anxiety that exists across marketing organizations. The other thing that's really different is how much we're all going through this together. Like, the learning curve is so steep, and yet everyone's doing it at exactly the same time. There there might be some people, some organizations that are six months or maybe even twelve months out in front, but it's not like somewhat a a marketing organization has been doing this for five years and kinda knows exactly what the playbook is and can apply, like, and teach other people. We're all kind of stumbling through this together and learning as we go and applying what we do and having conversations like this to actually share what we've discovered and what works and what doesn't. So those it feels very different from ABM or marketing automation or any of the other trends that have happened. Yeah. So I'm gonna stick with the theme of starting wide before going more narrow in in spirit of events and in digital events and webinars. But what you said right now, I think, is really important because I think we are all experiencing it. There is a lot of, like, FOMO or there's a lot of stuff happening out on the feeds where people are doing really impressive stuff and causing me, honestly, to feel like I'm not hitting the mark or I'm not investing enough with experimentation, that I'm not as further along as I I I'm supposed to because so many of my awesome peers are killing it out there with these really cool workflows and agents. What advice do you have for marketers that are kind of living in this headspace right now? Don't freak out. Like, every single conversate I mean, I've especially from my days in demand base, I I've got a really good network of CMOs. And I'll tell you, like, one week, I will feel like I'm crushing it. Like, wow. We're doing great. We're so far out in front. We're we're, you know, really at the bleeding edge in terms of what my marketing team's doing and how we're building agents and what we're doing with those agents and things like that. And then I'll have two more conversations and be like, oh my god. I'm we're hopelessly behind. I don't think we'll ever catch up. They're talking in in in terms and with use cases that I hadn't even thought of. And so I guess my advice is don't freak out. Right? Like, the everyone is going through this together, and there are some folks that have been leaning in and maybe they work at companies where they've got the resources because the company is leaning in, or maybe it's they're at a smaller company and have the ability to kinda move faster than a small team can, or than a large team can. So, but the the key is, like, keep learning, keep being curious, keep being open minded, and and just get in and do it, because you're you're no one at this point, even if they're just learning the two letters AI, is hopelessly behind where they can't kinda make good progress and start catching up. Yeah. I like this, this advice that Natasha put in the chat. Do one little thing and it will lead you into more interesting, more interesting and helpful workflows. Just start doing the thing. That's great. That's great. And I just saw the big iron comment. So thank you. I appreciate that. Peter, let's talk about AI native events, because this is what the session is all about. What does that actually mean to you? What would an event team do differently if they design their program for AI from day one versus layering AI into their workflows like they're might be doing today? And it might be very fragmented, even though it's a more efficient than completely manual. Sure. You know, this is adjacent to something that we did a a while ago at at Invoca, which is we took a a a product launch or a campaign launch, and this was, in early twenty twenty five. And the the impetus for this was that everyone on my team was AI curious, and we had some, like, real kind of bleeding edge folks that were really getting more sophisticated and some folks that were just feeling like, I'm trying to figure this out. But, everyone kinda felt like they were doing it as their night job, and I really wanted to make it, like, something that was actually part of their work and getting something done. So we had a launch coming up, and we we did something that ultimately is called AI LaunchLab, which was, actually named by AI. But the project was every marketer and all mark the whole marketing team participates in a campaign launch. It was one of those cross functional cross marketing things that, everyone had a role in. Basically, set a rule, like, every first step we were gonna use AI to develop, whether that was the name of the project, AI LaunchLab, which we developed, to, the agendas for our meetings, to the briefs that we developed, to the content that we executed, to the email campaigns that we had. All every single thing. And the rule was if we felt like the manual old school way of doing it was better, we could use that output, but the first step was was doing that. That was a huge eye opening effort, and it gave everyone on the team just cover because it was part of their day job to go do. So it wasn't like, learn this at 08:00 at night. I I take we could talk more about that if, if you want at some point. But take that as a microcosm of or that you, like, shrink that down to an events type of thing. And that's the difference between saying, I'm gonna apply AI to this part of event execution or webinar execution versus I'm gonna rethink everything that we do from it. And I I again, we I don't wanna, you know, state everything in the first five minutes of, of this discussion, but the the step that you take is one from looking at kind of the point, tasks that each person has to do and using AI to that and then transitioning that to actually reimagining the workflow and how. things get triggered and what things are triggered automatically and what needs human intervention to get triggered and what needs to be reviewed by a human and what doesn't and and truly, like, taking the workflow. So really, from soup to nuts, everything in a webinar can actually be, put into an AI workflow. Yeah. You just have to go through, like, that audit. Right? You have to audit the entire manual process to really be able to pick apart which part of the process to kind of start and then, you know, build from there. Yeah. And that's that's actually where whether it was a mistake or luck lucky serendipity or what. Instead of kind of choosing individual piece pieces of it or silos, we chose to reimagine the whole thing. It got the whole team involved, and. it helped us get in a mindset of, like, we were reworking the the overall workflow and not just how to use AI for a I I would argue that that's actually the right thing to do versus kind of piecemealing. it because, you know, that process could take a really long time. There's you you know, we you could get deep like, deprioritized in terms in terms of workflows, and it could sit half half baked for a year plus. Right? And so by ripping off the Band Aid and rebuilding it, you kinda guarantee that you have a functional agent that produces what you expect it to produce. So per personally, I like that that path that you took. Yeah. Cool. Another believer. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, But but I will say, Kelly, like, you never know. Like, that's the thing. Like, you've gotta be prepared to make mistakes on this because we're all kind of, like, feeling our way into the murky water. So when I say I don't know whether that was the right path and I appreciate that you agree with it, I legitimately didn't know. And. even now, there might be a 100 people on this that, like, will passionately argue that that was the wrong way, and they might be right too. I I don't know. Yeah. So Invoca, as you were explaining it to me, it's you guys sit in a pretty intersection with, you know, digital journeys, AI native, and, you know, also in including that human conversation element. Yeah. What have you learned about, you know, where AI should hand off to a human, and and how do you think that translates to events? Yeah. This is one of the, you know, questions of our time, I think, of, like, what should be human focused and what can be machine driven. I'll tell you, at at Invoca, so health care is a big part of our customer base. We we we sell into a lot of providers, a lot of payers, and providers exactly, the half of in particular, the hospital systems that are adopting our AI agents. It's really important that they get that human to machine kind of balance right because for you know, we're using voice AI and, and SMS messaging AI to actually engage with patients or potential patients. And they're calling up these hospitals, and sometimes they just wanna know the directions, and sometimes they just wanna know, you know, how do I make an appointment with the dermatologist. And sometimes they're saying I've got an emergency and 91 busy. What should I do? Or, like, I think I've got a lump, you know, in my neck, and I'm worried about it, and I think it could be cancer, and what do I do now? Like, there are certain things that machines and AI should not try and handle. They shouldn't try and handle an emergency situation. They should not try and talk to someone, engage. with them for when they think they might have cancer. Right? So there's there's times when it's, like, absolutely appropriate when AI should be the engagement vehicle for it and sometimes when it's absolutely not. The AI has to be smart enough and have enough context to know when, you know, how to make those those decisions. Right? The stakes are lower when it comes to events and webinars versus, like, a provider, but you still got to the the the importance of understanding that relationship. I mean, I think one of the interesting things we'll get into is, like, like, how valuable is the human experience and what does that get you versus an AI experience? And I think that becomes especially interesting with webinars, because there's arguments to be made for for both. So but, again, balancing the human engagement with the machine engagement is one of the great questions of our time, I think. Yeah. I I do have a a strong opinion here on where AI has a place and where it doesn't have a place. Like, when you were talking about the campaign that your team was, you know, full like, you know, cross functional team, all hands on deck where you guys kinda laid the foundation together, it's very it's operational. It's very operational. It's you know, that I I see AI taking a a big part in in the operational rigor of implementation. Yeah. But when it comes to building trust at events, like, I think that events, like, in person and digital, whether or not you are physically there or you have someone's attention on a screen, having that moment and having a human connection, helps. build that mind share that I think ultimately converts into pipeline down the line. And so I do think that, you know, if if I were an AI avatar and I was completely scripted, this would not be as engaging as it was. I would not be able to pull things from the chat and, like, be able to run things on the fly and have an off the cuff conversation. Maybe not today where AI is not at. So I I as of right now, my point of view is that there is that human element that you need to make sure is sort of, like, the source of the Yeah. So at at the highest level, I a thousand percent agree with you in terms of trust and trust with brands. and lots of people have spoken about this that are smarter than me. But trust amongst the four brands has become even more important than it was ten, twenty, thirty years ago because as you get bombarded by content, but now as you get bombarded by content that you're not sure is human or or otherwise, like, the the level of trust that you have in a brand, becomes even more important. And I agree, like, especially when it comes to the in person events. There's a reason in person events are doing so well these days. Like, every market I talk to talks about company is hiring for an event leader at their company. right now. Like, whether it's whether it's small events like dinners or, you know, the bespoke experiences or conferences and trade shows, stuff like that, people are jumping back in and craving those human experiences and that that interaction. I absolutely agree. I think it becomes a little bit more of a question, and I don't wanna maybe we'll get into this, but I think it becomes a little bit more of a question about with webinars and whether there's a level of personalization and and conversation that can happen even if it's AI driven. But Yeah. We can get into that as we as we go, Yeah. Kelly. We'll we'll talk about that now. You know, so, Peter, if agents can handle, you know, registration, follow-up, personalization, content creation, lead routing, like, all of the orchestration that happens around an event. Maybe the event itself, you know, is a high pressure pressure cooker. It's very human. You know, you saw us in the backstage just now. We're all very, very, very human. If agents can handle a lot of the operational rigor, what becomes the event marketer's actual job? Like, what what would you say is if that was on your team, how would you scope, you know, the event marketer or the digital marketer's job for running a webinar? As I answer that, let me just tell the insider story of what happened about fifteen minutes ago when, the the event team was having a very human reaction when your guest, Peter Isaacson, was totally rude and showed up ten minutes late, and, you were wondering whether I was actually gonna get here. So, those may maybe it would have been better to have, AI that, you know, wouldn't wouldn't get nervous about it. But, so sorry about that. Yeah. When it comes to when it comes to AI, like, all the stuff that you talked about, the registration and all, like, the audience generation and things like that, all of those, like, it's obvious that, like, AI can handle that. Right? All the way through. And, again, we could talk about this in a second. Like, the question is, like, whether the actual engagement and communication and the webinar itself could be handled by a realistic avatar that's quite conversational and stuff. So, anyway, I'll table that. But the role of the event person becomes, right, being able to be, sophisticated enough that you're managing the agents that are doing this work. Right? Chris Rudagret from, Sendoso, whose company is really forward in terms of their marketing team's application of of AI has a belief which we've adopted, which is every every everybody on the team builds agents, and every agent has a manager. So it's not just the demand gen team manages these set of agents. It's it's Kelly manages these four agents and Peter manages these three agents and things like that. So the the role of the human becomes like you're managing agents, and sometimes it's managing them with human in the loop. Sometimes it's just overseeing kind of the overall process. But the the the division becomes, you are managing agents to actually do this, and those agents at this point for the foreseeable future do need that human manager. That's a very interesting and very insightful way to frame it up. If there are any questions for Peter or me, please do, submit them in the q and a tab or put them in the chat. I'm just gonna make a note of that because we do have about eight minutes before we're gonna head over to questions. Peter, I'm gonna move over to measurement because I think this is where a lot of digital marketers and event marketers, this in this audience right now might be scarred from. So, historically, we have been measured against registration, attendance, engagement. In an AI native world, what do you think, you know, as a mark as a marketing leader, a CMO, what do you think we should be actually measuring? Does the measurement framework change with the AI mechanism entering the space? It's a great question. I I I don't I don't think the framework changes or what you measure changes, I don't think. But I've I've Kelly, I'd as I said, backstage, I wanna hear your views on this because you've probably done more thinking on this than, than I have. So I'd be interested in your point of view. From my point of view, it doesn't change it, but, I've never really focused on the registrations, attention, attendance, and engagement as the core metrics. My philosophy is measure everything, but focus your your impact on the outcomes. Right? So. further down kind of the the the funnel. So for me, whether it's webinars or in person events, I'm still measuring s one pipeline generation. I'm still figuring out whether those s ones, those pipeline opportunities that were generated, whether they were first touch or last touch or whatever, whether they actually, transition, whether they convert, whether they actually result in closed one business. That doesn't change for me with AI. I'd still advocate that, like, measure as far down in the funnel as you possibly can to to to those lagging measures to really judge impact. Because if you do a webinar that has 300 registrations and 200 attendees and nobody resulted in an s one. Is that how how valuable was that to you? So, Yeah. My. perspective in that so I agree with you. Measure everything because you have to keep your eye on sort of, like, the baseline throughout. With with AI coming in, I have I have a hot take here. I have some beef with lead scoring and MQLs with this whole AI AI entering the conversation because I I think that the scoring mechanism is a placeholder to be able to show qualification and intent. But with AI, you would argue that you'd you should be able to pull out a lot of insights that the score, maybe fails on. Right? And so say someone enters this webinar and they've done a bunch of things. They've chatted. They ask questions. They're the one on one messaging a bunch of people. Are you are we cap are marketers capturing all that and considering all that engagement into the scoring model, or are they just saying they attended and so score them 30 plus points? Right? Are they. are they actually taking the context into consideration? And with AI, is AI able to help us bring that cons context? And rather than manually stitching it together and then handing off the sales, could it be automated as an agent? Because if so, then I wanna kill the MQL, and I wanna kill the lead scoring model because agents should be able to help surface that where the mechanism of lead scoring historically has taken place. Yeah. That's a great point, Kelly. I thought that MQLs were were pretty much dead, but I I it keeps on gasping for life. But MQLs to me are kind of worthless in the sense that, like, I we'll still measure them. Like, we'll still track them, but, like, do not hang your hat on it. That's not a business outcome. Like, sales doesn't care about that. Like, they're not close enough to the end of the funnel to really kinda drive that. But I think your your point about all of this data providing context and insights that are are not possible right now. One example, like, that we're talking about at Invoca, which I think is really cool, is can we get our, Salesforce data and our gain site data and our demand based data and maybe our Cvent data, like, all of this into, like, a Databricks data lake. Right? And then put a clogged UI on top of it where it's conversational so that you can actually extract specific insights. And then once you're extracting specific insights and you've got the model set up, can you actually automate kind of the, you know, pulling specific types of insights so that they automatically get routed to sales? So it's not just, this person attended. It's this person attended, and they did this and this and this, and they actually engaged during the webinar, and they asked this question. And they even got into a pricing conversation and, like, go aft that's, like, Right. go get them. Yeah. So I I think that's what you're talking about. Right? Exactly. Yeah. I mean, that's a brave new world that, like, is is, you know, if we're I I was about to say we're on the cusp of, but, you know, there we're probably right there with it. like we're close to there. Right? Because it feels like, you know, if I wanted to do that today, I I could I I could probably pull the information from a few different places and stitch it together. But with MCP that, you know, you know, so many products are releasing, you know, we're releasing our own. It's it feels very much, like, within our grasp to be able to accomplish with automation. I think I think so. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. One last question for me before we wrap up today, Peter. And this is would love to see if a hot hot take about this. What's one AI use case marketers are overly excited about right now and one that they're dramatically underestimating right now? I under basically, underestimating and overestimating. Yeah. I think, we are oh, we're underestimating. This is gonna be so this is such a wonky answer. I'm almost embarrassed to say it, but, like, attribution has been like the great white whale, for for marketing for so long, and there's so many hockey stack and all these kinds of things. And, like, I I don't mean to diminish, you know, the vendors that are doing it, but they all come with an asterisk. They all come with, like, challenges. And I think that the ability to really, incorporate all of these signals in and use AI to kind of wrap around and find out, like, what's really driving. Not just like, oh, we got first touch, last touch, multi touch attribution. Great. But the idea for b to b marketers of, like, what's actually driving it? Like, what should I double down on? What should I kill? What should what role does it play? Like, how do I if I added a $100,000 like, all these things that is really easy to get to if you're a b to c marketer and, you know, pouring money into paid search and it comes out the other end as customers is really difficult for a b to b marketer. I think solving that complex attribution thing is something I'm excited to to kind of experience. The other thing we're we're we're over rate rotated on is just content. Like, feeling like content's gonna you know, more of it is gonna solve a million thing. Gary Vaynerchuk, who I'm sure a lot of people know Gary Vaynerchuk, totally profane but really insightful, of marketer. His, one of his famous lines is, marketers fuck up everything. And what he meant by that is we find something that, like, works or that's cool, and we, like, dial it up to a thousand. And Mhmm. that was, like, email marketing and digital ads and all those kinds of things. And right now, we're in that kind of effing up content because we're just pushing so much crap out there in the hopes that, like, something will stick, and I think we're over rotated on that. Yeah. Like, just because you can create it and post it doesn't mean that you should create it and post it. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. With. great love great with, with great power comes great responsibility. right. Like, there's so much noise out there now. And I actually I think that is for me, the benefit of the events and webinars is that that's more much more valuable because those are spaces where, the noise is quieter because there's not as much AI flooding it. Yeah. Very true. Alright. Let's move into questions. We've got ten minutes and we've got some questions. And so if you have a question, please feel free to drop it into the q and a tab. So let me pull them up. Okay. We've got a question from from Maddie, Maddie Lindsay. Alright. Is there one part of the marketing process that should not be influenced by AI? Peter, what do One part that should not be influenced. you think? No. I mean and and the keyword there is influenced to me because influence is, like, I think every every part should be influenced by AI. Every part can be from the very beginning stages to very, very, like, latter stages. I think that it absolutely, can and should be. I think as you get into sales processes, there are certain things where, like, sales engagement's really important, but I'm struggling to think of a a place where it shouldn't influence. Influence though versus take over and own because there are certain places where, like, taking over and owning, like, you can't you can't replace in person events. You can't like, there are certain things that you really can't and don't wanna, replace. So what what do you think, Kelly? I I I've been thinking about this as you were talking, and I I can't think of anything that I do I think that AI should not influence today. I think that if if you have AI, anything in marketing can you can use to help. But I think the human in the loop part is is very, very real, because that's the part where there's so many things about, you know, the marketing process that I I would not just let AI ship, but I would wanna make sure that there's a human in the loop. So I I agree with it and it it it I I was thinking about, this as I was, as I was answering. now. We're about to go through a review for our, you know, review process at Invoca. And I was thinking, well, you know, AI shouldn't do the reviews for you. You know, that would be a bummer if, your manager kind of offloaded that to an AI avatar that but then since it's influenced, it's like, well, actually, I used AI to, help me write my reviews, and I don't think that's a bad thing. I'm putting in our stuff from our one on ones. I'm putting in some of my own observations. I'm just dumping in three sixty feedback, and I'm actually, like, asking questions. So it's it's influencing. even the review process. The further review process, because we are also going through that, here. I use AI to help me search through my emails and my Slack for any, feedback from my team, because I wanted. some screenshot examples. So AI is very, very helpful. I think everything should be influenced Yep. Agreed. by it. Okay. Next question. Okay. Here. This is from anonymous. If pipeline and closed deals matter more than registrations, how should teams connect attendee behavior to revenue without overcrediting events? Attendee behavior to revenue. Well, I mean, this is this is where, like, AI can play a really interesting role in terms of the attribution that we were talking about. But, like, connecting attendee behavior to revenue, like, that's always a challenge, whether it's, you know, a direct mail piece or an ad or at like, this is the case with everything. If you have an ad and someone saw it and they ended up, going into pipeline and being a closed one account, Does marketing take credit because this person actually saw through view through an ad? Clearly not. Right? If they click on it, you know, maybe more of an impact if they attended a webinar, if they met them at an event. So there's there's gotta be some waiting on it, and that's why attribution engines can be so imperfect. But it it really comes down to, adding all these signals together to get true attribution of the role of, again, direct mail or advertising or, or events or webinars. So that's an imperfect answer, but that's the truth for me. Yeah. I I find this question very interesting because I think that events are very rarely ever over credited. If anything, they're under credited, because I think the attribution models don't really take events strategy under consideration, a lot a lot of models. And so and specific specifically because events really do work really well with enterprise motions, and we all here know that enterprise deals take a very long time. So the way that I look at this, and I'm gonna give a suggestion, and this is something that we've done at Goldcast for a few years now is we we really anchor on this one question in our demo request form and also in our discovery calls with our sales team. And that's a a question that we require them to ask is, how did you hear about us? And we capture the the responses, you know, whether it's open free text response or just, you know, word vomit response. We capture that through, you know, Gong, Chorus tools, and we do an analysis because attribution is so flawed. What the person actually recalls remembering, that's what we wanna capture and be able to have directional understanding on what channels are working. So that has worked really well in terms of giving events the credit that they deserve, actually. Yep. That's that. Alright. That's great. One last question. Okay. Let's see this. Alright. Wondering for both of you. This is the last question of the day. Is your team bigger or smaller than a year ago, and was AI the reason? Peter, what's your response here? My team is flat, maybe down one or two. One maybe. AI is not explicitly the reason. I have I have at this point, and I've got the company support, been very focused on how do I make our our marketing team more productive, and, deliver more impact to the business through AI versus how do I how do I cut, you know, 20% or 40% of the team and still get, you know, 80% of the productivity. So I know there are companies that are taking the alternate route, which is like, we're just gonna cut and then see how it goes. And if we cut too far, then we'll hire back and stuff. That's tough. Right? Because, you know, that's people's careers that, that you're experimenting with. So I've been I've been fortunate enough to have backing where we're we are working really hard to amplify the productivity of the team and have a greater impact on the business. And therefore, we're we're at about the same size doing more than we've ever done quite frankly than, versus just, slashing and burning. Yeah. For for me, very similar answer to you, Peter. My team is pretty much the same size, probably maybe one or two heads down from last year. The difference for me is that my my budget is is slightly lower. Like, my program's budget is also slightly lower from last year, but my targets, my goals are are double what last year was. Gotcha. And I I do have a lot more resourcing for tooling because through the Cvent acquisition, I now have a lot more access to tools that I didn't have before to really help with the productivity to be able to do more with less. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you of everyone for your questions. I really appreciate it. We're gonna close out today. So what I'm taking away from this conversation with Peter is that AI is going to absorb an enormous amount of what, marketing teams and event teams do today. So, like, a lot of the logistics, like, orchestration, the follow-up routing, and that is all good. But the point is always to make sure that where a real person says something true to another braille person, AI makes, that all, you know, reportable, make makes it actually you know, businesses realize the impact there. You know, events and digital events, in person events really help make, make trust, more realized. So, Peter, thank you so much. This is the exact conversation I was hoping for, and thanks everyone here for for joining us. We're gonna come back tomorrow with, day two of webinar fast with some really, really great content sessions. I'll be coming back live talking about the webinar maturity model. We've got five different stages to talk about. So we'll see you guys tomorrow. Thanks so much for coming. Bye, everybody. Thank you.