What's the point of a stunning trade show booth if nobody inside it knows why they're there?

Casey Smalley, Director of Global Events at Avetta, joins Matt Kleinrock to make the case that the smartest line in your event budget isn't the build. It's the briefing.

In this episode:

✅ Why treating booth staffing as a "scheduling exercise" quietly costs you pipeline, not just optics

✅ The one trait that separates a floor-ready team member from a liability (it has nothing to do with product knowledge)

✅ Inside a secret shopper program that graded booth staff posture with photos and why it worked

Most event teams obsess over booth design, tech, and swag, then leave staffing decisions to the final 48 hours, if they think about them at all. Casey brings 20 years in event marketing to explain why that gap is more expensive than most marketers realize.

She and Matt swap stories from the floor: a secret shopper program that once graded booth staff on posture, and the beautifully built booth with nobody working it.

What surfaces is something every senior marketer already suspects but rarely says out loud. Attendees forget the screens. They remember the humans.

Tune in to find out what actually separates a booth that converts from one that just looks good.

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Connect with Casey Smalley
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/caseywalkersmalley/

Connect with Matt Kleinrock
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-kleinrock-9613b22b/
Company: https://rockwayexhibits.com/

🚨 Register for the show: https://tinyurl.com/EventMarketingRedefined

Too many events still rely on the same booths, the same activations, and the same “safe” playbook. The result: experiences people walk past, forget, or never meaningfully engage with in the first place.

Ashley Nuske, Director of Field & Event Marketing at Goldcast (now Cvent), joins Matt Kleinrock for a candid conversation about what’s broken in event marketing today and why safe strategies rarely produce standout results.

Ashley shares how she approaches audience-first event design, builds experiences around business outcomes instead of assumptions, and pushes teams beyond repetitive execution. The episode explores everything from creative field event concepts to executive buy-in, experiential trends, and why immersive experiences matter even more in an AI-saturated world.

Learn:

✅ What stale event execution actually looks like in today’s market

✅ How thoughtful personalization creates stronger audience connection and recall

✅ Why event marketers need market awareness, not just internal opinions, to innovate

Tune in for a practical conversation on how modern event marketers can create experiences people actually remember and results leadership can actually measure.

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Connect with Ashley Nuske
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleynuske-expmarketing/

Connect with Matt Kleinrock
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-kleinrock-9613b22b/
Company: https://rockwayexhibits.com/

🚨 Register for the show: https://tinyurl.com/EventMarketingRedefined

Are you heading into fall events the same way you did last year? Same booth, same playbook, same hope that something sticks?

Most event marketers aren't lazy. They're just busy. And busy has a way of turning strategy into autopilot. That gap between teams who show up and teams who show up READY starts forming right now, in summer.

As part of The Summer Circuit, we're dropping a special compilation episode where host Matt Kleinrock shares the unfiltered advice he'd give any event marketer preparing for the back half of the year.

(Yes, Matt filmed this from a kiddie pool. The advice is still dead serious.)

Here's what you'll walk away with:

✅ Why chasing a perfect ROI calculation before you have any measurement at all is the fastest way to measure nothing

✅ How a real event theme works and what it has to be rooted in to actually move through your entire execution

✅ When to stop order-taking from internal stakeholders and start asking the questions that get to the why

Fall is coming faster than most strategies are ready for. Give this one a listen.

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Connect with Matt Kleinrock
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-kleinrock-9613b22b/
Company: https://rockwayexhibits.com/

🚨 Register for the show: https://tinyurl.com/EventMarketingRedefined