Observed Signal · Oct 15, 2026 · Interview · Source: The Drum · Impact: 1/5 · Sentiment: Neutral
Experiential Marketing Judge Urges Brands to Measure Emotion, Not Footfall
Keziah Wildsmith, founder and CEO of Heaps + Stacks, a London-based brand experience agency, argues that a queue outside an event is not the same as an engaged audience. In her role as a judge at The Drum Awards Festival, she emphasizes that counting attendees is easy but measuring emotional impact is what truly matters. She advises brands to focus on creating memorable, participatory experiences rather than flashy gimmicks. Wildsmith highlights the importance of authenticity, personality, and human creativity, noting that AI can assist with admin but cannot replace the human touch. She recommends investing in experiential marketing for 2026, meeting audiences where they already gather, and integrating events with broader brand strategy.
This is an interview with an industry figure providing opinions on experiential marketing, rather than a news event. It lacks hard data and doesn't announce a specific corporate development.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Keziah Wildsmith is founder and CEO of Heaps + Stacks.
- Heaps + Stacks has grown to a team of 50 over nine years.
- Clients include Nike, L'Oréal, Spotify, LVMH and The Estée Lauder Companies.
- Wildsmith is judging the experiential category at The Drum Awards Festival.
- Heaps + Stacks produced an event with The Ordinary featuring a giant silver salmon.
Connected Companies & Entities
5 Entities mapped“Partnering with brands including Nike, L'Oreal, Spotify, LVMH and The Estee Lauder Companies.”
“Partnering with brands including Nike, L'Oreal, Spotify, LVMH and The Estee Lauder Companies.”
“Partnering with brands including Nike, L'Oreal, Spotify, LVMH and The Estee Lauder Companies.”
“Partnering with brands including Nike, L'Oreal, Spotify, LVMH and The Estee Lauder Companies.”
“Partnering with brands including Nike, L'Oreal, Spotify, LVMH and The Estee Lauder Companies.”
Ontology Mapping & Concepts
Related Market Signals & Shifts
Recent verified developments and strategic activity across this market segment.
Canva's Knowles: Experiential marketing enters its imagination era
In an interview with The Drum, Jimmy Knowles, global head of experiential marketing at Canva and jury president of The Drum Awards for Experiential, argues that experiential marketing is gaining strategic importance as AI commoditizes digital content and production value. Knowles says brands are moving from one-off activations to recurring 'standing platforms' such as Canva Create. He advocates measuring success through 'return on emotion' rather than attendance or impressions, and notes that experiential is one of Canva's lowest-cost acquisition channels, though measurement infrastructure still lags finance-team expectations. As AI-generated spectacle becomes cheap, Knowles believes trust and earned community become the key differentiators, and that awards should reward sharp ideas over large production budgets.
Experiential Marketing Enters an 'Effectiveness Era'
Carley Faircloth-Kilmurray of Spiro argues that experiential marketing is moving beyond the question of whether live experiences work to understanding which design choices drive measurable business outcomes. Drawing on Spiro’s Experiential Marketing Impact Report (EMIR) and its follow-up research, the article highlights evidence linking live experiences to trust, advocacy, purchase intent and conversion. The piece stresses that human interactions — notably knowledgeable staff conversations — and active attendee participation are strong drivers of trust and purchase intent. The author calls for more intentional measurement and design (not the replacement of creativity) so marketers can optimize events for specific outcomes rather than rely solely on attendance or impressions.
Experiential Marketing: Beyond Spectacle to Meaningful Engagement
At ADWEEK’s SXSW 2026 session in Austin, a panel of marketers from Pinterest, PopSockets, Grillo’s Pickles, Viral Nation, Hello Party, Accenture Song and Starwood Hotels argued that experiential marketing is evolving from one-off activations into an integrated “operating system” that shapes brand interactions across touchpoints. Panelists described frameworks for designing experiences—Brandon Lentino outlined three layers (physical moment, shareable social moment, and cultural conversation)—and debated how to prove ROI, citing metrics such as earned social conversation, audience growth, foot traffic and repeat attendance. Speakers also noted tensions between rising personalization expectations and Gen Z privacy concerns, and raised the prospect that AI agents capable of planning itineraries end-to-end could bypass traditional brand touchpoints and loyalty programs.
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