There are moments that quietly remind you why you do what you do. Sitting in the crowd at Advertising Week in New York, listening to Marie-Elaine Lemire from SIGHTLINE, Jesse Gainer from C2 Montréal, Sofia Figueroa from Square, and Jimmy Knowles from Canva, I had one of those.
For the past decade, I have lived inside the world of brand experiences, designing events, producing shows, and chasing that invisible thing that makes people feel. Because when you trigger emotions, you create memories. And when you create a memory, you build something that lasts far beyond the applause.
That is what this conversation was about. Not the stage sets or budgets, but the art of moving people.
When Jimmy Knowles from Canva said that even in B2B we are still selling to humans, the room nodded. It was one of those truths that sound simple but carry real weight when spoken by someone who lives it. Canva has built its brand on accessibility and emotion, a platform that makes creativity feel easy and joyful. That mindset extends to everything they do, including their live experiences.
Jimmy talked about emotion as a language that brands too often forget how to speak. He described how their team builds moments that reflect the way their product feels: intuitive, inspiring, a little playful. He shared how, instead of a classic product keynote, Canva announced new features through a live rap performance. The decision was deliberate. It turned a predictable corporate launch into something people could feel. The rhythm of the performance mirrored the rhythm of creativity itself, showing that storytelling can be both strategic and joyful. The audience did not just hear about new tools, they experienced what Canva stands for, creativity that belongs to everyone.
When I design a moment, I think about rhythm, senses, and timing. The sound that wakes up a room. The light shift that turns curiosity into anticipation. The collective breath before something happens. Those micro choices are what make emotion tangible.
Listening to Jimmy, I was reminded that the brands doing this right do not separate business and emotion. They build for both.
At one point, Jesse Gainer from C2 Montréal started explaining their process and I found myself quietly smiling. He talked about world building, but not in the fantastical sense. For C2, it means crafting a full environment where every detail has intent. Every light, sound, and movement connects back to a single question, what do we want people to feel, and why does that feeling matter.
Jesse shared that this is how every C2 project begins. Before they sketch a stage or draft a concept, they ask their clients two things, what emotion should people leave with, and what action should that emotion inspire. That method grounds the entire creative process in purpose. It ensures that even the boldest ideas serve a measurable goal.
Listening to Jesse, I kept thinking about how rare that discipline still is in our industry. Too many brands start with aesthetics and work backward. C2 flips that order completely. They design emotion as carefully as they design logistics. They start with the outcome, then build the emotion that leads there. That mindset is something I have always admired. True immersion happens when creativity meets clarity. The result is not a spectacle but an emotion that lingers long after the lights come up.
When Sofia Figueroa from Square explained that no speaker stays on stage for more than four minutes, the entire audience reacted. It sounded radical at first, but the logic behind it made perfect sense. Attention is not something to fight against. It is something to choreograph.
She described how her team structures talks like episodes, each with a rhythm that rises and resolves before the audience can drift away. The goal is to keep energy high without losing authenticity. To make every minute feel like it matters.
As a show producer, I felt that in my bones. A good session should unfold like a story, not a lecture. The pacing, the cut to a new voice, the pause before a reveal, these are tools we share with cinema and television. That is also how I approach my work and what I tell new clients, you have to approach your talks like TV shows and your events like live movie sets. You make your attendees actors of the story, not spectators. And that's a perfect introduction to our next truth.
One of the most powerful moments of the session came from Jesse Gainer at C2 Montréal. He talked about giving people what he called player agency. Not in a gaming sense, but in the way you design an experience that people can shape themselves.
He said something I loved. “How do we give people agency, player agency? How do we think of our audiences not just as people on a roller coaster that are experiencing things, but that we let them design and feel part of that experience.” That one line captures what makes an experience stick.
C2 always asks how to make audiences participants instead of passengers. How to let them design part of the moment, even in small ways, so they feel like they are helping to build what they are living. That shift turns attention into investment. People stop consuming the experience and start contributing to it.
This idea resonated with me deeply. The best events do not treat audiences as spectators, they turn them into collaborators. When you give people agency, you give them a story to own. And when they own the story, they remember it.
Throughout the session, one theme kept resurfacing. The most powerful experiences are born from teams that collaborate early, honestly, and across disciplines. Creativity alone is never enough. What makes these brands strong is how their internal teams work together, strategy, creative, production, and partnerships all moving with the same rhythm.
Marie-Elaine from SIGHTLINE talked about breaking silos between departments so emotion can be designed together from the start. That is what turns an idea into an experience. When strategy and creative speak the same language, logistics stop being a constraint and start amplifying emotion.
I have seen this in every show I have worked on. The projects that stand out are the ones where teams share a single intention, where the producer, strategist, and designer sit around the same table, shaping the feeling before the format. That kind of collaboration saves time, avoids waste, and makes the story clearer for the audience.
When everyone inside the brand aligns on what they want people to feel, the result does not just look coherent. It feels effortless.
This session reminded me why I fell in love with this industry. Every story shared on that stage came back to the same truth. Experiences only work when they make people feel something real.
Emotion is not decoration. It is the architecture. It shapes how people move, listen, and remember. You can see it in the way C2 builds intention into every detail, how Square choreographs attention with rhythm, and how Canva keeps empathy at the center of everything it creates.
Turning a brief into a moment, a stage into a heartbeat, a crowd into a memory. The lights fade, the noise dies, but what people felt stays with them. And that, is why we do it.