Pipeline in Person: How Relationship-First Events Drive Real ROI

Trade shows and events are back!

But most still miss the point. If you're not walking away with real relationships and revenue potential, you're doing it wrong.

Hey there, I'm Kerry Curran—B2B Revenue Growth Executive Advisor, Industry Analyst, and host of Revenue Boost: A Marketing Podcast.

In this episode, Pipeline in Person: How Relationship-First Events Drive Real ROI, we’re diving into how the smartest B2B brands are getting off the expo floor and into curated conversations that actually convert.

I'm joined by Jon Whitfield, Chief Operating Officer at MediaPost, who has spent over 20 years perfecting the art of high-impact, face-to-face marketing. Jon isn’t just running another event company—he’s building a reputation for delivering summit experiences that sponsors rebook year after year because they drive pipeline, not just visibility.

And here’s the surprising truth: smaller, niche gatherings with the right ratio of buyers to sponsors consistently outperform massive trade shows—if you get the format right. Jon breaks down why most conferences fail to deliver ROI—and how to fix it.

We cover:

• The one customer value metric sponsors should use to justify their spend
  
   
• How curated experiences like golf, axe throwing, and roundtables deepen buyer trust
  
   
• What brand-side marketers actually want from events in a post-remote world
  
   
• And how to build stronger sponsor-attendee matchmaking and content alignment
  
   

Picture this: instead of awkward badge scans, you're having real conversations over dinner, sharing challenges in closed-door roundtables, and walking away with warm leads who already know, like, and trust you.

Stay to the end, where Jon shares his one non-negotiable rule for evaluating event ROI—and how to spot a conference worth investing in before you spend a dollar.

If you're investing in events this year, this episode is your edge.

Hit follow, drop a rating, and share it with your field marketing or partnerships lead—because pipeline starts before the pitch.

Let’s go!

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:02.296):
So welcome, Jon. Please introduce yourself and share your background and expertise.

Jon Whitfield (00:07.832):
Well, hello, Kerry. Thanks for having me on. My name is Jon Whitfield. I'm the Chief Operating Officer over at MediaPost. I've been there for a long time—I didn’t realize you could be at a place for as long as 22 years. Apparently, there are other places you can work. I didn’t know that. No one ever told me. I just learned that you can get other jobs at other places.

Yeah, I’ve been at MediaPost for 22 years. I’ve seen a lot of things change over the years, and yeah, we’re thrilled just to still be kicking and doing our thing.

Kerry Curran, RBMA (00:46.176):
Excellent. Well, I know you've become the expert at events, and in my own experience with MediaPost, you’ve curated a really valuable experience for both brands, attendees, and sponsors. I want to dive into your expertise and help marketers and sponsors get more out of their conferences—and really think about what that investment looks like.

We’re seeing more and more value put into face-to-face relationship-building and brand-building. Conferences offer that, right? Talk about how you've seen the industry evolve and what you're seeing today.

Jon Whitfield (01:38.716):
Yeah, I mean, it's funny. When I first started out in this business, you had real tentpole events—like the ad:techs and the SESs of the world—that had 300 exhibitors and thousands of attendees. These were real, large gatherings that happened several times a year. If you weren’t at those—whether as an exhibitor or an attendee—you kind of didn’t exist. It was like, “We’ve got to be there.”

So in the early 2000s and through the first decade of the new millennium, those large shows were really commonplace and important.

We participated not only as exhibitors but also by launching our own conference series called OMMA Global, which had a couple of thousand people, 150 exhibitors, and was a two-day, multi-track content event. It was a big lift. It wasn’t easy to put together or manage.

But after five or six years of doing that, we realized it was really difficult to go back to our sponsor pool and guarantee them the ROI they were looking for. Because with large events, you're not really in control of the experience. You're kind of leaving it to chance: maybe someone good stops by a booth, maybe there's a follow-up, maybe someone connects at the cocktail party, maybe someone attends the sponsored presentation.

Sometimes you get four people in the room, sometimes 50—you’re just not in control. Over time, we learned that the more