{"id":837,"date":"2025-01-27T22:48:35","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T22:48:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/internship.infoskaters.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/27\/how-our-events-team-saved-thousands-using-ai-for-inbound-24\/"},"modified":"2025-01-27T22:48:35","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T22:48:35","slug":"how-our-events-team-saved-thousands-using-ai-for-inbound-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/internship.infoskaters.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/27\/how-our-events-team-saved-thousands-using-ai-for-inbound-24\/","title":{"rendered":"How Our Events Team Saved Thousands using AI for INBOUND ’24"},"content":{"rendered":"

When HubSpot\u2019s Global Events Team had its first kickoff planning session for INBOUND 2024, they weren\u2019t sure about the creative direction they\u2019d take.<\/p>\n

One thing was clear though: Given how huge AI has become in the last few years, they knew they\u2019d incorporate it somehow.<\/p>\n

I connected with the team to learn more about the important role AI played in pre-production \u2013 from creating eye-catching visuals with Midjourney<\/a> to targeted agendas with Claude<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Creating Fresh Interstitials<\/h2>\n

Prior to INBOUND 2024, the team kept the onsite interstitials pretty consistent year-over-year, sticking to static visual imagery and light animation.<\/p>\n

It was time for a change.<\/p>\n

Instead of graphics that would disappear into the background, they wanted to create interstitals attendees would want to engage with.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year, AI has been big, and we got an intro to Midjourney and the work that Eduardo had been doing with the tool,\u201d said Sav Aaver<\/a>, former HubSpot production manager who led the collaboration. \u201cWe decided to look into that to add more interest to our screens, create a new element so people have something to look at that sparks conversation, if they’re sitting and waiting and working between sessions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Global Events team tapped Eduardo Garcia-Lopez<\/a>, a lead designer on HubSpot\u2019s Visual Design team, to oversee the production of fresh interstitials with AI \u2013 leveraging Midjourney<\/a>, Topaz<\/a> and Runway<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

They weren\u2019t trying to create something net new, he says, but they wanted to push their branding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2018t want it to feel like, \u2018Oh yeah, this is very on the brand. It\u2019s exactly what we would expect,\u2019\u201d Garcia-Lopez said. \u201cWe wanted to explore, because AI gives us these possibilities \u2013 you can take it anywhere you want but still maintain the same style of the brand.\u201d<\/p>\n

After some brainstorming, they settled on three themes:<\/p>\n

An umbrella theme for INBOUND, which was very abstract and closely tied to the HubSpot brand.
\n An extended brand for each stage.
\n A third, surreal, abstract city theme <\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

The Creative Process with AI<\/h3>\n

From start to finish, it took the team roughly a month and a half to generate 28 final videos, with 14 minutes of run time adapted for seven screen types at the venue.<\/p>\n

Starting with a baseline of shapes, gradients and colors that have always been the foundation for INBOUND graphics, Garcia-Lopez fed those initial images to Midjourney.<\/p>\n\n

That allowed him to generate initial ideas and options to present to the Global Events team.<\/p>\n

With AI, the person doing the prompting becomes the director, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2018re telling the AI. \u2018Here\u2019s my vision. Now, go out and do that,\u2019\u201d he says, \u201cIt takes a while, but if you compare that to a team, you still need somebody to drive the vision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once both teams agreed on the final 2D images for each stage and location, Garcia-Lopez headed to Runway for mini video shorts and animation.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cIt took me roughly two days to create the Boston mini paper city, generating all the flat images and creating a storyboard, going into Runway and animating all of them,\u201d he says. \u201cThen, I went into Adobe Premiere to edit the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also used Topaz, an AI editing software that enhances the quality of AI videos.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I wondered, how much would it cost if the team worked with a vendor to create these assets the old fashioned way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Garcia-Lopez estimates requesting a 30-second clip would take at least two weeks and thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n

That said, Midjourney wasn\u2019t exempt from the oddities that happen when you use AI to mimic reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I presented to the team was the most presentable, the cleanest options, but behind the curtains, there were many generations that were not coming out well,\u201d Garcia-Lopez says. \u201cIt was very choppy. You would have something weird happen \u2013 buses going into each other, buses running into people, like all these weird things.\u201d<\/p>\n

What took a lot of time was identifying the best takes and cleaning up inconsistencies, he says. Thankfully, AI works fast.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were iterating in a matter of days. We\u2019d have new options in a couple hours, so it was very, very fast,\u201d Garcia-Lopez said. \u201cAs a designer, we would\u2019ve needed a big team to deliver all of these assets, even an illustration for all the variation of styles.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Midjourney\u2019s assist, he was able to create 25 distinct styles \u2013 a result he calls \u201calmost unthinkable\u201d in the time they had.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need a big team with specific skills to accomplish a specific style,\u201d he says, \u201cand we were able to go wild and choose what we wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

AI isn\u2019t without its limitations.<\/h3>\n

When I asked Garcia-Lopez about the design challenges that come with leveraging AI, he said there\u2019s a big one people often forget.<\/p>\n

\u201cEditing something is actually quite hard. With an editable file, like a vector-based design in Adobe Illustrator, you can change every little detail,\u201d he says. \u201cWith Midjourney and these AI tools, it’s not that easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a myth that editing with AI is quick, he says. For example, color wise, you might not always get the exact same colors you\u2019d achieve from a color palette. But you can get something pretty close.<\/p>\n

Aaver echoes that sentiment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a big learning experience for us, as the approvers and reviewers,\u201d she said, \u201clearning what we can and can\u2018t give feedback on, what\u2019s an easy change, what’s not so easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, AI isn\u2019t doing the bulk of the work, contrary to popular belief. There is a lot of bringing it back to Adobe and then feeding it back into the AI model to get the results that you want., Garcia-Lopez says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can do a lot with a small team, but you need skills in other software and a good background to solve a lot of these issues,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

Creating Custom Agendas for Attendees<\/h2>\n

In addition to interstitials, the Global Events team also turned to Anthropic’s Claude to create assets.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to consider safety and we love Claude because it doesn’t train on the data you input,\u201dsaid Matt Diaz, the team lead on HubSpot\u2019s Global Events team. \u201cIt has a large context window so we could upload a lot of information for it to train on and give us the output without keeping that data for its system.\u201d<\/p>\n

They wanted to develop attendee personas and create targeted agendas, which would then be used to promote the event in an interactive \u201cChoose Your Own INBOUND Adventure\u201d<\/a> quiz.<\/p>\n\n

The team\u2019s first step was asking Claude to create targeted agendas, based on INBOUND\u2019s sessions and speakers, their buyer personas, and their goals and objectives.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was able to do that within a minute,\u201d Diaz says, \u201cIt was really detailed, it was incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their next step was instructing Claude to make sure each agenda was unique, without overlapping sessions, making sure to add the chatbot for context and reasoning behind its choices.<\/p>\n

The process took two to three rounds of reviews, as Claude would sometimes hallucinate, creating sessions or speakers that didn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n

The whole process took less than a full day, according to the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were to hire a team to do that, you\u2018re talking multiple days,\u201d Diaz says, \u201cand they\u2019re going to hit you over the head with a lot of money to do that. And this was the price of a Claude pro subscription.\u201d<\/p>\n

Once their targeted agenda was built, they created dedicated personas for each agenda. This included marketing-focused ones like the AI-Driven Leader and the Marketing Technologist, sales-ones like the Go-To-Market Strategist, and founder-inspired ones like the Data-Driven Leader.<\/p>\n

The second half of this project involved creating a personality quiz that attendees could take to match their persona to a targeted agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were operating under the assumption that, especially on social media, people don’t want to go and find out who they are,\u201d said Sarah Hughes<\/a>, the social media lead on the Global Events team. \u201cThey like to be told who they are through these quizzes or personality tests.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

The biggest challenge was ensuring that the quiz\u2019s scoring system had even odds for each agenda, i.e. making sure all quiz takers weren\u2019t getting matched to the same targeted agena.<\/p>\n

\u201cClaude got us roughly 85% of the way, and then it came to figuring out that scoring rubric and making sure that it made sense for all the personas,\u201d said Senior Content Marketing Manager Lanna Nguyen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They published it on the INBOUND blog<\/a>, driving traffic via email and social channels. To say it was successful is a bit of an understatement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn all of our 2024 blog posts, it was the third ranked in terms of impressions behind another post that we put a lot of paid spend behind,\u201d said Lanna.<\/p>\n

This quiz became a valuable resource for leads, prospects, and attendees, she adds.<\/p>\n

With so many ‘AI gone wrong’ stories floating around, this is a small case study into AI getting it right.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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