Melissa Vilders, Director-Events Strategy and Experience, SAP Global Events

Letting go and trusting the process can be hard for event profs, particularly those who identify as Type A, but Melissa Vilders says they’re essential habits to managing the chaos and stress that events can produce.

Over the course of her 15-plus-year career in event marketing, Vilders, director-events strategy and experience for SAP Global Events, has figured out the work-life balance formula that fits her life and encourages fellow marketers to lean into self-care and “enjoy the boring moments.”

In this “Event Peeps” podcast episode, Vilders shares her passion for events and drive to constantly elevate the attendee experience, whether it’s at SAP’s Success Connect or other flagship programs. She identifies her top four career learnings gathered from her start managing soccer sponsorships in France to then working in sales to now managing international h.r. customer events.

A member of the 2024 B-to-B Dream Team, Vilders also delves into what it means to be a compassionate leader to foster a supportive team environment, as well as the growing importance of wellness spaces in events. From her perspective, small mindset shifts all come together to create more impactful, inclusive events, without sacrificing one’s personal well-being.

“I don’t foresee myself ever leaving the event industry, if I’m being quite honest. I just love it so much,” Vilders says. “I don’t even want to say job, I think it’s a career and something that makes you feel so alive, and it’s so gratifying.”

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Have an idea for an episode of Event Peeps? Let us know. We’re always looking for brand-side marketers with compelling career stories to feature.

To sponsor an episode and feature your company on this page, reach out to Jon McLoughlin at jmcloughlin@accessintel.com.

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The Event Marketer editors were on the ground to take it all in and bring our firsthand coverage to you in this special edition of the “Event Peeps” podcast. Laugh with us as we recount our run-ins with murderous clowns, alien jump scares, rock stars, cheeky Fun Enforcers and cosplayers who wowed us.

We share our experiences and impressions of Comic-Con, how it has evolved through the years, the standout activations and the experiential trends to watch. Plus, we highlight the exclusive swag we stood hours in line to snag and our predictions for the event’s future.

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Have an idea for an episode of Event Peeps? Let us know. To sponsor an episode and feature your company on this page, reach out to Alex Chung, achung@accessintel.com.

The post Podcast: EM Editors Take San Diego Comic-Con 2025 appeared first on Event Marketer.

Justin Breton, Head of Brand Marketing Innovation, Walmart

Justin Breton is all about embracing the unknown and taking a chance on new technologies. In his role as head of brand marketing innovation at Walmart, he oversees content-to-commerce initiatives that engage with customers in meaningful ways and get them thinking differently about Walmart—not just as a retailer, but also as a digital destination.

The brand has evolved its digital strategy by venturing into shoppable livestreams with Walmart Live and launching activations in gaming platforms Roblox, Spatial and Zepeto. Last month, Walmart created its own Minecraft Java server, Walmart Skyward, capturing the momentum around “A Minecraft Movie,” which was released in theaters this week.

According to Breton, it’s a chapter-based experience built exclusively for the Minecraft fandom, where players embark on a space adventure to find a lost friend. While Walmart Skyward is not an official Minecraft service, the online activation, with an accompanying Discord server, shows Walmart is stepping further into gaming to connect with the next generation of consumers beyond its brick-and-mortar presence.

In this episode, Breton, who was featured in Event Marketer’s inaugural class of The Watchlist, delves into Walmart’s virtual innovations and its expansion into emerging platforms and experiences. He shares how brands can explore the intersection of physical and digital as they look to add virtual extensions to marketing campaigns and scale community engagement. Plus, he takes us through his career that’s “been a little bit of a zig and a zag,” starting in magazines out of college, moving into tech startups and finally landing at Walmart.

“We have identified partners and opportunities that really allow for us to connect with consumers, specifically a younger demographic, where they are and bring commerce to them in a way that feels native and seamless,” Breton says. “This also feels like a pivotal moment in my career, where we are scratching the surface of what could be, and I’m excited to see how it performs, what we learn, how we can use those learnings to be better at what we’re trying to do.”

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Have an idea for an episode of Event Peeps? Let us know. To sponsor an episode and feature your company on this page, reach out to Alex Chung, achung@accessintel.com.

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Greg Wamsley, Mosaic North America, and Alyson Walker, Wasserman

The Event Peeps Podcast returns with part two of our look back on one of the year’s biggest events, the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. In this episode, we’re going inside Canada Olympic House, one of 30-plus hospitality houses organized by National Olympic Committees that popped up in the city to support athletes, their families and friends, brand partners, sponsors and fans.

Greg Wamsley, vp-operations and sustainability lead at Mosaic North America, shares details on the agency’s work with the Canadian Olympic Committee to design and produce Canada Olympic House, which gives athletes a home away from home and offers a meeting place for them to gather with loved ones and supporters. In addition to discussing the long lead times and procurement issues that come with working on a global, landmark event, Wamsley offers his take on the Paris 2024 experience, including its sustainability innovations and integration into historical venues.

Also featured in the episode is Alyson Walker, svp-brands and properties at Wasserman, who delves into one of the partner activations at Canada Olympic House, the Air Canada Flight Deck, and how it tied into the brand’s larger, multipronged Paris 2024 campaign that included athlete send-off and welcome-home airport celebrations, employee engagement moments and fan experiences.

“For this Games, Air Canada’s focus was really about every boarding pass as a connection. We worked on making sure [that narrative] weaved its way through each of those phases of the Games and how they showed up,” Walker says. “We really loved to focus on sharing the very best of Canada and, in this case, the world. Air Canada is a real connector of sport, culture and people.”

Work is already underway on the next Winter and Summer Olympics, and both Walker and Wamsley predict what’s to come in Milano-Cortina 2026 (how will high fashion come into play?) and Los Angeles 2028 (a showcase of tech and sustainability?). Milano-Cortina last month announced the official “Look of the Games,” grounded in “Italian spirit,” for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. It’ll be here before we know it. For now, enjoy this overview of the recent Summer Games.

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Have an idea for an episode of Event Peeps? Let us know. To sponsor an episode and feature your company on this page, reach out to Alex Chung, achung@accessintel.com.

The post Podcast: Inside Canada Olympic House and Air Canada’s Paris 2024 Campaign, with Mosaic and Wasserman appeared first on Event Marketer.

Jeff Handler, VP-Olympic and Paralympic Clients, and Dennis Jenders, Executive Strategy Director, GMR

The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games took the world by storm this summer. After the last Games in Tokyo had to go without spectators and were locked down due to pandemic restrictions, fans and brands returned with a renewed spirit of celebration and unity. Hundreds of event and experiential professionals were on the ground taking in the sights and sounds of the French capital, while making brand activations happen.

We tapped four pros to offer some insight on Paris during this exciting time, share what it was like to see the athletes in action, and offer their predictions for the 2026 Winter Olympics and 2028 Summer Olympics. For the first of two episodes, we spoke with Jeff Handler, vp-Olympic and Paralympic clients, and Dennis Jenders, executive strategy director, from GMR, an experience agency headquartered in Wisconsin. Paris 2024 marked GMR’s 19^th Olympic Games, where the agency represented 11 clients with 250 global and local staff on the ground.

Handler and Jenders discuss how brands tied their activations’ storytelling to the Games, how they enhanced the experience of athletes in the Olympic Village and how they stepped up their game since the Rio and Tokyo Summer Olympics.

More Event Peeps Episodes:

• • Podcast: Inside Canada Olympic House and Air Canada’s Paris 2024 Campaign
  • Podcast: The Evolving Music Festival Landscape, with Pavan Pardasani of TAO Group

“What is your content play here to maximize your investment, and when you’re on the ground, what are you doing to level up the storytelling to make sure that it is equal and equitable?” Jenders says. “I was surprised to see in practically every brand activation, Paralympics on an equal footing with the Olympics. It was great; it was special. It’s important for us to still, as marketers, push that narrative and ensure equity and equality all across the board.”

The conversation also delves into the importance of accessibility considerations, innovations in tech and social connectivity, takeovers of historic venues around Paris, and the momentum that is already moving forward to Milano-Cortina and L.A., plus the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Check out the second episode in our Olympics podcast series here.

Listen here:

Have an idea for an episode of Event Peeps? Let us know. To sponsor an episode and feature your company on this page, reach out to Alex Chung, achung@accessintel.com.

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