The Future of Event Marketing: Interview with Mike Barbeau

At Leap Event Technology, we have long positioned ourselves as more than just a technology provider for live events. With a portfolio that spans ticketing, data, and fan engagement, we’ve steadily evolved into a strategic partner for event organizers navigating an increasingly complex marketing landscape. That evolution took a decisive step forward with the recent recruitment of three marketing leaders: Mike Barbeau, Joe Hix, and Erik Hostetler. This move underscored Leap’s commitment to not just keeping pace with event marketing trends, but leading them. As Leap’s Senior Vice President of Strategy in Marketing Solutions, Barbeau shared with us his thoughts on current marketing trends and how Leap is positioning to help clients succeed within this landscape.

A Builder’s Mindset: Why Barbeau Chose Leap

For Barbeau, the decision to join Leap was rooted in people and purpose as much as it was in opportunity. After decades working with globally recognized brands, he reached a point where the quality of the people he collaborated with mattered more than anything else.

When he initially connected with Leap, it seemed almost too good to be true – a company filled with innovative, driven people working with some of the most compelling brands in live events. Best of all, Leap offered something Barbeau and his team value deeply: the chance to build. “The biggest thing for us is we’re builders [and] we wanted to build something bigger,” he noted. In light of this, Leap has given them full autonomy to create a marketing service offering designed to become a true growth engine for clients.

Why Events Demand a Different Marketing Playbook

What excites Barbeau most about leading Leap’s marketing services is the unique nature of the events industry itself. Event marketing stands apart from traditional product marketing by offering a clear and tangible measure of success. “At the end of the day, there’s [an] arena that is either full or not full,” stated Barbeau. “And that’s the cool part of the events.” That environment creates both urgency and opportunity, allowing marketers to test, learn, and adapt far more quickly than in many other industries.

It also creates space for Leap to play a more consultative role with clients, moving beyond simply executing requests to actively guiding strategy based on what is working from the data. For Barbeau, that shift is about more than just driving better results. It’s about building careers, fostering talent, and creating an environment where people can grow alongside the clients they serve.

Challenging the Status Quo in Digital Event Marketing

At the heart of Leap’s marketing philosophy is a clear understanding of the challenges event marketers face today. Many teams are stuck in patterns built on habits rather than creative risk-taking. This means sending the same emails, spending on the same paid ads, and repeating tactics because they’ve always been done that way.

The problem isn’t that marketers are doing everything wrong; it’s that they aren’t willing to try something new that could be “more right,” as Barbeau put it. While doing the same strategies may deliver incremental gains to a business for now, he emphasized that “the status quo is always going to fail eventually”. Leap’s approach is built around helping clients – like the Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Roots – stay ahead of that curve. This includes testing new ideas, learning from failure, and applying proven successes across its broad client base.

The Shift Towards Convergence in Marketing

Those shifts in consumer behavior are fundamentally reshaping event marketing strategy, by moving away from volume-based marketing (i.e., the more ads, the better) to a more thoughtful, data-driven approach. “I think the best event marketers are going to be doing less communication and spending less money to get more return on their investment,” he noted.Leap is prioritizing relevance, timing, and personalization in its content, recognizing that audiences only respond to communications when they are useful and timely. According to Barbeau, it’s an approach centered around one key theme: convergence. That means aligning email, paid media, and all other marketing channels into a cohesive plan that prioritizes impact over output, even when that runs counter to traditional revenue models built on sheer execution volume.

Data as Leap’s Superpower for Events

This philosophy is deeply tied to Leap’s differentiator in the market: data. With access to tens of millions of ticket buyer records and engagement touch points across industries, Leap operates from a vantage point few can match. Thanks to this huge database of ticket sales, Barbeau stated, “We know how the world of ticket buying works.” That cross-pollination allows Leap to provide proven marketing advice to its clients, identifying what works in one vertical, understanding what won’t translate to another, and tailoring strategies accordingly. To this end, Barbeau added, “We are now trying to be more of a consultative force in the services industry in events.” In a world where marketing is increasingly shaped by data rather than instinct alone, that breadth of perspective is a powerful advantage. 

That consultative mindset is reinforced internally through close collaboration between Barbeau and Leap’s other leaders. The dynamic is intentionally built on open communication, daily collaboration, and a shared belief that the best ideas can come from anywhere. By combining pragmatic business thinking, deep technical expertise, and bold experimentation, the team is able to deliver powerful solutions that connect strategy, technology, and storytelling in meaningful ways.

Leading the Charge in Event Marketing

Leap’s consultative approach is more than just a business model; it’s a commitment to building lasting partnerships. By leveraging unparalleled data and challenging the norm, Leap empowers clients to build stronger, more meaningful connections with their audiences. By investing in forward-thinking marketing services with Barbeau and his team, our company has made its goals and ambitions clear. Leap is not only staying ahead of the curve, but actively defining it.