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When volume is cheap, “more” stops being the edge.

So what makes you different?

I'm digging into that on a panel at RevGenius's Revolt called The New Marketing Moat: If Everyone Has AI, What Makes You Different?

I’ll be talking and very possibly arguing with some of my favorite people: Mark Kilens (CMO, EasyLlama) and Natalie Marcotullio (Head of Growth & Marketing, Navattic).

Our panel goes live Oct. 15 at 3:35 p.m. ET. It's free and virtual, so grab a seat and come heckle me in the chat.

Save your seat and make your content memorable→

I worked with them for five months, developing over 20 breakout sessions for 1,300+ attendees and MC’d the main stage.

I was the content guy brought in to elevate the quality and energy of the event.

But as I'm reflecting on it, I realized most of the best advice I gave them wasn't really about events. It was about how to wow their audience, win mindshare, and put out content so good that it made other finance events feel subpar.

And we did. The event was a huge success, and the feedback was positive — from CFOs in attendance to Ramp’s executives.

So if you want content so good it makes your competitors envy you, makes your CMO adore you, and has your CEO asking if you can take on more responsibility (not that people want that, but you get the idea)…

Here are the top five things I told them.

As soon as you press “publish,” you've entered the attention economy.

And you’re either playing, winning, or dominating. I want to dominate.

Ramp is a great example. They launched an accounts receivable product, and one way they promoted it was by having two of their social team create an AI rap parody video of the co-founders.

That's not boring.

They also did a Broadway musical at OnRamp.

That's not boring, either.

But when it came to the event content, there was some hesitation to lean into that vibe. So I pushed them to balance “buttoned-up” sessions with more casual and relatable topics, like my personal favorite — How TF Do I Use AI?: What to Automate vs. What Needs You.

Treat your events like entertainment people will talk about, not just education.

Speaking of…

Entertaining your audience starts with how you build the thing.

The common way to open sessions is, "Hey, this is Devin Reed. He's the CEO of The Reeder…" followed by a long, dry bio.

Then people start by talking about how great their product is. What's supposed to be a thought leadership conversation turns into "how do you use our product?" and basically becomes a case study.

It sucks.

We've experienced it as attendees and as marketers running these events. And even when you've prepped your speakers over and over again, sometimes they go rogue and end up pitching.

The other trap is going straight into the solution. What did you do, how did it work, and what was the impact?

That's not a story. A story has to start with some sort of problem and tension.

For the How TF Do I Use AI? session, the easy version would've been "10 ways I use AI as a controller in the finance department."

But that's just information. Information is cheap, and cheap is typically boring.

Instead, I wanted Brock (main speaker) to take me through it. Help me understand the time you realized you were unprepared.

I want that emotional realization. Maybe it was in a meeting. Maybe it was walking his dog. Maybe he read a Twitter post that made him realize, holy shit, if I don't figure this out, maybe I will be replaced.

That tension, that pain, that problem is what's relatable. It grabs their attention early and has them lean in.

Then you look for the pressure valve. Now that we've built up all this pressure and tension, how do we release it? What was the first thing you did? Why that one? How did that happen?

Brock went from, for lack of a better phrase, incompetent and not confident to competent and confident. That's what everyone in finance wants when it comes to AI, because they're scared their job is going to be replaced. They're trying to find ways to keep their job or become more valuable, to become AI-fluent.

That's what that session was about. It wasn't about how much information I could dump on you about using AI in finance.

As a result, the room was packed with standing room only.

Then I did my best to do that 20+ times across the event.

Your audience doesn't want 10 tips. They want to hear problems, pressure, and tactics (in that order).

A great story only works if the person telling it doesn't freeze.

Most of the best stories at OnRamp came from people who don't speak for a living. One moderator told me flat out she was "not a public speaker… [I’m an] accounting nerd."

So I tell first-time speakers the same few things over and over.

Make it genuinely easy for your speakers. That's the job.

Even confident speakers can get sunk by a bad format. Panels are the worst offender.

I'm usually bored watching a panel, and I keep getting hooked anyway. There's a great promise in the title, and a logo or a title or two where I'm like, "Oh yeah, I'd like to hear how they did that."

The problem is, you get to the panel and two things happen.

One, it's usually an executive or leader so high up that they don't actually know the work. Their answers aren't those of a specialist. They're an executive too far removed to be helpful, so I don't really learn anything.

Two, you've got two or three really smart people you'd love access to. I'd love to hear them talking to each other. Instead, it's moderator to person one, person one to moderator, moderator to person two. Now you're getting three tiny interviews at the price of one good one. You're not really getting anything.

That's where we've lost the plot.

So my one best piece of advice to OnRamp moderators was to get some crossfire going. It makes your job easier, and it makes the conversation better.

Put two people who know the work in conversation with each other, and get out of the way.

Which brings me to my own job on that stage.

When I was preparing to MC, I didn't go study the standard. I leaned into my personality, which is the reason they hired me, and went and looked at comedians who own the stage.

I prepped by watching Eddie Murphy, not Steve Jobs. I spent a month watching stand-up — Chappelle, Caitlin Peluffo, Nikki Glaser — because tech events don't need more black turtlenecks.

A comedian has to hold a room for an hour without slides or a product to hide behind. If they lose you, they know it. You know it. And winning an audience back is nearly impossible. (Here's everything I learned if you want more.)

Events need your personality. Play to it instead of playing it safe.

If you're running an event, a webinar, or posting a single LinkedIn post this quarter, use these.

None of them are really about the stage. They’re about winning over your audience.

P.S. Know someone who wants to create better content? Forward this to them.

Holler at you next Saturday,
Devin

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Pen by Devin Reed​
​Founder, The Reeder​

Follow me on LinkedIn | YouTube | Instagram | TikTok

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