Ryan Glick writes about experiential marketing and leads work at CNC Agency (Coffee 'n Clothes), which creates brand experiences such as pop-ups, touring activations, and events. Glick's writing argues that these experiences should connect to content, customer relationships, and measurable outcomes beyond the event itself.
Ryan Glick is most useful for agency-led experiential campaigns that connect live events to content, retail, CRM and measurable outcomes.
Best for
Beauty brands planning repeatable multi-city pop-up tours with retail partners and product discovery.
Not for
Single-market one-night launch parties, production-only scopes, non-beauty brands, or personal creator sponsorship posts.
Key takeaways
A one-off event is one of the most fragile things a brand can buy.
Experiential should be built as infrastructure, not just a brief burst of attention.
Attendance should stop being the main measurement for experiential campaigns.
Check first: Confirm audience includes beauty brand decision-makers and ask for campaign results.
Main ideas
A one-off event is one of the most fragile things a brand can buy · Experiential should be built as infrastructure · Attendance should stop being the main measurement
Ryan Glick writes about experiential marketing and leads work at CNC Agency (Coffee ’n Clothes), which creates brand experiences including pop-ups, touring activations and events.
Their central argument is that an event should do more than create a brief burst of attention: it should connect to ongoing content, customer relationships, community and measurable outcomes.
In their Substack essay “The End of the Event Agency,” they describe Coffee ’n Clothes growing from an Instagram hashtag into a community, a café and an agency.
Their project posts show the range of that work, from a LANEIGE beauty lab touring with Sephora to an amika launch and roadshow connected to Ulta.
Readers interested in how physical brand experiences can keep producing value after an event will find their writing especially relevant.
Glick pairs a clear strategic claim with concrete examples, contrasting one-off events, whose attention can fade quickly, with assets such as content libraries, CRM and loyalty programs that can grow over time.
They apply that idea to real activations: the LANEIGE Wonder Lab repeated a recognizable hands-on format across cities and included Sephora bounce-backs, while the amika launch extended into a multi-city roadshow with product discovery and Ulta in-store demos.
Their five-trend post adds practical questions about when experiential enters campaign planning, who owns it, how to measure it beyond attendance, and whether a format can repeat.
The examples show how they think about connecting physical experiences to what comes next; ask for campaign results if those would affect your decision.
Ryan Glick argues that the events industry is selling the wrong unit of work.
Read more
A launch party or pop-up ends with little to show for it, while related investments—content libraries, CRM, loyalty programs and social followings—keep compounding.
The Substack essay proposes replacing one-off events with infrastructure: a connected system linking the physical moment to content, talent, earned media, CRM and community, so a four-hour activation keeps producing value for months instead of 48 hours.
The priorities are to measure more than attendance, bring experiential into campaign planning earlier, build formats that repeat and travel, and have agencies architect the system rather than simply produce the event.
Project posts show the approach in practice: one recognizable format repeated market to market, usually with a retail partner at each stop.
A one-off event is one of the most fragile things a brand can buy
Glick argues that the events business is built around a unit that no longer pays off: a specific moment, in a specific place, for a specific audience, with a beginning and an end.
Read more
The old return was press coverage, attendee posts, and a 48-hour boost.
In the essay's account, that world is gone: feeds are saturated, AI-generated content is everywhere, attention is fractured, and content has a shorter useful life.
Events compare unfavorably with the assets brands normally invest in: content libraries, CRM, loyalty programs, and social followings grow over time, while events usually evaporate.
The marketing value now sits in everything the moment makes possible, Glick writes, not in the moment itself.
The Substack essay 'The End of the Event Agency' sets compounding assets — content libraries, CRM, loyalty programs, social followings — against events, which 'usually don't' retain value. The shorter LinkedIn post repeats the comparison for readers who want the argument in two minutes.
This builds on an earlier bet rather than replacing it.
The essay recalls that during COVID, as the industry moved away from physical experiences, Coffee 'n Clothes bet the opposite way: in-person gathering would become more valuable, not less.
That bet turned out right.
The later claim is not that physical work is declining, but that a standalone event is the wrong thing to sell.
The proposed replacement for the standalone event is what Glick calls infrastructure: the architecture connecting each activation to what comes before and after it — content, talent, earned media, CRM, and community — so one moment keeps creating value for months.
Read more
The essay says the most interesting briefs already ask for 'a world' people can step into, with value before, during, and after the physical activation. The agency's clients have moved in this direction over roughly 18 months.
Glick lists the questions they use to test the model: How does the experience become a content engine?
How does it drive sales, sign-ups, or another measurable action?
How does the audience become a community?
How do we keep talking to people after they leave?
How does this physical moment connect to everything else the brand is already doing?
Glick argues that counting people in the room says nothing about what happened afterward, and that brands are getting more serious about what follows a visit.
Read more
The 2027 outlook post names search lift, sales, CRM, earned reach, and brand lift as metrics. The essay makes the same point from the planning side, asking how an experience drives a measurable action.
'Thousands of people in attendance sounds great in theory but then what?' the outlook post asks, before naming the metrics it expects to replace the headcount number.
The outlook post presents these as shifts to watch, not finished outcomes. It forecasts where budgets and decisions are heading; it does not report measured results from a campaign.
Experiential belongs earlier in campaign planning, and brands have not settled who owns it
Glick's outlook post says experiential budgets are growing, but identifies the more interesting change as internal: brand, comms, social, partnerships, and retail teams are all touching in-person work now.
Read more
That raises the question of who owns the strategy, budget, and measurement. Timing is changing, too: experiences are being considered alongside the rest of a campaign rather than assembled at the last minute from leftover budget, which Glick expects to produce better work.
The outlook post describes the change in practice: an experience no longer arrives as 'an add on when a brand decides to do an experience last minute with scraps of budget,' but is planned earlier with the rest of the campaign.
Brands will build repeatable in-person properties, and hospitality will merge into experiential
Two of Glick's five 2027 predictions point in the same direction.
Read more
First, brands will build repeatable formats that travel across cities and talent and get stronger each time they run.
Second, the lines between experiential, retail, and hospitality are disappearing, with cafes, dinners, hotels, lounges, food and beverage, service, and membership all counting as physical brand presence.
The outlook post sums it up: in-person work is 'getting a much bigger job.'
The essay traces Coffee 'n Clothes from an Instagram hashtag to a community to a cafe and then to CNC Agency, grounding Glick's interest in their own background. The hospitality overlap in the outlook post is a prediction, not a documented case.
The agency's job is to architect the system, not just produce the event
Production remains essential in Glick's account, but it is not enough for the model they describe.
Read more
The essay calls for strategy connecting physical to digital, content systems that extend an experience's life, talent and earned media built into the idea from the beginning, measurement beyond attendance, and CRM and community designed into the system rather than added afterward.
None of these pieces is revolutionary alone; the shift is to design them as one connected system from the start.
Glick expects brands to seek partners who can architect that system, not simply produce the event.
The amika launch for the Protector Collection is the clearest illustration: a two-night, circus-inspired takeover of a Beverly Hills estate with Mane Readings, stylist touch-ups, live performers, a Color Carousel, poolside space, cocktails, and gifting, followed by a roadshow to Chicago, Miami, and Austin with product discovery, samples, and games that pushed guests to Ulta Beauty for in-store demos.
One traveling format beats a new concept in every city
Across Glick's project posts, the recurring method is a portable format: a fixed set of interactions repeated in different markets, usually with a retail or partner destination attached at each stop, rather than a fresh concept rebuilt for every location.
Read more
Consistency is treated as an asset: the LANEIGE post stresses that every stop built on the same journey.
The LANEIGE Wonder Lab toured with Sephora from Disney Springs to Chicago, Sephora's SMC in Las Vegas, The Grove in Los Angeles, New York, and Miami, repeating the same lab journey of Cream Skin and Water Bank discovery, interactive games, sampling, giveaways, and Sephora bounce-backs. The Hanna Andersson custom Airstream applies the same idea at a smaller scale, moving from Mill Valley to Malibu Country Mart as part shop, part personalization studio.
An online brand needs a physical version, and two cultural moments can share one room
Two ideas recur in the project posts.
Read more
The first is translation: taking a brand people already know online and making it something they can walk into, with personalization as the reason to stop. The second is timing: anchoring an activation to a moment when two audiences a brand cares about are already gathered, rather than choosing between them.
For Hanna Andersson, a custom Airstream brought an online retailer into physical retail, and Glick notes that the project resonated personally as a parent.
For New York Fashion Week, CNC Agency partnered with '47 to take over Ace Bar in New York for the first football Sunday of the season.
Guests watched games, played pool and skee-ball, drank, and customized an Everyday Tee — fashion week and football, with no reason to choose.
This is the argument behind the project posts: what Ryan Glick thinks experiential marketing is doing wrong and what should replace it.
Read more
Read this first if you read only one thing.
Ryan Glick argues that the industry’s basic unit of work — a one-off event — no longer pays off.
The essay traces Coffee ’n Clothes from an Instagram hashtag to a café to CNC Agency, now described as 75+ people building experiences for brands including Uber, L’Oréal, Chanel, Walmart and Alix Earle, with Inc.
5000 recognition and three consecutive years on ADWEEK’s Fastest Growing Agencies list.
During COVID, the agency bet that in-person gathering would become more valuable, not less.
The central claim: events are uniquely fragile.
They happen, end and leave nothing behind, while content libraries, CRM, loyalty programs and social followings keep compounding.
The proposed replacement is what the essay calls infrastructure — one connected system in which a physical activation feeds content, talent, earned media, CRM and community, measured beyond attendance.
The essay also describes a shift over about eighteen months: clients began asking how an experience could become a content engine, drive a measurable action or turn an audience into a community.
The posts here end mid-sentence, so ask for the essay’s closing sections if you need its full conclusion.
For brands planning a campaign
For a multi-city beauty pop-up pitch, borrow this frame: position the tour as infrastructure, not a series of parties. Specify what each stop feeds — content library, retail traffic, CRM capture, community — and how you’ll measure results beyond headcount.
A two-minute version of the larger argument for readers who want the short form before committing to the essay.
Read more
This LinkedIn post distills the essay’s core comparison.
An event is a specific moment, in a specific place, for a specific audience; the old payoff was press coverage, attendee posts and a 48-hour boost.
Ryan Glick argues that world is gone: feeds are saturated, AI content is everywhere, attention is fractured and content has a shorter life, making a one-off event one of the most fragile things a brand can buy.
The post contrasts that with the assets brands typically invest in — content libraries, CRM, loyalty programs and social followings — which grow over time while events usually do not.
It closes by pointing readers to the newsletter essay.
For brands planning a campaign
A short client-facing rationale for extending a single activation, without circulating the full essay.
The clearest example here of a repeatable activation format travelling across cities with a retail partner — the closest match to a multi-city beauty brief.
Read more
Ryan Glick describes the LANEIGE Wonder Lab travelling across the country with Sephora: it started at Disney Springs and then ran in Chicago, at Sephora’s SMC in Las Vegas, The Grove in Los Angeles, New York and Miami.
Attendees explored Cream Skin and Water Bank through product discovery, interactive games, sampling and giveaways, with Sephora bounce-backs at each stop.
The post highlights how every stop built on the same playful lab journey and credits the CNC Agency (Coffee ’n Clothes) team.
For brands planning a campaign
Shows a touring-lab format working with a beauty brand and retail partner: one recognisable format, retail handoffs at each stop and a single journey repeated city to city rather than a new concept for each market.
A launch event paired with a roadshow and retail partner — see how one brand moment becomes a travelling series.
Read more
For the launch of amika’s Protector Collection, CNC Agency (Coffee ’n Clothes) turned a Beverly Hills estate into a two-night circus-inspired takeover: Mane Readings, stylist touch-ups, live performers, a Color Carousel, poolside space, cocktails and gifting.
The activation then travelled to Chicago, Miami and Austin with product discovery, samples and games, driving guests to Ulta Beauty for in-store demos.
Ryan Glick presents it as both a launch moment and a roadshow.
For brands planning a campaign
A template for pitching a flagship launch with a touring follow-up: the anchor event draws press and creators, while the roadshow drives discovery and retail traffic in additional markets.
The smallest-footprint example here shows how a digital-first brand can gain a physical presence without a permanent store.
Read more
Ryan Glick describes taking Hanna Andersson from online to offline with a custom Airstream that travelled from Mill Valley to Malibu Country Mart, operating as part shop and part personalisation studio. They note enjoying the project as a parent and credit the CNC Agency team.
For brands planning a campaign
For clients seeking a physical presence in several locations without a full pop-up build, a mobile retail and personalisation unit can maintain brand consistency as it moves between markets.
An example of combining two cultural moments in one event, for readers weighing timing and cultural relevance over scale.
Read more
For New York Fashion Week, CNC Agency (Coffee ’n Clothes) partnered with ’47 to take over Ace Bar in New York for the first football Sunday of the season.
Guests watched games, played pool and skee-ball, had drinks and customised an Everyday Tee.
Ryan Glick highlights the overlap: fashion week and football Sunday, with no need to choose between them.
For brands planning a campaign
A low-cost way to extend cultural reach: anchor an activation to a moment when two audiences a brand cares about are already gathered, and offer a customisation activity worth posting.
The most quotable short piece here, and the best starting point for Ryan Glick's current view of where experiential budgets and decisions are heading.
Read more
Ryan Glick lists five shifts to watch: brands clarifying who owns experiential strategy, budgets and measurement as brand, comms, social, partnerships and retail teams all touch physical activations; experiential entering campaign planning earlier, rather than as a last-minute add-on; success measured by search lift, sales, CRM, earned reach and brand lift, not just attendance; brands building repeatable IRL properties that travel across cities and talent and strengthen each time; and hospitality converging with experiential through cafés, dinners, hotels, lounges, food and beverage, service and membership. The common thread: in-person work is taking on a much bigger job.
For brands planning a campaign
A ready-made framework for a keynote or client session on experiential trends, and a proposal checklist: name the internal owner, place the work early in the campaign plan, propose measurement beyond attendance and offer a repeatable format.
Repeatable IRL properties and hospitality overlap2
Beauty sampling and product education at scale2
Experiential moving earlier into campaign planning and across brand teams1
Online-to-offline retail translation1
Cultural-calendar crossovers and customization1
Spectacle, talent, and earned-media moments1
Agency as architect of connected systems1
Multi-city activations with a repeatable format
Ryan Glick's posts show CNC Agency building touring experiences around a recognizable core that repeats at each stop.
Read more
The LANEIGE Wonder Lab moved from Disney Springs to Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, and Miami, keeping the same hands-on lab journey of product discovery, interactive games, sampling, and giveaways.
Amika's Protector Collection launch began with a two-night Beverly Hills takeover, then traveled to Chicago, Miami, and Austin with product discovery, samples, and games.
Hanna Andersson's custom Airstream moved from Mill Valley to Malibu Country Mart as a shop and personalization studio.
A portable format: a fixed set of interactions repeated in different markets, often with a retail or partner destination attached.
For brands planning a campaign
A strong fit for brands that need one campaign to run consistently across several markets, especially when the goal includes retail traffic, sampling, or repeated product discovery.
In the Substack essay, Ryan Glick argues that selling events as isolated moments no longer works because feeds are saturated, attention is fractured, and content life is short.
Read more
The essay describes the new unit of work as infrastructure: a system connecting the physical activation to content, talent, earned media, CRM, and community so a four-hour moment keeps creating value for months.
A related LinkedIn post contrasts one-off events that evaporate with brand investments such as content libraries, CRM, loyalty programs, and social followings that retain value.
The essay says the most interesting briefs now ask for 'a world' with value before, during, and after the physical moment.
Ryan Glick tests this model with questions such as: How does the experience become a content engine?
How does it drive sales or sign-ups?
How does the audience become a community?
How do we keep talking to people after they leave?
How does the physical moment connect to everything else the brand is doing?
For brands planning a campaign
Evaluate Ryan Glick for briefs where the event needs to feed content, community, and measurement after the room clears—not just deliver production quality or attendance.
A 2027 outlook post lists attendance stopping as the main KPI as one of five shifts Ryan Glick is watching.
Read more
The post says brands are getting more serious about search lift, sales, CRM, earned reach, and brand lift—and about what happens after someone leaves. The Substack essay makes the same point, asking how an experience drives sales, sign-ups, or another measurable action.
The outlook post presents these as shifts Ryan Glick is watching, not as completed campaign results.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful for brands that need an experience tied to downstream metrics. A proposal should define what is measured after the event and how the physical moment connects to sales, CRM, or earned reach.
Experiential moving earlier into campaign planning and across brand teams
Ryan Glick's 2027 outlook notes that experiential budgets are growing, but the more interesting change is inside brand organizations: brand, comms, social, partnerships, and retail teams are all touching IRL now.
Read more
The post says experiential is no longer a last-minute add-on with leftover budget; it is being considered earlier alongside the rest of the campaign. Glick frames the open question as who owns experiential strategy, budget, and measurement on the brand side.
For brands planning a campaign
A good fit for brands that want an experience partner involved at the planning stage, when the physical moment can connect to comms, social, retail, and partnerships instead of being bolted on later.
The 2027 outlook predicts brands will start building IRL properties: repeatable formats that travel across cities and talent and get stronger each time.
Read more
It also points to hospitality and experiential overlapping through cafes, dinners, hotels, lounges, food and beverage, service, and membership. The Substack essay's background in a coffee community that became a cafe and then an agency supports this interest in spaces with ongoing presence.
The hospitality-overlap observation is a forecast from the outlook post, not a documented campaign case.
For brands planning a campaign
Relevant for brands considering an ongoing platform rather than a single event, such as a recurring dinner series, a traveling brand space, or a hospitality-led activation with community as a goal.
A post on Hanna Andersson describes taking a brand people know online and bringing it to life IRL.
Read more
CNC Agency used a custom Airstream that traveled from Mill Valley to Malibu Country Mart, serving as part shop and part personalization studio. Ryan Glick notes that the parent perspective made the activation personally resonant.
For brands planning a campaign
A practical approach for DTC and retail brands that want a physical expression of their online identity, especially when product personalization and mobile retail can travel to existing shopping destinations.
Ryan Glick's posts show beauty launches built around hands-on discovery.
Read more
For LANEIGE, the Wonder Lab turned Korean skin science into an interactive journey with product discovery, games, sampling, giveaways, and Sephora bounce-backs across multiple cities.
For Amika's Protector Collection, the launch included stylist touch-ups, product discovery, samples, games, and a push to Ulta Beauty for in-store demos.
Both examples connect the experience to a retail partner and keep the product at the center.
For brands planning a campaign
Strong evidence for beauty brands that need sampling, education, and retail traffic in one campaign. The format also suits multi-market launches where the same product story must work in different cities.
For NYFW, CNC Agency teamed with '47 to take over Ace Bar in New York City for the first football Sunday of the season.
Read more
The event brought fashion week and football together, with guests watching games, playing pool and skee-ball, drinking, and customizing an Everyday Tee.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful for brands looking to connect two cultural moments or create a casual, participatory event with a customizable product takeaway.
The Amika launch turned a Beverly Hills estate into a two-night, circus-inspired takeover featuring Mane Readings, stylist touch-ups, live performers, a Color Carousel, poolside hangs, cocktails, and gifting.
Read more
The event then traveled to Chicago, Miami, and Austin, where it offered product discovery, samples, and games. The format pairs a high-production launch with a broader touring activation.
For brands planning a campaign
A fit for brands seeking a visually spectacular launch with talent involvement and content potential, then extending the story into additional markets.
The Substack essay argues that production remains essential but is not enough for the new unit of work.
Read more
The model calls for strategy connecting physical to digital, content systems that extend an experience’s life, talent and earned media built in from the beginning, measurement beyond attendance, and CRM and community designed into the system rather than added afterward. Ryan Glick describes the agency’s role as architecting the system around the physical moment, not simply producing the event.
For brands planning a campaign
Evaluate Ryan Glick for briefs that require the agency to coordinate strategy, content, talent, measurement, and community design around an experience—not just deliver production.
Glick says they have spent the last decade running Coffee 'n Clothes, which became CNC Agency, an experience agency of 75-plus people.
Read more
The agency's client work featured in the posts focuses mostly on beauty and retail: the LANEIGE Wonder Lab tour with Sephora, amika's Protector Collection launch and traveling Mane Act, a Hanna Andersson Airstream pop-up, and a New York Fashion Week takeover with '47.
Their Substack essay also names Uber, L'Oréal, Chanel, Walmart and Alix Earle among the brands the agency builds experiences for.
None of these posts carry a sponsored-content or affiliate disclosure, and they do not describe investments or portfolio relationships.
Coffee 'n Clothes (CNC Agency)
Owned business
Glick says they have spent the last decade running Coffee 'n Clothes, which began as an Instagram hashtag, became a cafe and then grew into CNC Agency, now a 75-plus-person team building brand experiences.
CNC Agency took the LANEIGE Wonder Lab across the country with Sephora, starting at Disney Springs and continuing through Chicago, Sephora SMC in Las Vegas, The Grove in LA, New York and Miami.
Read more
The repeatable lab journey featured product discovery, games, sampling and giveaways.
To launch amika's Protector Collection, CNC Agency turned a Beverly Hills estate into a two-night circus-inspired takeover featuring Mane Readings, stylist touch-ups, performers and gifting.
Read more
The agency then took The Mane Act to Chicago, Miami and Austin for product discovery, samples and games.
CNC Agency moved Hanna Andersson from online to offline with a custom Airstream that traveled from Mill Valley to Malibu Country Mart, serving as both a shop and personalization studio.
For New York Fashion Week, CNC Agency teamed up with '47 to take over Ace Bar in New York for the season's first football Sunday, with game watching, pool, skee-ball and customization of an Everyday Tee.
Ryan Glick's work is easiest to follow through one central argument and its practical examples.
Read more
Start with the Substack essay 'The End of the Event Agency' for the case that events should be built as infrastructure — systems that connect a physical moment to content, talent, earned media, CRM, and community.
Then read the LinkedIn posts to see how that argument plays out in practice: the LANEIGE Wonder Lab with Sephora, Amika's Protector Collection launch with Ulta Beauty, Hanna Andersson's traveling Airstream, and the '47 takeover during New York Fashion Week.
The 2027 outlook post lays out where they expect experiential budgets, ownership, and measurement to move next.
Readers interested in brand experience strategy, retail activations, or the changing role of agencies will find recurring themes in the tags.
Both write about the difference between producing events and creating experiences that change behavior.
Read more
Sasha Solonin argues that logistics are table stakes and the real work is emotion, content, community, and measurable impact beyond attendance — themes Ryan Glick also treats as central.
Sasha Solonin writes from the perspective of an experiential agency owner, diagnosing the mistakes brands make; Ryan Glick argues at the level of the industry's unit of work, urging brands to replace one-off events with connected infrastructure.
Both question the separation between digital and physical brand building.
Read more
Clivia Saracino writes that brand identity is built through repeated physical encounters, and that curation carries a human point of view personalisation cannot replicate; Ryan Glick makes a related case for physical experiences that keep producing value after the moment.
Clivia Saracino focuses on fashion and retail brand strategy, wholesale, and the distinction between curation and personalisation; Ryan Glick focuses on designing and operating multi-market activations and the agency's role in that system.
For a multi-city beauty pop-up pitch, Ryan Glick’s LinkedIn audience may offer a professional channel for an announcement or keynote, but the posts don’t show whether followers include beauty-brand decision-makers.
Read more
The LinkedIn profile shows 32,613 followers as of October 7, 2026.
Their posts offer practical case notes from CNC Agency work: the Laneige Wonder Lab tour with Sephora, The Mane Act for Amika across Beverly Hills, Chicago, Miami, and Austin, a Hanna Andersson Airstream tour, and a ’47 NYFW football activation.
Ask for recent audience survey results or platform demographics covering beauty and retail brand marketers, plus recent performance for comparable multi-city activation posts.
No subscriber count is published for the Substack feed, so the newsletter audience can’t be sized.
LinkedIn followers
32,613
LinkedIn profile record associated with the posts · 2026-10-07
Ryan Glick’s posts describe experiential campaigns created by CNC Agency (Coffee ’n Clothes), including a LANEIGE lab tour with Sephora, amika’s traveling launch experience, a Hanna Andersson Airstream shop and personalization studio, and a ’47 takeover of a New York bar.
Read more
In their essay on the future of event agencies, they argue that a live activation should start a longer-running system, connecting the in-person moment to content, customer relationships, community, and measurable outcomes. The examples describe agency work, not a personal creator sponsorship program.
The work described includes two beauty campaigns built on exactly that shape.
The LANEIGE Wonder Lab carried one hands-on lab journey from Disney Springs through Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York and Miami, with product discovery, interactive games, sampling, giveaways and Sephora bounce-backs at each stop.
The amika Protector Collection launch paired a two-night Beverly Hills takeover with a roadshow through Chicago, Miami and Austin, driving guests to Ulta Beauty.
Both use a fixed format that repeats city to city, connect the activation to a retail partner, and put product discovery at the centre.
The stated approach also matches the likely goals of a campaign aimed at beauty consumers: a physical activation should feed content, talent, earned media, CRM and community, and attendance should not be the main KPI.
For a beauty client, that means designing the tour as a platform, not a set of separate parties.
Ryan Glick's posts show agency campaign work rather than a personal creator sponsorship offer.
The audience information lists 32,613 LinkedIn followers but no breakdown by employer, role or category; ask for that breakdown to assess whether the audience includes beauty brand decision-makers.
When to choose a specialist
A materially different activation — a single-market, one-night launch party for a non-beauty brand, scoped as production only, planned late in the campaign cycle, and measured by attendance and press coverage — is a poor fit.
Read more
It runs against the position set out in the essay and the 2027 outlook post: a one-off event is one of the most fragile things a brand can buy; experiential should enter the activation plan early rather than as a last-minute add-on; and attendance should not be the main KPI.
A production-only scope also removes the strategy, content, talent and measurement work the essay describes as the reason to bring in an agency.
Separately, a request to book Ryan Glick personally as a paid creator posting sponsored content is not supported by their posts, which describe agency campaigns and industry commentary rather than personal sponsorship formats, terms or an inquiry route.
Ask whether they offer personal creator sponsorships and, if so, what the terms and booking route are.
A worked campaign example
Worked angle for the multi-city beauty brief: sell a travelling lab, not a series of parties.
Anchor it with a two-night flagship in one market that carries the press, creator and talent moment, as the amika launch did.
Then repeat the same recognisable product journey — guided discovery, a small interactive game, sampling, gifting — in four or five markets, each attached to a named retail partner with a bounce-back offer, as the LANEIGE tour did.
Plan content capture at every stop, including a touch-up or personalisation takeaway worth posting, so the tour builds a content library instead of a stack of recap decks.
Capture a sign-up at the sampling step and agree the measured actions up front: retail redemption, search lift, earned reach, sign-ups, rather than headcount.
Keep the format repeatable so the brand can bring it back rather than reinventing it per city.
For the keynote, the five 2027 shifts Ryan Glick lists — internal ownership of experiential, earlier entry into the brief, KPIs beyond attendance, repeatable IRL properties, and hospitality overlap — give a ready spine, with the LANEIGE and amika tours as worked examples.
Proposal next step: confirm markets and retail partners, name the measured action, and specify what each stop feeds before production is scoped; request audience demographics and comparable campaign results.
Choose Sasha Solonin when the beauty client wants one flagship activation that has to land emotionally and produce shareable content, and wants a producer who leads with strategy and psychology rather than logistics.
Read more
Their stated test — what do you want people to do after they experience this? — is the question the multi-city beauty brief should answer before choosing a format.
Their practice is described as designing for that behaviour change, curating the right attendees, and measuring impact beyond attendance.
This is the stronger alternative when the campaign is one high-stakes moment that must change how people feel and act, and the client would rather have one team own creative, content capture and measurement for that moment than run a travelling format.
The tradeoff is repeatability and retail attachment.
The posts describe an event practice — over 400 events produced, every event treated as a content moment, logistics called table stakes — but show no repeatable multi-city tour or named retail partner receiving guests at each stop.
A brand that needs the same product journey rebuilt in five markets, each pushing to a retail partner for redemption, gets less direct evidence of that specific machine from Ryan Glick's posts than from the LANEIGE and amika tours.
If the client's priority is one emotionally strong launch moment, that gap matters less; if the priority is a format the brand can repeat and hand to retail, it matters more.
Choose Marko Stupar when the client's need moves off the street and onto the commerce layer around a beauty launch.
Read more
The posts examine the change itself: Sephora piloting monthly product drops on TikTok Shop ahead of its own site and shelves, what that does to creator commission competition and to how much buyers will spend in the feed, and OpenAI placing ChatGPT Ads inside Shopify and HubSpot with native catalogue, attribution and product data feeding the ad. For a client whose bottleneck is where the product sells online, which creators hold the launch, and whether the product feed can answer buyer objections, this is the better-informed alternative — a launch can be run as a creator-led exclusive on a marketplace before the brand's own site gets stock.
The tradeoff is that the material reviewed is platform-change analysis and testing commentary, not production.
There is no documented activation, city-by-city execution, on-site content capture or measurement of an in-person campaign.
Ask for a production partner if the plan still needs a physical moment.
There is also a timing risk the posts name: the advantage they describe is a short window before cheap inventory normalises and creator pricing rises, making the tactic a test to move on quickly rather than a durable programme.
Choose Clivia Saracino when the client's real question is how a beauty brand should hold physical presence across markets, not how to run a tour.
Read more
The posts argue that physical retail and wholesale are where brand equity accumulates, name brands that took the slower path alongside performance marketing, and separate curation from personalisation — curation carries a point of view, is edited and sometimes withholds, and stays human, while geo-targeted storefronts are becoming table stakes. That is the better alternative when the client needs a multi-market retail strategy or a permanent physical presence, and a written case for what should travel digitally and what should stay physical before committing budget to any activation.
The tradeoff is that this is strategic argument rather than campaign delivery.
The posts show no activation build, city-by-city production, content capture plan or campaign KPI measurement.
Ask for a producer if the client needs an opening in several markets on a campaign calendar, with retail bounce-backs and measured sign-ups.
The production model described in the campaign-fit section is still the closer match; this alternative would sit alongside it as positioning rather than replace it.
Ryan Glick's posts include one Substack essay and six LinkedIn posts.
The essay, "The End of the Event Agency," carries the central argument about events, infrastructure and measurement, and ends mid-sentence, so its closing sections are not reflected here.
The posts describe agency activations for LANEIGE with Sephora, amika with Ulta Beauty, Hanna Andersson and '47, plus a shorter post restating the essay's case and a 2027 outlook post.
The individual posts do not state dates, and they do not state engagement figures or audience demographics beyond an account-level follower count.
Similar-creator comparisons draw on posts by Sasha Solonin and Clivia Saracino.
Company affiliations, client relationships and project details are described only as Ryan Glick's own posts describe them; the posts do not state campaign results.
