The entertainment industry and the public relations business both thrive on relationships and traffic in social currency. It’s one of the many reasons a platform such as Stage 32 exists—it’s a wonderful place to network and share creative ideas and experiences. The mass adoption of Artificial intelligence isn’t likely to change the importance of relationships. Instead, my belief is that it will make growing important and authentic relationships significantly more valuable. We’re already seeing that the power AI has to summarize content is already shifting how we consume and interact with information. It’s rapidly changing how we—as an audience—share by word of mouth.

In our agency, we’re choosing to use AI to help as we continue to increase our focus on building stronger relationships through in-person events and engagement.

Attend Industry Events Regularly

In-person industry events offer the opportunity to create immersive and memorable experiences. They’re also important venues for understanding who the current and emerging industry leaders are, how the industry is shifting, and importantly, how tastes are changing.

Whether you live near or outside an industry hub, we suggest making a concerted effort to regularly attend festivals, conferences, media events, and exhibitions. If your budget is tight, consider innovative ways to maximize your event schedules. For example, attend smaller regional and genre festivals that host exceptional industry panels.

AI can help you build and organize a potential yearly event attendance schedule and help you set a budget. AI-powered with internet search capabilities can help you find filmmaking and networking events in particular niche categories or specific regions and, importantly, help you filter out and rank them based on criteria you set—such as free to attend or a fee to attend up to a certain amount.

Curate & Host Memorable Experiences

Independent filmmakers have a lot of self-direction and initiative. Many can also emulate the studio model a bit by planning and hosting their own in-person events and experiences.

For example, consider working with a publicity team to invite select media and social influencers to your set or filming location. Work with a PR team on ways to engage your talent at events.

You can also look for ingenious and authentic ways to support other independent filmmakers. Are there opportunities to cross-promote your work? Are there ways to combine your efforts? Our team actively looks for ways to link up our clients.

When working with clients on their events, we’ve used AI-powered tools to help put together project management tools such as event to-do lists, create event schedules, organize data for event guest lists, create invitations, send event reminders, generate event inspo boards, as well as generate other important event planning ideas.

Consider hosting your own industry party and inviting other filmmakers and talent. You can use AI-powered tools to help brainstorm interactive and immersive publicity tactics that go further than step-and-repeat banners and carpets—ones that create audience involvement. If executed well, such experiences can lead to more industry connections, in-depth coverage, and fan engagement.

Be Active In Online Communities & Professional Virtual Cohorts

Communities like Stage 32 are a great way to connect when you can’t meet in person. They’re awesome for sharing ideas and growing important connections. They’re also a great way to find out who else will be at the in-person events you’re attending and to plan ways to support each other ahead of and during events.

We’ve sourced communities to connect with others who may have leads on cost-effective lodging and other travel amenities. We’ve sourced communities for events that would be a good fit for our clients to support. We’ve also sourced communities to help identify important influencers that may fit with a particular client project or need.

We’re using AI tools to nurture some of these relationships by helping us track our interactions, brainstorm new topics to discuss, and keep track of others' projects and work.

AI Tools Can Help Nurture Relationships Offline Too

In our work, we’re using AI tools to help nurture authentic relationships, which seems counterintuitive but can work wonders when pairing the digital with physical items. We’ve learned that physical items can stand out in a world ruled by digital interaction.

We’ve prompted AI tools to create and source client-themed gift baskets. After campaigns, we’ve used AI to generate a lot of thank-you cards to send out. For example, we’ve created AI prompts to help our team write individualized and custom thank-you notes at scale—about 125 at a time. Then, whenever possible, we print them out on cards and mail them—using AI tools to help organize and format items for mailing.

Final Thoughts

As AI continues to grow, it cannot replace the power of human connection. For filmmakers and content creators, particularly those in the Stage 32 community, in-person opportunities are an essential part of building genuine relationships and creating memorable experiences. Creative use of AI-driven tactics can enhance your in-person experiences and efforts. Embracing the best of both the digital and physical worlds will ensure you and your work resonate in an increasingly digital landscape.

Let's hear your thoughts in the comments below!

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