Earlier this year, three million people tried to get a ticket to a beauty expo. There were 3,000 available. They sold out in minutes.

Ulta Beauty World took over a convention center in Orlando. Sephora built a touring event that now spans five continents, selling out every single stop.

Two brands fighting for the same customer. Both betting on live experience.

These are not niche happenings. They are a sign that we, as associations, cannot afford to keep ignoring.

I have sat through enough panel sessions to know we have been running the same playbook forever. The phones come out. The energy drops. And we keep telling ourselves it is a content problem. But the real problem is the assumption that delivering information is the same thing as creating an experience. It is not.

The brands getting this right are asking a different question altogether. Not what do we want to deliver? But what do we want our attendees to feel, do, and become? That changes everything.

Two Beauty Leaders. Two Different Philosophies.

Ulta and Sephora sell essentially the same products. But their event strategies are vastly different, and both deserve attention.

Ulta goes big and loud, with a festival designed to make everyone feel like they belong. Sephora is deliberate, curated for a specific market and sold out before most people even know it is happening. One calls itself an immersive beauty expo. The other is a membership experience disguised as an event. Both work but for very different reasons.

I got to witness Sephora’s model firsthand, as my nieces dragged my sister to SEPHORiA in Rio de Janeiro. Two teenagers on a mission, pulling a grown adult through the doors of a beauty event they had been anticipating for weeks. My sister—a savvy woman with a finance background—coughed up serious cash for those tickets without blinking. When was the last time a member’s kid begged them to attend your conference? When was the last time a member paid without needing to be convinced?

There is a difference between a member and a superfan. It is not loyalty. It is experience design.

In times like these, associations need both instincts. The big tent moment that reminds everyone why they belong and the intimate touchpoint that makes your die-hard members feel seen. Right now, most of us have neither.

On Professional Development: Dreamforce Changed the Standard

The problem was never the panel format. It was the assumption that watching equals learning.

Dreamforce grew from a few thousand attendees to one of the largest tech conferences in the world. The detail that surprises first-timers: your registration includes a certification exam. On-site. You can leave with a new credential on your LinkedIn before you board your flight home.

Some people figured that out fast. In a Reddit thread about Dreamforce certifications, someone described sitting for four exams at a single event. Their reason? The exam room was "a nice relaxing change from the chaos of Dreamforce."

That's not a side feature. That's a design outcome nobody put on the agenda.

A colleague went for the first time last year and came home fired up for a different reason. He hadn't known the certification option existed. Missed it entirely. But instead of coming home deflated, he came home with a plan. "I will be back and ready next year."

Two different experiences. Same result: coming back felt like the only logical next step. That's what good event design does. It doesn't need to satisfy everyone completely. It just needs to leave people with something unfinished. A credential they didn't earn yet. A room they didn't find in time.

What are we designing our events to leave behind?”

Who Should Own the Event Anyway?

The question that nobody wants to answer: Whose job is this, really?

In most associations, professional development owns the content and marketing owns the promotion. They collaborate, occasionally stepping on each other’s toes, and together produce a conference that feels like it was built by committee. Because it was.

Sephora’s events live inside their marketing and loyalty teams, but the experience is identical to product education. Dreamforce is a marketing property that produces certified professionals. Ulta Beauty World is a brand moment that doubles as a masterclass series. The line between marketing and learning does not exist at any of these organizations. Because it was never drawn. That’s a deliberate structural choice.

The organizations that get live events right treat the whole thing as a product. Single owner. Clear value proposition. Revenue and learning are outcomes of the same decision, not competing priorities sitting in different departments. There is no clear handoff between the person promoting this and what people will learn. It is the same conversation, in the same room, led by the same person.

Most associations aren’t built that way. Until that changes, the programming will keep feeling like PD, the promotion will keep feeling like marketing, and attendees will keep feeling like neither department fully understood them. That is the conversation nobody is ready to have. The attendees, however, are already voting with their feet.

We Were Built for This

Ulta, Sephora, and Salesforce are working hard to replicate what associations were designed to do naturally: bring people together around shared purpose and belonging. They are building community. We are community.

Before your next planning cycle begins, I urge you to sit with three questions:

• Is your annual conference the only flagship or the largest event in your real portfolio?
• What does your most loyal member tangibly experience that a first-year member does not?
• What does every attendee leave having done, earned, or built?

The superfans are on your membership roster. The question is whether your event is worthy of them.

It can be. But only if you make it so.