Jimmy Doucette,
Chief Creative Officer
Describe your agency — what makes it unique and how are you different from the competition?
Hi, we’re Pinnacle, an experiential marketing agency with (seven!) shop floors. We’re strategists, creatives, and actual builders all under a single roof. What makes us really unique is that the big ideas and the physical objects that bring those ideas to life are born in the same place (hence the shop floors).
So, we say our vibe is IDEAS meets SAWDUST, and we mean it. Whether it’s an F1 activation or healthcare trade show, experiential retail install or a festival, our clients get the same team, same rigor, and same “never satisfied” partner from strategy to strike.
Given your agency’s successes, what approach and philosophy do you take to business?
If an idea can’t be built, it’s not worth buying. A lot of this industry is chasing culture and we think that’s backwards. The new measure of a good idea isn’t how clever it sounds in a deck. It’s whether it’s big enough and powerful enough to actually exist IRL.
We’re here to make something real. An idea so strong that your customers get up and reach out and touch your brand and then talk about it after. That only happens when thinking and doing live under one roof. So, we make it a point to fall in love with concepts that can survive contact with the ground.
What are your core strengths and how are you using them to serve your clients right now?
It’s all about making the brand argument physical, which means building experiences that go beyond what a brand does, and creating experiences that actually behave like it. When a security platform works in real time, we build something the audience has to play in real time. When an enterprise portfolio is vast and complex, we turn tens of thousands of square feet of it into something people want to walk through and feel.
The throughline is control. Because we strategize, design, and build under one roof, we can make the idea and the object answer to each other — and move fast enough to catch a moment while it’s still happening.
How is artificial intelligence positively impacting the business?
Accelerant, not an author. It helps us move faster; sharper research, quicker visualization, and more swings before we commit. But the ideas are still (and will always be) made by humans, and we’re deliberate about that. The tool earns its place. It just doesn’t get to hold the pen.
What is your take on what modern event audiences really want?
Audiences live connected, jumping between channels faster than their feeds can refresh, and they want experiences that move the same way. Our job is to pull (not push) them toward the communities and conversations they actually care about. But underneath all that, they’re starving for something real, sweaty, tactile, and face-to-face. And when they get it, they share it, in person and online and everywhere in between. One-way conversations are bigger dead ends than they’ve ever been.
What advice are you giving clients on how to win big this year?
We’re entering our Video Killed The Radio Star era. The work we’re making right now paves the way for everything that comes next. So don’t play it safe in the one channel built for nerve and goosebumps. One live moment fuels the influencer campaign, the UGC, the content, and the earned media. Take the swing, make the sawdust, and build something. Then the second it lands, ask what you build next. Never satisfied.
