Event Marketer’s 2025 B-to-B Dream has been unveiled. Each month, we’re sitting down with one of our all-stars to talk trends, best practices and all things uniquely b-to-b.
Joost Bijsterveld, Director-Global Customer Experiences, Philips
Delivering compelling, high-touch experiences within the highly regulated health care industry is a tall order, but Joost Bijsterveld has been rising to the occasion for the last 25 years. From his very first position in marketing and communications, to his current role as director-global customer experiences at Philips, Bijsterveld has spent a quarter of a century infusing his “efficiency with a soul” philosophy into the brand’s trade show exhibits, global customer experience centers and content.
With more than 1,500 annual events on Philips’ agenda, scalability and reusability are key pillars of Bijsterveld’s approach to experiential marketing. Across the eight strategic global events, two customer experience centers and executive briefing program that he directly oversees, a combination of storytelling, technology and the ability to upscale or downscale those elements depending on the event program, have been hallmarks of how Bijsterveld and his team deliver measurable business impact.
“One of the things that my focus has always been on is what I call ‘efficiency with a soul,’” says Bijsterveld. “With this volume [of events], you need scalable processes, but they still need to feel human. So you want to create those memorable moments, make real connections, but you also need to do it in a clever way so that you can actually do that at the right cost. So I think wherever we can, we should search for creativity and efficiency, but without losing that personal touch.”
Bijsterveld leans on multiple systems to ensure Philips’ events are maximizing efficiency while driving engagement. For one, he streamlined the brand’s design and experience strategy across hundreds of events, including implementing a central design service where processes and deliverables are consolidated, eliminating the need for marketers to memorize a brand playbook or build their events from scratch.
For another, Bijsterveld has crafted a “culture of collaboration” through a network agency model that encompasses event agencies, freelancers, Philips employees and vendors with varying areas of expertise, who work as a unified team. The structure gives Philips the ability to operate its events with agility, scalability and “much more compliance,” without the extra overhead, he says.
When it comes to the major medical shows where Philips has a significant presence, from HIMSS to RSNA to ECR, Bijsterveld isn’t afraid to color outside the lines of what a traditional health care exhibit experience entails. In fact, he’s often inclined to bring on the drama. Take last year’s HIMSS booth, which featured a theater-quality performance that conveyed a moving story about a stroke patient’s health care journey through the use of props, set changes, audience involvement and live actors who delivered perfectly timed interactions with digital personas. The “Moments that Matter” experience drew dwell times of 15-plus minutes and hit 120 percent of the company’s engagement target.
“We saw visitors laughing, gasping, some got emotional. This shows that bold storytelling really works, even in b-to-b health care, and I would love to see much more of that in b-to-b trade shows,” Bijsterveld says. “I think a lot of competitors or colleagues are sometimes playing a very safe game. But if they would up the ante and experiment with these kinds of techniques, the audience wins, you as a company win and the [event] organizer wins.”
The theatrical production, however, wasn’t executed for the sake of creating a spectacle, explains Bijsterveld. Rather, Philips embraces a “purposeful wow” mentality that entails creating experiences that have a connection to a bigger story or purpose. “Find something that relates to your brand and to your message, and then dramatize that to the max,” he says, adding that while free coffee or puppy visits at an exhibit may sound nice in theory, they won’t be memorable if they don’t clearly map back to the company.
Fun Fact: Philips houses a digital central experience hub where event playbooks, how-to guides and other tactical information is easily accessible.
And then there’s all of the work that comes after pulling off a successful event. Bijsterveld and his team measure nearly every aspect of the live experiences they produce, including foot traffic, dwell time, demo-to-lead conversion, number of meetings hosted and quality of customers, in addition to more qualitative metrics, like memorability and uniqueness. The team then works with key Philips stakeholders to identify a small handful (typically three) of KPIs to focus their efforts on, and refines its strategy accordingly.
“We put everything in a central framework so that we can compare all the data across events, across markets, so that we can refine, reuse and protect budgets, because we then have the hard evidence,” says Bijsterveld. “So we can say, ‘Actually, you’re over-investing here, you’re under-investing over there.’”
Like many experience builders, he’s also preparing for an AI-powered world in which his team will move from “descriptive to prescriptive” in its data analysis, paving the path to even more purposeful and personalized attendee experiences. And those live interactions will be critical in a digitally dominated future.
“What I expect is that there will be a need for real, authentic, in-person connections, and that they will become more valuable than ever before,” Bijsterveld says. “I think events and briefing centers will become that anchor of trust, places where real connections, real conversations happen, and where you can build real relationships. And then AI will still play a role behind the scenes, and you can use that to orchestrate journeys and tailor content, but the front stage will always be about people.”
DAY IN THE LIFE:
Photos: Courtesy of Philips
