April, 2026.- In a 2026 dominated by automation and Artificial Intelligence, Unplugged Collective emerges as a necessary reminder: businesses don’t build relationships, people do. Mike Richter and Erica Fieldman have achieved what many considered impossible in the Cannes, CES, and Miami circuits: stripping industry leaders of their “corporate armor” to foster genuine connections. Their philosophy moves away from passive sponsorships and spreadsheets to focus on what Mike calls “human-first design.” Whether through the intimate format of Supper Club or the vibrant energy of Strangers No More, Unplugged has created an ecosystem where attention is earned through authenticity. It’s not just about being present at an event, but being part of a community that values curiosity and truth over traditional networking.
In this exclusive interview with Roastbrief, Mike and Erica share how they have turned their experiences as attendees into a production methodology that prioritizes “emotional airspace.” Erica, with her holistic vision and ability to detect market frictions, explains how owned content and the launch of Unplugged Studio extend the life of these conversations beyond the four walls of a room. Discover why, in a digitally saturated world, face-to-face contact is not nostalgia, but a strategic business advantage. From their official partnership with POSSIBLE to their plans for Cannes Lions, the founders of Unplugged demonstrate that when the human being is cared for, business results flow naturally. This is the chronicle of a collective that prefers the real pulse of a conversation to the cold echo of an algorithm.
1. The Unplugged Philosophy: You’ve said, “The businesses in this industry don’t build relationships. The people inside them do.” How does this philosophy shape the way you design Unplugged experiences, from CTRL+ALT+Culture to Supper Club to Strangers No More?
It’s pretty simple, honestly. You think about the people first. That’s the number one rule in marketing, the number one rule in anything. It’s not about what you want to say. It’s about what they want to hear, what they want to feel, what they actually care about.
When we started building Unplugged, I kept asking myself: what do people actually want when they show up to these industry moments? Not what do sponsors want, not what does the agenda need. What do the people want? And I kept coming back to my own experience. Why do I love this industry? It’s not the tech stack. It’s not the media plans. It’s the people. The conversations. The relationships that turned into real friendships, real partnerships, real trust.
So when we design anything, whether it’s a CTRL+ALT+Culture session, a Supper Club dinner, or Strangers No More, we start with the human. What’s going to make someone feel something? What’s going to make them actually connect with the person next to them instead of just scanning the room? If you know how to speak to the human, the business is naturally listening. You don’t have to force it. The outcomes follow because the experience was real.
2. From Cannes to Miami: Unplugged has built a strong presence at Cannes. What made POSSIBLE the right moment to bring the Unplugged model to Miami? How does the energy and audience differ between these two industry gatherings?
This is actually our second year at POSSIBLE. We first came last year after already building at Advertising Week and CES, and POSSIBLE was the moment where we expanded Unplugged beyond nighttime entertainment into daytime programming for the first time. That opened up a whole new dimension for us. It lets us explore how our philosophy translates into programming, conversations, and experiences that live outside of a party. We learned a lot, and what we’re building this year reflects all of it.
What’s interesting about the four tentpoles we activate around is that each one carries its own distinct energy. CES has that new year, what’s next energy. POSSIBLE feels positively charged around possibility and growth. Cannes is… well, it’s Cannes. And Advertising Week has that unmistakable New York pulse. The audiences overlap, but the mindsets are different. And we build for that. Our schedule at Cannes Lions is going to look completely different from what we’re doing in Miami, because the agendas are different, the focus points are different, and where we choose to play is different.
That’s the advantage of having founders who spent years as attendees before we ever built a single event. We know what it feels like to be in that crowd. We know what pulls you in and what you skip. And we design from that perspective, not from a spreadsheet.
3. The “People First” Business Outcome: You noted that when you earn attention and trust, “the business outcomes follow.” How do you measure that? What proof do you have that a people-first experiential approach actually delivers commercial value for your partners and sponsors?
I’ll be honest with you. This isn’t a magic bullet. Becoming part of a people-first experiential approach is not going to magically deliver results just because you showed up and put your logo on something. I’ll tell you that point blank.
We have open, ongoing dialogue with our partners, and the feedback reflects reality. The ones who lean in, who show up ready to actually connect with people, who use the experiences we build as a platform rather than a backdrop? They see it. The ones who treat it like a passive sponsorship and expect the leads to just roll in? They’re going to be disappointed. Just like anything in life, you get out of it what you put into it.
What we do is handle the heavy lifting. We set the room. We build the environment. We curate the audience. We take care of as much as we possibly can so that our partners can show up as the best versions of themselves and use these moments to their advantage. Because if you’re going to spend the money to be somewhere, it should be worth more than an expensive trip to another city.
As for measurement specifically, that’s the question everyone in this industry wants to answer, and honestly it’s one we’re constantly thinking about too. We have a few things in the works that I think will change how we talk about this, but I’m not in a position to make promises on a timeline just yet. What I can tell you is that our partners keep coming back and they keep expanding their presence with us. We’re under two years old with nearly 25 partners at POSSIBLE 2026. That behavior tells you something that a dashboard can’t.
4. MorePossible Satellite Partnership: Unplugged is an official morePossible satellite partner. What does that partnership enable that you couldn’t do on your own, and how does it help you reach the right audience within the broader POSSIBLE ecosystem?
A great conference week is bigger than any one thing. It’s the main stage, the side conversations, the experiences people find beyond the convention center. When all of that connects, the whole week gets better for everyone.
There’s a difference between building something on the side that nobody knows about and being recognized as part of the ecosystem. We didn’t need permission to do what we do. We’ve been doing it. But when a program like morePOSSIBLE says “you belong here,” that means something. Not because we were begging to be included, but because so much of what we built Unplugged around is exactly that idea. That no matter your title, no matter where you sit in this industry, there’s a place for you. So having that same energy reflected back at us through this partnership hits different. It’s one of the key reasons this means something to us beyond just the logistics of it.
Last year, more than 20% of POSSIBLE attendees signed up for our events. This year, we’re already at close to 80% of our total signups from last year and way ahead of where we were at this point in 2025. We’re at the Fontainebleau in a penthouse with over 40 speakers and 19 scheduled programming elements, 10 of which are individually ticketed.
We’re thankful to POSSIBLE and Portrait Media Group for building a program that recognizes the entire ecosystem is what makes any event worth going to. And we’re excited to debut Unplugged en Miami in a few weeks because of it.
For Erica Fieldman:
5. Programming for Senior Marketers and Creators: Unplugged en Miami features a slate spanning culture, identity, sport, gaming, attention, and fandom. How do you curate programming that speaks to both senior brand marketers and digital creators? What threads connect these different audiences?
My background is pretty holistic. I’ve moved through a lot of corners of this industry, and I’m married to someone who builds advertising products, so I have an unusual topical awareness across the ecosystem. That helps. But the programming really starts with the conversations I have.
I’m constantly at industry events, or talking to industry veterans, and I really listen, especially to people who know more than me. When I hear the same friction point or question surfacing across enough of those conversations, that becomes the signal. I pull the hard questions out of those private moments and figure out how to make them safe to ask on a stage.
What connects senior marketers and creators isn’t demographic. It’s the questions they’re both sitting with. Who has cultural authority right now? Who actually owns the audience? What does attention mean when trust is so fragile? Those threads run through gaming, fandom, identity, sport, all of it. The format changes. The underlying tension doesn’t.
I also try to program things I don’t fully know the answer to yet. If I’m already curious about it, chances are the room is too.
6. The Unplugged Studio & Cannesversations: You’re launching an Unplugged Studio for live interviews and podcast recordings, including Cannesversations. What role does owned content play in extending the life and reach of an experiential event? How do you ensure the conversations don’t just stay in the room?
Something I genuinely believe: what you say only has the value of who hears it. A brilliant conversation that stays in a room of 50 people is still just a room of 50 people. Recording it, clipping it, turning it into something shareable, that’s how the idea actually travels.
That’s the whole premise behind the Unplugged Studio and Cannesversations. We’re not just capturing content for the sake of it. We’re giving people a real platform, a produced moment that follows them home, shows up in their feed, lives on their LinkedIn. For a lot of speakers, that’s more valuable than the panel itself.
And honestly, a lot of this comes from my background in creator marketing. Creators figured out a long time ago that the event isn’t the product, the content is. The event is just where you make it. We’re applying that same thinking to how we build programming, so every conversation we put on stage has a second life, a third life, however many times someone clips it, shares it, builds on it.
We also just want it to be fun. Not stiff, not corporate. The best stuff happens when people feel loose and the format gives them permission to actually say something.
For Both Mike & Erica:
7. The Signature Experiences: Supper Club is described as “reimagining what a business meal can be,” and Strangers No More has become a talked-about industry party. What makes these formats work so well? Is there a tension between the intimacy of Supper Club and the scale of Strangers No More, or do they serve different relationship-building purposes?
The whole premise, for both, is the same. We want people to forget they’re at a work event. The moment someone lets their guard down, even a little, that’s when real connection happens. And in an industry that is built on personal relationships, real connection is what actually turns into business.
Supper Club is intentional and intimate. The guest list is curated, the setting is close, and the conversation goes somewhere. It’s not a networking dinner. It’s the kind of meal where you leave knowing someone, not just having met them.
Strangers No More is a completely different energy, but the goal is the same. We build it as a multi-sensory experience, almost like a funhouse or a maze, where there is always something happening and something for everyone. Frick Frack Black Jack, karaoke, entertainers actually moving through the crowd and pulling people in. There’s no headliner you watch from a distance. Everything is designed to make you participate, and participation is what breaks the ice.
We always say it’s a little bit of Burning Man in the corporate world. That’s not an accident. Burning Man works because people show up without their armor on. We’re trying to create a version of that inside an industry that wears a lot of armor.
They’re not in tension with each other. They’re sequenced. SNM is where strangers become acquaintances. Supper Club is where acquaintances become real.
8. The Value of In-Person in a Digital World: With so much industry dialogue happening on LinkedIn, in newsletters, and on Zoom, why does Unplugged double down on in-person gatherings? What can only happen when people are in the same room?
Everyone is calling this the year of AI. We think it’s actually the year of human connection, and AI is exactly why.
The more you automate something, the more you digitize something, the more you remove the human element, the more people crave what’s real. Real conversation. Real trust. Real connection. You can feel it in this industry right now. People are hungry for moments that actually mean something.
That’s what Unplugged is built around. Trust. Not talking about it. Proving it. Every time we ask people to spend time with us, we’re asking them to trust that it’s going to be worth it. That the connection they’re hoping to find is probably just around the corner at something we’ve built. And they keep proving that trust back to us. They keep showing up. They keep asking “when’s the next one?”
LinkedIn is great. Newsletters are great. But algorithms shift constantly and we have no control over what gets shown or when. It’s harder and harder to reach people in spaces you don’t own. The deals that matter, the partnerships that last, they almost always trace back to an in-person moment. That’s not nostalgia. That’s just how humans work.
It’s one of the reasons we see ourselves as an IRL media and experience company. Traditional media asks people to spend time within its content, and in exchange, advertisers fund that experience. We do the same thing. We ask people to spend time within our content, and our partners fund it. The only difference is our content happens in real life, and instead of it being on a stage, it’s happening amongst the people standing next to you.
