I’m Chad Tons, Founder and CEO of the global experiential and brand agency Infinity Marketing Team. My company sells branded consumer experiences that capture the attention, awe, imagination, and investment of consumers through Experiential Marketing Campaigns. For those that are unfamiliar, experiential marketing is basically the specialized, multidisciplinary, technology-infused, and ever-evolving subfield within advertising and marketing. Our globally renowned corporate clients sell the futuristic and everyday products and services you consume and desire. You probably recognize various ways you are advertised directly: commercials on your television and radio, in embedded ads on outlets you read, and in targeted pop-up ads as you scroll the internet. 

Within my field of experiential marketing, client’s partner with firms to develop campaigns to embed the products, the brand ethos, advertising, and branded curated experiences throughout the entirety of consumers lives. After decades of being relegated to handing out mass-produced disposable products with a company’s logo, increasingly, brands are prioritizing memorable experiences – from embedded activations at special events, to product demonstration mobile tours, to branded social media competitions – that create instinctual and conscious associations with brands and corporate goods. I am proud to have led this shift in the world of marketing over the last two decades with my Infinity Marketing Team firm.   

At Infinity, our experiential campaigns are as creatively diverse as our corporate clients. But they always have three necessary ingredients: Groundbreaking. Innovative. Disruptive. 

Headquartered in Los Angeles, the Infinity Marketing Team (IMT) – now a strategic partner of the global powerhouse Pico Corporation – is a fully integrated, globally respected experiential marketing agency with offices and facilities in 44 cities worldwide. With over 20 years atop respected top agency “It Lists” and hundreds of continuously award-winning craft recognitions, we create and execute event campaigns designed specifically for each of our client’s objectives to enhance and evolve their brand. With over 5,000 annual groundbreaking events, tours, and activations on our resume and a client roster that encompasses the fields of entertainment, education, fashion, technology, food & beverage, automotive, travel, and finance, IMT possesses a broad range of depth and industry awareness.

IMT is a revered outlier in the field, as we offer one-stop shopping from a strategic agency, creative, production, activation, and internal construction and installation perspective. Couple that with our furniture rental division, our custom virtual solutions, our groundbreaking IMT Innovation team, and our Pico X analytics digital team, and IMT offers complete campaign executions from conception to fabrication to fulfillment with dazzling precision and infinitely rewarding results.

Your success wouldn’t have come easy. Can you share the challenges you faced and how you reached your current position?

We’ve had to weather setbacks to the overall industry, including recessions and a global pandemic, but each challenge has strengthened us to be more resilient. With the 2008 and 2020 recessions plus the pandemic, experiential budgets usually took the biggest hit, slicing sales in half overnight! Rather than shrinking our teams, services, etc., I’ve always made a conscious effort to stay agile, adapt, ride out the roller coasters, and not shrink our staff. I value the people on our team more than anything – they are some of the best creative minds in the world – and I’ve always wanted them to feel supported. Our work-life culture motto at IMT is: If we are going to spend so much of our time working here, how can we all make sure it’s a place we all love to be! 

I am proud to have retained employment contracts for all of my staff throughout the entire pandemic. In fact, we grew to meet the demands of digital-only pandemic realities and stay at the forefront of the hybrid in-person-and-online virtually-augmented future. 

We have managed to thrive and persist because we are always anticipating shifts in industry, technology, and society. Long before every in-person event in the world was brought to halt with the pandemic, IMT was tinkering with the latest technology to enhance virtual and hybrid events using our tried-and-true ingredients: groundbreaking, disruptive, innovative. 

By always remaining true to these principles and finding and hiring the most talented of talents across fields to continue to evolve, there’s nothing that can get in the way of the Infinity Marketing Team’s continued success.

In an industry with heavy competition, how specialized is Infinity Marketing, and why do clients choose to work with you?

Infinity is known for having the BEST Creative & In-House Innovation team: From jaw-dropping art installations at Coachella to boundary-pushing Gaming platforms, IMT’s creative & innovation team remains at the forefront of both technology and art.

What sets us apart from competitors are the wildly innovative campaigns we produce, and what keeps clients returning is the flawless execution of our integrated full-service team. IMT further stands out by delivering a focused strategy for each client that consistently produces groundbreaking returns on investment.

How have you planned for the future?

East and West truly came together as the Pico Corporation acquired a stake in Infinity Marketing Team. As such, and under the new IMT-Pico umbrella, offerings have expanded to 2,000+ event professionals on staff, offices, and facilities in 44 cities globally, 5 million sq meters of gross exhibit space, 100,000 sq meters of production facilities, and the greatest creative minds in the world now collaborating together!

Personally, my plans are to continue innovating and changing the game. The future is gamified – virtually augmented and immersive, strategically integrated across platforms and consumer experiences, and makes space for the diversity of consumer segments to feel empowered, meaningfully engaged, and interconnected. Here at Infinity Marketing Team, the future is NOW, and we’re just getting started!

If you could do it all over again, what one thing would you do differently?

I would have expanded globally MUCH sooner. There are so many brands that covet the work that’s being created here in the U.S., so having gone global opens the doors to many new clients and opportunities simply from our recognized work and awards. Moreover, for the global brands we currently partner with, it allows us to produce and create seamless worldwide campaigns. Lastly, with all of the brilliant global creative minds and artists we’ve been introduced to, it’s made IMT’s portfolio and offerings even stronger.

 “We create experiential magic”

 “We design groundbreaking, disruptive experiences to crush your brand objectives.”