As brands invest more heavily in physical experiences, sports venues and immersive activations, experiential agencies are increasingly competing on the ability to connect architecture, technology, storytelling and fabrication. ASTOUND Group is responding by adding two senior creative leaders, appointing Ross Guntert as Executive Creative Director, Head of Design, and Ivan Druzic as Executive Creative Director, Experiential.

ASTOUND Group has appointed Ross Guntert and Ivan Druzic to executive creative roles as the experiential design and fabrication company expands its work across sports venues, events, retail and brand environments in North America.

Guntert becomes Executive Creative Director, Head of Design, while Druzic takes the position of Executive Creative Director, Experiential. The appointments add senior creative expertise at a time when ASTOUND is expanding its venue portfolio with projects involving teams and clients across Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Hockey League (NHL) in the United States and Canada.

The move also continues a broader leadership investment at the company. ASTOUND previously added a Head of Sports and Chief Financial Officer, strengthening commercial and operational capabilities alongside its creative expansion.

For the experiential marketing industry, the appointments reflect a larger shift. Brands are no longer treating physical experiences simply as event marketing. Stadiums, arenas, pop-ups, retail environments, trade-show installations and immersive activations increasingly operate as extensions of a brand's broader customer experience strategy.

That requires creative teams to work across architecture, digital experiences, data, content and fabrication rather than treating each discipline as a separate project.

Architecture Meets Experiential Marketing

Guntert brings nearly two decades of experience spanning architecture, fabrication and experiential design. Before joining ASTOUND, he served as Northwest Region Design Director at Gensler, where he helped oversee design across six offices.

His previous work included contributions to NVIDIA's flagship headquarters in Santa Clara, while his career has also included work with Brooklyn-based design practice Snarkitecture.

At ASTOUND, Guntert will oversee the creative standard across architectural environments, exhibitions, live events and integrated brand experiences.

His remit includes developing creative systems and scalable workflows that can maintain design quality across ASTOUND's teams and offices. He will also play a role in integrating artificial intelligence into the company's creative practice, potentially using AI to accelerate ideation, iteration and communication of design concepts.

That is increasingly relevant across creative industries.

Generative AI is changing how agencies and design studios explore concepts, produce variations and communicate early-stage ideas. The more difficult challenge is incorporating AI into professional workflows without compromising brand consistency, design quality or intellectual property controls.

For an organization that combines design with physical fabrication, AI's role may be less about generating finished assets and more about speeding the transition from an initial concept to a viable built environment.

Druzic Brings Brand Storytelling Into the Experience

Druzic joins ASTOUND with more than two decades of experience across live events, experiential marketing, digital, advertising and sales promotion.

His previous work includes campaigns and experiences for brands such as Budweiser, Pepsi, Loblaws, Google and Xbox. At Mosaic North America, he eventually became Vice President, Creative Operations.

One of his notable projects was Sensorium, an immersive dining experience developed for Stella Artois. The project used multiple sensory elements to translate a brand identity into a physical environment.

That experience provides a useful indication of Druzic's remit at ASTOUND. His role will focus on developing experiential concepts across the company's clients and industry verticals, with an emphasis on turning brand strategy and consumer insight into physical experiences.

The distinction between experiential marketing and traditional advertising has become increasingly fluid. A stadium activation, immersive installation or branded pop-up can generate social content, customer data and digital engagement alongside the physical interaction.

For marketers, that makes experiential environments part of a broader omnichannel customer journey.

Sports Venues Become Marketing Platforms

ASTOUND's expanding sports-venue business adds another dimension to the appointments.

Professional stadiums and arenas are increasingly designed as multifunctional entertainment and commercial environments. Sponsorship activations, premium hospitality, retail, digital displays, fan engagement technologies and branded spaces all contribute to the experience.

MLB and NHL venues are particularly attractive environments for marketers because they combine recurring audiences with high-value physical interactions.

For agencies, however, these projects also create greater operational complexity. A successful venue experience has to work at architectural scale while remaining commercially useful and recognizable to fans.

That is where Guntert's architectural background and Druzic's experiential expertise could complement each other.

The Convergence of Physical and Digital Experiences

ASTOUND says the two executives will work across the company's full portfolio, including stadium and arena environments, trade-show exhibits, immersive activations, retail pop-ups, mobile tours and architectural projects.

The common thread is the convergence of physical and digital touchpoints.

This is increasingly relevant to enterprise marketing teams. Salesforce, Adobe and other major marketing technology providers have pushed toward connected customer experiences in which physical interactions can feed into broader digital journeys.

The experiential industry is moving in the same direction, although its core asset remains physical space.

For ASTOUND, combining strategy, design and fabrication under one organization can reduce the distance between concept and execution. That becomes especially valuable when a project needs to translate a digital brand identity into something customers can physically enter, touch or experience.

Why the Appointments Matter

The appointments are ultimately less about adding two creative titles than about how experiential agencies are evolving.

Brands increasingly expect agencies to deliver experiences that are visually distinctive, technologically integrated and commercially measurable. At the same time, venue owners and sports organizations need environments that serve multiple audiences and revenue objectives.

ASTOUND is positioning its expanded creative leadership around that intersection.

Guntert brings architectural systems thinking and design leadership, while Druzic adds experiential storytelling and brand activation expertise. Together, their roles suggest that ASTOUND sees the future of experiential marketing as a discipline that sits between architecture, advertising, entertainment, technology and customer experience.

The challenge will be turning that breadth into measurable business outcomes. As experiential budgets become more closely scrutinized, agencies will increasingly need to demonstrate not only whether an experience generated attention, but whether it contributed to engagement, customer relationships, revenue or brand value.

Market Landscape

Experiential marketing is becoming more integrated with broader brand and customer-experience strategies. Brands are using physical environments alongside social media, digital advertising, CRM and content to create connected customer journeys.

The global events and experiential marketing ecosystem is also benefiting from renewed investment in live entertainment, sports and in-person brand engagement. Research from PQ Media has consistently identified experiential marketing as a major component of the broader alternative marketing sector, while agencies increasingly combine physical experiences with digital technology and data.

ASTOUND's positioning is differentiated by its combination of strategy, architecture, experiential design and fabrication. Competitors across the broader experience economy include agencies and production companies such as Jack Morton, GMR, George P. Johnson and Imagination, although their service mixes and market positioning differ.

The competitive advantage increasingly lies in the ability to manage complex projects from concept through physical execution while maintaining a consistent brand experience.

Strategic Outlook

The next phase of experiential marketing will likely be defined by greater convergence between physical environments, AI-assisted creative development, digital engagement and measurable customer outcomes.

AI could accelerate concept development and personalization, while connected physical environments can create new opportunities for data collection and customer interaction. Sports venues, retail spaces and immersive activations are particularly well positioned to benefit from this convergence.

ASTOUND's new creative leadership suggests the company is preparing for that environment by combining architectural rigor with experiential storytelling and AI-enabled creative workflows.

For enterprise marketers, the implication is clear: physical experiences are increasingly becoming another layer of the connected marketing stack rather than an isolated event channel.

Top Insights

• ASTOUND's new creative leadership combines architecture and experiential expertise as brands increasingly connect physical environments with broader digital customer experience strategies.
• Ross Guntert brings architectural design systems and AI-enabled creative development to ASTOUND as the company expands its sports and venue portfolio.
• Ivan Druzic adds more than two decades of experiential and advertising experience, strengthening ASTOUND's ability to translate brands into immersive environments.
• MLB and NHL venue projects highlight growing opportunities for experiential agencies as stadiums evolve into entertainment, sponsorship and customer engagement platforms.
• AI integration could accelerate experiential concept development, but agencies will still need to demonstrate measurable business outcomes from increasingly complex physical experiences.

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