Industry events and parties can play a substantial role in effective influencer discovery in a couple of ways:

1. Networking: These avenues can enable brands and agencies to meet influencers face-to-face and establish valuable partnerships. It’s an opportunity to understand the influencers’ persona, audience appeal, and content strategy better.

2. Live Performances: Events and parties could help evaluate an influencer’s live engagement capabilities. This could include their communication style, interaction with fans, and how they handle real-time situations, which are essential qualities for live campaigns.

3. Reputation Assessment: Shared spaces with other industry professionals can give insight into the influencers’ industry repute. Referrals or shared experiences from industry peers can help gauge the reliability of an influencer.

4. Insight into Trends: Industry events often focus on the latest trends and innovations. Brands can identify influencers who are up-to-date and understand these trends, amplifying their influencer discovery process.

Comparatively, influencer marketing platforms like Flinque make the discovery process efficient and data-driven. Flinque, for instance, provides comprehensive profiles of influencers with audience demographics, engagement rates, and past campaign performances. Another platform may offer a similar discovery process but with variations on the extent and depth of data available.

Remember, the tool you select should align with your specific objectives and the type of influencers you aim to collaborate with. While industry events and parties provide an immersive, firsthand experience, marketing platforms allow for a more extensive, data-backed search from the comfort of your workplace. Using a combination of both methods could be an effective strategy in influencer discovery.