Igniting Innovation at Equifax Spark

Last week, the events team headed south and joined Equifax for their first ever customer conference in Atlanta. More than 250 of Equifax’s customers and partners from financial institutions and Fortune 500 companies, including SunTrust, Bank of America, Cox, and CreditKarma, attended Spark to learn about the latest trends and industry insights in consumer credit.

In the spirit of sparking inspiration and innovation, Equifax Chief Data and Analytics Officer Prasanna Dhore opened the conference by sharing his personal journey as an immigrant and how he built his credit from zero over the decades. His talk highlighted the information asymmetry that can exist between credit consumers and financial institutions.

Day 1 of Spark continued with the announcement of a new strategic partnership between Equifax and FICO.  In today’s information age, Equifax and their partners have more data, technology, and analytics than ever before. More accurate customer views allow for smarter decisions for financial institutions and lenders, and more importantly, better credit access for consumers and a stronger economy for everyone. To accompany this philosophy, the  new partnership serves help lenders better understand their consumers.

The rest of the content followed the key themes of data, analytics, and identity. Notable sessions covered the significance of data indicators such as student loan history, employment trends, generational differences; new analytics technologies such as explainable AI that are powering tools to better understand and predict consumer habits and behavior; and the role of identity to combat fraud and mitigate risk.

Artists from the Sketch Effect were onsite to help capture all the key session points and spark-worthy ideas. Other conference highlights included:

• Equifax and Moody’s Economic Outlook session: A deep dive into current consumer trends and indicators for 2020

• Equifax’s Innovation Studio Expo: Hosted at the Infinity Club of SunTrust Park, data and analytic leaders demoed some of their latest cutting-edge tools and solutions

• Erik Qualman’s energizing keynote: Voted the 2nd Most Likeable Author in the World behind J.K. Rowling, Erik offered a guide for leaders in the digital age  

After an eventful two days of thought-provoking content and demos, Spark left attendees feeling inspired and empowered to tackle the biggest challenges for our economy and consumer credit.

Interested in planning a customer conference like Spark? Let’s connect at events@credpr.com. See more of our event management here.

Brand Building @ Bowery’s Marketing Summit

This week we were on site with Bowery Capital for their first Leadership Summit of 2019, focused around the role of the marketer. Unlike most thought leadership events we manage, Bowery’s Summits focus on tactical lessons learned from not your industry, but your position, whether it be in marketing, talent, finance, or sales.

From branding to hiring techniques, we were inundated with tactical learnings from some of the best of the best marketers in SaaS. We've summarized our learnings on the day here:

It was clear marketers play a key role within their organization. With an infinite number of possibilities and strategies to experiment with, Clare Carr, VP of Marketing at Parse.ly, showed us how carefully planning your marketing and content strategy helps build a long term, successful plan. She also touched on the importance of pushing back when people try and get in the way of your focus for ‘quick-wins.’

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Tami McQueen, Co-Founder at 31South,  encouraged attendees to think outside the box and get creative when building your lead gen strategy. Thought leadership and branding through experiences proves to be much more powerful in amplifying the right leads.

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Overall, sessions throughout the day clearly conveyed an underlying tone of the importance of branding. Get your infrastructure set and align your team with your vision and mission, which will ultimately carries through to your messaging, website, sales efforts, and more.

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Hope to see you at a future Summit this year!

• People and Talent Summit on Thursday, June 20th

• Sales Summit on Thursday, October 17th

• Finance Summit on Thursday, November 21st

The Art & Science of Data at RampUp 2019

Last week, the cred events team pulled out all the stops at RampUp 2019 on Feb. 25-26 at the historic Fairmont Hotel here in San Francisco. LiveRamp’s flagship event kicks off a year of roadshows that will highlight the company’s presence around the country. This year, RampUp boasted 175 speakers reaching 2,500 attendees, making it one of the largest martech events in the country.

After a welcome reception on Feb. 24, the event transitioned into content the following morning with five pre-conference speaking tracks covering brands and agencies, B2B, data, technology, and TV. By the afternoon, RampUp was in full-swing with the main conference underway, featuring three tracks: Next-Generation Brand-Building, The Age of the Customer, Technology and Data Trends in Practice.

Across the two days, cred was thrilled to watch a few of our own speakers grace the stage. Ripple Senior Director of Audience Marketing Shanna Leonard kicked off the main conference content with a panel highlighting the shared practices between B2B and B2C marketers, while Strava Head of Communications Andrew Vontz chatted with Inc. SF Bureau Chief Jeff Bercovici about the challenges and opportunities of techlash and hyper-innovation. LiveRamp CMO Rebecca Stone moderated one of the most popular sessions addressing data integrity and transparency.

As the Fairmont buzzed with attendees, keynote speakers took the stage at the Masonic theater. This year’s keynotes featured brands such as Marketo, HP, Visa, Cars.com, McDonald’s, Quantcast, and Kimberly Clark, and we learned that customer centricity and utilization of the right data is top-of-mind for all of these marketers.

Going out with a bang, Oakland A’s Executive Vice President Billy Beane—and the subject of the best-selling book and Oscar-nominated movie Moneyball—gave the closing keynote and shared how he implemented a data-driven strategy at the Oakland A’s that has revolutionized their program and the entire baseball industry. The night came to a close with Billy signing books and baseballs at the RampUp closing reception and attendees celebrating at RampUp After Dark party at the Tonga Room.

Interested in attending a RampUp event near you? RampUp on the Road is kicking off the spring roadshow season with stops in Columbus, Atlanta, Seattle, Denver, and DC this spring. Follow RampUp here for more info.

No Bull at No Fleece: Bullpen Capital Talks the State of VC

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On Dec. 12, Bullpen Capital hosted a new kind of venture capital conference, inviting 100 GPs from the Bay Area to discuss some of the most pressing topics in VC today. The conference, dubbed No Fleece Allowed, aimed to get everyone out of the closed door, portfolio-pitching mindset and into a collaborative discussion about what works in VC and what doesn’t.

To allow for this free-flowing, unbridled chat, the conference was kept off the record–no press, no social media, and anonymized stories. Breaking the typical conference mold, the room was arranged in two concentric circles of chairs to keep everyone engaged in the discussion with no place to hide behind a laptop or step away for a call.

Without microphones and without a stage, speakers sat together in a circle to kick off each session before the floor was opened to continue the conversation. To encourage everyone to add to the dialogue and keep the conference fun, participants voted on the MVP (Most Valuable Participant) of the day. The winner had the honor of taking a picture next to the six-foot winners trophy.

No Fleece Allowed would not have be complete without hosting an ugly fleece competition. Participants were invited to bring their ugliest fleece to compete, and the winner went home with bragging rights and a prized trophy photo opportunity.

One of the many highlights of the day was the closing session with Bill Gurley of Benchmark. Following the format set by the previous sessions and speakers, he was an open-book and addressed crowd-sourced topics in what turned into a dynamic Q&A with eager attendees.

As the day wrapped up, the discussion moved into a networking and cocktail hour where attendees took in Commonwealth Club’s picturesque views of the Bay Bridge and SF Ferry Building.

Bowery’s Sales Summit Closing the Year Strong

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Bowery Capital wrapped up its fourth and final thought leadership Summit for the year, closing out a quarterly Series bringing together similar roles beyond the CEO to learn from some of the biggest leaders in SaaS. One hundred attendees came together with a goal of learning tactical lessons from some of the most experienced executives in the space. CROs, Heads of Sales, and CEOs from Slack, Stripe, Yext, Bitly, and more discussed themes around hiring, culture, sales velocity, and what it takes to successfully scale.

One of the best parts about being onsite running these events is the having access to elite thought leaders and a front row seat to insights and content. Here are my top five tips I learned from these Sales Execs (in no particular order):

1. Slack’s motto when building a “freemium” model: Build a product people love (make them want to buy the product).

2. Lesson Learned from CEO of Bitly on scaling: Everybody is in sales. Recruit your allies. Nobody wins unless everybody wins.

3. Everyone is always trying to master email marketing: SalesLoft discovered ending with a colon (:) is 35 percent better than ending with a comma (,)—I personally prefer a dash!

4. Hiring Strategy (and applicable across not just sales teams): Your starting pitching pitcher (i.e your first hire) won’t be your closer.

5. Even if prospects aren’t ready to speak now, keep ‘em warm with insightful content:  Give them a reason to come back.

RampUp on the Road and Across the Pond

We hit the road and the skies with RampUp this fall, making our way to Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, New York, and London for cred’s inaugural international event.

The speaker line-up was truly impressive across all cities—including representation from Starbucks, GameStop, Barclay’s, Google, and Stephen Dubner and Steve Levitt, co-authors of the best-selling Freakonomics. These amazing speakers drew the crowds with record-breaking attendance at all five events, allowing us to reach more than 1,300 martech leaders across the world. Amazing venues and features like the Dallas Cowboys Stadium and RampPups in NYC made sure everyone left happy.  

RampUp’s content is always stellar with a focus on the top current priorities for marketers ranging from the importance of data privacy and integrity to customer-centricity to the artful balance of creativity and data. We were thrilled to be a part of bringing these engaging topics to London for RampUp’s first European event.

In London, more than 300 attendees joined us at the prestigious Savoy Hotel, the sister property to Fairmont San Francisco where RampUp SF is hosted each year. A few key takeaways from London:

• Standing room only for the GDPR session proved that it’s still a relevant topic in the UK and across the Europe. Speakers discussed why GDPR should be viewed as an opportunity to better educate consumers worldwide about the value exchange between consumers and marketers.

• The rapidly evolving TV landscape is creating more opportunities than ever for digital ads and should not be overlooked as a key piece of the omnichannel puzzle.

• As Phil Jones, Head of EMEA Partnerships, Ads & Research at Google discussed in the closing fireside chat, consumer trust is decreasing as consumer expectations are increasing. Innovation and data-driven decision-making are critical to bridging these gaps between users and advertisers.

It’s been an amazing year with RampUp, but in true event planner style, our eyes are set to the future for RampUp 2019 in February 25-26. Less than 100 days to go!

If you’re interested in RampUp updates, or want to learn more about how we can help you with your event, email us: events@credpr.com.

Check out some of our favorite fall moments:

RampUp: Chicago

RampUp: Dallas

RampUp: Philadelphia

RampUp: New York

RampUp: New York

RampUp: New York

RampUp: London

Mastering Crisis Communications @ CrisisCon

CrisisCon, the inaugural conference hosted by Greenbrier Partners on all things crisis management, took place in San Francisco’s historic Fort Mason district last Thursday. Over the course of this half-day event, professionals from across the communications and PR ecosystem gathered for an afternoon of insightful conversations by industry experts around the applications of proven crisis practices and management, and real-life stories from the trenches.

The agenda kicked off with a fireside chat between Lane Kasselman, founder of Greenbrier, and Peter Ragone, principal at PWR, LLC, to discuss the nature of a crisis and how to determine if you’re in one.

• Key Takeaway: A crisis to one person will not be a crisis to another.

Nairi Hourdajian, VP at Canaan, followed their session with an impactful solo talk on “The Art of the Deal: Crisis Style.”

• Key Takeaway: You can’t spin your way out of a bad story.

Before breaking for cocktails and a networking reception, the afternoon concluded with panels around damage control and recovering from a crisis. Panelists included speakers from companies such as Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and Strava. Closing the event was an intimate fireside chat between President of the Center for American Progress Action Fund Jennifer Palmieri and The Messina Group CEO Jim Messina.

Looking to learn how to get ahead of a crisis? Get in touch with Greenbrier Partners!

Bowery Capital Summit: The Changing Role of the CFO

Bowery Capital’s Summit series, a structured quarterly forum built to generate opportunities and insights for thought leaders at early-stage companies, made its return this week in New York. This quarter we focused on finance leaders, where CFOs, Chief Accounting Officers, COOs, and even CEOs yet to hire a full-time finance leader, were invited for a day of networking and tactical dialogue. The goal of the day is to create engaging content for the audience, covering real-life topics seasoned finance leaders have experienced, such as creating an effective forecast, reporting measuring and metrics to management, and how the role of the CFO has evolved to include leveraging data, managing people, and building processes.

Highlights included Lorcan Malone, Boxever’s COO, taking us through his pitfalls and lessons learned around scaling companies in size and locations. FreeConferenceCall.com CFO Scott Southern took the stage to share insights on the freemium business model.

To close out, we invited attendees to participate in roundtable conversations, where they could share their lessons learned on the day, engage with speakers on any additional questions, or just connect with like-minded peers on some of the challenges and questions they face in their role.

Watch out for our final Summit of the series in December, where sales leaders will congregate in NYC. If you’re interested in speaking at or sponsoring any of the Bowery Capital Summits, please get in touch!

Interested in hearing more about the role of the modern CFO? check out this article from our friends at Toptal!