Creativity in the Era of Big Data with Speaker Seth Farbman(Former CMO of Spotify and current Executive Fellow at Yale University)

Bio

Seth Farbman is an Executive Fellow at Yale University, primarily within the School of Management. He joined the university recently, after retiring from Spotify. In addition to lecturing, he provides real-world insights on business, marketing and technology to students, faculty and administration. Seth is a senior advisor to high-growth companies including Peloton, Coinbase, Grubhub, Sunwink, Noom, and The New York Times. He is a Board Director for Dashlane, J.Crew and Snag, as well as serving several not-for-profit boards and the Sundance Institute. In 2015, Seth became the founding Chief Marketing Officer at Spotify. During his tenure, the company grew to over 250 million customers in 65 countries-- becoming the world’s largest music streaming service and one of the 100 most valuable global brands. Seth managed Spotify’s B2C and B2B marketing teams, as well as public relations, customer support, brand, creative and design, marketing sciences and analytics teams. Two years ago, Seth helped the company accomplish one of the most innovative and successful public offerings in years.

Recently, Seth was named the World’s Most Innovative CMO by Business Insider and, for the eighth year in a row, ranked one of Forbes’ Most Influential CMO’s. He was also recognized amongst the 50 most creative people in the world by Creativity. While at Spotify, Seth built a best-in-class marketing and communications team that has been recognized for its unique combination of deep data and world-class creativity, which led to the internal creative team being named Advertising Age’s 2018 Agency of the Year. At the Cannes Lions International Festival for Creativity, Spotify was awarded 11 Lions and named the 2018 Brand of the Year. Before Spotify, he was the Chief Marketing Officer at Gap, then the world’s largest specialty apparel company. In his five years at Gap, he drove a turnaround that returned the company to growth for the first time in a decade and increased the company’s share price almost three-fold. Seth helped achieve the results by reshaping the entire global marketing function and shifting the product and marketing development to a new, younger segment of customers. He also oversaw the expansion of the Gap brand into new markets like China and South Africa.

Previously, Seth was the co-founder and President of OgilvyEarth, one of the first sustainability-focused marketing consultancy and part of the WPP/Ogilvy agency network. Recognizing the new opportunity in the sustainability movement, Seth worked with global companies like DuPont, GE, Unilever, IBM, Coca-Cola and Siemens to help guide their product development roadmaps and marketing strategies to address customer demand for more environmentally and socially responsible products and services. Additionally, at the request of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, he created the largest-ever pro bono consumer campaign to raise support for the U.N. effort to secure a multi-lateral environmental agreement between its member countries.

Seth began his marketing career at two mobile communications startups that merged with carriers Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless. He led national marketing and communications teams during the most rapid expansion of the mobile industry. Seth is a trained journalist, working primarily for ABC and NBC television stations in the six years immediately after graduate school. He has an M.S. in Journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University. Over the years, Seth has also taught undergraduate courses at several universities, including Yale University, New York University, Ithaca College and Virginia Commonwealth University, as an instructor and an adjunct professor.

In addition to being a music fan, Seth is mildly obsessed with classic cars and Land Rovers, which consume a great deal of his time, as well as motor oil. He lives in the New York City area.

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