CPG marketers join social firm

Brand marketing veterans Chris Burggraeve and Ted McConnell are the newest members of the board of industry advisors at Syncapse, a leading social performance management company.

Burggraeve is the former chief marketing officer of Anheuser-Busch InBev and founder of Vicomte LLC. McConnell is a former director of marketing innovation at Procter & Gambler and EVP of digital at the Advertising Research Foundation.

"Both Chris Burggraeve and Ted McConnell are among the most accomplished and innovative minds in global brand marketing, technology, measurement and effectiveness," said Michael Scissons, CEO and founder of Syncapse. "Chris and Ted's insights and experience are further empowering Syncapse to understand and improve marketing ROI for the world's leading brands."

Syncapse is a software as a service based technology infrastructure tailored for large global brands and enterprises that provides the ability to manage and amplify communications, measure engagement, and analyze paid, earned, and owned social media across multiple markets, brands, and channels.

The company helps global marketers to understand and optimize, in real-time, the convergence of paid, owned and earned media. Its clients include hundreds of brands from global marketing leaders like Amway, Anheuser-Busch InBev, The Coca-Cola Company, Diageo, L'Oreal and Reckitt Benckiser among others.

"Emerging technologies and channels continue to create a fascinating renaissance in more direct marketing models and more directly managed interaction with people living your brand," said Burggraeve. "When I was a client of Syncapse, they helped our brand teams to understand the social landscape, establish social KPIs and content workflow, and improve our brand performance around the globe."

McConnel added, "If big data platforms are the arms and legs in the body of new marketing, then Syncapse is the nerve-center. There are a lot of data out there and marketers all have the same question: What does it mean? Syncapse is helping marketers understand this new world, and bridge the gap between legacy models and new ones."

For more than 23 years, Burggraeve has built world-class marketing capabilities in developed and emerging markets for leading global fast moving consumer goods companies including Anheuser-Busch InBev, Coca-Cola and P&G. His work spans the renovation and reinvention of iconic brands and established brand portfolios, getting marketing and executive teams digitally fit, and the incubation of new revenue streams. He is the president of the World Federation of Advertisers since 2010, and recently began running his own venture portfolio. Additionally, Burggraeve joined NYU Stern as Adjunct Faculty for its global programs, and founded Vicomte LLC, a NYC-based marketing and strategy consultancy working mostly with private-equity owned brands.

McConnell is a digital marketing veteran who spent 15 years presiding over digital marketing innovation at P&G, where he worked to understand how emergent technology and digital practices could benefit CPG brands. His innovation related work at P&G included building and running a marketing technology lab, and an assignment as the Corporate Futurist. Currently, he serves on the boards of select technology startups and is EVP of Digital for the Advertising Research Foundation.