Rafe Offer

Why organisations work with Rafe Offer

• He has run brand portfolios at the scale most marketers only study, including a $1.2 billion Coca-Cola business and a Disney adult merchandise category that grew from $50m to $800m under his marketing leadership.
• He turned a single concert in a North London flat into Sofar Sounds, a venture-backed live music network operating in over 300 cities, with $40 million raised and partnerships with Airbnb and Uber.
• He works on the seam between brand and community, which is where most companies now have to compete and where most marketing leaders lack practical playbooks.
• His career spans the corporate brand machine and the founder seat, so the same talk holds up in front of a CMO at a listed business and a scale-up CEO with a board to convince.

Biography highlights

• Founder and Founder-Chair of Sofar Sounds, the global live music community founded in London in 2009.
• Former Director of Global Marketing, Disney Consumer Products, leading worldwide marketing for a $12bn licensing business.
• Former Global Marketing Director, The Coca-Cola Company, with responsibility for $1.2bn in stores, attractions, events and licensed merchandise.
• Former Director of Innovation, Diageo.
• Founder of “this & that,” a community and tech start-up focused on the practice of dialogue.
• Sofar Sounds named “one of the top new brands in America” by New York Magazine and described as a “quiet revolution” by The Guardian.

Biography

A live concert in a North London flat in 2009, eight friends invited to listen to a single performer, became the seed of Sofar Sounds. From that evening, Rafe Offer built a global live music network now operating in more than 300 cities, with about $40 million raised across three funding rounds and partnerships with Airbnb and Uber. New York Magazine called it one of the top new brands in America.

The unusual part of his career is the route in. Before Sofar, Offer ran the Mickey Unlimited adult merchandise programme at Disney, where the “having fun never goes out of style” campaign helped grow that category from $50m to $800m. He went on to lead worldwide marketing for Disney Consumer Products’ $12bn licensing business, then ran a $1.2bn Coca-Cola portfolio of stores, events and licensed merchandise as Global Marketing Director, before taking a Director of Innovation role at Diageo.

That sequence, big-brand operator turned founder, is what gives his perspective its weight. He has built community-led growth from scratch and run brand P&Ls at industrial scale. He talks credibly to a CMO worried about declining ad efficiency and to a founder trying to convert a passionate audience into a fundable business.

His more recent venture, this & that, is a community and tech start-up built around the practice of dialogue. It extends the through-line of his work: how organisations earn the right to people’s attention, and how that attention becomes commercial substance.

Key speaking topics

• Brand building in the era of community
• Customer experience as a growth engine
• Scaling a start-up from idea to global brand
• Marketing and innovation inside large organisations
• Company culture in entrepreneurial businesses
• Fundraising and commercialising a community brand

Ideal for

• CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding marketing for a low-trust, low-attention environment
• Founders and scale-up CEOs converting community traction into investable growth
• Customer experience and innovation leads inside large consumer businesses
• Boards reviewing brand and growth strategy in consumer-facing categories

Audience outcomes

• A clearer view of why community has become the central question for consumer brands, with examples from Sofar, Disney and Coca-Cola
• Specific lessons on running a global brand portfolio at scale, drawn from leading $1.2bn at Coca-Cola and $12bn licensing at Disney
• A founder’s account of what investors actually fund in a community-led business
• Practical detail on how culture and customer experience interact in fast-growing companies