In his play All’s Well That Ends Well, William Shakespeare famously writes: “Love all, trust a few…” While the play is several hundred years old, these words are still relevant today as companies struggle to trust more customers online. With fraud on the rise, brands are often forced to require consumers to complete cumbersome security measures, leading to friction, frustration, and lost business. That’s where New York-based tech company Prove comes into the picture.
Prove is on a mission to rebuild digital trust by helping companies authenticate and verify consumer identities without adding friction to the user experience. To speak about Prove’s success in empowering companies to boost their revenue while cutting down on fraud, we spoke with Brad Rosenfeld, the company’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). In this wide-ranging conversation, we asked Brad about his journey up until now, the challenges he faced along the way, his thoughts on the marketing industry, the mission of Prove, and what he sees himself doing next.
Below are the highlights of the interview:
Briefly describe your professional journey up until now.
After undergrad, I founded a marketing technology consulting company that connected highly regarded non-profits with major name-brand companies like Papa John’s, Sonic, and Subway. As a result of these strategic partnerships, we were able to boost revenue through affinity-based digital products while also providing much-needed funding to non-profits.
After selling the company, I honed my product marketing skills by attending Columbia Business School and working at Philips Sonicare. After that, I eventually entered the payments industry when I moved over to PayPal, running NA B2B Digital Marketing; Later, I became the CMO for Biz2Credit and Biz2X. Reflecting on my career so far, I realize that, in many ways, my current role as Chief Marketing Officer at Prove is a culmination of all these past experiences. Every day, I work with an incredible team to transform innovative technology into sellable products, tell the Prove story, and work to combat fraud head-on.
What challenges did you face along the way?
Achieving the perfect work-life balance is always a challenge, especially when you are passionate about what you do but also want to be an engaged partner and parent. Add a historic pandemic and growing family into the mix, and it’s even harder! I don’t have the perfect solution, but I try to be more fully present, whether in the office or at home with my family.
What significant impact have you brought to the marketing industry?
Over the past few years, the marketing industry’s scope of work has expanded dramatically. It used to be that getting eyes on a webpage was enough. Today, marketing execs are increasingly responsible for boosting sign-ups and even improving retention rates. Over the past few years, I’ve helped many marketing leaders from across industries to leverage the latest technology to prevent onboarding abandonment and fix their leaky sales funnel once and for all. Watching Prove’s solutions help world-class marketers reach their ambitious goals is one of the most rewarding parts of my job.
Tell us about Prove and its foundation pillar.
When it comes to marketing technology, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
At Prove, our mission is simple but powerful: we deliver digital trust, providing businesses with the confidence to do more. Today’s digital world is plagued by fraud which contributes to a digital ecosystem lacking trust. Without trust, consumers must jump through more and more digital authentication hoops, resulting in lost business and increased operations expenses. To solve this problem, Prove leverages the mobile phone to modernize the way consumers prove who they are with ease, accuracy, and privacy – allowing businesses to focus on what they do best: increase revenue, provide best-in-class service, and contribute to economic empowerment.
How does Prove promote workforce flexibility, and what is your role in it?
Today, Prove offers the best of both worlds. For employees who want the comradery and dedicated workspace of an office, Prove has a handful of beautiful offices across the globe, including New York City, Denver, Redwood City, and London. Employees who crave flexibility, are welcome to work from home. Because Prove’s headcount increased rapidly during the worst of the pandemic to keep up with rising demand, workforce flexibility is in our DNA.
What is your take on technology’s importance, and how are you leveraging it?
When it comes to marketing technology, the more things change, the more they stay the same. While it’s critical to keep up with the times and use all of the tools at your disposal, it’s also important to remember the basics. As a marketer, you need to develop a message that resonates with your customer, and then you need to get that message out there by any means necessary.
Long story short: you need to use technology and not let technology use you.
What will be the next significant change in the marketing industry, and how are you preparing for it?
Kids today have grown up on Minecraft. For them, virtual reality and the metaverse are not some far-off concepts but an everyday reality. As they grow up and their purchasing power increases, marketers will need to meet this generation where they spend their free time and that’s on immersive digital platforms. Because Prove is in the digital identity space, we are actually looking forward to a not-so-distant future when everything from designer goods to back-to-school supplies is marketed and sold in virtual reality. We’ll help propel that industry forward by helping companies verify identities seamlessly.
What are your goals in the upcoming future?
Right now, my main goal is to put Prove’s technology into the hands of as many prospective partners as possible. After execs see their results in digital onboarding and servicing with Prove, they almost always make a purchase. Additionally, continuing to push Prove as a thought leader in the space.
What advice would you like to give the next generation of aspiring business leaders?
I think it’s better to get in on the ground floor of a smaller up-and-coming company than to be late to the game at a Google or an Apple. So many young professionals miss out on incredible opportunities because their only goal is to work for a company with widespread brand recognition. Having worked at both multinational conglomerates and smaller start-ups, I can tell you that the growth potential is exponentially larger in the latter.
