Event Marketer Fall 2022 - 12

STRATEGY Q&A
A NEW LEASE ON LIFESTYLE
How American Express is leaning on 'luxury lifestyle' touches
with its small-business conference
Clayton Ruebensaal, EVP, Global B-to-B Marketing,
American Express
FOR THE TENTH EDITION of its free
Business Class Live conference on July
20, American Express offered traditional
panels, breakouts and main-stage presentations
at New York City's Javits Center.
But it was the luxury lifestyle touchpoints
as much as the educational content that
Amex attributes to the success of the event
(Momentum Worldwide handled). Of
course, success looks different today than
it did when the show launched. So, we sat
down with Clayton Ruebensaal, evp-global
b-to-b marketing at American Express, to
discuss the evolution of Business Class
Live-and the b-to-b event attendee.
Event Marketer: Tell us about
the launch of Business Class
Live. What was the goal?
Clayton Ruebensaal: A little over 10
years ago, the team started talking about
how everything we do needs to help
[small] businesses do more business. If we
stay focused on how our customers are
growing, adding more locations and new
employees, going into new product lines,
it'll be good for them to grow their business-but
it's good for our bottom line as
well. And that central premise is what led
to Small Business Saturday, Shop Small
and Open Forum. The original Business
Class Live that we started 10 years ago,
the essence has been the same, which is
creating a first-class-level conference for
that purpose of helping these businesses
do more business. And we do everything
in these events from really big picture-
like inspiration-to very tactical help. So,
it started as this platform to democratize
business education.
12 EVENT MARKETER FALL 2022
EM: After a decade, evolution
seems inevitable, so what's
changed?
CR: I think evolution is a great word for
it. It started as an event in Washington,
D.C., with hundreds of people attending.
The last one we did live before the pandemic
was 2019, and we had about 1,000
people. And over the pandemic we, like a
lot of people, took the event digital, which
gave us a lot of scale. Then coming out of
the pandemic, we combined the best of
what we were doing in-person with the
best of what we were doing digitally. And
now we've got the numbers in-we had
over 5,000 attendees between physical
and digital in this last version... So, it's
evolved in size. What also changed over
the pandemic is that we saw we could
help these businesses grow by democratizing
business education across tons
of platforms. We have a daily newsletter
called " The Brief. " We have a video series
that we create with very high production
value with people like Jonathan Adler and
Tom Colicchio. We do an Office Hours
podcast. And Business Class Live as it was
produced [this year] is really the in-person
personification of everything we do.
EM: What differentiates Business
Class Live from other SMB
conferences?
CR: When we went into business education,
there was so much good content out
there, even from our near competitors
and other companies. And they do two
things really well: They provide very useful
information and they provide it in a
very accessible way, digitally. I think the
third leg of that stool that we bring and
why people love being at Business
Class Live is the lifestyle
part of the American Express
brand. Bringing the same style
and swagger that we bring to
Coachella or the US Open to
a business event where every
detail is something that you
want to do, not something that
you need to do. And by that,
I mean amazing speakers on
stage, fantastic food, a really
well-designed environment, the best
coffee you can buy, and great ice cream
for the afternoon break. Making sure that
those [elements] feel like part of a luxury
lifestyle experience really makes people
want to be there. It makes people want to
come back.
EM: Let's talk about the program,
and finding the speaker
talent for the event. How does
your team approach that?
CR: We've had good success with celebrities
who are known for their acting or
singing or athletics, but who also are true
small-business owners, like the attendees.
So, on paper, Issa Rae was the right person
to bring. She has a coffee company and
she has a beauty company focused on
Black women called Sienna Naturals. But
when I introduced her and she came on
stage, I've never in my life experienced
such an emotional excitement from an
audience. And it showed, not only did we
bring the right people on paper, but we
really brought that lifestyle excitement to
a business event. I would say there were
as many people there for Jay Shetty at the
very end of the day as were there for Issa
Rae at the beginning of the day. It just
showed that having the right content really
does make a difference. It makes people
want to be there, makes them want to stay,
keeps them engaged... That has been a
real differentiator for us.
The brand's luxury lifestyle approach
to b-to-b events is likely here for the
long run, because as Ruebensaal puts
it, " It makes people feel like we really
appreciate them-and we do. "
-K.S
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Event Marketer Fall 2022

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