Event Marketer Spring 2023 - 62

E ASHRAFI
lizabeth
CURRENT POSITION: AVP-Brand Communications &
Events, CareCredit/Synchrony
DREAM TEAM TITLE: Global Head of Trade Show Strategy
WHY WE WANT HER: In this cost-conscious era, she'll
make an exhibit portfolio work
harder and smarter.
Elizabeth Ashrafi's motto is " there's a solution
for everything. " Responsible for more than
100 events for CareCredit, a health, wellness
and personal care credit card under consumer
financial services company Synchrony, Ashrafi
is well-versed in not only trade shows and event
logistics and execution, but also marketing, communications
and branding.
For more than 20 years, Ashrafi has built her
career at CareCredit, starting as an executive
sales assistant, working her way over to several
different b-to-b marketing and branding roles,
and now serving as the executor of the company's
major events for nearly 11 years.
" I worked every department, but mostly
marketing, " she says. " Once I was in marketing,
I started learning about all these company
event opportunities, and I just quickly fell in
love with hospitality and event planning. It's
become my career, and it's been a really good
one. I love chaos; that's what events bring. "
In her current role as avp-brand communications
and events, Ashrafi focuses on
optimizing b-to-b strategies for medical and
financial trade shows, company events and
consumer engagements to ensure they maximize
the company's ROI, raise brand awareness,
track engagement and work toward
business objectives. She collaborates with
marketing sales leaders and analytics teams
to plan the events, and then passes the strategy
to the logistics team.
With a strong focus on trade shows, Ashrafi
and her team quickly pivoted to virtual
shows during the pandemic, which offered
critical learning opportunities.
" Not only was it more effective for us than
some of these in-person shows, but it was
more effective in driving engagements at a
lower cost, " she says. " We became much more
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EVENT MARKETER SPRING 2023
innovative in b-to-b trade show experiences, and
we really delivered the visibility of the brand, not
only through the platforms that we created for
virtual, but we also did it through editorial and
created that excitement. "
Now that the industry is increasingly returning
to in-person events, Ashrafi says she's seeing more
of a focus on local and regional shows, rather than
a full return to national shows, as well as smaller
booths on show floors with brands getting more
intentional about their investments, a practice also
extending to attendees and buyers.
" Attendees want more incentives, and they
come to the shows to either get the incentives or
with more intentions to buy the products or the
services, " she says. " They have their plan to get
this product or see this person. "
Always aiming to simplify processes, Ashrafi
will soon launch what she calls the Trade Show
Toolkit to help standardize and centralize marketing
assets, content and digital promotions
in one place, increasing efficiencies and allowing
the team to share event assets across all of
their markets and platforms. The kit, in its first
iteration as a demo after six months of development,
will include industry best practices, advice,
trends and event recaps for reference, as well as
a request form for the sales team to identify the
right assets for their events.
" We continue to reimagine our concepts that
increase our brand and category awareness and
capture that walk-by booth traffic, " she says-
embracing transformation and a little bit of controlled
chaos, like a true trade show pro.
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Event Marketer Spring 2023

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