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A versatile marketing and creative platform for growing businesses

Rich Caserta is the founder and CEO of Brandxpander, a production agency headquartered in Philadelphia. Created to give businesses better control over their marketing and creative department costs, Brandxpander describes itself as an “agency in the cloud” that provides its clients with flexible, round-the-clock access to a team of experienced project managers, designers, developers, and creative strategists. The company also offers a white label version of its software, so users can brand and customize the platform when pitching ideas or their business.

EDWIN WARFIELD: What kinds of clients do you work with? And what sorts of businesses do they serve, using the platform?

RICH CASERTA: When you start a venture like this… for us, it’s grassroots, and it started with an idea and a lot of passion, but we work with people who can sell and they didn’t have the other components to their business. That was really a place that we started: working with small businesses: people dream of having their own business but really didn’t have the infrastructure, but maybe they can sell creative services.

Other clients like we have done work with the 76ers—obviously, a larger clientele—and their needs are different. Their needs were more about, “Hey, we have so many projects that need to be done in a certain period of time. Our guys are maxed out—some of them are even threatening to quit.” So, we came in, and we basically said, “let us help you,” and so we sat down with them. One of the funny things is they were like, “We have all this stuff—we don’t even know where to start!” We were like, “alright, well, let’s go through the process,” and, we went through the process. We actually embedded somebody there because there was such an immediate need that had to be there, and then they were delivering the work to us through our system. It worked out great. Actually, the CMO at the time said, “My God, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot. I couldn’t believe how great it worked for them.” That was sort of a nice case study with the 76ers.

Some clients larger than the 76ers had different needs. For example, some of the companies we’ve talked to in New York City had needs such as they can’t get everybody on the same page together when they are executing projects, and they need approvals, and things of that sort. Some of the people they’re showing work to—they don’t know if they are looking at version 1 or version 5, and trying to comment on something. And some of the guys are overstretched in terms of, their bosses want them to be focusing on other things, so they saw this as an interesting sort of solution for them to be able to save time and money, and get everybody on the same page together.

Q. Why did you decide to build Brandxpander in Philly? What do you hope this company adds to the city?

A. One of the things that I would love to see in Philadelphia—and it was really strong in New York City when I was there—is more of the technology and creative community coming together, because I think there’s a lot of value—and, also, in a sense, a disconnect—but there’s a lot of value to people with experience in the business. One of the reasons why I say that because I remember when I was in New York City, there were retouchers who were artists. They would retouch photographs, and now you have the technology aspect where anybody can be a retoucher, but it’s the retoucher that learned that skill and developed those skills the old-fashioned way that sees things and can do things that a person who’s doing it now with all the great technology tools really does not have that skill and that mindset or talent, and is really more relying on the technical abilities of the tools that are out there.

The thing I’d love to see is the many great, talented people that have great experience and wisdom that can really add value from a different perspective, and also young people—and technology also adds another dimension of value, but maybe is missing that other component—coming together. I’d love to see sort of those two worlds come together. It would probably make something really dynamic.

Connect with Rich on LinkedIn

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ABOUT NEWMARK GRUBB KNIGHT FRANK

Newmark Grubb Knight Frank (NGKF) is one of the world's leading commercial real estate advisory firms. Together with London-based partner Knight Frank and independently-owned offices, NGKF's 14,100 professionals operate from more than 400 offices in established and emerging property markets on six continents.

With roots dating back to 1929, NGKF's strong foundation makes it one of the most trusted names in commercial real estate. NGKF's full-service platform comprises BGC's real estate services segment, offering commercial real estate tenants, landlords, investors and developers a wide range of services including leasing; capital markets services, including investment sales, debt placement, appraisal, and valuation services; commercial mortgage brokerage services; as well as corporate advisory services, consulting, project and development management, and property and corporate facilities management services. For further information, visit www.ngkf.com.

NGKF is a part of BGC Partners, Inc., a leading global brokerage company servicing the financial and real estate markets. BGC's common stock trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol (NASDAQ: BGCP). BGC also has an outstanding bond issuance of Senior Notes due June 15, 2042, which trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol (NYSE: BGCA). BGC Partners is led by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer  Howard W. Lutnick. For more information, please visit http://www.bgcpartners.com/.

Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

If you're interested in reaching CEOs, please contact edwin.warfield@citybuzz.co

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