Chris Burggraeve
Chris serves as the Chairman of Seaters board. A former CMO at AB InBev and Group Marketing Director at Coca-Cola Company, Chris is a world-renowned business marketing leader, turned advisor and investor.
My Story
With 33+ years of experience, Chris is a multiple award-winning, world-class corporate marketer turned entrepreneur, advisor, investor, public and private board member, academic, author, and speaker.
Always testing new frontiers as the best place to keep (un)learning, Chris was among the first senior CPG leaders to play an active role in the controversial global cannabis business, and he will likely become the first CMO in space (with Virgin Galactic). He has been profiled or quoted on Ad Age, Bloomberg, Business Insider, Forbes, Fortune, Financial Times, Marketing Week, NY Times, WSJ, and on countless local media platforms around the world.
His corporate marketing career spanned 23 years working for global CPG leaders like Procter & Gamble, The Coca-Cola Company, and Anheuser-Busch InBev (their first successful Global CMO from 07-12). Since 2013 he runs his own marketing advisory and micro-ventures firm (www.vicomte.com), serving corporate leadership, founders, and their boards, to (re)design and (re)build superior marketing capability fit for the next phase of growth. The resulting strong brand (portfolio) forms the basis for category leadership and sustainable returns to all stakeholders (consumers, shareholders, employees and society at large).
Chris has always put his money where his mouth is. He learned first-hand how hard it is to "farm" and "build" new brands. As a portfolio investor, and as an active board member on high-risk scale-ups, he has the battle scars and insights from successes, as well as from failures. He was an operating advisor in a leading Belgian family fund and is an LP in 3 VCs (1 in EU, 2 in US). Noteworthy exits to date include Sir Kensington’s, sold to Unilever (4/17), and FlashStock, sold to Shutterstock (7/17).
End 2012 he joined NYU Stern and the Trium Global MBA Academic Board as adjunct faculty. His passion is to bring the stubbornly disjointed planets of Marketing and Finance closer together. This academic journey resulted in the publication of two books: “Marketing IS Finance IS Business” (Dec 2018), and "Marketing IS NOT a Black Hole" (May 2021).