To hear Sam Brown tell it, BrandVia (asi/145037) had no idea what it was getting into when they hired her to set up a new website on a three-month contract. Three years later, she’s the director of corporate marketing, bringing her own sense of style and rebellious attitude to BrandVia’s marketing efforts. Take Reveal, the company’s annual new-product “epic” event meant to build engagement among its clients and give them a reason to brave California’s Bay-Area traffic. Since joining BrandVia and directing the showcase, Brown has grown the event in attendance and, well, coolness every year.

For 2019, Reveal featured a gift bar where guests could choose exactly which items would work best with their client or personal needs, as opposed to the near-ubiquitous generic swag bag. “What people really loved was the fact that they got to peruse and they were now shopping,” Brown says. “When they get the swag home, they’re more likely to use it because they’ve selected it.”

Along with all the client-facing marketing functions that Brown and her team orchestrate, in-house promos are some of their favorite projects too – despite some challenges. “When you have to actually pick swag to give out to your own staff, that’s harder. We’ve seen it all,” she says. “You have to wow people who are in the business of wow.”

And there certainly is a lot of wow to go around when it comes to Brown and her team’s outlook. “When you leave the path you come up with the most interesting adventures; that’s kind of where we’re at with BrandVia,” she says. “I think I make them uncomfortable 95% of the time, and we’ve gotten here either in spite of that or partially because of it.”