Cassie Petrey is co-founder of Crowd Surf, a digital marketing company providing catered and specialized marketing services to a roster of massive stars, including Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and Camilla Cabello. The company also manages Loren Gray (with Larry Rudolph), Jayden Bartels, Max & Harvey, and AJ McLean (of Backstreet Boys with manager Johnny Wright).
At age 12, Petrey ran an AOL Backstreet Boys newsletter that had over 10,000 subscribers, which led to being a serial super fan of several different artists. By age 17, she landed a job at Warner Music Group as a College Representative. Shortly after signing on board, MySpace made its debut and Petrey capitalized on this avenue by setting up a page for one of the projects she had been assigned from Warner. This page was one of the first major label ventures into leveraging MySpace, and this led to a full time position in the Digital Department at Warner Bros. Records office in Nashville. In her role, she oversaw social networking campaigns for label stars such as Faith Hill, Blake Shelton, and many others.
When Petrey graduated college, the role of “Community Manager” didn’t exist at companies. She knew social media platforms were more important than they were given credit for. Always seeking new and innovative ways to create organic, meaningful connections between artist and their fans, Petrey went on to form Crowd Surf in 2007, with long time friend Jade Driver.
At 25 years old, she was selected to be featured on Billboard’s “30 Under 30” list. This highlights executives making an impact in the industry and driving business forward. In 2016, she was included in Forbes’ “30 Under 30” and in 2017 was featured on Variety’s "Hollywood's New Leaders in Digital.” in 2018, Crowd Surf was also named to the prestigious Entrepreneur 360 List as a best small business to work for in America. Petrey was also named Billboard’s Digital Power Players list in 2018 and 2019. In addition, Petrey has been featured in numerous media outlets such as Huffington Post, Inc., Business Insider and more.
Today, Crowd Surf has evolved into a 50-person team, with four offices and a stacked roster of accounts boasting a collective social footprint of approximately 1 billion followers.
