{"id":3663,"date":"2025-10-08T00:01:29","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T00:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zoomlavilin.com\/?p=3663"},"modified":"2025-10-09T13:10:26","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T13:10:26","slug":"its-all-about-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zoomlavilin.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/08\/its-all-about-you\/","title":{"rendered":"It's all about you"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a marketer\u2019s dream: Hosting a sold-out event for 10k attendees. That brands are begging to be a part of. Oh, and that was headlined this year by none other than Taraji P. Henson, Kerry Washington, and Jennifer Hudson.<\/p>\n

\"Click<\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s Shareese Bembury-Coakley\u2019s reality as one of the driving forces behind CultureCon<\/strong>, the world\u2019s largest festival for Black creatives and entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how she makes the magic happen.<\/p>\n

Meet the Master<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\"shareese<\/p>\n

Shareese Bembury-Coakley<\/h3>\n

Vice President, Business development and partnerships at <\/em>CultureCon<\/em><\/a><\/h3>\n

Claim to fame:<\/strong> Successfully sold a partnership between the TV show Killing Eve<\/em> and buy-now-pay-later service Klarna; deliverables included an in-app experience that sourced pieces from Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh\u2019s (truly incredible) wardrobes. (Lesson 0:<\/strong> Look for audience behavior that you can amplify.<\/strong> Bembury-Coakley had noted that viewers were asking questions on social media about designers.)<\/p>\n

Lesson 1: It\u2019s not \u201cWhy this?\u201d, it\u2019s \u201cWhy you<\/em>?\u201d.<\/h2>\n

At CultureCon, Bembury-Coakley tells me, people make a run<\/em> for Activation Alley as soon as it opens.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just that the activations are amazing or that a particular brand is there \u2014 it\u2019s that CultureCon\u2019s attendees have high expectations, because they trust that this year\u2019s activations will be as good as the last. (More on this in a minute.)<\/p>\n

With events and experiential spaces becoming ever more saturated, I ask Bembury-Coakley how she stands out in a crowd. Her answer is deceptively simple: Instead of answering the question, \u201cWhy do this idea?\u201d answer the question, \u201cWhy do this idea with me<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just about it being a unique idea,\u201d she says. \u201cOftentimes, people can\u2019t answer the \u2018with me\u2019 question.\u201d To answer it, evaluate your cultural relevancy, your community, and your consistency.<\/p>\n

And think of it as a lens. When you focus your ideas through \u201cwhy me,\u201d you can frame your deliverables in a way that makes it \u201cas easy as possible to get buy-in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lesson 2: Build trust before opening wallets.<\/h2>\n

Trust was a through-line in our conversation, both interpersonally and between brands and audience. Bembury-Coakley credits much of her success to having had amazing advocates throughout her career \u2014 but “it\u2018s double-sided,\u201d she says. \u201cIt comes with the very heavy responsibility of making sure that you\u2019re also fulfilling your promises on the back end.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words: Trust is not <\/em>something that Shareese Bembury-Coakley takes lightly.<\/p>\n

She carries this responsibility into her work with brands and partnerships. I ask her what makes her say \u201cno\u201d to a CultureCon partnership, and she immediately says, \u201canything that would betray the trust we\u2019ve built with our community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trust is the underlying reason that Activation Alley is so popular \u2014 brand activations \u201caren\u2019t a necessary evil that you\u2019re connecting with for a free water bottle,\u201d Bembury-Coakley says. They\u2019re \u201ca testament to how authentically our partners have showed up in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\u201cbrand<\/p>\n

The secret behind the Activation Alley hype is pretty simple, really: Consistency.<\/p>\n

Lesson 3: Creators have audiences. Brands have bosses.<\/h2>\n

\u201cCreators should always remember that their point of contact has a boss,\u201d Bembury-Coakley says. \u201cUsually the person they\u2018re talking to is a stakeholder \u2014 but it\u2019s generally not the key<\/em> stakeholder.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnything that you can do to be a resource to make it easier on your partner is going to increase the likelihood of them working with you again,\u201d she says. \u201cI think sometimes you look at the brands as a whole, but they are [made up of] individuals.\u201d It\u2019s easy for creators to forget that \u201cfiguring how to navigate these brands internally in a way that makes it easy on them\u201d \u2014 and that makes them more likely to want to keep working with you.<\/p>\n

And on the flip side, \u201cthe brand should always remember why they wanted to work with that creator to begin with.\u201d What often happens, she says, is that a creator\u2019s content might be slightly controversial, but once they\u2019ve signed with a brand, the brand \u201cwants them to be extremely brand-safe in a way that would be betraying their audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

See? It all comes down to trust.<\/p>\n

Masters in Marketing was a proud sponsor of this year\u2019s CultureCon, which took place October 4 – 5, 2025.<\/em><\/p>\n

Lingering Questions<\/strong><\/h2>\n

This Week\u2019s Question<\/h3>\n

When it comes to building partnerships for CultureCon, how do you decide which people to collaborate with \u2014 whether that\u2019s speakers, creators, or community leaders \u2014 to make sure they authentically represent CultureCon\u2019s mission and resonate with your audience?<\/strong> \u2014Deesha Laxsav, Senior manager of brand marketing, Clutch<\/p>\n

This Week\u2019s Answer<\/h3>\n

Bembury-Coakley:<\/strong> At CultureCon, data is paramount to everything we do. So, we\u2018re not making assumptions about our audience, we\u2019re not just coming up with ideas. We’re really letting that [data] inform everything that you see.<\/p>\n

So, the programming that you see being hyper-relevant? Our communities told us what they wanted, the brands that they like to engage with, the speakers they wanted to hear from, and we listened to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think a lot of brands and communities are sometimes trying to go against the grain, trying to push something on their audience, and it\u2018s not what they want. We evolve and iterate [based on data], and that\u2019s why the brands and the community and the speakers can come out and have a great time.<\/p>\n

Next Week\u2019s Lingering Question<\/h3>\n

Bembury-Coakley asks: <\/strong>I think nostalgia is something that\u2018s been overdone. I would love to know: What\u2019s a better way for brands to engage with communities or consumers that they want to connect with?<\/p>\n

\"Click<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a marketer\u2019s dream: Hosting a sold-out event for 10k attendees. That brands are begging to be a part of. Oh, and that was headlined this year by none other than Taraji P. Henson, Kerry Washington, and Jennifer Hudson. That\u2019s… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3665,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoomlavilin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3663"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoomlavilin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoomlavilin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoomlavilin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoomlavilin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3663"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoomlavilin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3668,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoomlavilin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3663\/revisions\/3668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoomlavilin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zoomlavilin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoomlavilin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zoomlavilin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}