How a Black, female-founded agency is creating space for more than straight, white men

Economically, as well as racially, we’ve focused on primarily women of color and people who are part of the LGBTQ+ community. Very quickly, what we realized was that it had to go beyond an older white man coming up with the concept and a younger person of color directing the piece. Over the years, what we’ve done is created space. We’re really here to create space.

How did the summer of 2020 impact your business and what does that look like now?

There was a huge shift. When we launched, everyone thought we were nuts. They would say, “You’re so niche” or, “You have too many Black directors on your roster,” which was super offensive. It was a hard thing to get people to understand not only the idea of a young person but young people of color. For the six years of business, we were constantly running up against this bias. We didn’t shift our business at all as far as what our focus was.

The other thing that happened with George Floyd’s murder and this terrible beginning of the reckoning, suddenly people started looking around, like, “Oh shit. We actually have to listen.”  It finally raised into the consciousness of brands, ad agencies and people did start to look to us. I can’t tell you how many other agencies are female [and] Black-owned. Suddenly we were getting calls and opportunities to step into the room. But it’s still at the very beginning. I can’t say our lives have changed, people are coming in and throwing down money. It’s still a little bit of the lip service and “We want to do this,” but then they still go back to working with the same groups.

With that being said, has the industry’s efforts really made a difference?

It is an opening. I do see it shifting. And for the first time, I see the horizon, the opportunity and incredible value proposition that we’ve created is that the door has opened, or we kicked down the door, and are able to walk through. No longer are they looking at us so confused when we say there’s a fundamental need to hear stories from a variety of points of view. You can no longer keep telling the same story about the white boy or white girl whose heart was broken. Now, we want to hear different stories of are what makes the fabric of our society and our history, really. It happens to be these diverse stories told by diverse people. 

So, where do we go from here?

We have to get beyond this concept that people are doing us a favor by working with us and get to the idea that this is a huge value. What they’re getting from these diverse storytellers is not charity. You’re not doing them a favor, they’re doing you a favor. What we know is people of color lead all things. They lead culture, great ideas and art. A key part of our business still is to continue that education and continue proving ourselves.

I’m like a gardener planting seeds and I believe those seeds are going to grow. I believe the pain is temporary—the pain of trying to communicate our value, which is rough because people sometimes don’t get it. But pain is temporary and the future we’re headed toward is one in which people get the incredible value that we have here.