It all depends on you

It’s every marketer’s dream: hosting a sold-out event for 10,000 attendees on the web. Which the producers ask to be part of. Oh, and this was this year’s title with no one against Taraji P. Henson, Kerry Washington and Jennifer Hudson.

This is how Shareese Bembury-Coakley is one of the driving forces behind CultureConthe industry’s largest festival for Black creatives and entrepreneurs.

That’s right, that’s how he makes the magic happen.

Meet the clutch

Shareese Bembury-Coakley

Vice President, Business Development and Partnerships at CulturaCon

Claim: Successfully introduced a partnership between the TV program Kill Eve and supplier buy now pay later Klarna; the end results integrated an in-app experience that took pieces from the (truly incredible) wardrobes of Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh. (Lesson 0: Look for target audience behavior that you will be able to expand on. Bembury-Coakley was well aware that her target market was asking questions about designers on social media.)

Lesson 1: It’s not “Why this?”, it’s “Why You?”.

At CultureCon, Bembury-Coakley tells me, other people do a run for Activation Alley as soon as it opens.

It’s not just that the activations are very good or that there’s a particular trend: it’s that CultureCon attendees have very sensible expectations, because they believe that this year’s activations will be just as excellent as the final. (More on that in a minute.)

With events and experiential spaces becoming increasingly saturated, I ask Bembury-Coakley how she stands out in a crowd. His solution is deceptively simple: Instead of answering the question “Why this idea?” solve the question: “Why this idea with me?”

“It’s not because it’s a new idea,” he says. “Often, other people can’t solve the ‘with me’ question.” To answer, evaluate your cultural relevance, your crew, and your consistency.

And remember it as a lens. As you express interest in your ideas using “why me,” you will be able to frame your deliverables no matter what, which makes it “as simple as conceivable to get buy-in.”

Lesson 2: Build trust before opening your wallets.

Consideration was a guideline in our conversation, both interpersonally and between producers and target audiences. Bembury-Coakley’s credit is due to his excellent fortune of having had excellent supporters throughout his career – alternatively “he’s two-sided”, he says. “He has a very heavy responsibility to make sure that you too are enjoying your promises once again.”

In short: considering is Not something that Shareese Bembury-Coakley takes in stride.

He brings this responsibility into his artwork with producers and partnerships. I ask her what makes her say “no” to a partnership with CultureCon, and she or he quickly responds: “anything that would betray the trust we’ve built with our team.”

Consider this the underlying reason why Activation Alley is so prevalent: Fashion activations are “not a necessary evil that you connect with just for an untied water bottle,” says Bembury-Coakley. They are “a testament to how authentic our partners have been in the past.”

The secret behind the Activation Alley hype is beautifully simple, really: consistency.

Lesson 3: Creators have an audience. Producers have bosses.

“Creators will always need to keep in mind that their level of contact has a president,” Bembury-Coakley says. “Quite often the person they’re talking to is a stakeholder, but it’s definitely indisputably the most often not the key stakeholders”.

“The rest you are able to do to become an invaluable helpful resource to make things easier for your partner will increase the chances of them working with you again,” she says. “I think from time to time he checks the producers as a whole, or they are [made up of] folks.” It’s easy for creators to forget that “imagine one of the easiest ways to navigate producers internally comes whatever makes their life easy” – and that makes them that much more likely to want to continue working with you.

And on the other hand, “the emblem will always have to keep in mind why they wanted to work with that author to begin with.” What always happens, he says, is that a writer’s content might be reasonably controversial, or if they’re signed to a brand, the brand “wants them to be extremely brand-safe, whatever happens could betray their target audience.”

See? It all depends on trust.

Master in Promotion, Advertising and Marketing was a proud sponsor of this year’s CultureCon, which took place October 4-5, 2025.

Persistent questions

This week’s question

In terms of creating partnerships for CultureCon, how do you decide which people to collaborate with, whether or not they are audio equipment, creators or crew leaders, to ensure they authentically represent CultureCon’s issue and resonate with the target audience? —Deesha Laxsav, senior manager of brand promotion, Snatch

This week’s answer

Bembury-Coakley: At CultureCon, data is central to everything we do. So we don’t make assumptions about our target audience, we don’t just come up with ideas. We are actually allowing it [data] informs the whole thing you just saw.

So, the programming you see being hyper-relevant? Our communities guided us on what they wanted, the producers they liked to interact with, the audio device they wanted to listen from and we listened to them.

I think a lot of producers and communities try to go against the grain from time to time, trying to push something on their target audience, and that’s not what they would love. We evolve and iterate [based on data]and that’s why the producers, the band and the audio device can go out and have fun.

Next week’s lingering question

Bembury-Coakley asks: I think nostalgia is something exaggerated. I want to understand: What is the best approach for manufacturers to engage with the communities or consumers they want to connect with?

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