We’ve all had a client say, at one point or anything, “I want to go viral.” But what does it take to turn that request into a reality? Matt “BK” Augustin is the creative powerhouse at Hartbeat, Kevin Hart’s global entertainment company, and joins imPRessions this week to share what really goes into making content that cuts through the noise. We talk campaign strategy, the art of storytelling, and why chasing virality isn’t always the goal – but creating culture is.
imPRessions Season 3 Episode #5 Transcript
Jenn: Hey, Kalli. When you think of breakfast, what do you think of?
Kalli: So, when I was younger, it was chocolate pudding snack packs. That’s the only thing I would eat. But now actually, even like today, it’s usually like pancakes and side of bacon and coffee.
Jenn: Exactly. I was kind of hoping you would say that because yeah, somebody would ask me, I would be like, I don’t know, eggs and bacon, right? And coffee. The reason I asked is because, and this will kind of tell you into our guest today, Edward Berniece, who is basically the pioneer of PR, was really one of the first people to take a product and make a legacy out of it and way back in the day he had this client. They sold bacon. Nobody was buying it. Nobody was eating it, and he surveyed a bunch of doctors who, like pen to paper took surveys and asked them questions about breakfast habits and nutrition, and how people should be starting their day. And lo and behold, all of the doctors had recommended protein with breakfast, and that’s how he kind of pioneered bacon as a breakfast food and yeah, people eat it all the time. Whatever, bacon is great, but it did really become a breakfast staple and today’s guest kind of works along those same lines. BK Augustin, he’s a professor at USC, and he’s the current Creative Lead at Hartbeat, who was the creative agency led by Kevin Hart. He’s worked with a ton of brands and teaches advertising to kind of get people to understand like consumer habits. And I thought he would be a really great guest today. He has worked for Tinder. He’s worked for Paramount, Google, I mean, you name it. He’s been a really big part of their creative legacy. So, excited to bring him on today.
Kalli: Awesome, I’m excited to chat, let’s get to it.
Jenn: For those of us who work in social media, it’s not uncommon for a client to say these dreaded 5 words. “I want to go viral.” Thankfully for our listeners today we’re talking with someone who has done just that. BK Augustin is the current Creative Lead at Hartbeat, Kevin Hart’s global multi-platform company and creative partner to some of the world’s biggest brands, talent and entertainment platforms. But prior to Hartbeat, BK has worked for numerous household name brands, crafting compelling campaigns and utilizing his creativity through storytelling. Today, we’ll find out more about the countless campaigns BK has led that have fulfilled every client’s dream and has broke the Internet. Hi BK. So happy to have you on our show today.
BK: Hello. Hello. Thank you for having me.
Kalli: Of course. And, you know, before we dive in, tell us a little bit about, you know, your career and how you eventually landed the role of Creative Lead at Hartbeat.
BK: Ohh man, this is the, the story goes so many different directions so I’ll try to give the Cliffsnotes version. I actually had no idea the advertising industry existed. It was not a major at my college. I went to Illinois State and they had marketing, they had PR, like the School of Communications. But like many schools, even now, like I obviously I teach at USC too, and advertising was just making its way there. So, it was something that was not for me, known that I could pursue and make money off of doing essentially what I already was, which was just spreading the word about things and getting people excited about brands, products, events or services. And I had the opportunity to do a program called Marcus Graham Project after I graduated, shout out to my MGP family and that really exposed me to the entire world. And so again, this story can go many different places, but the short of it is from there, I have the personality where I just go out and make things happen. And if not, then get back up and try again. And every single job I’ve had has been created for me along the way. So I started at Digitas, or FCB. I’m sorry. Then ended up at Digitas. From there, moved down to Atlanta for Fitzco, which was under McCann at the time. From there, left to go to 72 and Sunny out in Los Angeles and then left to go brand side for Faze Clan and then now at USC and Hartbeat.
Jenn: That’s amazing. And I know in our brief, like intro conversation and the intro that I just gave to our listeners, you’ve worked with a lot of different brands. You’ve worked with Paramount, Google, but there’s one in particular that really has stood out to me. The Tinder Swipe Night campaign. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about the concept and how you came up with it?
BK: Yes, I love that. That campaign is like my, you know, when you hear those old heads talk about all the records they broke back in high school, they’re like, oh, well, back in my day like, that was my back in my day moment, it’s 72. And the thing that made it so beautiful is the team grew and there were a lot of people who were responsible for bringing that vision to life. But the original start of it was about five of us, because we knew the client who had moved over. She was someone we had worked with closely. I believe she even worked at 72 and Sunny at the time, and then she moved over to Match Group specifically on the Tinder business. And so they came to us like, hey, we don’t have much money, but we want to get people to think about Tinder more than just a swipe. They gave us all the issues, which look, these are issues that were, or challenges I should say, things that should not be strange to anyone who’s used the platform before or have heard about it. People are swiping on each other, but not actually talking. People are catfishing each other all the time. We’re not really known for anything. We pioneered this swipe, but there’s nothing magic about the brand, like a Bumble who, you know, the women message first or Hinge has like interesting things to call out on your profile to kind of add some color. And then there’s Tinder. Yeah. They pioneered the swipe, but that was about it. And so, we took this ragtag group of people, again 5 of us just literally working together, trying to figure it out and landed on this idea of gamifying the platform. They had never had video on the platform before. They never had, this was before Night Mode was really massive where it kind of just came standard with every app you have where it just adjusts to the system setting on their phone. And so we were able to convince them to do a lot of things, like changing profiles to night mode, adding video into the experience and gamifying it in a way that made people have a reason to go to Tinder and revolutionize the swipe in a way that had never been done before. So, it was really exciting. I threw a lot at you and the short of it is they didn’t have money. They wanted us to do something cool. And since there was really no barriers, because no one expected us to come back with this. We just came out with the idea of a choose-your-own adventure, where your swipes can really lead to the end result of how you end in the story, but also give you something to talk about with the people that you match with. All in knowing that we didn’t have a lot to start with. And then folks were like, yeah, yeah, you could do whatever you want to. And they’re like, oh, wait, I’ll crush this. And then the awards came in with it. Like. Yeah, that that’s me. Absolutely. One of my favorites, just when I think about all the things that went into it.
Kalli: That actually is awesome, and you probably didn’t know this, but I met my husband on. Tinder.
BK: Oh, Congrats.
Kalli: Yes, thank you. Yeah, very many years ago. And it’s so interesting that you say that cause I know like when I was trying to date like it was very hard to find somebody and make that connection. So, like seeing the evolution and Swipe Night as someone who like did find success on Tinder like it was not easy. It was literally like trying to find a needle in a haystack. But now, like, and a lot of my friends are still using it. And you know, they’re dating. And it’s such a different platform now. So, it’s so nice to see that. And to hear that you’ve been a part, you were a part of that. So, that’s really cool.
BK: Yeah, that that’s awesome. And to your point like you have that success story, but at the time they also were dealing with the positioning issue where it’s like you know Match is very clear and again it’s all the same group, right? But Match is very clear, it’s kind of backwards. They’re convincing you to be so successful that you delete the app versus Tinder, they’re like, well, we still want people on the app, but what are they on the app for if they found their love? So is it just the hook? And they didn’t want that positioning for them. So being able to kind of tell a story and give people a reason, to your point, to converse and match and have some sort of thing that they can get out of it while having fun was a challenge that was exciting to crack.
Kalli: Definitely, definitely. And I know you’ve said that you understand and get culture because you know you’re living it daily. And even with, you know, something like the Tinder Swipe Night, how does that influence your creative process?
BK: Absolutely love that question. I’m gonna dig a little bit on the zag of a question that you asked me. I don’t know if that makes sense, but we gonna keep rocking with it like I knew what I was saying just now. But when it comes to different things like this, for me, I love to pour myself into the work, and that happened. I have to credit Kelly Shuffle from 72 and Sunny. I was always a strategist, always someone who loved creative, but it always was coming from a sense of different programs I’ve seen in the wild. Different products, different campaigns like Shorty Awards was bookmarked on my page where I was reading every day to see where I can get some inspiration. And then one day, Kelly comes up to me at an office party for 72, where they allowed us to bring friends. And she’s like, I notice that everyone’s calling you Brooklyn or BK. Not Matt. As she says that to me, I was like, well, yeah, that’s my nickname. She’s like, why don’t you go by that in the work environment? If everyone in your life calls you Brooklyn or BK. And as I’m starting to answer, she’s like, you’re not being yourself. Don’t worry. I got it. And then the next meeting with the team, she’s like, just so everyone knows we’re gonna be calling Matt BK from now on. His e-mail will be changing. And I’m sitting like what’s happening right now. But that moment I do credit her for literally changing my trajectory with how I show up with creative, because then it became less of me putting on a mask and then showing up to work and trying to put on a mask of the consumer and me just showing up as me and adapting to, OK, these are the stories that we need to tell based on my own lived experiences based on me just being me without the filter of trying to be corporate. And so that’s what I mean by a live culture. I get culture and I’m able to implement it into my work because now I’m just showing up unapologetically as myself instead of trying to be this caricature of a marketer. And now I’m just me, who happens to be a great marketer and advertiser.
Jenn: Yeah. And I love that too, because especially in our line of work, you know, we’re creatives by nature and there is something to be said about that role, we’re not just a nine to five kind of doing spreadsheets all day and then go home where you can kind of have those two different personas. I think like who we are as people really fold into that creative process, which is what makes it authentic. So, I really love that somebody said to you like bring it all in. You know, like there’s no reason to have you be Matt at work and be BK as your real self in life. Be BK for everywhere. And I love that.
BK: Mm-hmm. And I know that sounds crazy. Folks are probably like, you sound like you need a therapist. I have one, but no. To that point it was a game changer for me because again, we talk about being authentic all the time. It’s one of those words like culture or viral that you said at the top of the podcast that’s overused and you don’t really realize you’re being inauthentic until you start showing up as you and you’re like ohh, this is what folks meant. So again, I know it sounds crazy, but literally we all put on those masks. I just gave names to mine.
Jenn: Exactly. Exactly. I love that. And it this kind of falls into the next thing I wanted to bring up because being authentic, really being able to like push the envelope from our creative side and really tap into our inner selves, and I think that really opens up our mind to a lot of different compelling ideas and campaigns and things like that. So, you have worked with so many different brands. From your experience, what defines a campaign that does break the Internet as like everybody wants to do these days? Do you feel that it’s virality? Is it engagement? Is it cultural impact? Like what do you think is really the recipe that makes something really go viral?
BK: I love this question and I think there’s like twofold or two answers I should say. On one end you hit the nail on the head of their campaigns that have cultural impact. On the other end, you hit the nail on the head of campaigns that break the Internet. I think sometimes campaigns can do both, but sometimes campaigns do one or the other, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And the examples I use is like, Wendy’s broke the Internet several times when they started doing everything from Nuggets for Carter to clapping back to people on Twitter, but they’ve done a great job of coming around and making it all for like one cohesive brand. But one thing that I used to always look up and think when they first were doing this is if you walk into Wendy’s and you’re not the generation that’s on Twitter, you have no idea they’re clapping back at people you’ve probably never even heard of Nuggets for Carter until it made its way onto like a Good Morning America. So, it broke the Internet but there was no cultural impact at a wider scale because they weren’t making that their messaging throughout, like everything. On the flip side, you think about the fact that when it comes to love in Western culture, doesn’t matter, you know ,who you decide to love, there is the diamond ring that you propose with for most people. Right? And it’s this idea that the bigger the rock or the fact that you’re willing to get something unique or you got down on one knee and propose that, like, that symbolizes love. That was actually a campaign that had a cultural impact. From De Beers and De Beers like they knew, diamonds weren’t even rare. They said, they were the ones that came up with the 2x a month salary. That was all part of their marketing initiative, and that was before social existed. So that had cultural impact cause it shifted the entire way people thought about love, marriage in our culture where now you have that, you don’t have to, but like it’s expected you get the diamond ring. And that all started with a cultural campaign where they just came out and said that signifies love. Really what matters is what is the story that you’re telling when you’re talking to your congregation, your tribe, the people that you’re going after, how do you get them so excited and leaning in and feeling something? And that really boils down to the story at the core of it. And so, I think the best campaigns that do have the cultural impact and can start to really break social and have that word of mouth and virality and spread are the ones that have the best stories possible. The most recent one that I’ll say and I think has a cultural impact that we haven’t even necessarily seen just yet, but it kind of coincides with the culture shifting into more of a love and appreciation for women’s sports. It’s about time, but it’s Nike’s So Win campaign and you look at what they’re doing with that, the cultural impact of it is we’re tired of sitting, acting like the most elite people on the planet are playing by the same rules as everyone else. They’re out here moving like they are cocky and confident because they have to be in order to be the best of the best. But then what they’ve done now is they started to turn the camera around towards their female athletes and it’s like the they say you can’t win, so win. And so like something like that to me is so powerful because now young ladies are looking at that campaign like I can do this. That’s the cultural impact that’s gonna have ramifications forever and a ripple effect forever, I should say. But on the social side, the way that they approached it and the way that they were just so unapologetic of, like, these are Nike athletes, they’re better than you. We’re not sorry. Got people talking on social. So again, the story at the core of it was we don’t give a damn what you think. Yes, everyone’s an athlete if you have a body, but don’t forget we’re Nike. We’re the best of the best.
Kalli: I think those are such great examples and I’m actually really glad you brought up the De Beers Swans because a lot of people don’t realize that it is a cultural thing and you know it was an advertising campaign and look how many times have we all heard diamonds are forever. And I am one that really appreciated that advertising campaign when it came time for me to get engaged. Like very glad that my husband, like, went with that. You know, but again, even now to see how you’re 100% right, like, Wendy’s is doing such great things, but a lot of people don’t realize it because if you’re not online, you know, you have to really find all those pieces and hit all those moments. And the way that things have changed. And now even the way that Nike is, is approaching it is, you know, more immersive and really trying to change the culture. So, there are so many different tools that are at our disposal now that we can, you know, incorporate when we’re creating these campaigns. You know, how do you see AI and emerging tech influencing the way that campaigns today are not only created but also shared?
BK: I love this question, fire questions. Thank you. For me, AI can be one of two things. It could be either threatening or it could be something that boosts. My mom is born and raised or was born and raised in Guyana. So South America. My dad was born and raised in Haiti, so Caribbean. And the reason why I bring that up is because we all like have jokes about our parents being like out of touch with certain things like technology and all that. But no, my parents really were. And I remember growing up, I always used to hear all the time like, you’re not gonna have a calculator all on you all the time. You need to learn how to do math. And I’d be like, but this phone is a calculator. You need to learn how to do XY and Z. And so I bring that up to say the interesting thing is I get where they were coming from of like, you need to be qualified to do things. I’ll make it extreme of, like, Walking Dead happens. You don’t have technology. You have to figure life out. But what also happened on the back end that I think they missed was, as phones got better and better, they weren’t able to keep up because they were so gung ho on trying to do things the quote unquote right way or the way things had been done traditionally. And like that mistrust of technology that it almost was detrimental to them learning how to do things where I’m teaching them. Again and I get it. There’s also like the age gap in the generation thing, but part of that is also because they just refused to lean on the phone. They wanted to figure it out themselves. So now I’m showing them how to do the basics. It’s the same. For AI, like we see all these stipulations and rules and everything roll out when it comes to utilizing AI. Especially again, I see this at USC as well, and my biggest thing that I tell my class is learn how to use it. Don’t, you know, obviously use it for stealing other people’s work. Don’t use it to create everything for you. But how can it plus up what you can do, and that’s the positive side of it. That’s the thing that I’m excited about. You will see pushback. You will see people sort of turning away from it when you’re taking jobs from people where you’re taking that human element out of it. So again, it’s that fine line. The law where you should be using it and leveraging it to plus up your work, expand your skills, do the work of more people and kind of look the world’s at your fingertips. That sort of mantra rah rah speech we always hear but then also making sure you’re not so relying on it that it loses that human touch, that human feel where it’s robots talking to us and you want nothing to do with it.
Jenn: Anything that makes life easier, I fully embrace. AI technologies all of that, but I want to ask you a little bit more of a personal question.
BK: Absolutely.
Jenn: Just in talking with you, and I know one thing you said to me is you know when you’re not working, you’re gaming, which I love that. I was curious to kind of talk a little bit about that interest of yours and how it integrates into your creative process at work. Do you feel like gaming culture has influenced the way you approach marketing because gaming is always evolving and changing, and that’s something I really like about that world do you feel like it has helped you, kind of with some of these, like marketing campaigns?
BK: So lovely. So the reason why I stress the absolutely out like that is because I try to gamify everything I do like we’re past the day and age where there’s very few brands that can show up and not interact back and forth with the consumer, right? Like you have your Ferraris out there. All of those brands out there that are luxury. They don’t really have to engage back and forth because they’re at a certain level of prestige that people are gonna flock to them regardless, because it’s a symbol of status or whatever. May be that being said, most other brands are at a day and age where it’s like we’re not in the Mad Men era anymore. You need to be communicating back and forth. People are expecting interactivity, people are expecting something to engage with. People are expecting something to make them feel something and they want to do something with those feelings. Good, bad, whatever it may be, and either they’re going to connect with others. They’re gonna connect with you, or they’re just gonna trash your brand for not saying anything when they want you to and so I say that to say, for me, again, a big man child who loves video games, I try to figure out what’s the gaming aspect or the gamified aspect of everything that even goes back to the Swipe Night aspect of it for Tinder. It’s playing alongside an adventure where you’re trying to survive the end of the world. That goes into some of the stuff that I’ve even done recently with Draft Kings, right? Where we had a podcast, we explained to them, and it just worked beautifully because Kevin started riffing back and forth with me, the idea that “bet” doesn’t just mean wager when you talk about different cultures and different tribes that can have many different meanings. It’s like language that you have something that people use to express themselves and depending on where you’re from and who you are, you’ll have different ways of expressing yourself. And so, we’re going back and forth explaining to them that bet has many different meanings from like, oh, we got a problem with each other? Bet. Or like. OK, no, I’ll see you after school. Bet. right? Like or no like, I need to make a bet. And there’s so many different ways to express that. And the reason why I bring that up is because we gamified a podcast where people could not just listen to them talk about sports and pop culture, but you can actually bet on everything from Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce at the time. Like, is she gonna run out of the field if they win the Super Bowl? To Gladiator and Wicked coming out, which thing is gonna perform a little bit better? And instead of just talking about that and telling people to go put their bets in making it a gamified experience where the hosts were competing against one another. And so I bring it up because every single project, every single campaign in the back of my head is how can we have fun with this? How can we bring the audience in to play along with us. And that goes back to me, just loving video games overall.
Kalli: I love that so much and you know, it really makes it makes sense to a lot of people. You know, you, they get so stuck in the ways that you forget, like people want to have fun with things. And that’s really how you’re gonna get them not only excited, but engaged, Great campaigns, they’re not just ads. Like you said, they’re stories that people want to share. So, you know, in your opinion, what are the essential ingredients of a compelling brand story that is going to capture attention and spread organically?
BK: Oh my goodness, I love this one too. I just talked about this two weeks ago with my class. The main elements of the story is who is the protagonist and is that a protagonist that your audience can identify with. It doesn’t mean they have to look exactly like them, but they should be able to feel some sort of emotional connection or some sort of tie, and I’ll try to do an example for each of these beats that I talk about without being too long winded. So, when I talk about a protagonist or like something you can identify with or like that key point you gravitate around, I go back to Johnny Walker. And they have a spot called keep walking. If I’m getting the name of it correct, but that spot actually means so much more to me now just because of some things happening in my personal life. But at the time when I first saw it, my brother and I were not close, and the spot is essentially a guy walking and he’s walking with his brother. He’s reading off of, like, someone’s reading a poem as it’s going on. They’re visiting different places, which seem to be from their childhood, their upbringing, and like they’re having cheers and drinking the Johnny Walker along the way. And when they get to the final spot, the camera pans and you see that his brother’s not really there. He’s actually holding a urn and then he spreads his brothers ashes. And I say that because this is a white man, it’s an accent from over the pond. So clearly not me, but I was able to identify with the magic of, OK, the protagonist is dealing with the loss of a brother and not having a close tie with his brother or thinking back and like the fond memories of that. That’s something that’s easy for me to gravitate to. So like that protagonist and that issue or that challenge that they’re facing or that moment that’s one of the main beats that is gonna pull your audience in. And then sort of your climax or your salt that you need to have the thing that you need to get past and having a solution whether it’s comedic, whether it’s emotion, someone who I just said with Johnny Walker being something where you look back on it and like that’s the highlight of the spot or the campaign or whatever it may be and I’ll use the replacer as an example for this one for Call of Duty. Surprise, surprise, yes, I’m doing a video game. So I had a chance to work on the second iteration of the replacer, he’s in this the third time he’s back because it’s worked so well, because the story of that is something that people can just get and understand. The climax of it is Call of Duty just dropped. You have responsibilities in life, but sometimes you just wanna say forget all these responsibilities, I wanna go play video games. And so that’s replaceable. Go up in space of like, OK, the president’s not at the desk because the replacers they’re making horrible decisions because the president somewhere playing video games, whoever that president may be, right. One of the spots is he’s at dinner with the family and the kids were like mom, where’s Dad and the replacer is like, I’m your daddy now. And the mom’s like, yeah, you are. And like, again, a little crude, but, like, that fits with that audience. But the climax of it is that dad is somewhere playing video games. Of course he is, because Call of Duty. Just so for me that that second component of it is having that climactic moment that people can look back and start to feel like man, yep, I’ve been there before. This spot made me feel, insert whatever that feeling may be. And then having that staying power, that thing that lasts with you forever, where you can look back on, whether it’s a tagline, whether it’s some hilarious moment and something that just kind of permeates across campaigns regardless, even if you shift the product, shift the service, shift the time frame. And my last one before I keep talking your ear off it’s Snickers. You’re not you when you’re hungry. It doesn’t matter what they do anything that they sort of put out into the world you remember? Like ohh yeah, it’s because you’re not yourself when you’re hungry. Snickers has driven that into my head so, so many times all the way down to them doing the Hunger Rhythm Campaign, which is one of my favorites. When I talked to my students about, you don’t always have to be boring when it comes to using numbers and data, what they did is they looked on social to see how many people were pissed and it was during the time period where politics were at all time high of dividing people. The world was just the world you watched the news like, of course you’re gonna be in your feelings. And they took negative sentiment and as the negative sentiment went higher, the price of Snickers went lower and the whole theme of that was they didn’t have to say it. But you’re not you and you’re hungry. Everyone in the world is pissed off cause you’re hungry. And so as more people started talking, more people got excited about it. And then prices started going back to normal. But you were able to redeem your coupon before then. So again, I just thought that was a clever way of having something that rolls out into the world that reminds you of this campaign of you’re not you when you’re hungry, even without them having to say it.
Jenn: Yeah, those are great points and all really, really iconic brands and campaigns. And I guess like I want to ask you a little bit more to segue in terms of a lot of these campaigns, like you said kind of bring up like an emotional reaction and response and a lot of times that is the most effective type of marketing and one type of marketing that it has really taken off, and its particular piece of the marketing umbrella that I love to execute, is experiential marketing. Which ones do you think brands should pay attention to if they really want to execute a successful experiential marketing?
BK: Love this. I think the trend that they should be paying attention to is like where are people at with their, I forget the exact terminology for it. But it was like revenge vacations or like revenge something because we were all cooped up inside. And so the segment we were able to be back outside at post pandemic everyone just was booking trips and just going places. So, I think those are the sorts of trends that pay attention to, because of ebbs and flows, these brands will put together these experiential things and to your point. It’s a tricky space because, not to pick on them at all, because I love the concept, love, love, love the concept. I’m an anime nerd, a video game nerd, as you all know too, but on the anime side of things, McDonald’s partnered with another brand in the States and they did like these anime pop ups and that was the exciting thing to me until I went. And I say that like not to pick on them, but again, when I went to the event, it just felt like, OK, you did this to say that you did it and I get it. Budgets are a thing, but at what point do you stop yourself and say, hey, this is not going to fulfill the people who actually love this space? It’s just gonna show up as, like, we put a Band-Aid on, you know, a crack in the dam. And it’s not saying that there was a problem that existed before, but no one asked McDonald’s to step into this space. They just saw that this was a community that was super active, that they can engage but it just felt like a campaign. It didn’t feel like an immersion into that world versus a Wendy’s where they partnered with Rick and Morty, and again historically, as I was saying at the top of the chat, when you would see Wendy’s online, it wasn’t the same brand in person until recently. They started doing this where they are just leaning in all the way and when they partner with Rick and Morty, you see the commercials with like it felt like a Rick and Morty episode where Wendy’s was a part of it. And then they did their whole activation drive thru where you drove through a Wendy’s that was entering into like, the Rick and Morty universe, and that felt unique. That felt like it was part of the brand. That felt like it was a home run. Make sure when you do lean into that space, people want it, and if they do, if they don’t, you know what sort of level of energy to bring in and make it feel immersive. But always, always, always make it feel like you’re stepping into their world.
Jenn: I love all of this, this has been seriously such a fun conversation BK you’ve really given us so many amazing insights and just like getting to know you and your creative process and your background. It’s truly no wonder why Kevin Hart has trusted you to lead the creative at Hartbeat.
BK: It’s one of those things where I’m like, oh, wow, you really, you really, me? You gave me the keys? OK.
Jenn: Well, it’s truly no wonder. I mean, you have such an eye for it. It really was a pleasure to learn more about your work and to garner advice from someone who really, really understands the power and process of going viral, so thank you so much for your time and the amazing conversation today.
BK: No problem. Thank you so much. Anytime it was absolute pleasure.
Jenn: Thanks for tuning in to our listeners, and hope you learned something new from today’s episode. Be sure to follow us on social media and as always, reach out anytime to say hello, ask the question or recommend a guest, at impressions@pollackgroup.com. See you next time.
