The Black Wavemakers
Role: Brand Strategist, Producer
THE BRIEF: For Black History Month SiriusXM wanted to create an all encompassing brand campaign to celebrate the rich legacy of African American culture that is represented on its platform.
THE PROBLEM: While SiriusXM’s breadth of content from A/A creators is immense the brand struggled to collectively position itself as being a truly diverse platform tapped into African American culture. Additionally much of its programming was divided along genres that largely separated audiences by their personal backgrounds.
THE INSIGHT: Research reaffirmed a well-documented yet often overlooked truth: African American audiences place a high value on diversity of thought and experience in entertainment. SiriusXM’s extensive catalog of Black voices was a major business asset. With cultural appropriation at the forefront of public discourse, we saw an opportunity to amplify the brand’s perspective on the contributions of African Americans in music, sports, news, and beyond.
Guided by these insights, I developed a brand territory that captured this cultural moment while honoring the breadth of personalities and content on the platform. The goal was to highlight the value of both the content and its creators to a wider audience—ensuring the message remained authentic and aligned with the brand’s voice.
THE WORK: The resulting creative territory The Wave is about creating a space to recognize the innovations of the African diaspora that have had a ripple effect on us all and a place for the next generation of black artists, creatives, tastemakers, athletes, and activists to lead a conversation around the ideas, and innovations, that will create the (sound)waves that will shape the future landscape of global culture. The focus of this concept is to celebrate the past contributions of Black America that define us all and identify emerging trends and trendsetters within the Black community that will define the future aligning with SXM company vision To Shape the Future of Audio.
THE OUTCOME: The brand campaign birthed from this territory was The Wavemakers a multi channel campaign focused on honoring the legacy of African American cultural icons that have impacted global culture in art, music, film, business, politics and more.
