Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner. And Will Add Hot Sauce Errytime.
“It was all a dream, I use to read Word’Up magazine”
Literally that is how I became obsessed with pop culture. Being a young black boy growing up in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, I studied how culture moved and why it moved to try and figure out where it was going to move next. Little did I know at the end of the day it was teaching me how to connect brands to culture in a major way.
The One Club: Brandon Rochon, CEO and CCO of Kastner, talks about how to go from a creative to creator.
I am humbled by the fact that I have won every major award in the industry on two continents and have been called one of the world’s youngest and freshest CCO’s in the business. In 2022, I was honored with Red Bull’s Wings For Life Impact Award, I am a 2019 American Advertising Federation Hall of Achievement Inductee, 2019 ADCOLOR One Club Creative Award, Los Angeles Business Journal’s Most Influential Marketers 2019, Ad Age 40 Under 40 2018, and 4A’s 100 People Who Make Advertising Great 2017.
Did you know at the current rate of hiring, true equality will not be realized in the advertising industry until 2079. That was in 2013, and when a group of us at Leo Burnett decided sixty-six years was too long to wait, we started a rallying cry. NO.2.66 is a wake-up call to spark immediate change throughout the industry.
Mini Doc: No266
A 3rd Culture Kid Inspiring the World
To Be More Cultural.
“As a third culture kid, you've experienced cross-cultural transitions that have molded you into an adaptable individual. Regardless of the challenges that you may have faced as a third culture kid, you've been shaped into a multi-cultural individual”. — Rudo Ellen Kazembe, Teen Vogue
“To be a citizen of this world one must go out and live in it. Go and find themselves by getting lost in some of the most outlandish and fringes of its societies and that is where culture can be uncovered. Pop-culture is not made, it’s lived. And then it’s either appreciated or appropriated.”
I have spent my entire career proving that advertising means nothing if it can’t make a lasting impact on culture. Like any visionary, I learned the rules before I broke them. I started my career on the hard streets of Madison Ave. where I worked on Hennessy, Lugz Shoes, and Sapporo Beer.
With a few years in the NYC under my Jordan’s, I got offered a job in Europe where I joined the award-winning TBWA/Paris and worked on brands like Absolut Vodka, McDonalds, PlayStation, Heineken and Nissan. After five years at TBWA/Paris, I decided to take on another challenge in the most romantic city in the world and moved to Ogilvy Paris and became the Global Lead of Coke Zero and launched it to the world, while working on other brands such as Louis Vuitton, Perrier and Ford.
The stars and stripes were calling me back, and after seven years in Paris, I came back to the US of A, to Leo Burnett Chicago where I was SVP, Global Creative Director of Samsung Electronics, helping usher the brand into the pop-cultural icon it has become to date. After that, I decided to continue west to Los Angeles, taking the helm of Kastner North America, the global agency of record for Red Bull, as Managing Chief Creative Officer. At the same time, I was driving other entrepreneurial triumphs as co-founder and CCO of SNKR INC, a global media company focused on the people in and around sneaker culture. In 2019, I then co-founded The Fluent Group, An Innovation and Venture Brand Studio.
“Excellence Is To Do A Common Thing In An Uncommon Way.”
Diversity is not some initiative to me or a nice thing to have. I spend every waking moment making sure that my teams and the companies I run and interact with, understand that unless true inclusion and authentic diversity at all levels is achieved, then you are a dying brand and will soon become irrelevant. It’s not something I just talk about at conferences, but in every single board room as well. Giving back and mentoring is also a huge part of my DNA and I sit on a number of nonprofit boards; The Marcus Graham Project, Ukandu Fight Against Childhood and Adolescent Cancer and The United Nations World Food Program US board, but when you meet me you will realize I’m just a big kid, with a big heart.
We live in a time where BRANDS are more important than ever. They are no longer responsible for simply defining and motivating our consumption. No, these brands are shaping our lives and determine how we live, work and play. The Reputation Economy is in full force, and changing behaviors and the products/services that shape our behaviors and is leaving a lasting impression like never before. We have a responsibility as brand stewards to become savants and create things with brands that will uplift this world from the soul, not just with mad heart.