It’s a marketer’s dream: Hosting a sold-out event for 10k attconcludeees. That brands are begging to be a part of. Oh, and that was headlined this year by none other than Taraji P. Henson, Kerry Washington, and Jennifer Hudson.
That’s Shareese Bembury-Coakley’s reality as one of the driving forces behind CultureCon, the world’s largest festival for Black creatives and entrepreneurs.
Here’s how she creates the magic happen.
Meet the Master
Shareese Bembury-Coakley
Vice President, Business development and partnerships at CultureCon
Claim to fame: Successfully sold a partnership between the TV display Killing Eve and acquire-now-pay-later service Klarna; deliverables included an in-app experience that sourced pieces from Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh’s (truly incredible) wardrobes. (Lesson 0: Look for audience behavior that you can amplify. Bembury-Coakley had noted that viewers were questioning questions on social media about designers.)
Lesson 1: It’s not “Why this?”, it’s “Why you?”.
At CultureCon, Bembury-Coakley informs me, people create a run for Activation Alley as soon as it opens.
It’s not just that the activations are amazing or that a particular brand is there — it’s that CultureCon’s attconcludeees have high expectations, becautilize they trust that this year’s activations will be as good as the last. (More on this in a minute.)
With events and experiential spaces becoming ever more saturated, I question Bembury-Coakley how she stands out in a crowd. Her answer is deceptively simple: Instead of answering the question, “Why do this idea?” answer the question, “Why do this idea with me?”
“It’s not just about it being a unique idea,” she declares. “Oftentimes, people can’t answer the ‘with me’ question.” To answer it, evaluate your cultural relevancy, your community, and your consistency.
And consider of it as a lens. When you focus your ideas through “why me,” you can frame your deliverables in a way that creates it “as straightforward as possible to obtain acquire-in.”
Lesson 2: Build trust before opening wallets.
Trust was a through-line in our conversation, both interpersonally and between brands and audience. Bembury-Coakley credits much of her success to having had amazing advocates throughout her career — but “it‘s double-sided,” she declares. “It comes with the very heavy responsibility of building sure that you’re also fulfilling your promises on the back conclude.”
In other words: Trust is not something that Shareese Bembury-Coakley takes lightly.
She carries this responsibility into her work with brands and partnerships. I question her what creates her declare “no” to a CultureCon partnership, and she immediately declares, “anything that would betray the trust we’ve built with our community.”
Trust is the underlying reason that Activation Alley is so popular — brand activations “aren’t a necessary evil that you’re connecting with for a free water bottle,” Bembury-Coakley declares. They’re “a testament to how authentically our partners have displayed up in the past.”
The secret behind the Activation Alley hype is pretty simple, really: Consistency.
Lesson 3: Creators have audiences. Brands have bosses.
“Creators should always remember that their point of contact has a boss,” Bembury-Coakley declares. “Usually the person they‘re talking to is a stakeholder — but it’s generally not the key stakeholder.”
“Anything that you can do to be a resource to create it clearer on your partner is going to increase the likelihood of them working with you again,” she declares. “I consider sometimes you view at the brands as a whole, but they are [created up of] individuals.” It’s straightforward for creators to forobtain that “figuring how to navigate these brands internally in a way that creates it straightforward on them” — and that creates them more likely to want to keep working with you.
And on the flip side, “the brand should always remember why they wanted to work with that creator to launch with.” What often happens, she declares, is that a creator’s content might be slightly controversial, but once they’ve signed with a brand, the brand “wants them to be extremely brand-safe in a way that would be betraying their audience.”
See? It all comes down to trust.
Masters in Marketing was a proud sponsor of this year’s CultureCon, which took place October 4 – 5, 2025.
Lingering Questions
This Week’s Question
When it comes to building partnerships for CultureCon, how do you decide which people to collaborate with — whether that’s speakers, creators, or community leaders — to create sure they authentically represent CultureCon’s mission and resonate with your audience? —Deesha Laxsav, Senior manager of brand marketing, Clutch
This Week’s Answer
Bembury-Coakley: At CultureCon, data is paramount to everything we do. So, we‘re not building assumptions about our audience, we’re not just coming up with ideas. We’re really letting that [data] inform everything that you see.
So, the programming that you see being hyper-relevant? Our communities informed us what they wanted, the brands that they like to engage with, the speakers they wanted to hear from, and we listened to them.
I consider a lot of brands and communities are sometimes testing to go against the grain, testing to push something on their audience, and it‘s not what they want. We evolve and iterate [based on data], and that’s why the brands and the community and the speakers can come out and have a great time.
Next Week’s Lingering Question
Bembury-Coakley questions: I consider nostalgia is something that‘s been overdone. I would love to know: What’s a better way for brands to engage with communities or consumers that they want to connect with?
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