Junae Brown from Browned 2 Perfection Agency on Authenticity Marketing

Brian Bosche:
Hey, everyone, welcome back to creativeBTS. This is Brian Bosche, and I am so excited today to have Junae Brown, the founder of Browned 2 Perfection Agency and marketing strategist. Junae, thanks so much for coming on.

Junae Brown:
Thank you for having me. Super excited.

Brian Bosche:
We're starting a little early today, so I appreciate you having a cup of coffee on the podcast.

Junae Brown:
Yes.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, to start off with, I would love to learn a little bit more about your professional background, because I know you went from a larger working in the music industry to starting off on your own. So I would kind of love to hear just initially about your path and your professional background.

Junae Brown:
Yeah, so I've been interning in music since I was like 16, people that were in the industry and then I also interned in college with like a startup marketing and brand management company. Then eventually I interned for Sony Music, so I interned at RCA Records in marketing.

Brian Bosche:
Great.

Junae Brown:
And then they were like, "Listen, we really like you. We don't have openings, but you can intern here until you find something in the building." I had built really-

Brian Bosche:
Is this in New York?

Junae Brown:
Yes, in New York City.

Brian Bosche:
Okay, all in New York, yeah.

Junae Brown:
I'm born and raised in New York. I'm from Harlem, New York, and so I had built a relationship with the main HR person there, shout out to Margo, he's my guy and he started sending me on interviews and eventually he sent me on an interview. He was like, "Yeah, don't kill me, but there's this finance position." I'm like, "Finance?" I was like, "I don't even like math, so I don't really understand where you're going with this. I'm a marketing girl, what are you talking about?" And he's like, "No." He's like, "It's not really like a finance position." He's like, "You'd be working with the CFO." He's like, "And he oversees all of the marketing budget, and they have a separate department that just handles the strategy and the financials." And so I was like, "Okay," and operations. Long story short, I start working with the CFO of Columbia Records.

Brian Bosche:
Whoa!

Junae Brown:
Right? I was like, "Whoo!" It was a quick jump.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Junae Brown:
Most people have a break after school and they're like, a couple of months they're looking for a job, hanging out with their friends, I didn't have that. I went straight from interning almost the whole school year to summer, straight to a job. Gratefully, but no breaks. So I start working at Columbia and it was great because I just learned so much more. I always knew the creative side and the ideation side of marketing, and how to hustle and make things happen, but to see what the numbers look like and how to really... One, nothing could get passed unless it went through my hands first. And I'm like the record deals to anything that wanted to happen. Nobody could do anything until I saw it because my boss refused to look at it until I saw it. I already...

Brian Bosche:
You're a good bottleneck to have.

Junae Brown:
Right, and so I went to Five Towns College in Long Island, and my degree is in business management with a concentration in music business. I already took classes like music marketing, publishing and copyright, concert production and promotion. These are courses I had to take in order to get my degree, and so I'm putting them in the work so it was great experience.

Brian Bosche:
Immediately, yeah.

Junae Brown:
Yeah, immediately, and so it was a great experience. Columbia has artists like Tyler the Creator, Beyonce, Pharell, J. Cole at the time. It was great to work on some of my favorite artists as well on these huge projects. Things like the AC/DC, like Reunion Tour. A lot of monumental things were happening and so that was great. And then RCA called me like, "Hey, you want to come work with us, we have an opening now?" And so that was a whole thing because even though Sony Music is one big entity, the individual labels are still like, "Once you're our people," nobody was trying to let me go. And so after the tug of war, I ended up going back to RCA and working in marketing. And that was really cool, working on projects like Bryson Tiller and Chris Brown. Literally, RCA has such an amazing roster and it was just another opportunity to really be hands on in the music that I grew up on, the music that I love.

Junae Brown:
It's constant though. One thing is they are very fast paced. You have a lot of projects. I think at peak I was handling 33 projects active. This is not including the projects that are not really super active, but you do have to do stuff for every once in a while. Yeah, what happened with RCA was a great experience. I think we're doing amazing things there, but eventually they had some internal changes, which happens in corporate and the job changed. I was hired to be creative and it got super administrative, and so we just came to the conclusion that this is not the same gig anymore. And so I was interviewing for a new job while at work, because why not?

Brian Bosche:
You knew the transition was going to happen. Yeah.

Junae Brown:
Yeah, I was feeling like, "I may need to make a move," and so I was actually in the third round of interviews for another really large music company. And I was on the fence about it, and I had a conversation with my mom and she was like, "Well, look Junae, you don't have a mortgage or kids yet." She was like, "You've been working for years now." She was like, "If you want to take a break and just take a step back and figure it out, you can do that. It's okay." And I had really needed to hear that because I was so insistent on what can I-

Brian Bosche:
It was too much pressure. Yeah. Push and push and hustle and hustle. Yeah.

Junae Brown:
Yeah, and I can get like that. And so I'm super spiritual, so I was praying about it, I was like, "Okay, if I get this gig and this is what I'm supposed to do, if I don't get the gig," I was like, "I kind of want to feel it out and see how I would do if I would do the things that I loved doing at Sony but without the stuff I didn't really like on my own, what would that look like?" And so last minute, there was this whole debacle in their HR where one person on the West Coast accidentally promised the job to someone else, and the other two executives here were so mad at them. It was a whole thing. But legally, it was hard to reverse. It was a whole thing. And they were like, "I'm so sorry, we have you on file, we're trying to fix," and I was like, "Nope, this is my-"

Brian Bosche:
It's not meant to be. Yeah.

Junae Brown:
... Like that's it, okay. Thank you guys so much, but I'm fine and literally, I have been founder and CEO of Browned 2 Perfection Agency ever since.

Brian Bosche:
And to go back to your work at Columbia, a lot of creatives and marketers get stuck in maybe... Not get stuck in creative but they only see certain sides of the business. If you're in creative, you're in creative for a long time. It sounds like the CFO role, working directly with the CFO, gave you the performance side as well and the measurement side and figuring out ROI and give you a [crosstalk 00:07:32] balance.

Junae Brown:
It's so crazy. I always say I know the bottom line and I am the bridge between corporate and culture, I understand what's absolutely necessary to really reel in the target and get them to become loyal to the brand but then also I can understand and speak the bottom line with corporate. I know sometimes that's a struggle with creative agencies, is we have this whole plan and this is what we're focused on. And the company's like, "Sounds cool, but how are we going to reach our ROI?" And so I don't put together a plan that doesn't include that. So luckily, I'm pretty sure I guess having both sides of the coin was definitely for a reason.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, I've talked about it a little bit on the podcast, but we started out as a creative agency as well in Detroit, so we were small eight-person agency. And if you don't have both sides, you die.

Brian Bosche:
Even just for your own financing and your own ROI, that's what clients buy into, you have to have the creative side, but you also have to prove the ROI to keep them as a consistent customer.

Junae Brown:
Absolutely.

Brian Bosche:
And so when you transition to... It was a little bit of fate as you started your own, but as someone who's done this before, it's scary starting out on your own, even when you have connections in the industry or with existing clients.

Junae Brown:
It is.

Brian Bosche:
So you could have just taken the break and not started something on your own or maybe taken a break and then gone out and got another job in the music industry. What drove you to start your own agency? How long has it been by the way? How long have you been doing the agency?

Junae Brown:
Well, I've been doing the agency since late 2016.

Brian Bosche:
Wow. So you have a sustainable agency!

Junae Brown:
Yes.

Brian Bosche:
I don't know what the start is for agencies, but so many fails within a year, having a three to four-year agency is hard.

Junae Brown:
I know, it's crazy. And I mean, entrepreneurship in general is like up, down, up, down, up, down. But this past year, we finally reached some benchmarks that I had set to prove to me that it was sustainable, because my degree is in business anyway. And so I understand proof of concept and sustainability is a real thing. You might have beginner's luck for a bit but can you actually make a living off of this thing and can you pay other people and help other people make.

Brian Bosche:
Yes, oh God, paying other people.

Junae Brown:
Yeah.

Brian Bosche:
So hard. Do you get hit with the six month payment cycles where it's like, "Oh yeah, 50% upfront, 50% later."

Junae Brown:
No.

Brian Bosche:
No?

Junae Brown:
No.

Brian Bosche:
I think that almost killed us a couple times.

Junae Brown:
Luckily, I also have a business in the midst of the gig economy and the freelance economy. And so for now, I use a lot of contractors, pretty much the same contractors typically over and over. If you do great work, I'm going to keep calling you for a project. But yeah, I utilize contractors and most of them are not... Maybe three months.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Junae Brown:
Depending-

Brian Bosche:
The net 90s, the net 120s, you get hit with, just from clients, you spend money up front at an agency and then you wait for the clients to pay.

Junae Brown:
And then you wait for them to figure it out on the back end. Yeah, so that happens, but usually for three months, not six. I think six would give me stress.

Brian Bosche:
Oh, it gave me so much stress. It was awful.

Junae Brown:
It would stress me out, it would seriously stress me out.

Brian Bosche:
So what instigated you wanting to start on your own and make it more sustainable other than the fate behind the vision?

Junae Brown:
What's crazy is that Browned 2 Perfection was supposed to be a website. And it was something that I was working on while at Sony, I just wanted my own... I understood the importance of personal branding outside of your job. And so-

Brian Bosche:
Well, that's how all the artists become successful. I mean, you see it. Yeah.

Junae Brown:
Exactly. And so I was already thinking about those kinds of things back then. And I started to think, well, what do I want to put out into the world? What I enjoy talking about? And so it was really going to be helping people that don't have close proximity to the industry learn things, and understand what's going on. Because I have this strong belief that a lot of people, it's not always if they don't have a good thing, or they think that they need all these resources, but there's a lot of stuff that you can do on your own, you just have to actually do it. And there's so much stuff, even in house at labels that I did that it's... Even our one sheets and our pitch decks and everything for artists, like let's say, I'm pitching ASAP Rocky to AT&T, I'm putting together that, I'm doing the graphic design and we're not hiring somebody fancy, it's just like, "What needs to be done right now? And I probably have ten more to do." And so it's really just knowing what's what.

Junae Brown:
And so I had website about that, I also wanted to talk about how to go from intern to actually working in the field. And so that was like my little passion project. And funny, I recently relocated to Atlanta, and I was going through a lot of my old files and I found, actually, a piece of paper from my college, where I had written down that I wanted my own marketing and brand management company eventually. And so it was something I always wanted to do, but I thought that it would be at like 50, and like, "Okay, I did my thing in the music industry, and okay, now I'm retiring, and this is my passion project, this company," right? But it happens so much sooner, so I always tell people, "Listen, be careful what you write down and you put into the universe, because it will show up."

Brian Bosche:
It could come true faster than you think.

Junae Brown:
Yes. And so that was really what made me want to start an agency is really just being that connection. And I also just see sometimes how internally at companies, sometimes it just is not the perfect blend of both, it's one or the other. Companies are missing something, and then the actual brands are missing aspects as well. And then the actual consumer and culture is missing another thing. And so really wanting to blend those things together. The company's twofold, we have a community aspect that really focuses on teaching emerging brands and companies and startups, how to market themselves, really big on even just wellness because being a creative person or being an entrepreneur is a full time thing mentally, physically, it's a whole thing. And so we do that through products or webinars or when the world is open, we do a lot of events and workshops, and even social gatherings because networking is important. But yeah, that was really my purpose behind it, was to be able to just bridge those two things like we were talking about earlier, the culture and the corporate. Like how do we make magic between the two? That's my personality too, right? I'm really down to earth, but I'm also super professional and about my business. And so I feel like that's also the agency's personality as well.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Well, you said a few things that really hit home for me where it's building off working for the CFO and learning the performance side as well as the creative side, when you start something on your own, even if you're at a corporate job, you learn how to do all the tactical stuff as well as the strategy. And so the huge benefit of starting these side projects or just doing things on your own is, you're the one that has to do to the design. If someone's been in corporate for their entire career, and they've never actually had to do the design themselves, they lose that tactical muscle a little bit if they stay on the strategy side too much.

Junae Brown:
Yeah. It's crazy because I used to think that that was a bad thing that I was doing everything.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, it seems small-

Junae Brown:
Or it's just like, "I'm tired. This is a lot, I'm wearing a lot of hats."

Brian Bosche:
I want to stop working.

Junae Brown:
But I also learned that it's good because when it's time to hire someone, I know what I would like it to look like, and I can articulate why it saves us loads of time. Because I'm like, "This, this, this," and I'm like, "I've done it before." So I understand, I get where you're at, and this is what we'd like it to look like, I'm able to translate that and so...

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, this is a great skill set to have as an agency owner, just any manager, is having a little bit of skills in a lot of different areas.

Junae Brown:
of all three.

Brian Bosche:
And then you can hire into the deeper domain expertise. You might never be the world's greatest graphic designer in the top 1%, but if you do a little bit-

Junae Brown:
fine with that.

Brian Bosche:
... then you can work better with the actual graphic designer who can be

Junae Brown:
Yeah, with the number one. Yes, exactly.

Brian Bosche:
And then the other part that you said that I really liked was, "Oh, I thought I'd be doing this at 50, but now I'm doing it now." And I think there's often this belief that you have to gain all this experience before you can do something on your own. But we're seeing what experience would prepare a marketing team to take on TikTok as a channel, or virtual events or, things are changing so quickly and marketing is changing so quickly that no one can get experience, so if you're in your 20s without the mortgage, without the kids, without all of that.

Junae Brown:
Go for it.

Brian Bosche:
Go for it, because you have as much or more experience in some of these new channels for those audiences than corporate people do.

Junae Brown:
Yeah, and I think I just have the energy still too, because there are some people that are older in that range who are still super passionate about it, and they're on point with everything or if they have kids, they're like test this stuff out on their kids.

Brian Bosche:
Yes, exactly.

Junae Brown:
Like, "You like this? Do you like that?" But there's a lot of people that is just like when you climb the ladder, you have so much responsibility and so much going on that you may not even be able to... Like me, I'm constantly, whatever new app is coming out, whatever new program is coming out, whatever new trend, it's like I have time to keep up with that and then try it out. I'm constantly... I always tell people, I'm like, "If you ever see me trying something different on my social media," I use my pages as guinea pigs all the time. And so- [crosstalk 00:18:31]

Brian Bosche:
I hear that a lot on this podcast.

Junae Brown:
... it works because before I bring it to a client or put it in a strategy, I want to be able to have some sort of proof of how it works or whatever the case is, but I think it's a beautiful thing. And I'm so happy actually that fate pushed me to take the leap because I definitely would have still been probably working through the label system or another music company and there's nothing wrong with that, except I think a big thing for me was learning that I'm very hands on. And so sometimes the job descriptions just didn't match how I work, and I think that's something to consider as well whether you're at a company or not, it's how do you actually work? When and where do you do your best work? And really learning yourself, I think society is changing but the regular mold is like, okay, you get a job, you sit there, you do what you supposed to do, and then go home. But we are in a different world right now where people who are doing amazing things, it just may not be a traditional setup, even if it's just how your workflow day goes, it's just different. Even just how you're seated in the office, it's different and so-

Brian Bosche:
Or no office.

Junae Brown:
Or no

Brian Bosche:
Everyone's at home.

Junae Brown:
and I think that is so beautiful. I've been pushing for this remote, because my biggest thing was... And people would be like, "Oh, this is snotty nose millennial," I'm like, "I just don't get why I have to be in the office every day." I'm like, "I don't think this is good for my [inaudible 00:20:11] videos." And I was like, "I don't know," I was like, "I feel like why can't we go in when we all need to be together? Why do we have to be there every day?" I'm like, "Isn't it a little daunting." I was like, "I don't know what you're talking about." And you see more and more how, especially after, unfortunately, COVID is going on but I think it's definitely shown that it's not necessary. A lot of people are... There's some jobs, obviously, where you do need to be at work physically at least some of the time, but for the most part businesses are still running, people are being efficient, they're being creative, they're making it happen. And so I'm excited to see how company culture adjusts, even if it doesn't completely switch, I just think everyone needs that, even if it's just for your mental health's sake, or there are some people working so much they don't see their families, they don't know... All that is...

Brian Bosche:
I think you'll see more of a mix. And I work at Smartsheet, so we're a collaborative work management meant to enable teams to work remotely. So I think a lot about this. But yeah, I think for industries that can't do it, because you're right, there's many industries that still have to go in person. But if you're in tech, creative marketing, so much can be done at home and is often better at home, especially for creative work, the deep creative work where you can't have distractions-

Junae Brown:
It happens, you need to be in your own zone, whatever that looks like, I'm a strong believer in that, because once you're in there, magic happens. Sometimes, I could be at a company when I was working for companies, I could be in the office, and I'm really trying to concentrate and trying to figure out this one thing. And then I go home and at 2:30 in the morning, it's there.

Brian Bosche:
Boom.

Junae Brown:
And I draft up a whole strategy. I'm like, "You can't make that up."

Brian Bosche:
No, you can't help that. And if you're at work and you're just like, "Hey, quick question for you, quick question for you," and you're just like, "Okay, I'm out of here, I need to go home and focus."

Junae Brown:
Yes.

Brian Bosche:
And turn off all distractions. Yeah, I think you'll see a lot more of a mix. And just like we're on a Zoom right now, it's so much easier like MURAL boards. We have real time whiteboards with people-

Junae Brown:
Yes, I love

Brian Bosche:
... and so much, and it's so easy to collaborate. Even Google Docs. I've been writing documents with people in real time.

Junae Brown:
I run probably 60% of the business in Google Docs.

Brian Bosche:
In Google Docs, yeah.

Junae Brown:
Everybody has it, I'm like, "Okay, cool."

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, we don't have to be in the same room.

Junae Brown:
I really love MURAL and I'm not really big on a lot of different... Because there's so many productivity and collaborative platforms, but I'm like, "MURAL is actually cool." I'm like, "Wow, I'm shocked," but I've been really loving that one lately.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Okay, so jumping into Browned 2 Perfection, one of the differentiators you have in your deck and in your branding is authenticity marketing. So I would love to hear an authenticity marketing pitch, what is it? Why is it important? Would love to hear from you.

Junae Brown:
So authenticity marketing is something that I swear by and it's really about taking what's great about the brand and packaging that and maximizing it and putting it out to the masses. I would say if you are a, I stole this quote from TD Jakes but it applies, if you're a chair, I'm not going to try and turn you into a table, that doesn't work. People don't buy it, people see through it. As fickle as consumers can be, they also have wisened up a lot, I think, and so they're not going to buy it. And so instead of trying to take you and turn you from a chair into a table, we're just going to make you the best goddamn chair that the world has ever seen. I'm really big on taking... Their brands don't exist unless they have something, right? And so I feel like it's our job to find out what that thing is and how it connects to the target audience and making sure you are approaching the right target in the first place. And really just blowing it up. I'm very like, if this is your thing, we're going to-

Junae Brown:
... That's going to be at top of campaign, is whatever your thing is. And probably that's how I approach every single brand no matter what it is, whether it's a small business or a tech startup or an artist, or a media personality, it doesn't matter. That's definitely how we approach things. It has to be real, I think that not only from making sure the consumer is really buying it, but also because in order for it to be sustainable, right? I think sometimes in marketing, we're just focused on one campaign. We're focused on making this a great campaign, this a great launch, this a great release. And then once that campaign really stops and it trickles down, that's it. And then the next time you want to do something, you have to start again with your Legos and build all the way back up. I think when you do it authentically, you can just flow.

Junae Brown:
I always say, in music, I create rollouts that keep rolling out. So much so that by the time you go to launch the next thing, the consumer is maybe just being like, "Oh, I would love something new from so and so," or, "Oh, what are they doing?" Not like this... I hate the dead space, where it's like, "Okay, we're sustaining but it doesn't feel like we're having motion," and so I think when you market authentically and you really just tap in organically, I mean, at the end of the day, I always say marketing is psychology. If you're not good with people, you may not be too good at it. You got to at least know how people think, what makes them tick. And I mean, if you can tap into the wants, the needs, or just the train of thought of whoever the audience is, organically, you have them for life, they're not going anywhere. So that's authenticity

Brian Bosche:
So I love the point of... Let me see if I can clear this up along with our audience. So if you're saying there's a brand that's doing a campaign, and they're not doing something that's very authentic or true to their brand or what they are, then it's almost like they're starting over every single campaign.

Junae Brown:
Absolutely.

Brian Bosche:
They'll have the campaign with a certain message, and then it will die. And because it wasn't true to them, they have to come up with some new pitch or angle and they do it again and they just-

Junae Brown:
that, actually-

Brian Bosche:
... Instead of building on themselves, it's just every time it's renewed.

Junae Brown:
Yeah. And I think when you build it authentically, then it's just like, "Okay, where do we want to go within our sphere of what we already do?" Not like, "Oh, snap. All right, Christmas holidays are coming, we need to—

Brian Bosche:
That's a great one.

Junae Brown:
... How we're going to-

Brian Bosche:
Any holiday.

Junae Brown:
Right? Versus like-

Brian Bosche:
Just take advantage of whatever's just on the calendar.

Junae Brown:
Like, "Okay, whatever." Instead of being like, "Okay, we've been building this rapport with our consumer, we're going with this vibe. This has been our arena." And like, "Okay, holidays are coming up. Cool. Well, we've already been focused on... " I don't know, we've already been focused on working moms and we've been camping and we're ready. So now we can come up with something for working moms handling the holidays, it just will flow basically, it's not hours of what do we want

Brian Bosche:
Adapting yourself to the event instead of the event kind of get to your stuff.

Junae Brown:
Yeah, Okay, we need to call it, and for me too it's that when companies want to work with me again, I think that's amazing when artists... And especially because I still work within the music industry, when teams want to work with me again, I think that's great. But I'm not in the business of making anyone completely reliant on me, right? So I'm big on no matter how big the client is, walking them through what I'm doing so that it's not just like, "Here's the plan. This is what we're going to do. Cut the check, please, so we can get it done."

Brian Bosche:
Yeah. Exactly.

Junae Brown:
But also, "This is why we're doing it. This is why it makes sense for you guys." So that moving forward, whether or not we work together again or not, they have that knowledge.

Brian Bosche:
And it's sustainable going forward for them.

Junae Brown:
Yeah, I'm just big on longevity and big on sustainability, I don't even honestly really take on projects that I don't feel like have potential to be a long term thing if it's an emerging brand. But I just think it's important. I do.

Junae Brown:
In this day and age, I think it's important, especially when people also have so much access to brand, and at any given moment, can call you out on [crosstalk 00:29:30] doing or not doing, so I feel like let's just keep it real.

Brian Bosche:
What is it? The joke on Twitter is you never want to be the star of Twitter that day, because then you never want to be trending.

Junae Brown:
You never want to look at your phone, and I mean, I keep my notifications off, but I know if you have them on, you never want to wake up from a nap and be like-

Brian Bosche:
Uh-oh.

Junae Brown:
... "Why do I have so many notifications, what's happening? I went viral for a good reason or a bad one."

Brian Bosche:
Or a bad, yeah, exactly.

Junae Brown:
You want to stay on the good side.

Brian Bosche:
So if we put this in the more... On Creative BTS, we like to focus more on... We talk about these broader concepts, but then applying them to an actual case study and how it's actually implemented. So I'd love to hear what brands in general you think you are doing good with authenticity marketing, but I would like to start off with the music stars live app and your work around there. So what's the quick creative brief on your work with the music stars live app?

Junae Brown:
So music stars live app, firstly, is an app that helps artists or DJs or talent, I would say, get booked. And so it's twofold where the talent is on the app and they can market themselves on the app to the gigs and get paid. And then brands and businesses can be on the app when they need something. So if they need to book a DJ, if... Excuse me, I believe it expanded eventually to even hosts and things like that. They needed to book talent for some sort of company event or anything, if you need somebody for your kid's birthday party, I don't know, anything of that nature. And it was born out of the founder, his name was Brian, the founder-[crosstalk 00:31:15]

Brian Bosche:
With a I or Y?

Junae Brown:
With an I.

Brian Bosche:
Oh, thank God.

Junae Brown:
Yeah.

Brian Bosche:
Continue. Now we can continue to do the case study.

Junae Brown:
So Brian was an ally, the concept was just helping artists get gigs, and be able to be a part of concerts and larger shows and festivals and just making the booking process easier, especially if you maybe don't have an agent yet. And making it an easier process on the other end because sometimes going through other-

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, bookings are not easy.

Junae Brown:
Yeah, it can get it to be a lot when it's right there in the app, it's almost like ordering a Uber at that point. So a big part of the goal for the app, as of obviously any app, is getting people on it, getting people to download it.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, both sides too, talent and the consumers.

Junae Brown:
Yeah.

Brian Bosche:
I guess it's not consumers necessarily, it's the talent and then the people booking the talent.

Junae Brown:
Yes, yes.

Brian Bosche:
Okay.

Junae Brown:
Yeah. They're like customers in a way, but really, I guess they're both the people on the app.

Brian Bosche:
Let me see if I can get hundreds of millions of people.

Junae Brown:
Exactly.

Brian Bosche:
To be available. Yeah, that makes sense.

Junae Brown:
And also getting regular people on the app as well and getting them to interact and engage on the app just with the artists. So the big

Brian Bosche:
Oh, to come into the artist's

Junae Brown:
Yeah, it was a whole concept there. And so super, super startup, and the goal was to start introducing it to their target markets, which two big ones were DC and New York City. And so one thing about me too, is that I'm really big on capping off a strategy with some sort of activation or experiential marketing [inaudible 00:33:06] because I feel like after you do all the digital stuff, when you really seal the deal, you really want to lock somebody in, you make them feel something and make it interactive-[crosstalk 00:33:17]

Brian Bosche:
Where you can connect to them.

Junae Brown:
You got to really get their senses going, and so that's my favorite thing to cap off strategies with. And so basically, what we were doing was doing a launch event, which was going to be a live show, one where people could interact with the app in real life, but also where artists could come and connect and they could perform. And we did it at one of DC's most popular venues. And leading up to that was the digital campaign, right? The show was the last, like I said, the cap off and just getting people to download the app because that was their bottom line, right? Their ROI was, "We want people on this app." And my goal was to get people on the app, but not like, "Hey, download this app," because that doesn't really work. More so-

Junae Brown:
Yeah, more so getting the people that they want on the app to really connect with it, to know what it even is in the first place, because they had no idea what this was. And so yeah, the campaign was a lot of-

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, how did you get it set up? How did they reach out to you? How do you kick off your process?

Junae Brown:
I actually met Brian at another event I was doing for a client.

Brian Bosche:
Okay, that's the best way.

Junae Brown:
Right?

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Junae Brown:
And so I was marketing and curating this indie festival in DC and it was like we blocked off the street, and we have fitness classes part of the day and live performances and the other part of the day, like 30 vendors, T-Mobile. We had a gaming lounge, it was a whole thing. And so one of the guys that painted a mural, because we had an artist lounge upstairs, we did this whole thing in this huge warehouse. And so upstairs, there was a space we set up a VIP artists' lounge, and we had a bunch of things up there, people could play video games, eat food, people behind the scenes.

Junae Brown:
And so one of the guys who spray painted this entire mural on the walls in their craziness, he introduced me to Brian, and apparently, I guess, he was sort of starting to help him with some things for that. And so I meet Brian, and he was like, "Yeah, you need to meet this girl Junae, she has an agency. She's dope, she's helped put all this stuff together." And so I'm like, "Cool." And so he starts telling me about the app, we exchanged contacts and he reached out and wanted to see... Initially, he wanted to hire me for marketing for the app. And I was like, "Look, right now I'm in the middle of really digging into this agency." I'm like, "I could sign on as your marketing consultant, but I'm not in a place to sign on as your official."

Brian Bosche:
And then startup marketing is a big jump too, to go full time there.

Junae Brown:
Yeah. So I'm like, "I can't really do that, but let's see..." And he was like, "Okay, well, this is what I have going on, this is what I'm trying to achieve," and I was like, "Okay, well, let's start on this project and see how it goes, and then we can talk about everything else from there." So that's literally how it started. I always laugh because like 70% of all the clients I've had in the past four years have been direct referrals, or just a product of me making a connection and then pitching.

Brian Bosche:
Do you get any of your Twitter? Beyonce of marketing, by the way.

Junae Brown:
So much off of Twitter.

Brian Bosche:
That's amazing.

Junae Brown:
Yeah, it's great, it's great. Sometimes it's overwhelming but it's great. I get a lot of... Yes, social media definitely, it's great because you can connect with people like how we connected off of social media, right? And we may not have been in the same room.

Brian Bosche:
Just a quick reply.

Junae Brown:
Exactly. I'm on the East Coast, but it doesn't matter because quick and then you connect, and I've just met so many people from so many companies and areas and brands with so many levels of expertise. And I'm just so grateful because it's always... Sometimes people won't even tell me that they're referring me but the client reaches out and they're like, "Hey, so and so recommended you, they spoke really highly of you." And I'm just like, "Ah, thank you so much."

Brian Bosche:
It's an amazing channel. It just shows you how important personal branding is.

Junae Brown:
Yes, yes.

Brian Bosche:
So to go back to authenticity marketing, when you were looking at the music stars live app and the launch and how you wanted to put the campaign together, what made them authentic? How did you tie in the authenticity marketing into the app in the launch they had?

Junae Brown:
So for them, it was like they had a real purpose. And the founder had a slight music background. I mean, he had worked in tech, essentially, as a career.

Brian Bosche:
Well, that's good. He built an app, it's good, yeah.

Junae Brown:
Right?

Brian Bosche:
That's the important part.

Junae Brown:
But in the beginning, back in the day, he was a musician, maybe not super big or serious, but he was a musician.

Brian Bosche:
He had the background?

Junae Brown:
Yeah, he had the background and so the passion was there for artists, the passion was there for creative people, for people in music. And it just was an authentic cause, it was like there was a problem, the problem is emerging acts have trouble getting booked, which means they have trouble getting paid, which means they have trouble sustaining their careers. [crosstalk 00:38:50]

Brian Bosche:
They have to stop and then we don't get new, cool musicians. Yeah.

Junae Brown:
Exactly. Discovery, that's a problem as well and just being someone who did have to put together a lot of company events, luckily, we worked in music, so it wasn't that hard, but I could imagine, or even when I'm working with other clients, it's like I have connections so it's cool, but I could imagine someone who maybe isn't involved in the industry at all trying to find acts that fit what they're doing. And I just thought it was great. I still do, I think it's great that even DJs... And I also throw events in New York, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and I know so many DJs and it's just like I can only book them but so much, right?

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Junae Brown:
I'm not throwing a party every night, and just knowing what they go through, and my stepdad is a DJ, I have a heavy music background too, so I just got it. And I thought that it would be very simple to translate, once we got the messaging right, to really translate what it is that they were trying to do and achieve, people just needed to know about it, the people that they were trying to reach.

Brian Bosche:
So what was the timeline for the campaign up to the launch event?

Junae Brown:
So if that happened in like... I want to say it was like three months.

Brian Bosche:
Okay.

Junae Brown:
We didn't have a lot of time, because when I met him, he actually was already trying to put it together. So I was able to come in and merge his already strategy with what I would think was a good strategy. And so I would say it was like a three month timeline.

Brian Bosche:
And what were the deliverables? So you start with digital and then went into the experiential.

Junae Brown:
Yeah, so the deliverables were really... I had someone that I would contract often as a social media manager, because the first thing we have to do is clean up the brand, digitally, right?

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Junae Brown:
Like what have you all been doing? And what are we actually trying to do? And so we put together a digital strategy, one that included just getting people in love with the brand first, the awareness of the brand first before we just come out like, "Hey, we're doing something, please and come." It was really engaging people in that community, following the right DJs and the right influencers in music and a lot of it also leading up was incorporating them into the strategy. [crosstalk 00:41:37]

Brian Bosche:
Oh, great.

Junae Brown:
So not just like, "Oh, this person has..." and that's even something I had to discuss with the client was like, "You have this list of influencers and that's great, but this person doesn't fit, that person doesn't fit," even if they'll let you partner with them, they want to check and I understand that, but this doesn't fit and we're wasting money, right? And I'm like, "I actually could use a little bit of that budget over here."

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, exactly.

Junae Brown:
So the influencers makes sense, I'm big on that too. I just feel like influencers should be an amplifier and not the whole meat of your campaign.

Brian Bosche:
Unless they're a founder or a big investor or something. Yeah.

Junae Brown:
Right, exactly, unless they're a really important part of it already, I think that they should be the icing on the cake. I don't believe in just bring in an influencer and thinking that they are going to automatically convert, now we've spent the budget, it's done and if it doesn't work now, we're all looking around each other like-

Brian Bosche:
Uh-oh.

Junae Brown:
Uh-oh, yeah.

Brian Bosche:
Well, it's just like you said, the brand has to be authentic and people have to identify with the brand, they can't just copy an influencer's because then it's all on the influencer's side, not anything on the brand side.

Junae Brown:
Exactly. And so we did the groundwork of building up the Instagram, getting the Twitter engagement going and in the meantime, we're planning out this launch, and figuring out actually having to set up the live show and how to do all of that stuff, right? And figure out what that event is going to look like, booking the talent, who we're going to have on the bill, who's hosting, who's DJing, who's involved, and then figuring out how we were going to just market the event. So how are we going to get people off of Instagram and Twitter, and Facebook-

Brian Bosche:
Into actually, yeah.

Junae Brown:
... into a room? How were we going to do that?

Brian Bosche:
So you're going through this campaign and you're working with influencers and clients, we talked about collaboration tools a little bit, did you have a project management tool or were you using Google Docs? For other people that might want to start an agency or how did you actually collaborate with everyone?

Junae Brown:
So lots of Google Docs, and yeah, lots of Google Docs, lots of Google Excel, which is-

Brian Bosche:
Are you a Gantt chart agency? How do you see the cascading of your campaign launch?

Junae Brown:
I use mind maps sometimes where it's just like, here's the general idea and then here's the legs and-

Brian Bosche:
Oh, yeah.

Junae Brown:
... figuring out what's going on in each area. But I'm also kind of old school, pen and paper. I have to do that first, where I'm like literally I have to write out the entire thing, the whole thing down to the tablecloth colors. I'm like-

Brian Bosche:
You said, notebooks.

Junae Brown:
It's terrible, but I'm... You ever seen an encyclopedia collection?

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Junae Brown:
Those are my notebooks, and I don't throw them away, because I'm like, "There's gold in those." I'm like, "No," [crosstalk 00:44:41]

Brian Bosche:
Like the PDF Britannica of all your campaigns out?

Junae Brown:
Yeah. It's like a thing. And so every once in a while, I would literally remember when I used what notebook, and so I open it up, and I'm like-

Brian Bosche:
Where's this thing? Yeah.

Junae Brown:
I'm like, "This idea would be perfect for them." And so I'm definitely a notebook girl. And then Google Docs, I'm moving over to the Docs. As far as decks are concerned, depends on the type of mood I'm in, but I may have started off in Slides and then turn it into a PDF afterwards. And really just a lot of shared documents with the client and then I have the shared document with my team as well, and whoever is working on the project, because just because I'm the marketing person, I need to be speaking with whoever is in PR, whoever is in whatever other departments there are for the client. And so we have that area, and then we have the area which is me and my team, and we're focused on... Some things, honestly, just will overwhelm the client rather than make them feel calm about what's happening. And so it's like, "It's okay, we'll handle it." So yeah, that's how we split that up.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, that's great. And talk to us about the results, how did it go?

Junae Brown:
So it actually went really well. What we did was we added a lot of incentives for people to download the app. In order to get free entry to the event, they had to download the app, in order to be eligible for prizes, which some were cash prizes, some were items and things that people will want, concert tickets, whatever, in order to do that, you had to show that you downloaded the app. There was an option where if you were an artist and you wanted to compete to be able to open for the show, you had to download the app and do a certain amount of things. I've created this somewhat of a digital obstacle course where you had to do these things, it was like a video game, it was like, okay, you have three coins, get this. And so we did a lot of that as well as utilizing the influencers to sort of promote what's happening.

Junae Brown:
And then we had artists, a pretty well known rapper Casey Veggies, he was one of the main performers, so he was able to boost things and what was great was that on social, I think an advantage that I have as an agency is that we have a digital presence that is already connected to the consumer and likely connected to the target already, and so we already engaged a lot. And when we say that we are behind something or rallying behind something, I'm like, "Oh, you can be a part of this," people will attach to it because it's just organic, it's [crosstalk 00:47:34] language that they typically understand, it feels like someone-

Brian Bosche:
It's a good crossover.

Junae Brown:
... is recommending something to them. So it works. And so when we started to... I had this amazing graphic designer, Danny, I had her do a graphic that was interactive and it literally looked like the iPhone and the app. And so it's moving around and it turned into the flyer for the event. But really, it was showing them what the interface looked like and what it would look like to be in the app. So we did that, and it looked so cool. And so it's eye catching regardless, right?

Brian Bosche:
Yeah.

Junae Brown:
So even if you don't care anything about any of this, you're like, "What is that?" There were some people that were just like, "Well, this is cool, so I'm going to follow the page," and they go to the page, and then we have this whole layout of just this whole immersive experience before they even get out the house. So we did that-

Brian Bosche:
And you got a ton of impressions from this too.

Junae Brown:
Yes, yes, I was just about to get into that. We made over a million impressions in, I think it was less than 24 hours, just on Twitter. So in a few hours, honestly. And then once we started calculating the impressions on Instagram and Facebook and everything else that... The crazy thing was when we started the initial launch and started promoting on Twitter, I don't think we had even begun running the ads, because I said, "Let's just promote for the first 48 hours organically and see what happens so that we know if our ad plan makes sense, or we need to"

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, exactly.

Junae Brown:
And so we did that for the first 48 hours, and we amassed over, in two days, it definitely was at least 2.5 million impressions.

Brian Bosche:
Jeez, that's amazing.

Junae Brown:
Yeah, it was crazy and...

Brian Bosche:
For a startup too, I would have been].

Junae Brown:
I was just like, "What?"

Junae Brown:
And it was not just the impressions but the downloads were happening, which was his bottom line. And so go buy the time and then after that, he ran some ads and the ads really were like whatever more downloads we can get and getting people inside of the event. So by the time the event was happening, he was pumped.

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, that's amazing.

Junae Brown:
It was kind of like-

Brian Bosche:
A celebration.

Junae Brown:
Yeah, and that's exactly what it turned into. He was like, "You know what? This is now a launch party and we're just going to have a good time," and that event was wonderful. We also handled social, live social, for that. And so it was like anyone big on that as well, once we get to the experiential marketing area, anybody who missed it, anybody who didn't come out, anybody who didn't do, even if it's something digitally, I want them to have FOMO, right? I want them to be looking like, "Oh my God, I should have went, I can't wait till the next one or the next thing that they do." That definitely works psychologically as well. And so we were basically, at some points we live streamed the event, but other times we were just documenting on Instagram story, sharing the videos to Twitter and Facebook and taking them backstage, seeing the setup. Again, I think it's helpful for creative agencies especially, I know sometimes it's a lot of focus on just campaigns and the clients and getting that done, but I think there's a lot to be said when you also make sure the agency is a brand, because you're going to-

Brian Bosche:
It helps the amplification too. Yeah, you're like an influencer for your clients as well.

Junae Brown:
Exactly, exactly. And that's also something that sometimes is like the hook, line and sinker because they're like, "Okay, yeah, you also... Okay, this works, this works." Regardless, something's going to happen here. And so even with that, it's like the agency people follow the agency. So if I'm like "Hey, guys, I'm traveling from New York to DC today because we're finally doing this music stars live app launch, and here's the backstage, here's the before and after of the green room, here's how we're doing the decor setup, here's how we are checking people in and here's footage of someone screaming up and down because they just won $100."

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, exactly.

Junae Brown:
So it was a great time.

Brian Bosche:
I'm glad it went well.

Junae Brown:
He was really happy. Thank you, he was really happy with the results. And it was a good segue to whatever city he wanted to do it in next. I think- [crosstalk 00:52:28]

Brian Bosche:
Yeah, a good repeatable model.

Junae Brown:
Yeah, it's like, here's the blueprint, and if you want to do a bigger area like New York, or if you wanted any East Coast, we had that down, basically.

Brian Bosche:
That's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing. I don't want to keep you too much longer.

Junae Brown:
No, it's fine.

Brian Bosche:
But incredible case study and I like to end every creativeBTS with a parting shot. So if you have one piece of advice or anything, any of your wisdom, basically, what would you leave the listeners with?

Junae Brown:
One thing?

Brian Bosche:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Brian Bosche:
I did not prep you, or anyone else.

Junae Brown:
No.

Brian Bosche:
So it's pretty fascinating what jumps top of mind.

Junae Brown:
I would say playing back off of authenticity marketing that, this is our company mantra, perfection is simply the best version of you. We're called Browned 2 Perfection not because we're creating these perfect campaigns, these perfect everything, but I really do feel like perfection is just an extension of you at your best self. So when it comes to branding, when it comes to marketing, you are polishing up. You aren't creating something that doesn't exist.

Brian Bosche:
Yes, that is great advice. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it.

Junae Brown:
Thank you for having me. It was great.