ECTION: RO TODAY
HBO’s Manager of Multicultural marketing, Dennis Williams, understands what it takes to bring innovation and enrichment to entertainment. In this age of digital distribution, viral marketing and YouTube infamy, Williams is a champion of utilizing these mechanisms to get an artist’s work seen. HBO’s reputation as an innovator is expanded through the work of people like Williams. Here are three keys that he believes can assist other marketing professionals for staying ahead of the curve when working for an entertainment brand as iconic as HBO.
Get Your Product to the Public
“Familiarize yourself with as many different ways to get your content into someone’s hands as you possibly can. In our community, creative ways of distributing content are legendary. You have to think about ways to distribute your product, even if people are closing certain opportunities or doors [to] you.”
Be Innovative Artistically
“I think we can learn from shows like ‘The Wire’ in terms of how people approach the creative process. I think most people want to be entertained and the way that you captivate someone — the way that you get someone’s attention, is to show them a situation in a way that they’ve not seen before, yet [they] can insert themselves into the experience. Look beyond the circumstances.”
Don’t Be Afraid to Seek Help
“I was fortunate … my experience was that there were a number of guardian angels for me in the form of other executives of color. [They] adopted me in my professional life. I can remember as an intern sending out an email that had a number of grammatical mistakes in it because I was rushing. I can remember an African American male executive saying ‘The ideas in your email were great, but no one is going to get to them because of the mistakes.’ Each representation comes back to me in terms of how people will view me as a professional.”
Williams practices what he preaches and he believes it is at the core of the hip-hop generation’s psyche to be self-motivated and innovative. “We’ve got to get back to that,” he adds. –todd williams
