Ashley Cleveland serves as the brand ambassador for Ciroc in Atlanta. Along with her role at Ciroc, she also manages other brands owned by Diddy that include Revolt TV and AquaHydrate Water.
Cleveland recently stopped by rolling out’s Atlanta office to discuss the business of branding and gives advice to business students.
What are your responsibilities at Ciroc?
My responsibility is to grow this brand and our general market space here in Atlanta. So, everything from working on video shoots and product placement, to strategically developing program and on premise accounts, to heading over to package stores and mom-and-pop shops to support the brand through point of sales. There is a lot of relationship building.
What are some of the things that you’ve seen change with the branding of Ciroc?
Ciroc started as a very grassroots program when they originally did the partnership with Mr.Combs. Thus far, it’s evolved into this international brand that has exploded in a ton of different markets worldwide. So now their strategy [is] underlining in the digital space and the media space and continuous in the grassroots marketing space as well. There’s just a lot more strategy that’s above the line that you’ll see with the huge campaign with the NBA. We are also doing a lot of things out in Hollywood for red carpet season and aligning Ciroc with a lot of other luxury brands nationwide.
What can business students in college right now expect when they get out?
I’d say don’t wait until you graduate to really indulge in the landscape of the marketing industry, [or] whatever industry it is you want to go into. Marketing is something that every business, every industry needs; from insurance to music to fashion to legal advice. Immerse yourself in all aspects of that skill set to understand which direction you want to go in because it’s going to change over the course of your career. Familiarize yourself with every channel of marketing that exists. And then also be creative enough to develop your own lane, while simultaneously entering into any career. One of the things I love about Blue Flame is that they encourage all of their employees to be stars in their own lives outside of being stars within the organization. So they love for everybody to have their own thing that they aspire to. Blue Flame is a lifestyle agency brand wise. They just love the fact that we do a lot on our own in tandem with our jobs day to day.
Photography by JAXONPHOTOGROUP MUA: Jennifer Fariola @lovejenmakeup
