( ENSPIRE Business ) Founder of NIMBUS, Husband and Wife Duo Stacey And Dr. Dawn Wade
ENSPIRE Contributor: Gabrielle Maya
NIMBUS is a nationally recognized Black-owned strategic marketing agency. Founded by wife and husband duo Stacey and Dr. Dawn Wade, they emphasize “lived experiences” when doing advertisements and other campaigns. They can reach consumers and increase their demographics. NIMBUS’s footprint within the marketing space goes to other brands such as MassMutual, Brown-Forman, and Metro United Way. Recently, the Wades have accomplished their latest ad campaign for KFC’s new menu items starring Deion Sanders.
The Wades were behind many well-known campaigns, such as the 2020 Papa Johns’ Papadia campaign for their new grilled buffalo chicken flatbread sandwich, The 2022 Jack Daniels Gentleman Jack’s Culture Shakers, a curated group of celebrated Black and Brown bartenders across the U.S, and the Jack Harlow Meal collaboration with KFC that launched summer of 2023.
ENSPIRE got to speak with Stacey Wade to go over his journey into marketing and advertising, creating NIMBUS, keeping up with advertising trends, how to campaign products and choosing the cast, the recent collaboration with KFC, and everything in between.
Tell us about your journey into marketing and advertising; how did the creation of NIMBUS come to be?
My marketing journey began with a much less traditional path. I started as a fine artist, and ultimately, my inability to sell my art led me to a design position with a local Ad agency. Although I was awarded multiple promotions, advertising comes with ebb and flow, and I existed in both ebb and flow. The ebb was being let go from an agency I loved. The flow was that the experience created an opportunity to start my agency, NIMBUS.
How do you keep up with the advertising trends in the marketing industry?
Keeping up with trends requires an always-on approach and openness to new ideas. It’s also important to have enough humility to identify that we don’t know everything. Learning from anyone and anything allows me to keep an open mind and stay connected to emerging market trends.
How do you know what campaigns are a hit or miss with the key audiences?
Depends on the audience. From a cultural perspective, if it’s not a topic within my thread of friends/family – it didn’t hit. Outside of this, we all have an algorithm for cultural conversations. For the target audience, our work must creep into that conversation.
How do you choose who stars in your campaigns?
Each client is different, and the campaign’s needs determine who stars in a campaign. It’s not a complete science, but some inputs go into a successful campaign – starting with the right influence that talent brings to the creative.
What are some critical components in creating a campaign from process to on-screen?
The most important component is a creative brief. We must understand the success metrics to have a successful campaign. And, with this brief comes the inputs, i.e., audience, cultural deposits, cultural unlocking moments, and cultural nods, which ultimately guide us from ideation to execution.
How was the experience collaborating with KFC?
Amazing. Being able to work with a brand that understands what they don’t know but having the foresight to allow our agency to bring our lived experiences to the work is something that can’t be discounted.
You emphasize “lived experiences.” How does this give you an advantage in advertising and marketing?
Being able to bring our individual lived experiences into the work becomes the line of delineation between NIMBUS and other agencies. It sounds simple, but it usually only shows up as a facsimile in the work. The “real thing” leads a brand to authenticity and ultimately brings value to the brand by creating a deeper connection between the brand and the audience.
Based on the ever-fast-growing technology to advance and create marketing ad campaigns, specifically AI, what are your thoughts on its usage and the advantages/disadvantages in the marketing world?
With the rise of AI, we’ve seen industries across the board leverage its power to help optimize day-to-day operations. However, we cannot ignore the biases that inherently come along with its use. As marketers, we are responsible for serving as a filter when using AI outputs to ensure we are not unintentionally contributing to the discrimination of marginalized communities and risk being a victim of cancel culture because of being tone deaf. We anticipate that some lawsuits will be filed that will slow down this progress, but ultimately, the big brands will still win over individual losses.
They have also won numerous agency awards, including Ad Age’s 2023 Southeast Small Agency of the Year, Best in Show at the 2023 American Advertising Federation Louisville Advertising Awards, ranking 58 out of 75 for Adweek’s 2022 Fastest Growing Agencies, and Ad Age’s 2021 Southeast Small Agency of the Year.
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