Unlocking the DOPE Framework: How Nicholas Love Injects Intelligence into Marketing

Join us for episode 18 of Breaking Through the Mayhem as Morgan Kelly chats with Nicholas Love, CEO of Kulur Group. Nicholas delves into the essence of what makes a challenger brand successful, emphasizing the importance of bold strategies and the courage to disrupt the market. Central to his philosophy is the commitment to brand authenticity, ensuring genuine connections with consumers that transcend traditional marketing.

Nicholas discusses his career trajectory, from ESPN Digital Media to leading marketing initiatives at prestigious institutions like the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and North Carolina State University. His extensive experience has equipped him with profound insights into building and executing successful social media strategies that resonate on a national level.

The episode explores pivotal adtech themes such as the critical role of data-driven marketing and the ever-evolving landscape of social media. Nicholas introduces Kulur Group’s DOPE framework—Data, Optimization, Personalization, and Engagement—which serves as a guiding principle for challenger brands aiming to distinguish themselves in a crowded market. Additionally, the conversation addresses the transformative impact of AI in marketing, evaluating its potential benefits and challenges.

In Nick's view, a strong company culture is essential for success. He underscores the importance of transparency, inclusivity, and a commitment to continuous learning and adaptability. Such a culture not only attracts top talent but also fosters an environment where employees are motivated to drive innovation and achieve sustainable growth.

Listeners will benefit from Nicholas Love's unique perspective on leadership and marketing, making this episode a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the dynamics of authentic brand-building and market disruption.

TRANSCRIPT

Morgan Kelly
Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Breaking Through the Mayhem. I'm your host, Morgan Kelly. I'm joined today by a fantastic guest.

His name is Nick love. He is the CEO of Kulur Group. Kulur is K-U-L-U-R. and we'll touch on that, momentarily here. But Nick has a career that spans being an on air talent for ESPN Digital Media to senior leadership positions at prestigious institutions like the University of Chicago School of Business. He's known for his unwavering commitment to authenticity, transparency, and transformative change.

Nick's approach to marketing, communications, and leadership really sets him apart. I met Nick about six years ago after he led a social listening panel at a client summit. I was super intrigued. Then I'm even more excited now to have him here on the show today. Welcome, Nick!

Nicholas Love
Thank you very much, man. I really appreciate the opportunity. certainly believe that, it’s getting ready to go down in, like, four flat tires and, it's just really good to be able to be able to reconnect.

Morgan Kelly
That’s awesome. Well, look, we're going to touch on a few topics today, including challenger brands, authentic marketing. You can't have any conversation today without touching AI. So we'll get into a bit of the pros and cons on that. And I think, unique framework that you guys have developed called DOPE which is obviously a great, you know, teaser in any conversation. Who doesn't want to talk about DOPE?

But before we get into any of that, let's dive into who you are, Nick. I mean, we briefly know each other, right? but if anyone goes to your LinkedIn profile, they're going to see that you're a father, a teacher, a marketer, an editor, even a sportscaster at some point in time. But I think I'm even more interested to find out how you got into marketing in the first place?

Nicholas Love
It’s a funny story, man. And, I finally gotten clearance from my father to really talk a little bit about some of the direct and also indirect learnings that that I had growing up as a child. But my father and mother, they were never married. Right. But remain good friends and my father grew up really, as a young adult as a promoter.

Right. Throwing a lot of parties and events in the city of Detroit and, you know, there's a lot of natural synergy, right, with marketing and event activations and event promoting. But there's also a lot of synergy between marketing and dating. Okay. And, my father was very much The Bachelor, okay. As I was growing up. And so I like to tell the story, and it's really quite funny.

I would say that during my formative years, in terms of learning how to engage with ladies and things of that nature.

Morgan Kelly
Sure.

Nicholas Love
There are a lot of influences for me. My father was one. And then the character Marcus Graham, who was played by Eddie Murphy in the movie Boomerang. Another one. Okay. But my father had this particular, phone that and this was like in the mid 90s that really had about maybe 300 or 400 customizable voice messages, which means if I called from my grandmother's house phone and my father had that number programed in his phone, it would say, well, hello, Frannie, I'm not here, give me a call a little bit later.

If my mom called that phone and that number was programmed in his house for me, it was. Well. Hey, Rita, I'm not home. Leave a message. Right? Right. I was old enough to actually be home while my dad would kind of go to work on the weekends and things of that nature

Yeah, his phone was blowing up off the hook. Okay. He's not very happy with me right now. So again, I'm in a good place to be able to tell this story. And these people would be calling in these people and women. they were calling it. Oh, my God, Charles, it just keeps a smile on my face. And as I was able to really kind of progress and really fully understand what that meant, well, it was beyond awareness, right?

But it was creating connection because they felt like there was some type of personalization or customization that was actually happening. Right? It was creating some form of emotion and connection. Right. And there was a perceived point of differentiation. And so I think about my pathway into marketing again, understanding the premises of that, understanding the importance of storytelling and content marketing.

Right. Understanding the importance of audience intelligence, right. To be able to bring all of those things together. While I started off my career as an on air talent within the ESPN digital Media department. I have instinct. I instinctively during that time was really fighting the calling of what I really supposed to be a marketer, vis-a-vis and on air talent. And so that is really the genesis of how I've arrived to where I'm at today.

Morgan Kelly
Wow. Well, maybe that's a good segway into, you know how you arrived in the seat as the CEO of Kulur Group and tell us a bit more about Kulur Group as well. And without. And I would be remiss of not touching on the acronym or just how it's spelled, because I think that's significant in the definition of who the agency is.

Nicholas Love
Absolutely. I mean, you know, just you tease out a little bit, but I think it's very important for me to just talk about the experiences that that formed, who I am and how I approach certain things. Spent a lot of time in higher education. vertical. Right. the University of Chicago Booth School of Business was transformative for me, both on the domestic and also international scale of things.

I like to joke that my first week, I was actually, you know, walking into a gig that I had absolutely no clue how prestigious the business school was. It's still my first week there. I was asked to develop a social strategy for a Nobel Prize. Winner. and, and then, you know, that took me to Ohio State.

And, you know, that was rough as a Michigan fan. in fact, I, I joke all the time, and it's a true statement that on my last day, I tweeted go blue. and, and and really, you know, spend another, you know, another year and a half and really, you know, this is where you and I met at North Carolina State and we were building this social media strategy hub, and I was garnering a lot of national attention, speaking at various conferences and things of that nature.

But the one thing that kept coming to me in terms of feedback was, well, you know, Nick, you're a talented marketer, you're a dope marketer, but the bulk of your experience is within higher education. And for the life of me, I really didn't understand what that meant, however, yet it was another example of me and my capabilities being questioned and being challenged.

Right. And this is a narrative that I faced even as a child. It is that, well, you know, you get to a point and then it feels out. It feels almost as if the goalposts are being moved. Right. And so that's really what the challenger mentality has really been developed, firmed up. And we'll talk a little bit about that later.

So I jumped to the agency industry and had some really good time, good years of experience. Like as business business communications really had an opportunity to kind of cut my teeth there, was promoted multiple times, built a digital center of excellence, led help, helped land, you know, some of the largest clients that the agency has had, right, wanted to kind of get some global experience and took another job and then, you know, it was really I had been saying for a long time that I wasn't going to ever really fully be happy.

And so I was running my own shop. Okay. And, you know, they say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Right? And for me, that was working for somebody.

Morgan Kelly
So I bet you have, there's a lot of people out there that are nodding right now. So -

Nicholas Love
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we can talk a lot about that community of people as well at some point. But, you know, I, truthfully, bought into the Kulur group, maybe two and a half years ago, and I have two children who are both on the autism spectrum.

Morgan Kelly
Okay.

Nicholas Love
And when I initially loved G&S, I was intending to launch my own agency then. but my wife, who every major career move that has happened in terms of physical, location, changes had always been about my career. Right? From Chicago to Columbus, from Columbus to Raleigh. And I had always been about me. And during Covid, it was very, very tough.

Not only because of the reality that Covid 19 brought to us, but, you know, when when you have children on the spectrum, virtual learning, there wasn't really a lot of resources, and it created some very tense realities that that both of her and I, we're facing and, you know, she held a senior level position as well.

And so, you know, Covid 19 might have transformed how we work, but it didn't dilute the expectation of our delivery of performance. Okay. And so imagine being in that situation where you have two children right. you know, one was of age to kind of go through virtual learning. Both of you have high expectation roles and responsibilities.

Those of you who may work in the agency vertical understand what I'm saying when I say, hey, you still have responsibilities as not only a senior executive to deliver the work, but also influence the work that's actually being done right. And it created a lot of physical stress transparently and mental stress. And, so what I did was, you know, when I, when I transitioned from G&S, I told my wife, I said, you know what?

Every move up into this particular point in time had been about me. Yeah, I'm going to take another job, but I want you to take 7 or 8 months off so you can heal Right. So I had to be quiet about the Kulur group for longer than what I really wanted to. Right. but while on LinkedIn, it may say, you know, Kulur Group 2022, I really didn't start, you know, fully leaning into the Kulur group until 2023.

Morgan Kelly
Okay.

Nicholas Love
And that's kind of the genesis of how everything is really started.

Morgan Kelly

Interesting. And that Kulur group, you go to market as a challenger brand agency. Can you talk more to that? And, and, you know, as a group, did you see like something missing in the agency marketplace that, you know, you're coming in fulfilling from a challenger role?

Nicholas Love
Yeah. I think let me answer that second question first. Unfortunately, when you look at the market and you think about diverse owned agencies, there's typically a tendency to associate their strength and capabilities with creativity. One of the things that we talk about, at the Kulur group, is that we're going to lean in with intelligence and intelligence and not in the way that it historically has been defined.

But there's a four pronged approach, from an intelligence perspective, that we're going to lean in on. We're going to lean in on cultural. We're going to lean on the audience, we're going to lean on channel, and then we're going to leverage artificial. And those four areas of intelligence ultimately power human intelligence. And so human intelligence is what's actually driving the services, right?

Creative, digital, market research, account based marketing or demand generation, public relations. Right. And so when we looked at the market and and you look at the market, particularly through the lens of diversity, right. So one of the things that we talk about at the Kulur group, how it's embedded within the name, right, is diversity and also inclusion okay.

And so being able to merge, you know, being able to leverage diversity inclusion as a part of the core fabric of the organization through the lens of intelligence that then powers the perspective outputs is is certainly something we we felt very strongly about was missing, in the market as it pertains to the challenger framing. Right. So earlier on, I talked a little bit about what it seemed like at every step, throughout my career.

Right. The goalpost was being missed. Right. For me, when you talk about challenger brands and this is a phrase that, you know, we're in the 25th anniversary of the term actually being introduced, by Adam Morgan in 1999. in the book eating, eating the Big fish. Right. And, but but when we talk about this, it's always been thought through the lens of mindset, right?

That you have business ambitions beyond conventional resources to bring change to an existing industry. And what I'll add to that is that, in effect of experience, what the challenger brand brings about is emotion and memories and feelings that last a lifetime. And so hopefully you can understand. Right. you know, how we connected, okay. Because it’s important that regardless if you're a small business, an emerging one, or sitting at the top of the food chain, you can never get comfortable right.

And so that mindset of innovation, that mindset of grinding like bad breaks is really derived from, again, my personal experience that, yeah, I've done X, Y, and Z. I've gotten to this point and now it's okay. Well now you got to do A, B and C right now you got to do this other thing, right? Right. And it's really the recognition that you can never get too comfortable.

Morgan Kelly
Right. Your saying - go ahead.

Nicholas Love
And it's uncomfortable. It's unfortunate. Excuse me that people who look like me have had a tendency that that is their consistent reality. Okay. But what I say, is as opposed to using that, as a form of, of a handicap, if you will, as I'm going to use it for good.

I'm going to use it for motivation to ultimately be able to create something and lead something that then starts to facilitate change and brings about recognition of, of what the power of inclusion looks like within the conversation. So that's that's kind of, you know, the, the, the 50,000ft view on this and I want to be very clear, Kulur group actually existed prior to my arrival.

Right. It was founded about 4 or 5 years ago. Right. So I'm, I'm the newest, agency partner, but I have ascended quickly, obviously, to the CEO role. when it was initially started, it was really initially started. some hustle type work, if you will. And, you know, like when I was able to join and we began to kind of leverage the collective power of everybody was like, yo, look, we might have something here to be able to kind of, you know, do something special with.

And here we are.

Morgan Kelly
So just, as I think through that effectively and I think you said this a couple of months ago when we, when we got reconnected, that you just challenged the notion of the challenger brand by saying, really, any or most brands worth their salt should be setting themselves apart, right? With a mindset. They should be challenging themselves to continue to like, put to what you're saying, you don't rest on your laurels as soon as you accomplish X, you should be pushing yourself to accomplish Y, and that's challenging.

That's the challenger mindset within the industry.

Nicholas Love
Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, if, if, if we were to take it, take that a step further, right, and say, okay, well, you know, you hear these things. You know, the challenger mindset, right. Talk about this macro sense. Right. But let's kind of drill down into, well, what are the characteristics and traits.

Right. And so I did a presentation a few weeks ago at the African-American marketing for the Culture Summit in Houston. And, you know, you know, shout out to them is sponsored by Hewlett Packard, who, you know, has a phenomenal DEI program. But that's another conversation for another day. But one of the things that I talked about in that session is that, you know, there's often the term challenger and disruptor being used, as if they are the same or interchangeably.

Right? They are different. They are different. But you can be both and you can be both, but they are different. Okay. Right. One of the things that I talked about in that session was, what does the challenger mind map look like? Right. What are those? What are those tenets that, that, that that built you up. And so what I settled on was, well, you're going to be hungry.

You're going to be humble, okay. You got teachable. You have to have something to prove. You have to be willing to serve. You have to have a sense of urgency. You have to play to win. And last but not least, you have to be allergic to the plateau,

Morgan Kelly
Allergic to the plateau.

Nicholas Love
Right? Right. That's so right. Again, working in alignment with this idea that you cannot rest on our laurels of past success. Right? Right. Because the moment you get comfortable, your replaceable,

Morgan Kelly
Right. You know, everything that you named, leads me to, you know, of course, from a Sightly standpoint, our Brand Mentality, you know, we think about, brand values, brand authenticity, you know, every day, all day. This is really how we go to market, right? But in that list that you mentioned, where does brand authenticity kind of fit into the playbook for a challenger brand?

Nicholas Love
Yeah, I think it's critical. and I would say that there are elements of authenticity that need to be challenged as well. I don't think that, you know, authenticity can only live in a vacuum. I think it also has to have a, a plus one approach and maybe a plus 2 or 3 approach.

Right. So, you know, we typically think about authenticity. It's going to be broken down through the lens of, you know some say three three pronged approach. Right. So continuity and credibility. Integrity. Right. We are in the era of receipts and the reason why authenticity is so important is that purpose has emerged. you know, within some of the emerging generations, right, as a point of focus that will guide advocacy or revenue or support tenets.

Okay. And so, you know, when we talk about continuity, right, a brand being sure of itself over time, credibility, you know, are you trustworthy? Integrity. You know, it's more about, you know, being honest, this, this idea of doing the right thing. But what I would add on to that is consistency and vulnerability. Right. you know, are you showing up in a, in a consistent form?

Because I can be authentic and my authentic self might reveal that you've said something -

Morgan Kelly
Yeah.

Nicholas Love
- that I don't like. Okay. Right. And I might transparently or authentically right respond in a way that may not be favorable. But then ten minutes later you might say something that I do like, and I'm going to authentically respond in a very favorable manner.

Now, those are two opposite ends of the spectrum, right? Okay. And we know as a core business principle that people not only remember what you say, but they more so remember how you made them feel. Right? Right. And so if those two things cancel each other out, right, then your brand image is going to be compromised.

But if I'm consistently engaging with you in a way that is making those positive deposits right, the equity balance is there. That's ultimately going to be what you pull from to make a decision. Right. And and then the vulnerability aspect has to come through. And, and really an inward approach, to be real about, you know, can our products, can our people, can our services truly deliver what we say?

Right? Right. Because we live in a world that is infinite, but, you know, there's an infinite amount of data that's available to you, right? And and, you know, ultimately, there are some fundamental questions that all strategies, all marketers have to be, you know, have to be answering all the time. And, you know, I know we'll talk a little bit about this later around the importance of, of, data.

Right. But I'll say this, you know, we don't talk about data driven decisions as a company. We talk about decision driven data.

Morgan Kelly
Interesting. Yeah. Expand on that.

Nicholas Love
Yeah.

Morgan Kelly
So I hear it every day, data driven.

Nicholas Love
Right. But exactly, exactly. But like it's really decision driven right. Because you know let's just be very clear. If you lean in on data driven decision, oftentimes what this aligns with is that you're providing the right solution to the wrong question.

Okay. Right. But you have, you know, as a marketer, as a leader, you have to provide the right solution to the right question. So there was a book that came out by, the name escapes me, but they are faculty associated with the the Wharton School of Business at UPenn that talks about decision driven analytics. Okay. and, and what this really hones in on, right, is what are the questions that you need to have answered, and what are the data points that you can leverage that's support that you are making the right decision?

Morgan Kelly
Right.

Nicholas Love
Right. And so it's really about let's start with the end in mind. I don't want to just look at a spreadsheet of data. Right? I want to be able to and we talk a lot about learning agendas at the Kulur group and really arming our clients with that.

You know, here are the three, 4 or 5 courses of questions that we want to be able to answer as it pertains to this marketing or public relations campaign. Right. And then that allows us to zero in on, the, the particular points of, of data that's available to us. Right. That then allows us to answer whether these were successful or not data driven decisions.

Right. You know, it has been used so often. It's almost like people are in a rush to go look at the data and then take the data and arrive at some point when data by itself doesn't always tell you the full story. Right? There's always going to be some context and some nuance associated with it. Right? And so, you know, and again, I don't want this to be misconstrued that we deprioritized data.

We do not. Right, right, right, right. You heard me earlier. Talk about our intelligence factor. Yeah. What I am saying is that context matters here. And that can not be lost for today's market, right?

Morgan Kelly
Right. Yeah. And that's it's hard when you have an ocean of data in front of you. you know, how do you sift through all of that data to find the supporting insights that you were talking about?

You know, everyone wants you to boil the ocean to come up with, you know, the silver bullet, if you will. your clients are looking to you to come up with the answers based on all this data that you're getting. We have a, you know, every day for us at Sightly we have all this unstructured data that we're structuring into insights.

It's, you know, a lot of what we do. But how do you approach all the data that you have available to, to, you know, surface the insights that you need for your clients?

Nicholas Love
Yeah. I mean, again, I think it ladders back up to the to the learning agenda is right. You know one of the things that will do what typically, you know, roll out a learning agenda and we are arriving, you know, first and foremost at business objectives.

Right. Not marketing or comms, business. Right. Because ultimately that's what you're going to be evaluated on, right? How are you impacting the business? Can you either correlate or provide some causation? Right. To due to what you're specifically doing. And we want to get alignment upfront. Right. Like your particular questions that we need to be able to answer.

Right. Right. So we're if you're if you're paying us, you know five six figure deals to help develop a messaging strategy for you. Right. That we need, you know, as a part of that learning agenda, we need to be having some formal question that starts to evaluate, you know, which message is impacting or resonating with your audiences, the most.

And if it is driving, what you need to drive. Right. And so what, you know, we'll have general questions, right? We have this for our methodology that talks about reputation, recognition, relevance and resonance. Right. And there's going to be a core question that fits within each of those four R’s But the one that's you know, if we're just talking about messaging, right.

Yeah. The one that's always critical that we're going to ask within that four are not within the learning agenda, but within the four R’s is are you known for what you want to be known for? Real. Simple.

Morgan Kelly
RIGHT. Yeah. Well that's getting that. You're getting that reflection. Do you go to, you know, social listening? How do you, how do you, put that mirror up for the clients to understand?

Nicholas Love
Yep. So we use a collection of things, you know, certainly social listening is going to be one, you know, certainly keyword research is going to be one, right? I mean, we're in an omnichannel world where, you know, multiple I mean, individuals are using multiple channels or whatever to be able to, you know, be informed or be educated or be entertained, ultimately build those relationships with those particular brands, right.

We'll certainly tap into, survey based data, that we're able to kind of gather, you know, we are tapping into more, machine learning and predictive, right to, to, to ultimately leverage that into, to want influence, you know, testing opportunities and really, you know, kind of get a sense on, you know, how how clean, is the data that we're gathering driving to, the outcomes that we're trying to influence?

I would say that, you know, we're looking at behavioral data, you know, when people are landing on a particular where products. Right. One of the things that we talk about, there's a difference between beliefs and behaviors. And so, you know, we segment these data points. You know, there might be social listening there. It falls into the belief aspect.

Right. This is right. These are the opinions that people are expressing. Right, right. you know or, or the comments that we, that might be left on message boards or news articles of things of that nature, but is it matching the behavior? Right, in terms of sales, in terms of web activity, in terms of engagement, right, from an email perspective?

And so like, like. The ability to understand both, we're going to look at all of the respective channels through this omni lens to ultimately, hopefully provide that silver bullet that our clients are looking for.

Morgan Kelly
Right. Right. I, I want to ask you about, just on the data piece, the AI. But you just sparked the thought of, how often are the clients that you're working with coming to you and asking?

We want to be more authentic in the marketplace. We understand consumers, you know, every day are looking for that connection, that genuine authenticity is that. Do you see that or is that coming up in your conversations with your clients?

Nicholas Love
It hasn’t come up a lot yet. and I but I expect for it to with, the emergence of our agency in the, in the momentum that we're starting to kind of, scale with we have a client that I won't mention their particular name, but they are a global, entity that focuses on, solving one of the world's biggest issues, and that's poverty.

Okay. and so, what I will say is that they have not said that they don't know their audience. Right. I think they have a very firm understanding of who their audience is. Well, I do think that they're comfortable engaging is, is that they want to understand a lot more about their audience behaviors. Okay. They were particular platforms in how the content that they're disseminating on their respective channels are resonating.

Right? So that that gets into, again, what I was just talking about regarding beliefs and behaviors. Right. so, so, you know, they understand the demographic psychographic information, you know, through the lens of focus groups, market research and so forth and so on. But does it translate well from the behavioral component? And so that's where I do think, you know, that's not in our scope yet, but, but, but that is an area where I think more and more entities will start to really parse out the two, to get the behavioral intelligence, which is why you see predictive, which is why you see machine learning, right?

Really emerging, as a critical component, I can quickly share this, that a few years ago and this was at another agency. but, you know, when I was leading that, that arm of the agency. We did some really cool things where we were able to actually predict with a degree of accuracy the performance of social media pose based on the tonality of the words used in the copy.

and so, you know, I'm hoping to. Well, it's not that I'm hoping because I guess I can. I have the ability to make the final decisions. I got to get used to that. We will build that, you know, a similar capability with the Kulur group, because when you think about the impact that social media has.

Right. effort versus impact, right? Is, is critical from a business perspective. And so, being able to predict with a degree of accuracy, word choice and tonalities, right, right. So we get above first and second levels of particular algorithms. Could be a very interesting play. I think I might have just given away a business plan, but you know, but bite me,

Morgan Kelly
That’s fascinating. when it comes to generative AI, you know, how is the Kulur, how are you and the team leveraging that, you know, for different use cases? And, I'm very keen to understand, you know, what challenges or biases that you're up against or feeling realizing when you're going through that data and saying, now that's to your earlier point.

You know, you have to filter everything for context. And obviously there's a lot of limitations on generative AI and working with diverse clients. You're you're you might be more keen to it than many to be interested, to hear your perspective on that.

Nicholas Love
Yeah, so it's, it's very much a factor in how we create content. with the Kulur Group, to be honest with you.

So we did a, we did a podcast on so one of our sub brands is called Dope Thinkers Only. and we did a podcast on the importance of cultural or channel and artificial. Right. I'll say that during Women's History Month, we came out with an article that featured Harriet Tubman. Okay. And the article was really positioning her as the Goat of Challenger, the greatest of all time with challengers.

Right? Right. We have conviction of business resources brought change to an existing industry. All right, all right. Now, you know, hers wasn't about business. Hers was about life. Yeah, right. But we tapped into generative and really had some interesting conversations and, and you know, and produced some what I would call some very thought provoking creative where we had an image of Harriet Tubman giving a Ted talk to a roomful of men who didn't look like her.

Morgan Kelly
Right. Fascinating.

Nicholas Love
Very intentional. Right. Okay, okay. you know, and we've done some things where, you know, I won't spend a whole lot of time talking about solo stove and Snoop and that, you know, that, fiasco or, you know, marketing case study. But, you know, we had an image of Snoop on top of, a burner.

Morgan Kelly
Right.

Nicholas Love
Okay. with something lit, with, with actually money left. Right. Because again, you know, there was misalignment within that activation around influencer, and impact on bottom line business goals. Right. And you spent a lot of money generating awareness. Right. Did not impact. Right what you were trying to do, which ultimately led to an exit.

Right, right. so, you know, we, we, we use generative in a lot of different ways. And, you know, it's interesting, one one of my colleagues and co partners, you know, I can only imagine the type of. swifting that he has to do when developing these creative images. Right. Because while AI is, you know, very much an accelerator, there's a lot of gaps in it.

Right. And understand cultural context. Right. Again, I spoke at the marketing for the Culture Summit and if I said, you know, if I typed in as a prompt, right, or if they pick something up that says, oh, well, you know, Nick is the shit, well, they might be thinking about a piece of defecation, right? Right. But from a cultural perspective, that's actually a compliment, right?

Yeah. Right. Of, of, of elevation. And so, you know, when we did the Harriet Tubman thing, there were a lot of outputs. I'll just leave it at that. Right.

Morgan Kelly
Yeah.

Nicholas Love
A lot of discernment. you know, had to be applied so that's why, you know, one of the things we talk about emphatically is the importance of that cultural intelligence to run. Right. with that artificial intelligence, right, to make sure that you're not putting yourself in situations like Gucci did a few years ago with the blackface campaign where, you know, people are questioning like, well, who was in the room, right?

Oh, who made the call for this to say, oh, this is okay, let's go to market with it.

Morgan Kelly
Right. Yeah, yeah. We're in such early days, with generative AI and, I mean, to have this conversation three years from now is going to be fascinating because there will be so many more there. There's going to be such an expansion of data sets that may or may more accurately be able to give results.

You know, it may. It could make your job easier. Maybe it'll make your job even harder because maybe there are more nuances that you're going to have to, you know, use the human intelligence to decipher and determine. No this is still culturally not aligned, right. But yeah, interesting.

Nicholas Love
And if anything, I think, you know, it's going to wage more competitiveness.

Morgan Kelly
Right.

Nicholas Love
I wrote an article that started out 2024 and talks about that. This year was the year of the challenger, okay. And I believe that, when you have the ability to merge these areas of intelligence, particularly in a reality where remote working is available right now, these smaller entities, smaller brands can not only tap into creativity, but accessibility as well.

Right? In this global world that we live in, that is going to require ongoing, focus and creativity. Because right now, you know, in a lot of different industries, it's a sea of sameness. Yeah, right. There's a sea of sameness. Right. And so when you think about these inputs kind of going into, you know, AI and things of that nature, right, is going to really bring out the importance of intelligence that powers creativity.

Morgan Kelly
Right.

Yeah. you have the hat DOPE. I got to touch on that before we bring this to a close. so definitely in terms of, you know, you were just mentioning cultural terms, certainly, you know, dope has different meanings with. I'd love to for the listeners to understand more about dope. And yeah, this is new within the last six months.

So maybe if you can flesh this out more for us and tell us, you know, if there are any early success stories.

Nicholas Love
Yeah. Yeah. So we got a few things actually kind of going on. You know, what they've done within the dope aspect. And you heard me talk a little bit about our sub brand dope thinkers only, but, our first introduction of dope.

And let me explain what the acronym means is that, D is for brands who dare to disrupt, who are opportunist, stick with positive intent, who are exploring possibilities through change. and who are I'm sorry, who are peers, are exploring possibilities through partnership and brands who are executing change. Right. and so what we did was we launched, our are you dope, program in Q4 of 2023, where we are, providing pro bono marketing and communication services to either, black owned or women led, technology, companies.

And so there were three winners as a part of this initial launch. and, you know, one of which, who was actually our third place winner, is Hayti. That's led by a gentleman by the name of Kerry Willis out of Durham, North Carolina. that he owns the largest, independently owned black podcasting network, that existed.

And he's ultimately partnering with a lot of advertisers who want to reach a particular demographic. a lot of the larger, black mediums who struggle because of algorithms that ultimately have their content found, as a vendor. And then I believe in either Q4 of this year or Q1 of next year, he's going to create a digital version of, or of a storefront where black owned businesses are able to kind of, make their products or services available.

and so, you know, that was we, as a part of his deliverable with, done some competitive, digital advertising auditing for them. And then, he's getting ready to lay out some of his new brand positioning and messaging. and actually is now serving as a sponsor for our event on the 4th of July in New Orleans.

Okay. Paul Newman color. so you know that really kind of came out, as a part of the are you dope program built thinkers only, is, you know, started off as a newsletter on LinkedIn. But what is emerging now? Excuse me? As a business community, that we're standing up and, you know, we've really tried to give some definition to what is a dope thinker, right?

You know, is someone who elevates categories, products, people, experience and culture through the power of diverse and inclusive thinking. so, you know, certainly, we're not going to be standing up some scholarships and some internships in the fall. So really, really excited about how this framework is really starting to kind of grow, and permeate through through the Kulur group

Morgan Kelly
Oh that's really exciting for the listeners. Can you spell the podcast that you were mentioning?

Nicholas Love
Yeah. So, the podcast is actually, With Love, which is my podcast that appears on kulurgroup.com. Right. We have some video series that is just called DOPE Thinkers Only, which they label on our YouTube channel as well.

Morgan Kelly
Okay. And then the, the you mentioned of the, of the three that you're doing pro bono work for, the name of that podcast that you were just featuring.

Nicholas Love
Oh! Hayti, Hayti, Hayti is actually an app, and it's really a network that allows for podcasts viewers to have their presence on this particular app. Right.

So a lot of news distribution entities, journalistic organizations and news mediums, right? So it's called Hayti. H-A-Y-T-I.

Morgan Kelly
Perfect. Thank you so much. all right, so as we bring this to a close. Nick, we're almost halfway through the year here. So much has gone on. I mean, the year of the challenger brand.

We have the Olympics in front of us. We have, as we always say, one of the more consequential elections in front of us. In the US, the economy seems like it's rebounding a bit. I mean, there's a lot of macro influence. Does that come into play? Whenever we're doing marketing? We'd love to get any predictions you want to put on the line for the second half of the year, or any predictions, maybe that you that you forecasted in 2023 that you're already seeing come to fruition?

Nicholas Love
Yeah, I think the examples I just laid out, comes to one common thing, and that is the importance of culture.

Morgan Kelly
Yeah.

Nicholas Love
Period.

Morgan Kelly
That's right.

Nicholas Love
There are various cultures. And in each of the examples that you just talked about right in Nick, what do you mean by culture? Right. You know, this is a word that's thrown around a lot.

Well, the way that I define culture is that cultures act that instinctively forces you to change the way you think or you behave.

Morgan Kelly
Right.

Nicholas Love
And so there's going to be a culture divide that we well, with the upcoming election.

Morgan Kelly
Right.

Nicholas Love
And this is really about what is, you know, what is the will of each respective culture.

Do you stand on the side of, you know, unity, right? Or do you get in a lot of divisiveness? Let me just call a spade a spade.

Morgan Kelly
Yeah.

Nicholas Love
There is the Olympics aspect, right where there is going to be a battle of cultures from, from, a nation.

Morgan Kelly
Yeah, right.

Nicholas Love
And the perception that one is supreme than the other through the lens of, of of competitiveness.

And when I think about, you know, marketing and collaborations through all of the, all of this, that, this, this, this tenet, right. It's really about do you have a cultural intelligence to authentically and effectively engage with these audiences to ultimately drive impact? If you do, you're going to be set up in a very deep way, right. Good luck to you. Period.

Morgan Kelly
I love it.

Great way to tie that all together from a cultural standpoint. Yes, the second half of this year, hopefully won't be tumultuous. Hopefully it will be inspiring. and, you know, drive a lot of positive change. That's what I can say. So thank you again, Nick. It's been a pleasure speaking with you for our audience.

It would be great. You mentioned a few, you know, different points that they can connect with you. But just to clarify that, where can our listeners go to find out more about Kulur, DOPE thinkers and so forth?

Nicholas Love
Yeah. kulurgroup.com. k u l u r g r o up.com. And then feel free to reach out via LinkedIn directly to me.

I respond to each message, I mean, as long as, you know, you're not trying to sell me a franchise that's just out of whack on LinkedIn. oh. but, but yeah, you know, feel free to reach out directly to me on LinkedIn or visit our website, sign up for our newsletter. You know, we have some dope things happening, events happening as well in the fall.

So, yeah, feel free to reach out and connect us.

Morgan Kelly
Awesome. And by the way, we are coming out with a mentality hat, so we might have to do a hat swap.

Nicholas Love
Okay. So I'll rock with it.

Morgan Kelly
Nick, thanks so much. we'll be in touch soon.

Nicholas Love
I appreciate it, man. Thank you.