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Articles by Wil Shelton
Kendrick Lamar’s Cash App Partnership Signals a Power Shift in Brand Marketing
For decades, marketers have faced a profound disconnect: Black culture drives consumer trends, yet the infrastructure of commerce often excludes its core community. Black artists fill stadiums their day-one fans can’t access. Black style defines luxury brands their originators can’t afford. Black vernacular sells products while its creators watch profits flow elsewhere.
Why barbershops may hold the key to African-American health
While Washington settles into its new political reality, a health-care revolution is taking shape in unexpected places — your local barbershop. As the new administration prepares to implement its health-care agenda, black barbers and salon owners are quietly solving two of America’s most persistent health-care challenges: access and trust. And they’re doing it without a single congressional hearing or federal mandate.
Netflix’s Barbershop Brilliance: How the Streaming Giant Mastered Cultural Marketing Through Authenticity
By Wil Shelton, CEO of Wil Power Integrated Marketing In an era where brands stumble over themselves trying to create “authentic connections,” Netflix just schooled the marketing world with a masterclass in cultural engagement. Their strategy? Walking into Black barbershops and letting the culture do the talking. And with the highly anticipated Paul vs. Tyson fight, they’re proving just how powerful this approach can be.
The Gentrification of Black-Owned Businesses: A Sense of Displacement and Eviction
When a Black-owned business is acquired by a large conglomerate, loyal customers often experience emotions similar to those felt during gentrification. Like neighborhood revitalization that displaces long-standing residents, corporate takeovers of beloved Black-owned brands can unsettle supporters, even if they continue to use the products. Consumers may feel a shift in the culture and soul of a brand, as though it’s no longer “theirs.” Gentrification has both environmental and mental effects.
American Marketer
Wil Shelton By Wil Shelton When we rise, do we fall? That is the question facing Black-owned businesses. Here are several factors dwelling on the cultural cost of corporate acquisitions of Black-founded businesses. Paradox of progress In the grand tapestry of Black economic empowerment, a profound paradox emerges: As Black-owned businesses ascend to the pinnacles of corporate success, do they risk severing the roots that nurtured their rise?
The Silent Agreement Between Black-Owned Businesses and the Communities That Built Them
There is an unspoken, yet ever-present cultural contract between Black-owned businesses and the Black communities that built them. It’s an invisible agreement that is rarely talked about but always understood; a relationship rooted in shared struggle, history, and identity. For Black businesses, especially in industries like beauty, this contract is both a gift and a weight. On one hand, it offers a deep connection to a loyal, invested community.
Diversity Insight: The complexities of code-switching
We pay a price when Black executives create facades of conformity to fit into corporate America Most white Americans have never joined a meeting to find they are the only person of their race in attendance, so it can be hard for them to understand why Black executives feel dismissed and disenfranchised in corporate America.
Black Paper: The Power of Black Consumers By Wil Shelton, CEO and Founder of Wil Power Integrated Marketing
Black Paper: The Power of Black Consumers By Wil Shelton, CEO and Founder of Wil Power Integrated Marketing In the wake of the U.S. presidential elections, Black Lives Matters protests, and heightened tensions around police brutality, African Americans are feeling their collective power, and they are using it to shape new cultural norms. This extends to their expectations for brands that want to cash in on Black buying power.
Social Welfare, Social Justice, and Social Good |
Case Managers must make impossible choices to manage the complexities of an unstoppable pandemic—and they are working against the clock. Unless, like me, you are married to or related to a Case Manager, you’ve probably never thought about what they do, yet they are critical to the healthcare system that we all rely on. They reside in the central command center of a crisis.
Case Managers: The Other Frontline of COVID-19
Published on March 31, 2020March 31, 2020 • 399 Likes • 141 Comments Wil SheltonFollow CEO of Wil Power Integrated Marketing |Consultant |Speaker Case Managers must make impossible choices to manage the complexities of an unstoppable pandemic—and they are working against the clock. Unless, like me, you are married to or related to a Case Manager, you’ve probably never thought about what they do, yet they are critical to the healthcare system that we all rely on.
Diversity Insight: Empathy Fuels Connections With a Wide Variety of Members
In recent times, many credit unions have wondered if they are truly serving the people they were originally created to serve—local communities, people with such common bonds as an employer or community and the underserved. Doing so well may depend a great deal on the ability to serve people you don’t serve now. And serving people that you don’t serve now may require you to get better at first recognizing diverse needs so then you can address them.
Unbylined: A Q&A With A Rwandan Fixer - Roads & Kingdoms
In international journalism, a local journalist hired by foreign reporters for his or her special knowledge of the local area, culture, and language is called a fixer. This series explores the untold stories behind their largely unrecognized work. You can read about fixing in China here, Mexico here, Belarus here, and Afghanistan here.
Amy Wood's daughter, Gracie, follows in mother's footsteps into journalism
When presidential candidates campaign in the Upstate, a sixth-grader at McCracken Middle School is among the big pool of reporters and photographers getting the story. She has become such a seasoned journalist that she has worked on stories alongside everyone from NBC's "Meet the Press" moderator Chuck Todd to NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell. She also has interviewed lawmakers such as U.S. Rep.
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