Sold out Gen-Z Show in 3 cities. A cultural moment boosted 53% in brand engagement.

Overview

Verizon didn't have a reach problem with young Black audiences. They had a credibility one. Buying attention was never going to fix it.

So they partnered with REVOLT, who already have that network, on "Back In Session", an HBCU Homecoming tour across three cities. REVOLT pulled me and my team in as creative partners to build the campaign world around it.

Approach

This audience lives online first. A physical event with standard marketing wrapped around it was never going to land, so the digital had to feel as alive as the night itself.

We started with the audience rather than the brand, and the research gave us something specific enough to build on. This audience engages with filters. Not as a novelty, as a way of putting themselves inside a moment. So AR stopped being a nice-to-have at the end of the deck and became how the campaign actually travelled.

Then the colour. Rather than drop Verizon red on top of HBCU culture, we tuned the palette until it read HBCU-coded, leaning into the nostalgia homecoming already carries. Hand-drawn illustration from a Black university student went into the identity alongside animated iconography and bold type. Every element had to belong to the community rather than perform inside it.

Everything after that followed one decision. Bridge the physical and the digital, so the campaign matched how this audience discovers things, turns up, and shares them.

Outcomes

The RSVP site wasn't a form. It was a city-specific destination with video, artist lineups and its own colour palette per city. The AR filters were yearbook-themed, with face-tracking stickers, personalisation prompts and switchable doodle themes. The merchandise matched, cups, wristbands, lanyards, event passes, animated flyers per location. All of it from scratch in ten weeks.

The tour sold out in Houston, D.C. and Atlanta. 5,000+ RSVPs, 22,801 interaction clicks at a 53% engagement rate, and a 69% video play rate.

The result Verizon cared about most isn't in any of those numbers. The campaign captured a pool of first-party data on exactly the audience they'd been missing. Sold-out shows are the moment. The data is what they still had the morning after.