Earlier this month, I had the chance to chat to Brandon Williams, the founder of 55 Media Group, a multicultural digital ad agency with broad expertise across content, partnerships, and advocacy. 

The focus of the agency is very much on building multicultural equity. All of the team are remote freelancers and creatives, and Brandon never wanted to have employees because of his feelings about being within the system of corporate America. 

Here, he offers nuggets of advice for fellow Black agency owners and Black freelancers in general. He shares his experience building a business that has gone on to work with top-name brands and famous figures, and why it’s important to build up a network to get your name out there. 

What’s been your experience as a Black agency owner? 

We have had some experience with clients who’ve gone with bigger shops or non P.O.C due to respectability politics within the advertising industry. 

Some have been huge clients who we’ve already committed to working with, but felt like a white agency or less ethnic agency made better sense for their brand messaging. 

Being a Minority agency owner, getting the funding to scale is incredibly hard. 

When I go into meetings with VC’s and show how great our margins are, what we bill per month pre-COVID, and how lean we are, the reception isn’t the same. 

There are Black-owned VC companies but it’s .001%. I think it’s a lot easier for a non person of color to get in the door. A lot of brands tend to shy away from minority agencies especially those who don’t have a board or C-Suite level person who is white involved to make sure it’s valuable.  

Again, these are just my opinions and my experiences. There are agencies like Uni World, Saturday Morning, Burrell Communications, and plenty of others, but I see these as legacy agencies. I’m not sure if any of these new shops will have that sort of success. 

What is it like to be a Black freelancer? 

It’s incredibly hard and you have to continue to innovate with design, strategy, and branding. 

We are constantly looking at how we can push the envelope with how we approach our marketing assets internally and externally with clients. We also are very cognitive of who we work with. 

Proving your value within your own community even can be difficult because people want to work with people who other people work with. 

A lot of times that might even be white and non-African Americans. 

Everyone is always looking for co-signs. Keep in mind we have collectively 15+ years in advertising and marketing. There are so many Agencies who start with no clients and no business acumen and just tons of experience. They end up with huge accounts because the optics of their senior team are less ethnic.

Do you have any general freelancing tips or advice? 

Build a network by continuing to uplift other creatives within your industry. 

Everyone doesn’t do the same thing and the more resourceful you can be, the better. 

Take a lot of exploratory calls. I get on at least 10 a day hoping to close 5% of 50 of those calls and the others just to continue to build the brand name. The more people that hear about your business in different ways, the more you can expand your business. 

Portfolio work is great but doesn’t be scared to expand outside of creative and venture into a strategy.