Representatives from major lifestyle and beauty brands told The Washington Post they sometimes have difficulty connecting with Black consumers on a personal level. But at a place like Essence Festival, they get an inside look at the Black perspective, and companies have started hiring Black women to reach a long-ignored demographic.
At an influencer brunch hosted by Procter & Gamble and The Black Hair Experience, a pop-up art exhibit, plus-sized fashion content creator Kortlynn Jenae’ said it plainly: “Essence Festival is like the Wakanda for Black women.”
Shannae Ingleton Smith, who runs the Black talent agency Kensington Grey, said 13 of her 90 clients were selected by Essence Festival organizers to attend free of charge.
“We sent an email out to the influencers on our roster of the festivals that they might be interested in. No one wanted to go to Coachella, everyone picked Essence Fest,” Ingleton Smith said.
Ingleton Smith said her clients were required to post a pre-negotiated amount of content to their TikTok and Instagram pages for brands such as NYX Cosmetics, Pandora and Garnier during the four-day festival.
Essence Fest has been around for 29 years but gained mainstream recognition after the 2017 movie “Girls Trip” starring Jada Pinkett Smith and Tiffany Haddish. It’s described as a homecoming of sorts that happens for one weekend every July in humidity-hazed New Orleans — a place where knotless braids are the most recommended hairstyle.
You can double-dutch in the middle of the day at the convention center, catch…
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