Boardroom is a media brand co-founded by Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman that focuses on the intersection of sports, entertainment, and business. Boardroom produces premium content showcasing how athletes, executives, musicians, and creators are moving the business world forward. Boardroom’s ecosystem also consists of an advisory arm that consults and connects athletes, brands, and executives with its broader network and initiatives. Additionally, Boardroom curates high profile experiences, including NBA/WNBA All-Star events and CNBC’s Game Plan. Boardroom Sports Holdings invests in emerging sports teams/leagues, including the Brooklyn Aces, Gotham FC, and Philadelphia Union.
No other brand can curate a room like Boardroom. From managing creative campaigns and client expectations to understanding social audiences, Boardroom is adept at creating opportunities that are mutually beneficial for talent, brands, and consumers. As an embodiment of their desire to curate these opportunities, Boardroom has spent the last year building a cutting-edge experiential brand strategy, tapping into brands’ desire to combine B2B events with D2C content strategy. Boardroom’s goal with Boardroom x VISA Talks was to turn a conventional event format into a dynamic “night-out” that attracted influencers and celebrities alike while creating a multi-pronged content strategy for consumer audiences. Boardroom’s cutting-edge experiential brand strategy helped VISA tap into a combination of B2B event with D2C content strategy in a truly effective way.
In an effort to highlight unique and impactful perspectives to their audiences, Boardroom created a multi-pronged social strategy around their one-of-a-kind inaugural Boardroom x VISA Talks event, “The Intersection of Sports & Music: Business and Beyond,” featuring a conversation between rapper & entrepreneur Lil Baby and Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin, moderated by Rich Kleiman. Through curated programming and production, Boardroom turned a fireside chat into a full “night out” in NYC, producing truly unique content.
After the event, with a mix of written editorial and thoughtful but fun short-form video, the Boardroom team brought key insights from the event to life to a savvy, Gen Z and Millennial consumer audience. Boardroom’s content strategy included a mix of short-form video, mid-length highlight video (5-7 minutes), written editorial, and newsletter inclusion, all brought together on one landing page. The insights shared by Lil Baby and Michael Rubin were one-of-a-kind and brought a unique lens to business that Boardroom’s audience appreciated.
A specific challenge Boardroom faced was how to help Visa execute the perfect combination of a B2B event and D2C content strategy, all while working within the parameters of Visa’s much larger content guidelines. By giving its audience unparalleled access to an exclusive “night-out” for talent and the insights revealed over their keynote discussion, Boardroom managed to bring something entirely unique to the table. Boardroom’s experiential strategy has become a core part of its business. The team finds creative ways to keep VIP events “B2B” while still bringing those experiences to consumers with compelling content. For this event, the company not only achieved that delicate balance, but drove extensive interest from other brands and partners to do more of the same.
Between production, programming, and content production & distribution, this event was exemplary of Boardroom’s cultural impact, consumer reach, and unique ability to pull together a room of influential and diverse talent. The event garnered impressive reach on Boardroom’s platforms, receiving 9.6 million impressions and 3.5 million video views. On social, Boardroom drove an aggregate engagement rate of 5.21% compared to a 1.5% media average rate. Moreover, Boardroom’s event’s social success extended far beyond the brand’s reach, as high-profile VIP guests shared posts on their own social media channels. 100+ industry leaders across sports, music, entertainment, and business attended Boardroom x Visa Talks, including Julius and Kendra Randle, Gayle King, Fabolous, KAWS, Justin Tuck, Jadakiss, Ashlyn Harris, Steve Stoute, Amber Sabathia, Paul Rabil, Rick Pitino, Speedy Morman, Yes Julz, Joey Bada$$, Victor Cruz, and many more.
Attendees were thrilled to be invited to a limited-capacity conversation with two cultural and business leaders. Guests relayed their appreciation for Rubin and Lil Baby’s insights, as well as the opportunity to enjoy cocktails and network with each other during what felt like a true “NYC night.” Boardroom received great feedback from talent, guests, and brand alike, which translated to great traction Boardroom across social media. Beyond Instagram shares from attendees, the event earned an additional 21 million added potential impressions from tweets discussing the event.
