Blackweek won’t be targeting a large audience in the thousands, Geer added.
“It’s about how do we keep it small and tight and keep the right individuals in the room to have these right conversations, so when people come here, we don’t expect that someone’s going to sit off to the side and not do anything and just be there to listen,” Anthony said.
The goal for the “premium ticket” event is to target senior executives, Anthony said. With early bird pricing available through March 31, two separate packages are available at $1,499 and $1,999.
“That is an indication of how we’re trying to focus on a certain class of individual within these industries to maintain the high-level decision maker and individuals that can actually have the ability to affect change. That’s really where we want to start, and then we’ll start opening up the aperture in subsequent years,” Anthony said.
‘We’re not on those stages’
The goal was to hold Blackweek simultaneously with Advertising Week, Anthony said. Since Advertising Week hasn’t yet posted a date, Blackweek is scheduled for mid-October, which will potentially be around the same time as the established New York ad industry event.
“The intent [is] to disrupt at that moment while Advertising Week is going on,” Anthony said. “Everyone’s going to be in town at that same time, so there are no excuses that you can’t hop on the subway or hop down a few blocks to come down. Any executive or leader that has made any type of commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion should put their money where their mouth is, and this is where they should actually be attending.”
The founders said they would try to adjust the date if it would help executives attend both conferences.
“The reality is we’re not on those stages with the frequency that we need to be, and that was one of the inspirations for us to do this as well,” said Anthony, referring to events such as Advertising Week, the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity and SXSW. “When we go to all of these events we’re an ingredient, we’re not the full recipe, and we want a platform where it’s all about us. We are the curriculum, we are the topic, we are the focus versus being a bolt-on.”
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“To every single one of the trade organizations, if there is even an area for DE&I, it is really small way off to the side somewhere,” Nelson said. “If you don’t get your best friends to come and support you, no one may ever see what you presented.”
When asked if people will pay to be on stage at the conference, Anthony said “nothing is off the table” but the group is not “trying to have people pay to basically placate the culture.”
“What we’re focused on is a very meticulously constructed programming curriculum of people who need to be on the stages because they deserve to be on the stages versus people who’ve paid to be on the stage to self-promote whatever they’re doing,” Anthony added.