S2Ep09: Community Relevance Over Cultural Relevance with Gavin Guidry

Paint & Pipette: The Art & Science of Innovation

While many brands spend lots of time and money trying to present themselves in a way that is culturally relevant, today’s guest Gavin Guidry learned a powerful lesson while working as a content creator. He suggests that the best way for a brand to get its message across is not through cultural relevance but actually through community relevance. Despite being a Black man who never went to portfolio school, Gavin now works as one of R/GA Advertising’s creative directors. Apart from blowing our minds with this revelation, in this conversation, Gavin also talks about the need to cultivate a base set of knowledge before seeking to break a paradigm. He sheds light on the fact that the popular quote by Malcolm X, “By any means necessary,” may actually have a lot more to do with preparation than we may think. Tuning in you’ll hear about the value of social media to harness the power of authentic community, the value of community relevance in the current social and political climate, and Gavin’s tools for building community relevance. To finish off the show, Gavin reads us a profound quote by Tyler Mitchell that has fueled a lot of his thinking over the past several months. For all this and more, don’t miss this episode!

Key Points From This Episode:

• How Jeremy learned the value of being deliberate about his own blind spots through this podcast.
• Gavin’s belief that everything that's good develops organically.
• How being a content creator led Gavin to become a creative director in the advertising space.
• How he realized he was an in-house advertising agency and a breakdown of all that his job as a content creator entailed.
• Gavin’s most profound revelation as a content creator: It's all about community relevance over cultural relevance.
• The story of how Gavin came to this realization.
• The value of social media to hear from and harness the power of authentic community.
• How Gavin distinguishes the difference between community relevance and cultural relevance.
• The value of community relevance in the current social and political climate.
• Gavin’s tools for building community relevance.
• The challenges faced by young Black creators to break into the advertising industry.
• Why Gavin believes you need to learn from a landscape before you disrupt it.
• How Gavin processes the energy that says that cultivating takes too long and it's time to tear down the old structures for the sake of equality.
• How Gavin takes self-awareness precursory work and connects it to the work of community relevance.
• How Gavin protects the discipline of inspiration and makes time to be inspired.
• A quote by Black photographer Tyler Mitchell that has fueled a lot of Gavin’s thinking over the past several months.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Gavin Guidry

Gavin Guidry on LinkedIn

R/GA

Wish Atlanta

Hypebeast

Complex

In the Plex

Culture Making

Jeremy Utley

Marcus Hollinger