Audience-Centric Communications & Connecting to Global Culture: A Comms Chat with Alexa Palacios-Pierre

Alexa Palacios-Pierre is a brilliant communications professional who launched her own comms agency - Connectivity - in fall 2022. Connectivity is an integrated communications consultancy creating pathways of connection for brands and leaders to global culture. And she has a recipe for success: strategy, media, partnerships, experiences, and talent. Alexa has worked with big brands across the fashion, luxury, and retail spaces, with a keen focus on PR and communications campaigns that center audience connection and community building.

I met Alexa through a mutual friend and colleague, Mia Moross , and got to work on a project designed to amplify the voices of strong women in service of creating community and inspiring change. I was immediately inspired by Alexa herself, a new mom like me leveraging communications for impact.?

I love Alexa's insights about her audience-centric approach and her advice to listen, practice humility, and be curious. She talks about the emerging trend of micro-consultancies and shares a beautiful story about a year-long campaign that she spearheaded that was rooted in authentically engaging Black Gen-Z creatives.?

How did you get into communications? Tell us your story.

My journey into communications started when I was a child, spurred by a love for connecting and holding space for others. Originally, I was drawn to journalism and wanted to work in editorial. My work from high school, college, and into the early years of my career included campus journalism, freelance writing for publications and digital channels.

In college, I developed an interest in fashion PR. By that point I had learned a lot about integrated communications and consumer marketing through work experience at a major corporation while I was in school. With the educational and professional experience I was developing, I realized I liked harnessing many of the tools used in PR: forging community at events, drafting messaging that engaged a range of audiences, and connecting with influencers and reporters who are trusted by their audiences. My interest was piqued, but I remained committed to forging a career in editorial.

Coming to NYC after college, I landed at a multi-line luxury fashion PR agency to work with a range of emerging and notable brands. This unleashed my interest in learning how to create culturally-sound connections with consumers, which has been the cornerstone of my career ever since. Shaping and curating the elements and opportunities for people to connect and build upon culturally significant moments is my calling.

You founded Connectivity, an integrated communications consultancy. Can you tell me about why having an integrated approach is important for brands as they look to connect to their customers and audiences??

Working across marketing functions not only showed me how everything interconnects but the value of each communications domain. Starting Connectivity, I wanted to hone and explore all the facets of communications instead of getting siloed into a particular frame of thinking. My consultancy helps brands connect to consumers in the most authentic way to them and their brand voice and ethos.

Communications should be designed for humans. How can we authentically represent those we are talking to so that they feel seen? Through my work I have found that many consumers don’t feel seen. I am a Black woman, and I know many people don’t feel represented in the fabric of the companies trying to reach them because of a lack of investment in learning how to convene with and understand them in the first place. Using integrated strategies to connect a brand’s offering and purpose to a consumer’s values is a solution we are committed to and will continue to center our efforts around as we grow.?

Connectivity leverages strategy, media, partnerships, experiences, and talent to help brands and leaders connect to global culture. How did you land on those 5 key levers? Can you give me an example of these critical domains working in concert to have impact?

Strategic thinking is core to the approach. Everything starts there. We leverage the strategic and macro thinking married with the executional and tactical know-how to create the end to end moments that manifest through PR storytelling.?

I headed up a project at Depop at the height of the 2020 uprisings with an organization called the Black in Fashion Council (BIFC) that was the first of its kind for both them and Depop. For context, Depop is a digital marketplace that targets next-gen audiences within the world of second hand fashion. The primary audience is Gen Z–they are young, creative, expressive and are specifically looking for brands to not only have a purpose but live up to it.?

Mindful of that, the marketing and messaging for this initiative had to center on connecting to audiences values, platforming and investing in diversity at a large scale, and self-expression. In order to stay authentic, it was important to make sure it wasn’t performative with no substance; as we know, many? brands came under more scrutiny at that time. We devised a meaningful way to lean into the moment through the partnership, with a campaign built on a foundational strategy and manifested through media, talent integration, and a robust digital education experience for emerging Black talent looking to carve their path to success in the fashion industry, as well as strong community engagement across all of our channels.?

The campaign pulled in many key tactics for its 360 activation, including partnerships on social, paid media, a paid media takeover across Teen Vogue web and social channels which gave way for Black sellers in the marketplace to thrive, and more. We looked to create an enriching and empowering message by platforming the Black creatives in our own community and beyond. This was underpinned by consistent, creative and engaging content, including educational content to support entrepreneurs in our community who used Depop as a primary or secondary source of income. We thought about how to help them power their business by leveraging trusted voices, including a number of fashion giants within the BIFC’s advisory board. We spotlighted community members to speak to their own businesses and discuss the impact they hope to have through their work in fashion.?

These are proud moments not least of all because I am a Black woman and it is important for me to platform the voices that are underrepresented. I have rarely encountered people in communications who look like me, and up until that point, had never worked with anyone directly on my teams within the roles I’ve had that did. I didn’t report to a person of color until I was nearly a decade into my career. This experience ascending within this industry where I felt isolated most of the time, posed a challenge that I chose to accept and build a business doing, which was to balance communicating authentically in culture cognizant that many brands don’t integrate that inclusive mindset into the core of their business models.?

What advice would you give to someone starting their career in communications or someone who is trying to advance in their career??

My career has been full of change and reinvention. Throughout, I focused on honing my active listening skills, and keeping humility and openness at the fore. I took a step back and learned from those who had expertise in what I wanted to shift into as I developed throughout my career, that I continue to work to pass on the emerging talent I encounter today.?

Too, being consistently curious has helped me carve out my career to what it continues to blossom into today. I have been curious about the levers that form the core of Connectivity’s business model. I have grown into an expert in this industry, while maintaining a generalist mindset by consistently learning other areas of marketing, which helps me weave everything together.?

What is a challenge or trend that you're excited about in the communications field?

One challenge in communications is viewing roles as siloed and segmented instead of seeing it holistically.?

As well, it can be tough to make the case that communications is a business imperative. Brands have to have a good understanding of how audiences engage, where they consume information, and who they trust. When I worked in consumer spaces, especially the luxury sector, it was hard to rally internal decision makers to invest in audience-specific strategies. In that, I didn’t often see my community represented authentically, if at all. I found myself having to prove the validity of an audience-centric approach as a part of the community they were not prioritizing. It was a hard dance.?

One trend I have loved seeing is micro-consultancies. People like myself, who have faced difficulty in corporate spaces, are striking out on their own through freelance businesses that give them a vehicle to have impact across the board.?

Who is an inspiration to you? Either someone who prompted you to go into comms or purpose-driven work or a person that you follow who does it well??

As I said, I am so enlivened by the micro-agencies I see popping up and creating impact. Miles Worthington’s WORTHI stands out. He is a former Netflix marketer and empowering professional that I’ve only ever encountered throughout following his work and his impactful insights shared via LinkedIn, who knows how to build the internal teams and the necessary infrastructure within the confines of the industry while never losing sight of the audiences his work centers. He does it well and it is inspiring to witness. I am taking note of how WORTHI and other leaders in my space navigate a holistic model with values front and center, especially as we look to scale at Connectivity.