It was their first day at Morehouse College when then-undergrad students Brian “Bwrightous” Wright and Desmond “Dez” Attmore started their business partnership.
Wright, who was studying business and marketing had recently launched a closing line, had asked Attmore to be a part of it, and more than a decade later, they’re still building brands together.
Over the years, their partnership birthed Six Degrees Marketing, a creative consulting firm that touts itself as the coolest agency in the world. A lofty title, but one they’ve arguably earned.
In less than ten years they’ve racked up client names in their portfolio that are the stuff of dreams. Everyone from Drake to Doja Cat, and brands spanning from Xbox, Pandora, Jordan Brand among many, many others. If you can think of them, it’s likely the Six Degrees team has excellently executed a project for them.
So, how did they manage to consistently land these major deals? Clothes.
“While we working on the clothing line together, we came up with a marketing strategy in that every time an artist stopped by our campus for a performance or an appearance, we’d make sure they were outfitted in the clothing brand,” he explained, pointing out that artists like Lil Wayne and Wiz Khalifa were early adopter to the apparel label. The brand quickly spread to other HBCU networks and it became a pretty well known brand among students and other celebs. While growing the company, Wright simultaneously completed his studies and began working with artists to develop their brand, namely successful hip-hop producer Mike Will Made It. Following the success of Wright’s work with the artist, launching a creative agency was a no-brainer.
“We just knew what target audiences wanted to see and hear, and helped to authentically get that across,” Attmore explains to ESSENCE.
The duo’s surgical approach to brand marketing led them to organically landing deals with stars like Lil Baby, Big Boi, and LeBron James (by way of his Lobos brand) over the years.
“When we’re working with brands, the reason they come to us is because they know we have a very strong vision,” Attmore tells ESSENCE. “We’re not like a production house, so you don’t come to us with the idea already made. We kind of strategize and create a lot of really cool concepts and culturally relevant experiential moments from scratch. Which is why I think brands do lean on us because sometimes they don’t have the answers, sometimes they don’t know the culture, sometimes they don’t know the approach. And when they tap in with us, we do the proper research and we have a lot of knowledge and understanding of these different markets.”
Wright adds: “I think you could get anybody to produce anything. And sometimes we do do that. But I think you win with us when you let us see what’s going on top to bottom, whether we get a strategy, whether it’s just a feed-in moment, whether it’s content, whether it’s experiential. These are all our services. We’re thinking about all of these things when we go in and just specifically do one piece of it. We think about PR strategy because this is our work, right? And we think that the more this is working, the more obviously it’s a blast and it’s effective. We not only think about the cool factor—we think about the concept and the bottom line.”
Although the celeb-filled events look glamorous from the outside, the founders advise aspiring marketing moguls to learn the craft and prepare themselves for the hard work involved.
“You don’t necessarily need to go to college like we did to learn the craft,” Wright says. “But you do need to understand the mechanics of the practice. All paths are different, so figure out what works for you. But if college is something that you’re on the fence about or it seems like a direction you want to go, I think you could be a great fit from a networking standpoint and a community standpoint and just getting to learn yourself, learn other people and further kind of like develop yourself as well. It provides that opportunity, for sure. But whatever you do, remember to leave some room for fun.”