Instagram has been growing in popularity for years now, but lately due to the pandemic, Instagram has really proven itself as the new virtual storefront. It acts as a landing page to quickly and effectively communicate your story, a major e-commerce engine, brand discovery tool, and way to foster and build community. Knowing the ins and outs of advertising on Instagram, and other social platforms, is critical for any current or aspiring entrepreneur, regardless of whether you're investing in paid opportunities or going full-on organic with your growth.
A critical note: a lot of these incredible featured founders, like Jasmine, Polly and Victoria, had to juggle not only the normal highs and lows of brand-building on social media, but also had to factor in content and advertising restrictions due to their unique product categories. For Polly and Unbound, a sex tech company, that meant getting creative with marketing and social campaigns to avoid or challenge Facebook's restrictive advertising policies for sex tech businesses. For Jasmine and Victoria, it has demanded similar creativity, due to both working and growing businesses in the cannabis space.
Let's meet our incredible panelists and our expert moderator, Clarice Metzger, below!
Moderator and networking expert Clarice Metzger is a Sierra Leonean-American storyteller and strategist passionate about inclusivity, authentic representation, and community. By day, Clarice is a creative strategist at culture-focused marketing agency Creative Theory Agency. By night, she is the founder of Kno. Media, a creative platform telling the stories of marginalized misrepresented change-makers with a focus on identity. Clarice hopes her passion for building community and amplifying marginalized voices can drive multicultural conversation and create lasting cultural change. Through her work with Kno., Clarice has shared countless stories, curated interactive, introspective workshops, and partnered with revolutionary brands such as Ethel’s Club and Bulletin to host intimate events empowering and enlightening young misrepresented change makers while highlighting our true, lived experiences. In her free time, Clarice enjoys trying new beverages (hot, cold, caffeinated, alcoholic, etc.), reading amazing books, and posting frequently on Instagram stories @its_clarice.
Victoria Ashley is the CEO and Founder of Laundry Day, a line of design-forward smoke-ware founded with a mission to change the visual narrative behind cannabis use. After seeking out personal smoking pieces for years, Victoria, who uses cannabis as a natural sleep aid, came face to face with a notable gap in the industry. While acceptance of cannabis use – for medical, self-care, and recreational use was on the rise- the products, packaging, and design continued to lack the creativity demanded by other categories. Laundry Day is on a mission to provide more approachable, design-forward products that dispel stigmas, redefine outdated expectations, cater to modern voices and elevate and expand the industry’s status quo. Victoria has leveraged compelling design, thoughtful influencer collaborations, and new virtual formats like animated digital "rooms" to build community and spark sales on Instagram and other social platforms. The brand has been featured in Vogue, Nylon, Arch Digest and more!
Jasmine Mans is a Black American poet, artist from Newark, New Jersey, author of "Black Girl, Call Home" and founder of Buy Weed from Women. Jasmine has leveraged Instagram to successfully build her personal brand, grow her Buy Weed from Women brand community, generate sales, and blast her spoken word poetry into the algorithm and throughout the world, where so many are lucky to listen and receive. Jasmine started building her brand by taking profits from her poetry and spoken word opportunities and reinvesting them in affordable, high-margin merchandise like mugs and t-shirts. Years later and a brilliant social strategy later, Jasmine, her poetry and her brand have been featured in Time Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29, and Oprah Magazine, and the business has cultivated obsessive fans like Chelsea Handler and Gabrielle Union-Wade.
Polly Rodriguez is the Co-founder and CEO of Unbound, a sex tech company dedicated to designing beautiful, affordable, body safe products for when you're feeling yourself. Polly created Unbound after receiving a cancer diagnosis that resulted in early onset menopause, and her caretakers suggested she buy a vibrator as part of her recovery and healing process. Polly got fed up searching for vibrators at seedy shops off the highway in St. Louis, Missouri or on oversaturated, hard-to-shop marketplaces, so she decided to build her own sex tech company from scratch. Polly's name and brand have become synonymous with rebelling against Facebook and Instagram's prohibitive, sexist and discriminatory advertising policies, which have historically let companies push explicit erectile dysfunction ads while prohibiting or shutting down ads by Unbound and other women-owned sex tech brands. You can learn more about Polly's journey here.
Jessica Tse is the Founder and CEO of Notte Jewelry. Jessica is a former accessories trend director, and has turned her long-time love for jewelry into a fun, lifestyle accessories brand with a big focus on jewelry. Notte is directly inspired by living between New York and Florence, Italy. NOTTE Jewelry is the manifestation of late nights ideas and spontaneous thoughts that found their ways onto pages of her sketch books. The brand’s aesthetic is a fun mix of New York quirk with a hint of la dolce vita daydreams. Pieces are designed and crafted in different precious metals including sterling silver, gold plated brass and gold filled findings, with an eccentric mix of pearls, seashells and other unexpected materials. With NOTTE, Jessica hopes to share her love for thoughtfully made jewelry while sparking happiness through her designs, one little fun shiny jewel at a time. Jessica has built a loyal community of organic influencers and amplifiers on social which has spurred explosive organic growth and high quality UGC content.
