Back for its fifth season, Bet on Black - Visions to Ventures set out to equip Historically Black College and University (HBCU) student entrepreneurs with tools, mentorship and funding to help them grow their businesses and grow as business owners. The series was powered by Target and featured three proven Black founders who served as judges - Ryan Wilson, Barron Davis, and Janelle Stephens, who has her brand Camille Rose product in Target stores; all have successfully built and scaled businesses by merging culture, commerce, and community. Over the course of the series, viewers watched (and learned themselves) as nine emerging HBCU entrepreneurs were provided with intimate mentorship sessions and the opportunity to compete for a chance to pitch their business concept and win a piece of $100,000 in funding and prizes. While the winner walked away with the $30,000 grand prize, all HBCU entrepreneurs were rewarded for their vision and effort, each receiving funding and business tools, as well. This series was not only a way of rallying community support and pouring into the next generation of Black business owners but was also a way for Target to show their commitment to nurturing Black entrepreneurs.
Season 5 of Bet on Black - Visions to Ventures started with the idea to build on previous seasons of Bet on Black, in which Target committed to the growth of small Black-owned businesses, but with a new spin. This time, the series focused on highlighting the entrepreneurship journey for a younger group of business owners, HBCU students, and reformatted the episodes to focus on group mentorship before pitching. The goal was to, first, educate the nine young entrepreneurs (and the viewers!) through mentorship sessions, which allowed them to learn from a successful entrepreneur’s journey and to gain tools needed to grow their own businesses. Then, in the finale, the students were able to apply lessons learned as they competed to pitch their own businesses for a chance at funding. Together, this allowed the team to achieve the second goal, which was to make entrepreneurship more accessible to a younger, often underrepresented, demographic of Black student entrepreneurs.
Another important part of this project was to ensure that each of the student business owners felt supported, that’s within their cohort, by the mentor-judges, by REVOLT, and by Target. That was the driving force behind ensuring that each of them walked away with a piece of the $100,000 prize. Ranging from the grand prize of $30,000 to individual prizes of $5,000, awarding each HBCU entrepreneur with funding was a way of encouraging the young business owners to keep going and showing them that both Target and their communities were ready and willing to invest in their dreams.
Throughout the development of this series, a major challenge that the team faced was the large amount of negative press and brand perception that Target was facing in relation to their commitment to diversity and inclusion. With that in mind, the Six Zeros team was very intentional in how the series was developed and produced. Thoughtful decisions were made to be able to still weave Target’s brand into the series, while also supporting and uplifting the talented young entrepreneurs, and protecting the brands of the contestants, judges, and even our own agency, from any residual backlash that could occur.
In the end, a series was produced that met all of the goals and supported all brands involved. Each young entrepreneur was positively impacted by their experience, expressing publicly via social media their gratitude for being a part of an experience that was designed to uplift their brands and their voices.
This project was a success largely because it uplifted and empowered the next generation of Black business owners. 86% of online campaign comments praised the HBCU students for their drive and their dreams. The young entrepreneurs’ and judges’ brands also received nationwide, Target-backed exposure and support, with fans cheering for them online, sharing comments like “Congratulations Keshawn Wiley…You did an amazing job. You WILL/SHALL get through that door....DESTINED!!!” and “Keep grinding and putting out good wisdom.”
Regarding series KPIs, among key wins was social media, which delivered 64M impressions (4x more than the goal) and YouTube, which delivered 11.9M views.
In total, the series surpassed all KPIs among our target audience. Other notable wins included:
HPTO
11% more impressions delivered than the campaign goal (Goal: 5M | Delivered: 5.5M)
Billboard
10% more impressions delivered than the campaign goal (Goal: 366K | Delivered: 402K)
REVOLT.tv
9% more impressions delivered than the campaign goal (Goal: 6.5M | Delivered: 7M)
Pre-roll
8% more impressions delivered than the campaign goal (Goal: 8.1M | Delivered: 8.8M)
Display
7% more impressions delivered than the campaign goal (Goal: 13.1M | Delivered: 14M)
