With more scrutiny on marketing budgets and recent technology privacy restrictions, it’s harder for marketers to reach their desired target audience. Despite the challenges, Kudzi Chikumbu – known as Sir Candle Man online – has built the exemplary type of engaged niche community many marketers are looking to reach.

In this conversation, Kudzi teaches organizations and creators how to build niche communities, how to sell to them, and how to keep them engaged. Audiences walk away with a fresh playbook on how to approach marketing in an authentic and effective way. 

Between emerging technologies and culture-driven trends, there are constantly new ways to leverage digital spaces. As Global Head of Creator Marketing at TikTok, Kudzi Chikumbu is tapped into the communities – and micro-communities – that are driving tremendous change online.

In this talk, Kudzi discusses the aspects that make social media a unique platform to discover new and diverse voices and the important cultural understanding marketers need to authentically reach these communities.

Kudzi shares with audiences the trends he has seen develop, what he believes the future holds, and how marketers can use this information to discover and target new audiences.

Whether building your personal brand or managing a global company, social media is essential. As Global Head of Creator Marketing at Tik Tok, Kudzi Chikumbu is equipped to provide audiences with a crash course in how to show up digitally – and the perils of doing it wrong.

From expanding your customer base to building a network to self-expression, he explores the limitless potential of the full digital landscape.

In this talk, Kudzi will provide a step-by-step guide to finding your audience and connecting with them authentically online.

Audience takeaways include:

• How and where to start telling your story
• How to stand out with all the noise and connect with an audience
• How to be ahead of the game
• How to fix it when things go wrong
• The often-missed secret to success when building a brand online

When Kudzi started his career, he didn’t set out to become the Global Head of Creator Marketing at TikTok – partly because neither the role nor the company existed at the time. However, Kudzi was preparing himself for this role throughout his life simply by living authentically.

After working as an accountant and consultant at Deloitte, he took a leap of faith to follow his long-time ambition to monetize his creative mindset. In this talk, Kudzi meets the audience where they are – a generation that is obsessed with being influencers and creators online – and demonstrates how the principles that make a successful creator can lead to a successful career in any industry. 

He leaves audiences with the 5 guiding principles that have led him through the pivotal moments along his journey as a creator and an executive:

1. Have a clear why. This is your guiding light.
2. Have a creator mindset – you can create your best life. Take action.
3. Be authentic and trust your instincts.
4. Build a community. We are stronger together so make friends, help others, and ask for help (in that order).
5. Pivot when you need to. You can change your why.

Audiences will walk away with actionable takeaways to bring their full selves to everything they do and, in turn, create the life and career they want. 

As a black, gay man working in tech, Kudzi Chikumbu stands out every single day. Instead of caving to the pressures of a world full of trends that promote replicating and copying others, Kudzi focuses on authenticity. He makes a point to bring his full self to work and encourages everyone to do the same, whatever their identity is.

Based on his own experiences in the workplace, Kudzi shares how diversity leads to creativity and discusses the power that comes from bringing together different perspectives to achieve success.