At WORTHI, our mission is to unlock the business value and cultural impact of historically underestimated communities.  

Through a mix of data, insights, and lived experiences, we build and execute upon innovative strategies that authentically and consistently connect brands with Black, Latine, AAPI, LGBTQIA+, Indigenous, PWD and frankly all audiences who have been ignored, misrepresented or only spoken to during a cultural heritage month. 

We steep ourselves in the behaviors and desires of specific communities, and create the cultural relevance between their unique needs, and a brand’s unique story, to create a lasting bond.​

Why? Not because of DEI, although that’s a beautiful and necessary byproduct of our work, but because these audiences influence and define broader culture and offer inarguable and extensive bottom line value to brands, and business longevity ultimately depends on their buy-in.

When it comes to the canvases we paint on, we don’t limit ourselves by a certain function or marketing mix diagram. The people we are trying to reach on behalf of our client partners do not live in boxes, so we do not think in them either.

We’re building the most diverse and inclusive agency on the planet, and we’re doing this because we know that diversity of perspective will always, always yield the best work.

What makes WORTHI unique (shout out to Beyoncé), is how we:

• Hire best-in-class people who innately understand and actively contribute to specific cultures and communities

• Communicate candidly and authentically with each other and our clients

• Build and execute strategies with business growth as the primary driving force

• Integrate with our client partners and become true extensions of their teams

• Unearth and leverage audience data, insights and lived experiences 

Our WORTHI Values:

These are the traits and philosophies that help guide us in who we hire and who we partner with. Conversely, they also help us decide who isn’t right for WORTHI in both categories. 

• Embody Excellence

  To be perfect is to be completely free of faults, which is untenable and not always all that interesting. Instead, we hire and reward people who embody excellence at every turn. 

• Lead With Empathy + Respect

  We’re humans who treat one another the way we want to be treated, and show respect for one another at all times, even when we disagree. 

• Do The Right Thing

  We have the best creatives, strategists and communicators on the planet working at WORTHI, but they’re not just the best because of their output – they’re the best because they have integrity. You only say things about colleagues and clients that you would say to their face, have accountability regardless of the outcome, and you always act with good intent (and assume good intent from your colleagues). 

• Keep it 💯

  We are completely honest with one another, even if it feels uncomfortable at times. If we’re assuming good intent in others, we’ll receive that feedback with open arms and know it’s given so that each individual (and the company as a whole) can be stronger. We strive to foster a culture where people aren’t afraid to take accountability, and feel comfortable sharing feedback with one another, because we believe that feedback should be Fearless, Freeing and Fruitful.

  • Fearless: We should give and receive feedback without fear, and with confidence that we’re on the same team working together towards excellence. 

  • Freeing: Feedback should release us from feeling some type of way. If we harbor feedback, it festers and the individual relationship is weakened, and we as a company can’t move as efficiently. 

  • Fruitful: The goal with honest and respectfully delivered feedback is to strengthen our relationships within our teams in order to improve. With the ability to address each other's possible points of improvement, we grow our interpersonal relationships and strengthen the quality of our Worthi work.

• Insatiable Curiosity

  We’re always asking ourselves and each other: “What if?”. We’re constantly consuming culture, observing culture, and are active participants in culture. We know what’s happening online, what people are talking about offline, and how to translate all of that into our work.

• Creative AF

  A wise person once said: “you can’t teach taste”, and we agree. There’s a creative aptitude and innate sense of what will fly and what will sink that we look for in our employees and partners, and while that can be refined over time, we recruit and retain people who have those natural abilities. 

• Multipliers, not Diminishers

  Multipliers are those who use their intelligence and creativity to amplify the smarts and capabilities of the people around them. Diminishers drain intelligence, energy, and capability from the people around them. We only have space at WORTHI for multipliers. 

• Deep Rooted Passion

  We have a deep rooted passion for communities and their unique behaviors, and we have a deep rooted passion for brands and how they can be culturally relevant to communities. 

• Fail Fast

  When we fail, we fail fast. We look at every failure as a learning opportunity, and a chance to pivot to a newer, better direction. We also don’t form unproductive attachments to the work. Sure, we’re passionate and confident about everything we put forward, but if we have to change course for whatever reason, we dust ourselves off and try again, try again. 

• Partnership not Vendorship 

  We are key collaborators with our clients, not vendors. Collaboration is a two way street. We strive to be aligned with our client partners, in order to operate as true extensions of their teams who are able to bring a invaluable perspective, actionable counsel, and conversational creative.

How We Operate:

Structurally Speaking

We have a number of divisions that make up Team WORTHI:

• Audience Strategy: Multi-faceted marketers that drive strategic guidance for our client partners with audience-based insights, and lead overall account management.

• Creative Production: Creatives and makers that develop ideas from concept to execution, with integrated project management along the way.

• Partnerships: Bridge builders that strategically connect our client partners to creators, influencers and other brands to produce and amplify mutually beneficial narratives through content. 

• Comms & Publicity: Relationship builders and dot connectors who strategically ignite earned conversations with influential press, community organizations and key opinion leaders.

• People & Culture:  We are real people that are here for the people. We strive to create and maintain a nuanced culture that supports and champions our world-class workforce. We recognize the importance of creating a space where our employees feel safe, valued, and empowered to be their whole selves, which in turn unlocks an unmatched level of creativity.

Insights 🤝Instincts

Everything we do is data-backed, but not all data is shown in numbers and pie charts. We leverage numerical data certainly, as it provides a lot of foundational information and about size and influence of audiences. We also pull insights from research, social insights, and how culture is moving on a day-to-day basis. Finally, and of equal importance – we listen to our instincts. We hire people with unique but relevant lived experiences, and instincts are born from those, so we should always include them in the larger equation.

Working Authentically

We are proudly Black owned and fully BIPOC/LGBTQ+ operated. This doesn’t mean our hiring practices exclude folks who live outside of those communities, but we have organically attracted best-in-class executives who do. We also strive to work with BIPOC/LGBTQ+ partners (photographers, videographers, editors, designers, etc.) to ensure that every piece of content, every press release, every partnership brokered is touched by people who have varying connections to the communities we’re trying to target – it’s an added layer of strategy, quality control and comfortability. 

Leveraging Representation and Perspective 

Historically underestimated audiences watch and consume EVERYTHING. They have the ability to find the universality and entertainment value in content that doesn’t highlight their lived experiences prescriptively, but they also have a deep desire and appreciation for content that mirrors their culture and communities with nuance and breadth. So, we think about our approach in two different ways:

• Representation: When there's physical representation of a specific lived experience in a title or a product, whether that be on-screen or behind-the-scenes, then we focus our go-to-market strategy in that space. 

• Perspective: When a title or product is lacking physical representation, we go with a perspective first approach. This is where we get into the psychographic tendencies and cultural behaviors of people to spark connection and relevance.

Creating at the Intersection of Culture and Cultures

We build and execute strategies that live between culture and cultures. What does that mean? Well, Culture is the current state of humanity. The trends. The needs. The news cycles. The conversations. The political and economical climate, and so on. Cultures are the lived experiences of others. The traditions, histories and motivators of people based on the shared values they have rooted in their ethnicity, nationality, race, language, sexuality, ability, religion, gender, and so on. To truly resonate, we need to live in the matrix of the two. 

Ethnographic Marketing is Growth Marketing

We operate as growth marketers, because we see the innate business value of historically underestimated audiences. So when clients receive a strategy from WORTHI – it’s built with the attempt to grow the business, not just get the clicks or the likes. 

Specificity is Power

General marketing is so generic, not to mention ineffective. There’s sometimes a fear that specifically targeting an audience means you’re alienating other audiences, but that’s a big misnomer. If you act with specificity, you have a higher success rate of getting engagement from that audience, and that ripple effect hits every audience that is influenced by them. 

Authenticity is Meaningless without Consistency 

You can be authentic one day (or 28-30 days) out of the year, and it ultimately doesn’t mean much. Think of it as a friend that calls you only on your birthday, you look forward to that call, but you’re not thinking about them the rest of the year. Audience acquisition and retention is won the other 11 months out of the year, so we strive to build programming for our clients that is ongoing vs. temporary.

Disagree Then Commit 

Our clients come to us for our incomparably valuable counsel, which we freely share, even if that means presenting ideas and guidance that might be contrary to popular opinion. In the event that we disagree with our clients, it is our responsibility to explain why, and share all of the relevant information to back up that perspective. The ultimate informed captain on decisions is the client, so even if they choose a path that we materially disagree with, we will commit to it, and to everything in our power to ensure the outcome is as successful as possible.   

Underestimated Audiences

Using words like minority or marginalized is ultimately harmful rhetoric because it diminishes and “other”s groups of people and puts them in a category of smallness and inferiority. Marketers should see the opportunity here in speaking to these audiences, and the ultimate business proposition – not as something they have to do because of cultural pressure.  

There are moments when we need to speak broadly about people who are not white, cisgendered, straight, able-bodied men, and there are more impactful ways to do that. And, for every other instance, we should lean into the specificity of who it is you’re actually referring to, because if you’re speaking generally you’ll get generic results every time. 

Speaking Broadly

When speaking broadly, we at WORTHI use the term “underestimated audiences.” We gravitate towards this phrase, because the word “estimated” is closely tied to valuation and business impact. 

When you underestimate an entity, you miss out on some sort of return due to a miscalculation of effort. The act of speaking directly to Black, Latine, LGBTQ+, AAPI, PWD, etc. audiences feels like it's inherently DEI or something to be considered charitable, when in actuality, the data (source 1; source 2) demonstrates that these audiences are critical for business longevity due to their increasing size, outsized influence, and buying power which rivals the GDP of many major countries. 

Terms like marginalized are slightly ridiculous, because it makes it seem like these audiences are off to the side watching the world pass them by, which is not the case at all. These are audiences who are constantly at the forefront of culture, and creating the trends and habits of the mass market. 

“Minorities” is frankly now non-factual, as there is nothing minor about these audiences' sheer population size, cultural impact or buying power. 

The word “underserved” is misleading as well. These audiences aren’t looking for service, or a handout or any sort of charity – brands actually need them to thrive and frankly to survive. There’s no business longevity without gaining the trust and support of these audiences. 

And lest we forget, the worst one of them all: diverse. Nobody identifies as diverse. You can’t say “I want to get a diverse hire for this job” or “we should go after diverse audiences.” This is where specificity is so important, if your organization has a deficit of Black people, then say you want to hire a Black executive. If research is telling you your product would bode well with Latine audiences, then that’s who you need to specifically target. 

Being general with your approach will always yield generic results. 

Let’s Be Specific

There’s sometimes a fear of being specific. My hypothesis is that the fear stems from one of two places: (1) dread of using the wrong word and (2) worry of alienating a “general market” (put in quotes because the term general market is a farce).

We do understand the fear of putting your foot in your mouth and using the wrong or a potentially dated, now politically incorrect term, but curiosity and humility here will be your best friend. Ask questions, and seek to understand. Don’t let your ignorance be your downfall. 

For example, the word Black is not offensive. You don’t have to whisper it, or look around the corner to see who’s around before uttering the word. If you want to target Black audiences, put it prescriptively in your brief, just remember to capitalize the ‘B’ when referring to Black people, and never use the term “Blacks” (the plural is racist, we don’t make the rules). 

Now, there is a lack of credibility to the second fear of alienating a “general market” with specific audience targeting. For decades, non-white, -straight, -cisgendered, -able-bodied people have had to find relatability in stories and ads that did not reflect their existence, let alone speak directly to them. 

There are universal, relatable truths that “general market” audiences can glean from underestimated audiences, and marketers shouldn’t think that if their content features a Black person, for example, that only Black people will be attracted to that campaign. Targeting one audience specifically, doesn’t mean you’ll only reel in that one audience alone, it means you increase your chances of getting an outsized reaction from an audience that is not only influential to the masses – but carries certain human truths that others can relate to. 

These audiences carry a lot of influence outside of their specific communities, and are known for creating broader cultural conversations, starting trends, and sparking awareness where there may not otherwise have been. So think of these audiences as potential brand ambassadors and amplifiers of your message and mission, but the gag is, you have to authentically and consistently show up for them to reap those benefits. 

To our core, we believe in weeding out the apathetic language, leaning into specificity and being intentional about authentically and consistently connecting with historically underestimated audiences - brand survival depends on it