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• Deon Graham, 35, is the Chief Brand Officer at Combs Enterprises.
• He oversees the marketing strategy for everything to do with the eponymous founder, Diddy.
• He told Insider about his rise, spurred on by a nightlife website he started in the early 2000s.
• You can find more stories in the Insider business section.

In the beginning it was just Deon Graham and his nightlife website City Never Sleeps.

Now it’s Deon Graham and Combs Enterprises, where he’s chief brand officer in charge of marketing everything to do with mogul Sean Combs – aka rapper Diddy.

“Year after year, I have seen him grow into an accomplished, robust and future-oriented manager,” Diddy told Insider, “for big and bold ideas for digital and brand strategies that are of crucial importance for our actions and our success . ”

In fact, years before he started working full-time for Combs Enterprises in 2015, 35-year-old Graham caught the attention of the rapper who has become one of the most prolific businessmen in music with a net worth of over $ 700 million.

If anything, Graham can say he helped.

In an interview with Insider, Graham talks about his rise to the mogul’s chief brand officer, what nightlife taught him about digital marketing, and the importance of creating content for and by black people.

A nightclub platform for “The People Who Look Like Me And Go Out Every Night”

Graham told Insider he was a heavy night clubber when he was a marketing student at Florida International University in Miami.

But one night in the mid-2000s, he said he had started paying attention to the world around him – the bottles, the girls, the photographers. Graham said he noticed that photographers take pictures of everyone but himself and his friends. When he went to the club websites only the white partygoers were shown.

When asked a bottle girl why this happened, Graham told Insider, “She said with certainty, ‘Because you’re black.’ I realized that I had the opportunity to create a platform that would serve people who looked like me and went out every night. ”

In 2008 he launched City Never Sleeps, a website that helped blacks navigate the club scene. He did business with club managers across the country and hired photographers to take photos of the black club goers that he then posted on his website. It helped the clubs look “less racist,” he said, but it also helped blacks figure out which clubs they would let in.

Graham said he dropped out of FIU after a semester to focus more on City Never Sleeps.

At its peak, Graham said, club managers paid up to $ 20,000 and he took paid ads on his website as much as in the low six digits.

During this time, he had also been promoting a popular brand of vodka on the website. The advertisement caught Diddy’s attention, and the mogul’s advertising agency, Blue Flame, reached out to Graham and asked if they would be promoting Diddy’s Ciroc instead.

Graham soon signed a contract with Ciroc in 2009. From there he began to work more closely with Diddy and Combs Enterprises. “I had the urban market that nobody else in the country had,” said Graham. “We worked well together.”

Deon Graham (R) and Diddy (L)

Courtesy Deon Graham

The club scene moves fast – just like Twitter

Graham joined Combs Enterprises in 2009 as a freelance digital consultant. He remembers the phone call that helped get everything going. He spoke to one of the Blue Flame marketing directors who was talking about the redesign of the Ciroc website.

They threw big numbers “like $ 120,000 to repeat the page,” Graham said. So he took himself in silence and interfered, “I was like you, I could do this page for about 20 grand,” he recalled.

“I had no idea what drove me to build a site with this capacity for such a large company,” he continued. “But that just opened another door. I would try to jump on something at any opportunity.”

By 2010 City Never Sleeps began expanding globally to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, London and Toronto. Graham said he had nearly 30 photographers across the country at one point, but struggled to pay them. Club managers delayed payments, and Graham said he often didn’t make a dime himself.

By 2015, he received a call from Dia Simms, then President of Combs Enterprises who had a role as a full-time digital director, and Graham on mind. Three years later he was named Combs Vice President of Digital, and two years later he became Chief Brand Officer.

He’s worked on everything from Ciroc ads to movies with Apple Music to music with Bad Boy Entertainment. He focuses on building and maintaining long-term relationships with consumers, even if it means Diddy creating TikToks, posting a few Instagram, or jumping into the clubhouse for a chat.

Graham said he likes it slow. “I don’t chase like the headline. I don’t chase this one-day growth.”

It turns out that the club scene moves fast, just like Twitter. It doesn’t take long to find out if a social media campaign worked, just as it doesn’t take long to find out if it’s going to be a good night out for the club.

“He’s relentlessly on purpose, and he’s shabby and innovative,” Combs Enterprises president Tarik Brooks told Insider. “He’s a key leader on our team.”

Deon Graham (R)

Courtesy Deon Graham

Graham seeks authenticity

Exercise is a big thing for Graham. “How you are perceived is how people think of you and how they approach you,” he said.

Combs Enterprises likes to attract people who can help spread authentic narratives that let customers know that “culture comes to culture,” said Graham. “If you want to reach people, you have to reach them with people who look like them.”

For example, Ciroc did sponsorship and placement during the Verzuz fights taking place on Instagram Live. At this event, artists like Ashanti, Jeezy and Brandy compete musically against each other to find out who has the biggest hits. To promote the events, the Combs team usually shoots trailers and makes a few leaflets, but they also rely on the natural interest of users on social media to keep the conversation going.

Creating moments of authenticity is one of Graham’s main strategies, he said.

People liked it when Diddy in the documentary “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop” jumped around his office with excitement after presumably just closing a deal and yelling, “I’m a savage. Whatever I want, must I get. “” This clip goes viral to this day, he said.

As a marketer, he said he’s always focused on how projects land with audiences. As a black marketer you always pay attention to “culture vultures” – the often non-black people who use the black culture for profit and gain.

He said some companies and executives were to blame during the Black Lives Matter protests last summer when they suddenly released statements and pledges to increase racial justice. But he said he was glad that some consumers were starting to stand up against those who steal ideas and appropriate cultures and become socially conscious for monetary reasons.

“Nobody is forcing you to support companies who don’t support you, who don’t hire executives who look like you,” he continued. “You make this choice.”

That’s one thing he’s learned from his years in the nightlife and now working with Diddy – people feel like they’re seen and support the places and the people who make them feel good about themselves.

“I am happy to be in a company that is owned by a black man,” he said. “It feels good to go into a building and see people who look like you and make decisions that are culturally relevant. I want everyone to have a chance to feel that now.”