BMF x Roots Picnic 2025

Client: STARZ

Agency: Wild Card Creative Group

Role: Senior Strategist

Markets: Philadelphia, New York City, Los Angeles

Moment: Roots Picnic 2025 + BMF Season 4 launch window

The Brief

Activate BMF at Roots Picnic in a way that felt earned inside culture—not bolted on. The goal was to use creators to translate a live, IRL fandom moment into social momentum and tune-in intent ahead of the Season 4 premiere.

The Insight

BMF fandom doesn’t live quietly online—it shows up in real spaces: festivals, music, nightlife, and community gatherings. Roots Picnic is a physical convergence of that audience. If we seeded the right creators where the fandom already moved, their content would feel like access, not advertising.

The Strategy

Build a mid-to-macro creator ecosystem across Philly, NYC, and LA that mirrored how BMF culture travels in real life.

Instead of chasing maximum reach, the focus was cultural adjacency + local credibility:

  • Creators embedded in hip-hop, music, nightlife, and Black culture

  • Strong IRL-to-social storytellers (festival POVs, day-of posting behavior)

  • Audiences that already overlapped with premium TV, music, and culture-forward entertainment

I used a hybrid curation approach:

  • Native research: location tags, event chatter, posting cadence, comment quality, and past festival behavior

  • Tool-based vetting: audience interests, performance consistency, brand safety, and reach/engagement balance

Creators were scored on cultural fit, city relevance, format strength (Reels/TikTok-first), and audience trust—not just follower count.

The Activation

Creators were activated around Roots Picnic weekend and adjacent Roots experiences, translating STARZ’s on-site BMF presence into social-first storytelling.

Content framing

  • “You had to be there” POVs: arrivals, access moments, activation experiences

  • Cultural proximity: music, crowd energy, fits, and festival atmosphere

  • Soft tune-in integration tied to the Season 4 premiere window

Why it worked

The content didn’t explain BMF—it assumed fandom. That assumption signaled authenticity and let creators speak to their audiences as insiders, not promoters.

Execution Framework

Pre-event

  • Built city-specific creator shortlists (Philly, NYC, LA)

  • Balanced reach drivers with high-trust community voices

  • Established a simple messaging spine: Access → Experience → Tune-in

Live

  • Prioritized creators who could post in real time to stay inside the cultural conversation

  • Ensured content felt observational and experiential, not scripted

Post

  • Captured evergreen social proof that extended the Roots Picnic moment beyond the weekend

  • Held top-performing content as cultural receipts supporting the season launch

Impact (Strategic Outcomes)

  • Positioned BMF inside a real-world cultural moment instead of a traditional media buy

  • Reinforced STARZ’s credibility within hip-hop and Black culture spaces

  • Turned IRL fandom energy into social momentum aligned to the Season 4 premiere

Why This Mattered

This work demonstrated how entertainment brands can move beyond “influencer marketing” into culture-led creator strategy—using location, community behavior, and timing to make social feel inevitable rather than interruptive.