Charlotte Williams: On Her Journey So Far
Last year, we hosted an All Day Communion with lots of wonderful guest speakers. We had some of these talks transcribed and published in our first ever newspaper, which celebrated one whole year of Communion. 100% of the proceeds from the paper go to Papyrus UK, a charity that works hard to prevent young suicide in the UK. You can buy the paper here, and listen to all of our previous guest talks here.
We know that watching videos and buying publications isn’t always accessible to everyone, so we thought we’d put the transcribed talks up on the blog too. We hope you enjoy them.
Hi, I am Charlotte - the founder of SevenSix Agency. We're an influencer marketing agency based in London, focused around diversity. We launched in 2019 and the concept came around before that, but took a while.
On childhood:
I was born in Watford. My childhood sounded like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and at same time UK garage, reggae. My Dad was always playing music. He was a DJ and very musical, so music is quite a big part of my life. I listen to everything and I have no shame in anything I listen to! I listen to a lot of old school RnB and things that reminds me of my teenage years, so I think it's musically quite eclectic. I also went through a very heavy indie music and vintage clothing phase between 16 to 18 so there's a lot of The Cure and The Smiths. My Mum really is an incredible baker and so is my Nan. I always joke that I'm obsessed with cakes. To the point it’s actually detrimental to my dental health and perhaps my body! I ate way too much sugar. But in my childhood my Mum was always baking, any type of cake. Victoria sponge or coconut sponge or different types of West Indian or Caribbean foods if I was going to Nana's house or my Aunt’s houses.
When I was about 16/17 I became obsessed with Camden market, I don't know how it happened and I don't know who took me the first time. But every Friday after school between the ages of 16 and 18 I would get the train Camden. I'd just live in the market. I worked from the age of 15, so I always had money. I would trawl through the vintage shops and buy the weirdest outfits. I wish I kept them all now, because I'm sure they would have been worth lots of money! I’d buy cool shoes from the 1950’s that hardly even held together anymore and dresses in amazing prints that my Nan would take in for me.
My Mum was a childminder and everything she did was to ensure that she was always with her children. She is literally the most loving human you'll ever meet, an interesting character and an absolute force to be reckoned with. Whereas my Dad, who is my absolute favourite human, would go to work in London all day and I'd only see him most days after 7pm. But my Dad is incredible. He’s young in his mindset, he’s musical and he introduced me to music because he was a DJ. Back in the day when we were always six months behind America, he was really into RnB. He would always be ahead of the curve. He keeps me humble and grounded, I’ll often send him articles that have been written about me or things that people have said. He's like “okay great, so what's next?” He’ll always make sure that I know that he's proud but he also says “this doesn't mean anything, are you watching the next step? What's the plan?”
I call him a lot in tears, if I need a cry, because he will tell me how it is and stop me from crying. Whereas my Mum would probably just cry with me. I cry a lot about social injustice and race related issues. Even to this day I find it really confusing and frustrating and mind boggling that different things happen. For example, last year I went to a big press event with a client. We walked into a room of 375 people and there were only three people of colour in the room, apart from the waiters and servers who were pretty much all people of colour. It was really overwhelming. At the time I felt that this was crazy, but thought lets just enjoy the night. The following day I went to my parents house and just cried. My Dad said “I grew up in the 70's and 80’s. You went to an event. You were invited to that event, let’s take it from there.” He is great at giving me anecdotes like that which help me see the bigger picture.
On school:
I had a really good childhood and I really enjoyed my childhood. But there were parts of it that were unnecessarily difficult, quite frustrating and it's something that I think has really shaped me as an adult. I grew up in a really, really white area. I was one of three mixed race kids in my year. There were a couple of Asian kids, but majority white. It just wasn't very multicultural as a town, but it is now. I struggled at school, I was in the popular group at school and I had a really good, fun time. I've never been a mean girl, but I was friends with the mean girls. But the boys in that group, for whatever reason hated me. I didn't have an older sister so I learned all things about hair and makeup from my friends, it was really nice. But then the boys would always tell me how I wasn’t meant to be there, how I wasn’t pretty and how I wasn't kind of good enough to be in the group. So it was a really confusing time as a kid to be at home with my parents and girlfriends saying “you're beautiful, you're lovely, you're amazing” and then constantly being hit down by others. It was quite difficult but I kind of grew resilient with it, almost too resilient. I don’t think I let myself take it in. But I think it shaped certain things that went on in my early adult life.
University was a really weird experience but I guess it's all shaped me. To be honest I didn't want to go to Uni, my parents forced me! I studied Portuguese and Spanish. I had a year abroad which I think was my haven. I spent eight months in Portugal, I just learnt so much about different cultures and languages and made some amazing friends. I then had four months in Spain. Spain was a bit boring, but it was a good experience because I lived alone and I realised how much I loved living alone. I had to figure out my whole life by myself and I think it was also great because it took me somewhere else in terms of having to find my own entertainment. That’s when I became really interested in YouTube and blogging, which has now turned into my full time life!
On friendship:
Whilst I was there I decided to start a little online journal, because I knew I'd really miss my family. So every time I did something I just wrote about it, and then when I was in Spain I realised I could write not only about my life, but fashion and beauty too. So that's when I created my blog and started a YouTube channel. I realised that there are people on the Internet who are also bored in their rooms doing nothing and want to be creative. Every weekend I’d buy different makeup and then do videos. I had no idea what I was doing but I became obsessed with makeup, and it was just my creative outlet whilst being somewhere that I didn't necessarily want to be. When I came back to Uni I continued doing the videos and I found a girl, Shirley, who was a really big ‘Youtuber’. She was at Nottingham Trent Uni. She gave me a shout out on her YouTube channel and consequently my channel exploded in terms of numbers, with thousands of followers coming through her. We became friends and my Uni experience actually became way more enjoyable, because she was also another Black person. We had the same skin tone, this girl was just like me. It was exciting. I’d just go to her house and relish this experience that I’d never had growing up. My first time having a friend who I could identify with and even though our backgrounds were different, we still had a sense of unity. That's when I thought, I need to find more friends like this, because none of my friends were interested in makeup and none of them were interested in online culture. I had grown up obsessed with Myspace and coding my website page. I love the back end of creating, I'm like a social media geek, I love data, and she was into this as well, so it was really nice to find that person. When I left Uni, that friendship really shaped who I was trying to find as my tribe. And I have that now with my group of friends. I always say that I don't have friends outside of work because my work and play are the same.
On career:
I graduated in 2012 and then two days after graduation I moved back to Portugal. I was there for about 2.5 years, teaching English but also doing some social media freelance work for a family friend, which was a good experience. When I moved back home, I was looking for a job and I couldn't find anything I really wanted. So I took an administrative role with an e-learning company and thought, I'll just be here for a month and then I'll find something else. When I got there I just realised that nobody knew anything about the digital side, but it was really important for them. I was like, guys, this is how you use Twitter and this is how you schedule a post. So very quickly I got loads of promotions. I ended up being promoted to the Marketing Manager, which was actually the coolest job ever. The founder is this lovely guy, an older white man and I think he saw something in me. He hired a new admin person, actually they hired my now best friend. Which was amazing, she taught me so much about my life. She's incredible. She has shaped a lot of my life too and seeing other Black people in different spotlights was really important to me. I was involved in the business development and I would be sent to Boston for training with the team there. They gave me all the tools I needed to be a great Marketing Manager and it was all just through chance really.
I was then headhunted to work for a software partner. But after a month I realised I hated it because everyone sat in silence all day, in a tiny office. I applied for a job at Hello Kitty, which I didn’t get, but then a week later they got back in touch to say ‘we've made a job for you”. Moving to Hello Kitty was when everything got started in terms of influencer marketing. I was given the job brief to create a new strategy for 18-35 females in the UK, which then also led to Europe and Australia. I was asked ‘what do you think we should be doing?’ they just trusted me because I was their target audience. Eventually I became their digital marketing manager.
On SevenSix Agency:
Right now, at SevenSix, we work with brands to create social media related campaigns. We either pair influencers with a specific campaign or company or we create big campaigns. What excites me the most is when we get to work with people that we know and love. I've got a network of 310 influencers and pretty much on a daily basis we help them with pricing strategy, any deals that come in or if they just need a contract checking over. It's great seeing someone go from not knowing what the hell they're doing, to getting a really good job and seeing their career grow. I also just love connecting people. If a friend is looking for a job and I know she'd be perfect, or if I see an opportunity I will say “speak to this person because you're trying to create the same goal, you have the same vision.” I think that's what my job actually is, just being an ultimate connector and now most of the time I get paid for it!
On using my voice:
I have an incredible way of being able to see where something will go, so everything I do is really tactical. For example: “I’m going to post this, because if I post this and this brand sees it, they will know I like the product and I can get a job with them.” But there was a video I posted recently, that I just posted because I was upset. I had lots of different people in my life, friends, family and also strangers asking me questions at a time when I physically couldn't function. It was at the weekend, George Floyd was murdered on the 25th which was a Wednesday. From Thursday to Sunday I actually couldn't function, I couldn't move. My team had to take a week off work because I just felt completely numb, helpless and I didnt know what to do. My boyfriend had gone away to give me some space and I thought of the questions that people were asking me. I needed to just have an outlet, I just thought, I’m going to post a video, there was no purpose behind it. There was no intention, there was no planning there, which is very odd for me. That was the first time in a very long time that I've just done something with no strategy behind it, and then that piece of content almost went viral. It’s viral when it hits 100,000 views and my video got around 90,000, so almost viral across the world. The reason it did so well is because my old boss who has 30,000 followers shared it. She's really well respected in the beauty industry, from that lots of people saw it, one of which was Zoella (Zoe Sugg). She shared it and I gained 22,000 new people on my platform and it was amazing. I'd say life changing but it was weird because there was no plan behind it. If I had planned it maybe it would have been even better but it was born from frustration and needing to speak.
People have asked, “what are you going to do with your voice now?” and “where are you going to take this next?” The answer is I don't know. I’m just focused on my company right now. I think that's the most important thing. My job is to make sure that content creators who are people of colour are seen. The advertising industry has a real problem and my job has always been to change that. There are lots of other agencies popping up now who can also help with that. I have a lot more to say, I just don't necessarily have the time to say it. I’m trying to sort out my life to give me space to think, I often have no room for my brain to actually think about what's happening in the world, what my life is like, I'm just constantly fire fighting or answering questions. So I'm not sure I actually know where I’m going, but hopefully we'll figure it out soon.