Kevin Kuster

Kevin Kuster is the CEO, Marketing Director & Chief Editor @jjcommunity. @JJcommunity runs daily photo challenges each day and receive between 5,000 to 35,000 photos submitted every day. Because of their huge traffic and daily photo submissions, they have custom branded campaigns for FIAT USA, Polaroid, McDonalds, Lands End, M&M Mars, Le Meridan Hotels, Cruise Lines International Association, Walgreens, Red Nose Day, Travel & Leisure, Bermuda Board of Tourism, MILK, Abbott Labs, BodyGuardz and SONY PICTURES.

Kevin is an experienced strategic marketer and branding professional with experience focused on developing, producing, budgeting and managing all forms of visual communications (social media, web, mobile, print, film, video, photography and live events).

Expert session

Tactic that has had the biggest impact on Kevin’s success

Authenticity, consistency, not being afraid of the negative and developing a creative environment for that allows people to truly connect

Result if you follow the steps in Kevin’s session

A stronger connection with members of your community

Full session with video, notes, audio and discussion inside EHQ Club. Learn more

Expert session snapshot

Transcript

So I would say there’s, it’s all one voice, right? And I think the voices really being authentic. And I know that’s a word that’s easily thrown around right now but really being authentic is really the key to the community.

Twofold. One, the types of writings that Josh initially started to do. You know, Josh would go online. For a little while he went dark, the community, Josh wasn’t posting. And he was struggling. He was struggling with just some real heavy choices in life and some depression.

And he made a critical decision. He’s like, “Okay, I have these people’s ears every day, right? And I just disappeared for X number of days. What am I gonna do? Am I just gonna act like, oh, nothing went on”.

And he went on and he wrote about his depression, very sincere and almost very dangerous and yet courageous way and so many people connected to, right? In this day and age of social media where it’s like, everybody’s perfect, everybody’s on a vacation. Everybody’s, you know, life is amazing.

You know, here’s someone who has a voice who’s like, I’m struggling. You know, I’m really struggling. And that was a turning point for him.

And then when I came on to it, it was a turning point for me because it was like one of those things where it was like, wow, like, you don’t want to, you want people know that stuff. Like you shouldn’t write like that, you know? And I saw how people were just yearning for true connection. Right?

They really wanted it to be authentic. And that authenticity now is the way we do everything, right? Even as we’ve brought in brands, you know, that wasn’t easy.

You know, a lot of people are like, Hey, man, you’re making money off of us. We don’t like that boba. No. We never shy away from those questions. We never shy away from a really hard question. And subsequently also with brands to we’re like, look at, if someone leans in with a really hard question or is really adversarial about your brand, that’s okay. It’s an opportunity for a real, honest conversation. And that’s not necessarily easy to hear, right?

We do kind of set up some tenants, where people, when they’re unhappy with something, we’re always like looking, you can be totally unhappy with something you can disagree. But you can’t be disagreeable and attack people personally, right? You’re gonna have a problem with an image or you’re not might not like it, and that’s no problem. We’ll totally have that conversation.

But when it gets into personal tax and stuff like that, the crazy thing is we used to have to kind of governmental little bit. Now, it’s such an amazing community where self governing, where people are like, Hey, man, you know, don’t say stuff like that about people, right?

You can say some about their image. You don’t like it or whatever, but just don’t attack that person personally.
And that I would say is one of the things that I’m most proud of. That you just don’t have a bunch of people saying horrific things to one another. So it’s really encouraging. And because it’s encouraging, it’s also equally authentic in them.

When someone says something negative or supportive, you’re hearing both ends, right? You’re not just always hearing positive, and you’re not just always hearing negative, right? You’re hearing a combination of those two. And that I think people in this day and age are just dying for like, truth and authenticity.