Mark your calendar for Mediaweek, October 29-30 in New York City. We’ll unpack the biggest shifts shaping the future of media—from tv to retail media to tech—and how marketers can prep to stay ahead. Register with early-bird rates before sale ends!
Electronic music community platform Resident Advisor (RA) has introduced an in-house creative agency called 23:59 which will be led by its recently appointed chief brand and creative officer Kazim Rashid, with Italian fashion house Bottega Veneta as one of its founding clients.
Resident Advisor claims to host 5 million monthly active app users and reach 1.8 million social media followers. For 21 years it has published journalism on the music scene and aims to act as a place where fans, artists, music and culture can intersect.
The company currently has offices in London, Berlin, New York, Manchester and Los Angeles.
Rashid joined the company in March from audio streaming platform Mixcloud. There, he launched its in-house brand consultancy Loud in 2020, which has since worked with brands such as Adidas, Dr. Martens, Shure, Red Bull and W Hotels.
He has also previously worked in the marketing department for Warp Records as well as Vice Media’s advertising agency Virtue and as creative director for brand consultancy Protein.
Brand partnerships and community
The creation of 23:59 will aim to work between the company’s contributor network of clubs, promoters, record labels, DJs and artists and its in-house team, with the agency offering activations in over 150 different countries, allowing brands the opportunity to interact with the global electronic music community.
Supporting the agency will be the company’s creatives, journalists, video producers, audience strategists, marketers and media sales team.
Rashid told Adweek that the formation of 23:59 was in response to potential brand partner requests which created the need to form “a more flexible and dynamic model.”
“We’ve always approached brand partnerships as just that—a brand partnership,” he added. “However, it had become increasingly apparent there [were] many brands we wanted to work with and who wanted to work with us, who all needed slightly different levels of attention and collaborations. So, we decided to create 23:59… for brands and those relationships can vary from pure white label, all the way to full blown co-partnerships.”
RA has previously worked with major brands such as Rockstar Games, Sonos, Absolut and Nike across its network of offices.
Headquartered in London, the core 23:59 leadership team is made up of Rashid, chief executive Dave Selby, head of creative partnerships Kate Akyuz and new business and sales lead Rohan Sakhardande, with the support of “a large virtual team” across RA’s existing editorial, films, events, content and podcast teams.
David Selby, chief executive of RA added: “Resident Advisor has been telling the stories that matter to our community for over 20 years. 23:59 is the logical next step in our development, allowing us to create more meaningful, purpose driven content for our audience, whilst delivering exciting activations for our partners.”
