Diverse entrepreneurs face stereotypes, biases and rampant discrimination on a regular basis. Typically, diverse brand owners have limited networking support and a lack of visibility with limited online presence. In a highly saturated marketplace, diverse-owned brands have a hard time breaking through and getting their message out to potential customers.

In Shark Tank episodes each month, in order to highlight diverse-owned brands, we activate ShoppableTV by tapping into the highly engaged Shark Tank audience and inspiring them to shop products directly from the show during the pitch moment with the Sharks.

To drive awareness and discoverability of diverse-owned brands, by teaming up with CNBC’s Shark Tank, we activated a diverse-led entrepreneurship strategy. Each month, highlighting these businesses by having their episodes run on-air, complemented with a broader digital and social strategy to further amplify awareness and discoverability.

We created a first to market shopping experience, inspiring Shark Tank fans to shop directly from diverse businesses featured in this franchise. We ensured the entrepreneurs had maximum brand discoverability across platforms with a seamless checkout experience by dedicating Heritage months to highlight their brands and products. As viewers watch episodes on-air, a QR code appeared during the brand pitch where once scanned, fans arrive at a dedicated page to learn more about the featured brands and shop their products in a one-cart transaction experience. We had dedicated staff to onboard their products into our proprietary tech stack to create a frictionless cart experience. To further amplify awareness and build anticipation for each Heritage month, we ran custom promos across linear, digital/social and email. CNBC covered all credit card transactions, waiving the typical affiliate rate so brands had 100% of all revenue going to their bottom line.

Building brand awareness and attracting customers as an emerging brand is extremely difficult and compounded even more when you are a diverse business owner. In celebration of different Heritage themes each month (i.e. Black Heritage Month, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Pride and so much more), we tapped into a highly engaged Shark Tank audience to air episodes corresponding with diverse business owners.

For two years, we celebrate a different Heritage each month. In the weeks leading up to the launch of each new Heritage month, we work with CNBC to select specific brands to share the opportunity. Once a brand confirms their participation, we onboard the brand and their products into our marketplace. In parallel, we work cross-functionally to create Heritage-specific articles and promos scaling awareness and brand discoverability across linear (promos, snipes and an in-show QR code), social (TikTok, Facebook and Instagram promos), e-mail (newsletters) and digital (shoppable articles).

Total Impressions across linear, digital, social, email: 6M+

Total Celebratory/Heritage Months: 14 (Planned through 2025)

Total Featured Brands: 18

Planned Featured DEI Brands: 36

P-Nuff Crunch for Hispanic Heritage Month: “We really appreciated NBCU invitation to participate in the Hispanic Month promotion. As expected we got a lot of traffic when the show re-aired and that led to purchases and more awareness.”

PiperWai for Breast Cancer Awareness Month: “I wanted to express our heartfelt THANK YOU for choosing PiperWai to be a part of this partnership, especially for such an important cause to us and many of our customers! The results were excellent.”

Range Beauty for Black Heritage Month: “We received a lot of orders directly on our site and a lot of engagement on our social media. It was a great boost and we’re extremely grateful!”