Korrine Sky
Cultural brand strategy, proven at commercial scale.
I help artists, founders, cultural businesses, brands and institutions build relevance, trust, authority and commercial value in culture.
Cultural brand strategist and entertainment executive. CEO of SMADE Group, talent agent, and editor of Culture & Commerce.
Who I work with
Three routes into the same discipline.
Pick the one that describes you. Each route goes to the relevant work, the proof behind it and one way to start.
The receipts
Six numbers, before anything else.
Every one of these is attached to a case study you can read. The full archive, press and essays hold the rest.
Worked with
What I actually do
Cultural brand strategy is one discipline. This is what it means.
I work out who you are trying to reach, what those people already believe, and what would make them care, trust you and act. Then I build the positioning, the audience strategy and the campaign that gets it there. Talent representation and live culture are the same discipline applied at full commercial scale.
Most recent flagship
Timaya Day, a sold-out O2 homecoming.
20
Years of Afrobeats, staged live
Timaya
A sold-out headline show at indigo at The O2, with a full room, a surprise-filled set and the operating proof to scale Timaya's next UK campaign.
My role
Project leadership · Live production · Artist relations · Marketing · PR · Programming · Audience strategy
Recent work
More selected work.
August 2025
Rotimi
Rotimi's first Leicester show, sold out to capacity.
My rolePromotion · Booking · Artist liaison
350Tickets, sold out to capacity
2022 onwards, New York and London
United Nations
A rescue operation taken from a thread to the floor of the UN.
My roleAdvocacy · Briefing · Narrative
2,000+Students supported out of Ukraine
Ongoing, narrative and communications strategist and advisory board member
The Executive Branch
16,000+ members, one connected brand story.
My roleNarrative Strategy · Advisory · Partnerships
16,000+Community members
Live culture
Four thousand people in a field in Leicester.
Africa Music Festival 2024 · Marketing Direction · Talent · Audience Strategy
Talent
A selection of the artists I have worked with.
The thinking
I don't just work inside culture. I study it.
Essays, frameworks and a working library on authority, credibility and access.
PDF, free download
The Cultural Brand Strategy Toolkit
The working document behind the frameworks: the definition, the five principles, the glossary, the Clarity to Connection™ model and the Cultural Alignment Filter™. Free, no gate you cannot walk through.
By Korrine Sky
Culture & Commerce
The magazine.
Long-form features and learning notes on how culture turns into commerce.
Cover storyCulture & Commerce · 15 min read
Jay-Z Is Selling Us Music We Already Own
Thirty years after Reasonable Doubt, an old catalogue is generating stadium shows, physical products, exhibitions and new commercial partnerships.
Essay
We're all Africans, until an African headlines Reggae Land
On reggae, ownership, and why Black unity gets complicated the moment power enters the room.
Essay
I AM RANKED #1 — BUT HERE’S WHAT ACTUALLY GOT ME THERE
It wasn’t my strategy. It wasn’t even the work. But a realisation that took me years to see; and it happened through my own brand.
Work with me
Bring me the problem, not the package.
Some people arrive with an artist preparing for a new market. Others have a festival that needs an audience, a campaign that is not landing, or an institution trying to understand a community properly. The first job is working out what the actual problem is. Then we decide what level of intervention it needs.
One decision, needed quickly
Strategy Intensive
A defined strategic problem that needs senior thinking now rather than a scoped project later.
Book the Intensive →Ongoing counsel
Advisory & consulting
Continuous strategic support on positioning, cultural intelligence and growth while you are actually building.
Explore advisory →A major move
Project & campaign strategy
A launch, market entry, event, brand, cultural initiative or audience problem that needs a strategy built end to end.
See project work →A room to teach
Speaking & workshops
Conferences, leadership teams, universities, brands and institutions. Keynotes, panels, briefings and workshops.
Invite me to speak →Learn
The same sequences, written down.
Playbooks and masterclasses built out of the campaigns, rooms and markets on this site.
Playbook
The market entry plan, written down.
The International Artist Playbook
The sequence I use to decide whether an artist is ready to leave their home market, which territory to enter first, and what has to be true before anyone spends money on flights, PR or a headline show.
- An artist has momentum at home and no plan abroad
- A team is about to spend on PR or touring
- A promoter is asking for proof you do not have yet
The rest of the library
Start free: the checklists in The Library, and the free Artist Legacy Audit inside the Culture & Commerce cover story.
The short version
I arrived in the UK as an asylum seeker, learned early that credibility is something you build in public, and turned that instinct into a craft.
Asylum seeker, teenage trader, medical student, crisis organiser, chief executive. It reads like a detour until you notice every step was about the same thing: who gets believed, and why.
2,000+ students evacuated from Ukraine in 2022, with borders still moving.
Get in touch
Tell me what you are building.
Pick the option that fits and the form asks only what is relevant.
Culture & Commerce
One letter. Culture, audience and commercial strategy.
Notes on how culture becomes audience, and how audience becomes revenue. Written for artists, teams and brands building beyond their home market.