The National Board of Review

Before I joined the National Board of Review as the organization’s Director of Digital Marketing, it was a legacy institution with cultural authority but no social presence in modern film conversation. Despite over a century of prestige, its digital footprint was nearly invisible. Awards season content struggled to break even 1,000 views, there was no verified platform presence, and the brand existed outside the ecosystems where younger audiences actually engage with film. My role was to change that: to take something historically important and make it culturally relevant again.

I rebuilt NBR as a media brand, shifting from static announcements to video: content designed to move, circulate, and participate in culture. We leaned into fan behavior, built direct distribution pipelines with high-velocity media accounts, and treated the org’s annual gala like a live content engine. Interviews were written and hosted for virality, and every moment was engineered to travel. This approach turned isolated content into a system where talent, studios, media partners, and audiences all contributed to amplification in real time.

Moving With Culture, Not Behind It

In response to emerging discourse, we honored the live arts and cinema together by creating a supercut of iconic ballet and opera scenes in film. It reached 3.4M views across all platforms in its first 24 hours.

The result was a complete transformation in both reach and perception. In 2025, with a single night’s worth of content, we generated over 226 million total views and viral moments like our Cynthia Erivo interview (“The Concept Of” meme with more than 60M recorded uses) which drove massive and long-lasting cultural penetration. We achieved a +35,000% increase in impressions YoY and verified status across major platforms.

The impact is clear. Over the last two years, NBR has entered the cinema conversation as a participant with a system built to repeat, scale, and compound over time.