After years of helping brands and artists connect with audiences from inside one of the world’s largest streaming platforms, Justin “Jay” Norman is betting on a different model for how companies engage with culture.
At the center of it is the simple idea that Black consumers should not be treated like a separate audience.
Norman, Spotify’s former global director of creative strategy and global head of music marketing, left the company this summer to lead Verse + Hook full-time. The Detroit-based creative strategy, branding and marketing consultancy, which he co-founded, announced the move in July.
In an exclusive interview with theGrio, Norman said the decision came after years of trying to balance two ambitions at once: succeeding at what he considered a dream job and finding a way to make a lasting impact in his hometown.
“For the past few years I’ve been carrying two ambitions at the same time: building the absolute best work I could at a dream job with one of the biggest platforms in the industry, and making meaningful impact in my hometown of Detroit,” Norman said.
He had also watched Detroit’s advertising community absorb the fallout of parent-company mergers, automakers moving work elsewhere and waves of layoffs. Verse + Hook became his answer to what he believed the industry was missing.
“V+H is the agency I always wished existed, one that treats culture as a cornerstone to build on and not a buzzword to throw into pitch decks,” he said.
Verse + Hook works across strategy, creative, content and production, experiential marketing and music. Its leadership team also includes Miso Brown, Tierra Filhiol, Kyle Bernhardt, Chelsea V. Huguley, Apryl Gordy and Joe Zimmer.
Before Spotify, Norman worked on campaigns for major brands including McDonald’s, Dodge and JBL. His time at the streaming platform gave him a front-row seat to how music, fandom and culture can move at a global scale. Now, he is applying those lessons to an agency built from Detroit.
Rethinking the ‘general market’
One of Norman’s biggest frustrations with traditional advertising is the long-standing divide between the so-called “general market” and multicultural audiences.
“The main issue has been the myth that the ‘general market’ ever existed,” Norman said. “We’ve treated Black audiences like a specialty item ordered off a separate menu, which is reductive to everybody.”
That division can feel especially outdated when Black creativity routinely shapes what becomes mainstream across music, entertainment, fashion, language and digital culture.
“Black culture IS popular culture,” Norman said. “The songs Gen Z and Gen Alpha play, the shows they watch, and the way they talk, most of it leans on the same folks the industry’s antiquated ways used to call ‘hard to reach.’”
For him, that means brands have to move beyond treating culture as a separate channel, sponsorship category or line item in a media plan.
Verse + Hook’s approach combines lived experience with research and data. Its cultural intelligence work includes FLAVVRR, led by Tierra Filhiol, which helps the agency examine cultural nuance, fandoms and consumer behavior.
Norman said having people in the room who have actually lived the culture can shorten the distance between an idea and something that feels true.
“If you came up in it, you don’t need five rounds of focus groups to arrive at something real,” he said. “Fakeness sticks out to us like a sore thumb.”
That does not mean skipping research. Norman said the agency still does its due diligence. But he believes cultural fluency gives Verse + Hook an advantage when it comes to spotting what will connect and what could backfire.
“Our experience with deep data on cultural nuance, fandoms and consumer behaviors saves clients months of time and public embarrassment,” he said.
He compared the difference to food.
“Studying culture is like going to a restaurant and ordering something delicious. Living it is like having cooked that dish your whole life,” Norman said. “We can all talk about the food. But only one of us knows what happens when you change the recipe.”
Making cultural investment tangible
For Verse + Hook, that philosophy is also supposed to show up in who gets paid.
Norman said one of his priorities is creating real, compensated opportunities for Black creatives, musicians and strategists rather than asking people to participate for visibility or exposure.
“We want to pay folks here. Not with exposure,” he said. “With real opportunities to expand while getting compensated.”
He pointed to the agency’s work with Pepsi, which supported nine artists who opened for Queen Naija and left with professional recording setups.
“We wanted to back our ideas with real budgets, real gear, real stages, real work,” Norman said.
That same thinking extends to Soundry, Verse + Hook’s music licensing arm.
Norman said Soundry is structured so artists keep their rights and receive the majority of revenue from placements. Rather than operating only as a sync-licensing business, the music can also be incorporated into broader brand pitches, concepts and playlists developed by the agency.
“To us, music is strategy,” he said. “We want to bring clients music that sounds like music. Not stock or AI slop.”
Verse + Hook has also worked outside of entertainment.
Norman said the agency led the Indianapolis launch of Partnership for a Healthier America’s “Good Good Food” initiative, which drew more than 1,000 people and served more than 600 meals.
He also cited a year-long engagement with the Michigan Growth Office that included building the Michigan Creative Economy Report and launching #MIMoment and Make It Michigan, efforts designed to support and retain creative talent in the state.
Additional work, he said, includes philanthropic projects in Detroit, partnerships with financial and educational institutions and entertainment series centered on music that are expected to launch later this year.
“But we’re just getting started,” Norman said.
Why Detroit matters
Verse + Hook could have been built from any number of major advertising or entertainment hubs. Norman wanted its foundation in Detroit.
Part of that decision is personal. He was born there. But he also sees Detroit as a city that proves his larger point about culture and influence.
“Detroit has shaped so much of American culture for so long,” Norman said. “For over a century we’ve brought the world music, cars, art, design and all while being slept on.”
He believes the city’s demographics also offer a perspective that can be difficult to replicate elsewhere.
Detroit is one of the nation’s Blackest major cities, but Norman pointed to the city and surrounding region’s Mexican, Polish and Arab American communities as part of what makes the area culturally rich.
“If I could build something that keeps talents from those backgrounds here, I know we’ll win,” he said.
That local focus is informed by lessons Norman said he learned while working on a global scale at Spotify.
“The biggest lesson learned solidified a belief I’ve had for a while: music and marketing run in the same circles,” he said. “They’re cousins that hang tough at the reunion.”
For Norman, fandom sits at the center of both.
“If you understand how music moves people, you understand how to move people, period,” he said.
That thinking also shapes how he believes brands should approach Black audiences, particularly at a time when consumers are quick to recognize the difference between genuine engagement and a company simply attaching itself to a cultural moment.
Norman said one of the biggest mistakes brands make is “treating everything like a sponsorship or a media buy.”
“Reaching Black culture, or any culture not included in ‘Gen Pop,’ has been reduced to writing a check for some produced moment in an attempt to rent credibility for a quarter,” he said. “But these days, everybody can tell.”
His advice to brands is much less complicated: be clear about what you want, bring something of value, show up consistently and tell the truth.
“We can feel the difference between being talked with and being talked at,” Norman said.
A year from now, he does not want Verse + Hook to be framed as an interesting young company finding its footing.
“I want Verse + Hook known as a serious player in the industry,” Norman said. “I’m not aiming for ‘promising young startup.’”
He wants the agency to be the call brands make when their message is not connecting, while creating more opportunities for the people whose culture is helping drive the work in the first place.
“I want to be a catalyst for creator opportunities,” Norman said. “And I want to point it all back to Detroit.”
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