I first met Bilal Kaiser at his B.L.N.D. panel, where he wasn’t just leading a conversation, he was holding space for it. There was an ease in the way he navigated the room, a genuine curiosity in how he listened, and a presence that made people feel both seen and heard. It’s rare to witness someone guide a dialogue on diversity, inclusion, and equity with that kind of balance: grounded, thoughtful, and quietly intentional.

As the principal and founder of Agency Guacamole, Bilal has built a company rooted in those same values. What stands out isn’t just the work, it’s the way he approaches it. There’s a clear throughline of care, whether he’s speaking about clients, collaborators, or the communities his work aims to reach. It’s not performative, it’s lived.

There’s also a warmth to him that’s hard to miss. A contagious smile, an openness, and a sense that he’s not just building campaigns, but relationships and environments where people can show up fully as themselves.
In this conversation, we talk about storytelling, leadership, the evolving role of DE&I, and what it really means to create impact, both within the industry and beyond it.

Beyond the Brief: Bilal Kaiser on Storytelling, Impact, and Building with Intention

Q: What is something outside of work that you care about that most people don’t know?
A: Two causes that are near and dear to me. One is food insecurity. I think it’s really heartbreaking to know that we have an abundance of food for most of us, but there’s still people that go hungry every night. So I work with food banks and non-profits around the area to help support that. The second is climate change. We are on a scary path towards scary days weather-wise, and I think about that a lot.

Q: What’s a question you wish people would ask you, but they don’t?
A: I get asked a lot of questions, informally and in work and media settings. One question that I wish people would ask that they don’t is, what motivates me to continue doing what I’m doing?

And the answer to that would probably be wanting to leave a small positive impact in our world. It’s not about the money, it’s not about the stuff that you might see online or social. It’s really just wanting to try to impact one or a handful of people.

Q: And how do you try to do that?
A: We do it through a range of ways. On our work side, giving our clients intentional work that takes into account a number of things such as the people working on projects coming from diverse backgrounds, working in a place where they’re paid fairly and enjoy working.

And doing initiatives outside of work, such as our B.L.N.D.  initiative, Beauty, Lifestyle, Nurturing, and Diversity, where you and I met. To bring all those things together and do work that’s beyond just, you asked me to give you a red crayon, here’s a red crayon. It’s a lot more intentional, focused, and meaningful beyond just the red crayon.

Q: What drew you into the world of brand storytelling?
A: Honestly, it was a very natural fit for me. One of my first jobs in marketing and public relations world was for a sports division at my college. I’m not a sporty guy, but a friend was getting this internship and suggested I should too, so I applied and got it.

What I realized was they would give out items at games, do sweepstakes, and create campaigns and stunts on campus to get people to show up. The games themselves weren’t that exciting to me, but the opportunity to get the attention of people who cared about sports, that was really compelling.

And I’ve found over the last 20 years of doing this that when you create a campaign that has a story on it, you can get someone’s attention, engage them with the message you’re trying to convey, and ultimately get them to show up, buy, download, or to engage in some way beyond.

It’s a lot more fun than straight-up advertising messaging.

Events in particular are such great ways to do brand storytelling. You walk into a space and there’s food and beverage, light, music, decor, and if you think about the story you’re trying to tell, everything can connect.

Let’s say, for example, you’re launching a shampoo. Very simple, how do you tell a story around that? You walk into the event and at the entrance you might see life-sized bottles of the shampoo to create a visual connection.

In food and beverage, you might use ingredients that are in the product to be on your plate—edible, obviously—but helping create a connection around taste and scent, and why the product might be more effective because of those natural ingredients inside it. A photo moment might use the colorways in the product or of the actual juice, maybe the scent, to bring that connection to it as well.
So I love events in particular for that opportunity around storytelling.

Q: What makes a story “stick” emotionally for you?
A: I’m a sucker for something with good heart.
Beyond the actual story: who’s telling it, what is the intention, what is the desired result beyond just having to buy a product or sell something, that’s what sticks with us.

Over the last 50 to 100 years, even just in American culture, we’ve had a lot of advertising and marketing campaigns where, whatever your opinion of the product itself might be, the way the story was conveyed stuck with us in an emotional way.
MasterCard has that famous campaign around experiences—plane tickets, $1,000, luggage, $100—but the memories you take away from that trip, priceless, right?
So we associate this feeling of creating memories, of having experiences in life you can’t put a dollar sign next to, with a brand. And that concept, using that emotional connection, is very exciting to me.

Q: When you’re shaping a brand narrative, do you start more from intuition or strategy?
A: I like to approach both. My intuition kicks in first: what is so special about this campaign or product we’re about to launch? Who is our consumer beyond the data and demographics? Who is the ideal person that, when I look at this product, it’s going to connect with?

Then we use strategy—data, objectives, insights—looking at what the brand is trying to do and creating a program around it. In this world, it’s imperative that we tap into our intuition because ultimately we’re talking to human beings (at least for now) and that connection is intuitive. Sometimes strategy says X, but your intuition says Y. It’s important to look at both and find the right balance.

Q: How do you balance driving results while also holding space for people to feel seen and heard?
A: As a leader, you have to make sure your team knows you have their back within the walls of the company, externally as well, on stage, in the world, etc. At the same time, business sometimes requires you to make decisions or move forward in a direction the team may not immediately understand the full context around.

I balance being a leader and doing what’s best for the business and the team, while also giving team members and agency partners space to feel seen and heard, by over-communicating and over-sharing where my heart is at. That way, in the moment of a decision, there’s no mystery around why I came to a certain conclusion or why a direction had to be taken.

At the same time, outside of intense decision-making, there’s ample space for people to feel seen and heard. Because in my experience, I haven’t met someone who needs to constantly feel seen and heard over and over again. People want to know: you see me, I see you. Great, now let me go do my work and you do yours. And I think as long as that foundation is there, it allows for people to feel seen and heard while also giving me autonomy as a leader to do what I need to do.

Q: How do you foster communication and collaboration within your team and with clients?
A: In a hybrid, bi-coastal environment between LA and New York, communication can be challenging. It’s important for us to stay connected coast to coast, and we do that in a number of ways. First is maximizing the tools at our disposal such as Slack, Zoom, email, text, phone, DMs, you name it. And sometimes, I’ll be honest, it can get overwhelming. That’s the technology portion.

The second part is the human side, which is especially important when working in stressful environments, competing deadline, clients are unhappy with something, or something unexpected comes up, I think the art of the human connection can get lost in digital tools and communication, so the second pillar would be a conversation. Getting on a call, connecting face-to-face—whether on Zoom or in person if we can—and tackle the problems as a team rather than you vs me.

With clients, it’s actually pretty simple: they want to feel seen and heard. If they say they want something black instead of blue, make it black. And if you don’t, tell them why. Often times in the pace that agencies work in, we sometimes forget that. Ultimately if you tell them why it can't be black, that's all you really need to do. Clients want to know you understand what they want and that you have their brand’s best interest at heart.

I’m oversimplifying it, obviously, but that’s really what I’ve learned.

Q: What does success feel like to you now compared to when you first launched the agency?
A: When I first launched Agency Guacamole, success was simply being able to pay my bills and have a job. Now, 10 years later, it’s a completely different approach to what success means.

Professionally, success means creating a space where people’s needs are met and their livelihoods are supported through the work they do with us. It means clients see us as a trusted partner, someone they can rely on to deliver on time, on budget, and with creative that excites them and their consumers. It also means making an impact in our industry. We do that through B.L.N.D., through nonprofit work, including food insecurity, and in other ways that extend beyond the day-to-day business.

Personally, success is about how I continue to show up as a leader for my team and being a soundboard for ideas that are innovative, creative, and sometimes unexpected.

The industry is complex right now. With AI moving as fast as it is, there’s a lot of uncertainty around how business evolves. So for me, success on a personal level is finding the right marriage between human effort and technology, while still giving people a place to work, build a cool, fun company, and see where that goes over the next five to ten years.

Q: When you founded Agency Guacamole, what belief did you feel the industry was missing?
A: When I founded Agency Guacamole, I had built a career working on the corporate brand side of marketing and PR. I’d done everything from consumer packaged goods to entertainment to magazine publishing and non-profits.
Across most of the projects I was working on, there was a clear, at the time not a red flag, but over time it became one, a lack of representation, particularly in consumer packaged goods conversations.

I was often asked to make decisions on behalf of communities I did not represent. And I felt that was a very common situation across both small and large companies.
When I started my company, I wanted to do good work and focus on the kinds of projects I enjoyed, so influencer marketing, PR, events, which we still continue to focus on. What I really wanted to make sure we did was create a space where candidates, team members, employees, vendor partners, photographers, and creatives could be part of a conversation that was inclusive, that represented their community, and allowed them to be exactly who they are.

Whatever identity they hold close to them, we love that. Come work with us and focus on the work. Versus environments where:
A: you’re the only X, Y, Z.
B: you don’t feel like you can be your authentic self because of the company culture or a hostile work environment.
Or C: even if the agency is great, the work you’re putting out, you’re afraid your client might not want to see who you are.

I’m so grateful, so blessed that in our 10 years at Agency Guacamole, we’ve really built exactly what I described.

Q: B.L.N.D. has become a space for honest conversations. What’s something that has challenged your own perspective through those panels?
A: Gosh, in so many ways. This year will be our 10th B.L.N.D. event, and we’ve explored DE&I from a number of different perspectives—race and ethnicity, gender, aging (especially for women), and even tech, looking at how products from companies like Meta take DE&I into account.

For me personally, setting my own identity and beliefs aside, the conversations I’ve had the privilege to facilitate have really shown me that there is no single, shared human experience. And that’s a beautiful thing. Even if you put four women on a stage, each of them brings a completely unique set of experiences that led them to that moment. There’s no one way to fully understand or simplify it through any single lens.

What excites me about that is how many stories there are to tell within DE&I. The richness comes from those individual perspectives. Maybe one person is a woman of color, another is disabled, another is part of the LGBTQ+ community, whatever identities they hold. Each perspective adds depth and understanding.

And in hearing those stories, you start to reflect on your own experience in new ways. You might recognize privilege you hadn’t considered before, or realize that certain actions in your day-to-day life could be unintentionally impacting someone else.

Honestly, one of the greatest privileges in my life has been facilitating these conversations through B.L.N.D., because it’s allowed me to keep learning and to see the human experience from so many different angles.

Q: What’s your perspective on AI in your industry?
A: Our point of view on AI is that we use it in our workflows where appropriate, but we’ll never pass off computer-generated work without the human touch. It’s important to us that an actual person is reviewing it, understanding it, playing with it, and giving it something AI just can’t, no matter how smart or fast it gets.

On the client side, ideas or briefs may initially be driven by AI, and then they come to us. That’s where we step in to shape it, refine it, and bring that human layer to the work. And don’t get me wrong, AI can be incredibly helpful. We use a variety of tools across our workflows. But I don’t think you can ever fully replace the human touch. That’s a short-sighted way of looking at the business.

And we’re already seeing it globally. I was in Europe last fall, around Oktoberfest, and in Zurich there were massive billboard campaigns that were clearly fully AI-generated. And it only took half a second to register: that’s not human, that’s not real. Maybe that was intentional.

But when you’re building campaigns meant to connect with people, to get someone to buy something, to feel something, if there’s no instinctive human connection, you can only go so far.

Q: What does meaningful change in DE&I look like beyond messaging?
A: Diversity is a core pillar for us at Agency Guacamole, and transparently, it has to be more than just messaging. I’ll give you a few ways it shows up as a lived value, not just something on our website.

First, it starts with hiring. I firmly believe you’re only as good as your team, and I’m constantly in awe of the people we have across both coasts. Their work, their passion, their energy. That begins with casting as wide a net as possible beyond the usual channels, making sure we’re reaching people from different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. Not just the same schools, cities, for example.

Second, once people are part of the team, it’s about creating an environment where they feel comfortable and included. That shows up in the language we use, the holidays we celebrate, and the things we support and care about from a cultural zeitgeist point of view. The goal is that no one feels excluded or that we’re investing time and energy into something that goes against their values.

Externally, it shows up in the work. When we’re casting for campaigns, it would be easy to deliver exactly what’s asked; say, 20 women with long hair who all look the same. But our philosophy is to present a diverse, eclectic, and representative mix from the start, and then let the client choose who they want to move forward with. Clients shouldn’t have to ask for that, it should already be built in.

And then on the community side, beyond B.L.N.D. which is all about creating conversations around DE&I through different lenses. That’s a value we’re intentionally showing publicly. Especially in today’s environment, where the conversation around DE&I can be polarized or negative, I don’t feel the need to engage in that directly. Instead, we focus on showing where we invest our time, energy, and resources. And to me, that goes beyond just messaging.

Q: Where do you think the industry is still being performative?
A: When you hear messaging around certain holidays or cultural moments, good or bad, that directly impact communities beyond the mainstream, it’s very easy for agencies to post on Instagram, ‘our heart is with XYZ.’ It’s very, very easy. And I do think that can be essential because you’re using your platform, but at the same time, it can be very performative.

The real work has to happen behind the scenes, with the people at the company, the people they hire for photo and creative work, the people creating the fabrications, the mailers, etc. That’s an opportunity, and it should be exciting for agencies and businesses, because that’s often where the best work comes from, when you have a mix of people bringing different perspectives to the table.

Q: How do you navigate pushback around DE&I today?
A: By being honest and vocal about your values. That may not land with everyone, and that’s okay. I come from a place of abundance, and a desire to do good work with integrity and heart. These are my values, and the companies that align with that will work with you. And the ones that don’t, maybe they’re not meant to.

Q: What’s a conversation around DE&I that people are still avoiding?
A: It’s probably how we toe the line between being performative and actually making an impact. In today’s culture, people are so afraid of making a mistake, of getting canceled or ending up with mud on their face, that sometimes they’d rather not say anything at all than take that risk. And I get that. I would never want a client or partner to feel like they have to hide their values because they’re afraid of getting it wrong.

But that’s also where the opportunity is. With trusted partners, you can workshop ideas and values in a way that allows you to show up authentically. You can test with different audiences, have conversations internally, bring in people with different perspectives, so you’re not figuring it out for the first time in public.
Because I really believe most companies want to do the right thing. The intention is there. The hesitation comes from the fear of making a mistake.

And the reality is, mistakes are going to happen. You might put something out into the world and realize it missed the mark. Okay, take a beat. How do you respond in a way that takes accountability and shows what you’ll do differently next time?
There’s a lot of value in that. What you do after the mistake can actually be just as powerful, if not more, than getting it perfect the first time.

Q: Can you share a challenging moment that led to growth?
A: My entire career has been filled with moments that felt incredibly challenging at the time, but later turned into real opportunities.

Looking at Agency Guacamole over the last decade: COVID, economic crises, tariffs, wars... it’s been one thing after another. And I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t scare me as a business leader, thinking about how much is out of our control and how it impacts what we do day to day.

I’ll use COVID as an example.
In March 2020, we were concepting six events coast to coast. I was in Miami for site visits, then New York after then the world shut down. I flew back to LA on Friday, March 13th, and the city closed. Overnight, those six events, along with all the revenue, jobs, and time attached to them, were cancelled. Very, very scary.
What we did next was start asking: is there a way to redirect the work and still meet the core objective, which was connecting with consumers? We put together a handful of plans and we found an opportunity with PR mailers and boxes.

For context, we had launched a warehouse in LA in 2018. It allowed clients to send us product, and we’d store it, build mailers, and ship them out, but it was more of a value-add at the time. In 2020, we scaled that part of the business significantly to meet the moment.

Now fast forward six years, we have an entire warehouse team and a head of operations that manages that. Significantly scaling beyond what we were doing in 2020.  In the moment, it was very freaking scary. But looking back, it pushed us to build something that’s now a huge part of our growth. Events are back with a bang. Crazier than ever before too.

Q: What advice would you give your younger self?
A: I firmly believe that whatever life lessons or challenges we go through make us who we are, so in some ways, no advice. I think Elizabeth Gilbert said something along the lines of, ‘I couldn’t give my younger self advice because I wasn’t in a place to hear it.’

But if I could step into a time machine and share a couple of things, I’d say this:
First, in moments of stress or chaos, stay focused on the mission. You can’t control everything else, so just keep going. One more day, one more week, one more year. In a world of nonstop information, doomscrolling, and constant input, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. I know I do. I get emotionally impacted by what’s happening around me. So that reminder, to focus on the mission, is something I’d give my younger self, and honestly, still give myself today.

The second is to assume best intent. I say this to my team all the time because I want to live it as well. Whether it's a difficult conversation you and I need to have or something goes awry with the client project, rather than jumping to a negative place, what if we were to assume the best intent and approach the conversation in that way in the hopes of getting a resolution?