Blurring the Lines with Kevin Wong The Trevor Project

This week I spoke with Kevin Wong , Senior Vice President of Marketing, Communications & Content at The Trevor Project . Kevin joined the world's largest suicide prevention and mental health organization for LGBTQ+ young people after working at iHeartMedia and Six Flags .  

Tell me about your career journey up until this point. How did you get where you are today? Was your path more linear, or less so?

I didn’t take the most traditional path to communications. I studied English literature, and started experimenting with different minors — journalism, creative writing, marketing and communications. I interned at a boutique agency in New York City for two summers, and my first job after college was doing communications for Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey. Facebook was new, Twitter (now X) had just launched. It was my first exposure to local news. Six Flags taught me a lot — about general entertainment, local amusements, local press — and in my next role at iHeartMedia I really had to level up because they are a media and entertainment company at heart. 

Before I got to The Trevor Project, one person handled communications and marketing, development, fundraising, partnerships, and special events; when you oversee so much, it’s impossible to dedicate 100% of your time to all those areas. So for Communications I got to set the vision and strategy, build a team, and basically rebuild the brand to be seen as innovative, to transform the organization so different audiences knew everything we are doing. We inherited a ton of brand equity, but we are better equipped now.

How do you approach storytelling, and where do you find inspiration?

When I started at The Trevor Project I was the head of communications, and now I am seeing more than communication, it’s content and marketing too. Those three departments are a storyteller’s dream. To me it's the audience and delivery. What is the data behind those stories, who do you know your audience to be? 

For The Trevor Project, LGBTQ+ young people are our primary audience. We want them to know we are around for them 24/7. Our crisis services — being able to text, chat, or call anytime for free and confidential support from a trained counselor — are available to them always, same with educational resources and key programs. We generally don’t talk with young people about all these items, but we will talk with other audiences (like our supportive adult audiences) who are more likely to be advocates and donors. 

We know the younger generations are using TikTok as a search engine to discover, so we’re always thinking about how we show up on that platform to reach them. For supportive adults, depending on your brand, they really care about who we are and are finding their touchpoints for things they care about on broadcast and radio. 

So we’re delivering those messages to different audiences where they are. 

What are the biggest changes you’ve experienced since beginning your career? Is AI playing a role in your work?

The shifts are in tech generally. When social media platforms change how they connect with users, that changes how we control how we get in front of audiences. 

While our supportive adults use Facebook, how our messages reach certain audiences or what comments we might see on our Facebook posts might be different from what we were seeing just five years ago. 

Discoverability has also changed. It’s no longer just the people in your network who are informing what you see, it’s we’re also now being served things we didn’t know we had an interest in because of how complex and smart these algorithms are. 

As marketers, we should still be telling our stories, the platforms should still be part of our strategies, but at the core we should always be telling the same story because we don’t really know what a platform might be thinking or how it’s going to change in a year.  

We use AI in combination with human interaction to train our crisis counselors — it helps them practice realistic conversations with youth personas at different levels of risk. The AI models are trained on anonymized conversations we’ve had to support LGBTQ+ youth in crisis.

For those in social media marketing or interested in this space, how can we create branded content that is more engaging and impactful?

The content is important, but how you express the message is key. Take your audience insights and use them to tailor content to the delivery platform. We have a research department that has regular outputs, and we have to think about how we deliver that same piece of research to different audiences. For LGBTQ+ young people we might work with a creator or influencer to humanize research and storytell around it, versus create a shareable Instagram Carousel with the data for our supportive adult audience. 

There are a lot of opportunities for brands on social media. How should brands figure out where to show up on social media, knowing that many don’t have the bandwidth or resources to be everywhere?

Limited resources are going to be something most of us run into at any company or organization. I would encourage everyone to make values-based decisions and to also carefully consider who your core audiences are. If you can’t be everywhere but you know your audience is on Facebook, how are you tending to that garden? Similarly, know what your investment can look like and set your audiences up to expect that output. Maybe that means spreading out your investment to create a few short clips instead of one big, beautifully produced video that takes up your budget in one swing. You want a sustainable content cadence, and your audience will come to expect certain types of content from you on specific platforms. That expectation helps you to build trust with your audience.

And there will always be tough decisions to make. The Trevor Project departed from X because of an increase in hate targeted at LGBTQ+ young people (and the community at large) and that decision and those discussions took months. When we announced it, we reminded our audience where they can find us and encouraged them to follow us in those other places. 

What is the difference between content creators and influencers? And what should brands consider when thinking about who to collaborate with?

Passion plays a big part. When you are on the brand or organization side and are working with someone who really cares about your mission, that comes through. For us, passion and commitment are what we look for. I would also delineate between celebrities and creators or influencers. The latter are the people who are pulling the curtain back on their daily lives. When those people build their dedicated audience based off of showing who they really are, that creates a different influence or power that they can exert over an audience. Celebrities are a little bit more limited, so when they are asking you to take an action, it has a different level of impact. 

How should brands approach partnerships with talent to make these collaborations successful, from the actual brief to the moment the content goes live?

The relationship dynamic shifts as soon as you introduce compensation and a contract, because you can set parameters and expectations that more closely align content to a brand narrative. 

To succeed, it helps to have a nimble team involving your talent engagement lead, social lead, marketing and communications, and legal. They can help guide a brand’s messages to be authentically expressed by the creator. Talent audiences are there for the talent, so being flexible can help you adapt messages that are too brand-forward for talent, and maximize the opportunities you have with the creator’s voice and interests.  

How do you think about building your own personal brand?

I recently saw a CMO job description that listed this essential responsibility: “represent [brand] to the external marketing industry.” For many companies, industry leadership isn’t a “nice to have” anymore; it’s an expectation or a requirement. That means marketing and communications leaders are bringing their full selves to the industry, including their intersecting identities, on top of their professional duties and expertise. 

While that’s how I think about personal branding for myself, we shouldn’t be the focal point of a brand’s communications strategy. Communicators and marketers can be great at delivering brand messages, but in service of a communications strategy that should still be able to succeed without relying on you or your voice. A good communications strategy will contribute to brand equity even beyond our tenure. 

What advice would you give to someone about to graduate college that wants to work in communications or marketing, or someone who wants to expand their role or pivot into this space? 

If you can, explore internships to see what’s out there. Be mindful when accepting your first few jobs, which can often set you on a specific career path. Network (professionally and recreationally) with people who share similar identities, and keep in touch with your communities throughout your career. Join a professional association, and seek out opportunities to judge industry awards; these experiences allow you to take a step back and see how others are innovating in the field.