It’s hard to imagine a superstar like Keke Palmer — famous for her starring roles in films like Nope and Scream Queens, and the Netflix animated sitcom Big Mouth along with two studio albums — building a slide deck.
And yet she does.
“I make a deck for everything,” she revealed onstage at Brandweek in Pheonix, Ariz. “I live for a deck, about me! Like ‘these are the brands and words that describe Keke Palmer.’”
Over the years, those words have grown into a list: actress, singer-songwriter, producer, chair, host, entrepreneur, activist, and author. Since 2022, it’s included media owner.
And as of this week, it includes ADWEEK 2024 Brand Genius.
If that’s overwhelming to most people, it certainly isn’t to Palmer.
“For me, diversifying has given me so much freedom. It’s allowed me the opportunity to dig into different corners and still be able to feed my family,” she said.
But as Palmer’s multiple careers exploded, she’s now focused on giving back to a community of fans and creators inspired by her success. It’s become the “foundation of her brand.”
Here’s how she’s doing it — and why now.
Quotes have been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
She wants to pass a legacy of community down to her son
Becoming a mother to her now one-year-old son, Leo, transformed Palmer’s life — including her business decisions.
“He has given me so much more clarity and intention about what works for me and doesn’t, and how I want to show up for myself,” she said.
For much of her career, she was focused on her own trajectory. But as her family and resume have expanded, so too have her ambitions.
“But now I want to hand down to him this concept of community. That’s what I was raised on,” she said.
The transition hasn’t always been easy.
“It’s been hard to go from, ‘it’s me, I’m the star, Keke, I’m the one everything is [laddering] back up to,’ to working out how we can create an infrastructure that can spread that out, and fast,” Palmer said.
But having her son has given her the ability to see more clearly, she said. And her business decisions now are based on an entirely different set of concerns.
“When you have a kid, everything comes into perspective,” she noted, adding this made it easier to say “no,” to things that previously felt like “life or death.”