House Music Authority × Cincy Social
Cincinnati, OH · July 2026 · Prepared for Drew & John
You didn't start House Music Authority to make flyers. You started it because you believe the city deserves a different kind of underground. That's a story. Let's build it.
↓ Read the brief01 · Who Is House Music Authority
Departure Lounge. Galaxy. Alice. Shows built from scratch, a team of four, a brand that had real momentum. Then life intervened — a friend passed, the LLC owner relocated to Jersey — and the team went from four to two. Ten months of pause. Now it's just you and John, deliberately lean. "The less hands in the pot, the better."
The rebrand isn't a pivot. It's a return — more intentional, built for a different lane. House Music Authority's version of the underground is daytime: park pop-ups, coffee shop activations, the branded box truck rolling up with a location drop. The 2am–6am crowd belongs to Mach-B and Project Sonar. You're going somewhere they're not.
You have a daughter now. You can't spend your nights in Canva making flyers. And you were honest about what you're not great at — video, capture, the visual side — which is why you were about to hire on Fiverr before you found Cincy Social on Instagram and decided to go local instead.
Two events are already on the calendar with real budgets behind them: Blink in October, an Alice OTR-sponsored show with a $5,000 activation budget; and a city-funded Halloween headliner at the end of the month. The brand needs to be ready before either of those happens — not scrambling after.
"I would love to be able to bring a festival to Cincinnati… own some real estate so I can help the community have some more underground locations. If I could quit my job and just bring artists to the city and do shows like that, that's what I would do."
02 · Our Read
The Department of Underground Affairs isn't a brand name — it's a worldview. The daytime gateway. The park pop-up. The city as a dance floor, not a late-night escape. Playful, community-driven, genuinely different. That's a story that compounds.
The problem isn't awareness. It's that the visual identity hasn't caught up to the idea yet. You have two brand documents — a Copilot-built bible and a Fiverr style guide — and they don't fully align with each other. The content you post is mostly flyers and ads: all bottom of funnel, almost nothing above it. When Blink comes, you'll have an event. What you need is a brand that makes the event mean something beyond October.
The first move isn't a shoot. It's a conversation — to define what House Music Authority actually is before anything else gets built on top of it.
→ When you picture House Music Authority two years from now, is it still just you and John — or is it a platform that runs without you?
03 · What We Build Together
We don't start with a shot list. We start with DNA — what House Music Authority is, what it isn't, what it sounds like, what it refuses to do. That becomes the document everything else is written against. Every flyer, every reel, every caption stays consistent because the source of truth exists and everyone has it.
From there, the content strategy practically writes itself. Top-of-funnel brand and community content (the stuff that pulled you in off our Instagram) makes up the majority. The event flyers and ads — the bottom of funnel — drop against a brand people already recognize. The ratio flips. The compounding begins.
And when Blink lands, it's not just an event. It's content. The branded box truck, the activation, the crowd — all of it feeds the library. Every show becomes a deposit.
"I came across your Instagram post, I was like, I'd rather just work with somebody here if possible."
04 · The Window
Blink is October 8–11. The Alice OTR show. The city-funded Halloween headliner at month's end. These are the first real test of House Music Authority's relaunch — and they need a brand behind them, not a flyer in front of them.
If the DNA document doesn't exist by September, the events evaporate the way events always do: a great night, a memory, nothing that compounds. If it does exist, Blink becomes the first proof point in a story that keeps going.
The window between now and those events is small. The work we do inside it determines whether October is a moment or a milestone.
→ If the brand isn't ready by Blink, what's the plan for the content after?
05 · Who
Cincinnati EDM promoters, deliberately lean after a decade throwing shows. Won a record label contest that sent you to music school. Built Departure Lounge from the ground up, paused when life intervened, back now with a clearer vision and a shorter chain of command.
The daytime gateway to the underground. The Department of Underground Affairs.
"The less hands in the pot, the better."
A one-person creative shop that lives between a production company and a social media manager. One cinema camera, exceptional sound, one light when needed. High quality, never overproduced, never inauthentic.
AI-fluent — not to generate content, but to index and compound what already exists. The context engine gets smarter every month.
"We contextualize and capture your magic in a way that makes it positioned and profitable."
Past clients: Cincinnati café, publishing house, high-end construction developer, regional restaurant brand. Named on request, with their consent.
06 · Two Ways In
This isn't a choice between two products — it's a choice between two altitudes. Both are real. Only one of them keeps working after the session ends.
07 · What Happens Next
Send us the brand bible and the Fiverr style guide — after payment is confirmed — and we'll come to the first session already oriented. The faster we have the materials, the faster we move.
No hard deadline on this. Read it, sit with it, push back on anything that feels off. When you're ready, the next step isn't a signature — it's picking a door.
Or reply directly: alok@cincy-social.com