Brilliance beyond bars | Vincent Bragg + Joe Michael Nickson | TEDxSanQuentin 2022

A look into how Vincent and Joe leveraged the belief system that creativity without opportunity leads to criminality to create an advertising agency all about collaboration over competition. After being sentenced to several years in prison, Vincent Bragg quickly learned that some of the most outside of the box thinking happens inside the box. During his incarceration he watched as his fellow convicts were able to make something from nothing – books, music, entire meals – all created between four barren concrete walls. It was here Vincent realized the cells meant to imprison them for 23 hours a day were actually breeding grounds for creativity. Throughout the rest of his sentence Vincent naturally assumed a leadership role. Using his years of experience from the marketing and entertainment industries, Vincent organized think tanks, book clubs, led a cancer walk and developed an animated series. Years later, he founded ConCreates: a creative agency that crowdsources ideas from incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women. Now the same skills that put his creative teams behind bars are helping them find careers, and become contributing, creative members of society. Pure strategist, charismatic, and creative genius isn’t something you normally would think when you talk about a bank robber. But in the case of Joe Michael Nickson, a South Central LA native, his ability to turn media nightmares into marketing miracles allowed him to turn his life around. Growing up in the home of a logistics expert and a caregiver, Joe developed skills that took him places he could never imagine, and at 25 he ended up in Federal Prison. On June 6, 2005, he was sentenced to 20 years for having robbed 27 banks. While in prison he met Vincent who helped him to see the potential of his skills in the agency space and there they formed ConCreates. After 17.5 years, as he took his increased attention to detail, paired with his undeniable charisma, Joe went from navigating relationships inside to now finessing marketing tactics on the outside. Today that brilliance, once behind bars generating revenue driving campaign,s has moved beyond and the opportunities are endless.