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AAPRC Weekly: Kareem Smith

Kareem Smith
Senior Account Executive
PR Newswire
Minneapolis, MN

Often, a career in marketing and public relations is a path professionals discover for themselves once they’re already out in the working world, or at least in college studying business or communications. Kareem Smith caught the bug long before that, though. He was barely in high school when a business class peaked his interest in marketing. He decided right then that he wanted to do something “related to helping corporations understand and communicate into various markets.”

Pretty intense for a teenager, but it paid off. Outside of a brief, post-college stint in the insurance industry, Smith has nurtured a steadily rising career at one of the country’s most successful communications firms, PR Newswire. As a senior account manager in the company’s Minneapolis office, Smith’s territory includes Minnesota, Iowa and North and South Dakota, and his clients run the gamut from nonprofits to Fortune 1000 companies and private firms. “Anyone who needs to communicate has a certain set of things that they need to go along with that and our niche is really filling in to help them with all of those things,” says Smith of the company’s work. “The news release distribution side of our business is what we were founded on in 1954, but we’ve now moved on to monitoring and keeping track of what
the media is saying about your company. We’re also giving companies and the clients a chance to really find out what their competitors are doing in the media.”

Smith speaks proudly of PR Newswire’s ability to provide their clients with the reach and depth that their precise, global distribution system can offer. Need to reach a tiny radio station in Hillsboro, Ohio? Not a problem. A major daily in London? They can handle that too. Smith is enthusiastic about the depth of services he and his colleagues can provide, covering almost every aspect of a corporation: from media relations to analyst and investor relations, public affairs, marketing, advertising and internal communications.

And it’s a good thing he’s enthusiastic about the work, because the Michiganborn Smith has to be on point all the time. In addition to internal committees and the professional associations he works with, between his laptop and his Blackberry, Smith often fields some 300 emails a day. “I am overly technologized, I think,” he laughs. “I can be reached anywhere.” The use of technology like email and Blackberry is a critical part of what Smith can offer his clients. “A typical client will send out a news release…and whenever they do that it actually goes to a group of journalists that have signed up to receive information across the wire…They can actually get our satellite-driven wire feed via email.”

Smith is, needless to say, a multitasker extraordinaire, a skill he began working on as a student at Michigan State University, where he earned an undergraduate degree in advertising, focusing on public relations. “As a typical college student you’ve got all these different jobs, you’ve got classes, you’ve got all this stuff going on. It really ingrained in me the spirit of multi-tasking and the need to wear multiple hats,” says Smith. “Also, when I started off with PR Newswire I started off in a capacity known as account coordinator. By helping our clients with whatever they needed outside of the sales process and providing customer service to them, and also providing internal customer service to our sales staff, I had to wear multiple hats.”

But before he began his stint with PR Newswire, Smith worked in, of all arenas, the insurance industry. Just out of college he spent a year in the small town of Marshall, Michigan as an underwriter for State Farm Insurance. “I basically was an analyst. I determined who received automotive insurance coverage,” he recalls. “It was one of those things where a public relations or communications degree can help out in so many facets of a career. I was able to use the fact that I was a communicator by training and was able to provide excellent internal customer service to the agents I was working with. The experience really solidified for me that being out in the public and working with people, working with clients, is what I really wanted to do.”

After his stint with State Farm, Smith, who’d been eager to move to a larger city, got hired at the PR Newswire office in Detroit. “Working with PR Newswire exposed me to both agency and corporate life as well as nonprofits, in terms of talking with PR people, media relations people, public affairs people, even governmental affairs in some instances. All different types of people doing all types of communications work,” Smith says of the company’s appeal. “Having that ability to see what different types of communicators there were was really attractive for me.”

Smith’s been with the company for six-and-a-half years now (a senior account manager for three) and attributes his success so far to his adaptability. “I have basically moved up through the company by virtue of always being willing to learn and always being able to accept new challenges and, in this day and age, being mobile.”

His future plans include more responsibility at PR Newswire. He envisions himself as a director for the company, and also hopes to work on initiatives that help usher more people of color past professional and social barriers and into the communications field. “One of the barriers that I can see is networking. The networking aspect is something that we may do but we have to get a little bit better at it,” Smith explains. “We have to realize that the networking that we can do may not necessarily be the most comfortable thing at times but that’s what it actually takes to get your name out there and get you exposed. The networking aspect of media relations is incredible. It’s all about who you know, as well as who they know and what they know.”

When he finally manages to turn his Blackberry off, Smith enjoys working on his home, travel and following Detroit’s football and basketball teams.

AAPRC’s Mission
The African-American Public Relations Collective (AAPRC) is an assemblage of professionals who provide communication conduits among clients, journalists, media and our communities. We come together as a collective because we recognize the importance of building those same conduits amongst ourselves.

A great deal of what we do is professional development––updating our skills, keeping pace with technology, refining and streamlining processes, providing a forum to tackle the issues that impact our work environment––but we believe our professional lives benefit most from the forging of effective alliances. Connected to one another, we possess the power of a nationwide body of committed, knowledgeable practitioners with an eye on the future.

As we move into the 21st century at lightning speed, mass media and its potent messages occupy an ever-larger part of our daily lives and our collective psyche. The AAPRC is focused on helping our members gain a deeper understanding of media’s force and supporting their growth as powerful participants in the global communications network.

AAPRC’s Contact
GQ Media & Public Relations
1650 Broadway Suite 1011
New York NY 10019
1212 765 7910
1212 765 7905
aapublicistcoll@aol.com

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