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Global Communicator: L. Marilyn Crawford

L. Marilyn Crawford
President & CEO
Primetime OmnimediaNYC

L. Marilyn Crawford, President and CEO, Primetime Omnimedia, has built her extraordinarily successful career in strategic marketing through creative ideas and hard work.

An award-winning entrepreneur with A-list corporate and celebrity clients, Crawford says that if she’s flying pretty high these days, it’s because her parents’ support and encouragement gave her wings. “I grew up thinking all things were possible,” said Crawford. “I never thought there was anything that I couldn’t do. I got that from my parents,” she added. Crawford lost both her parents while she was still in her twenties, but she says the lessons she learned from them as a child were the building blocks for her success. “When you lose your parents when you’re young, you feel like you’re all alone on an island with no backup or support, and all you have is what you know is possible,” she said.

For Crawford, many things have been possible. Her Wall Streetbased company has developed strategic outreach, marketing and promotional strategies for Fortune 500 companies, sports and entertainment organizations, music industry groups and tourism bureaus of several Caribbean countries. In addition, she has organized special events related to important occasions that range from presidential inaugurations to world cup soccer. Crawford also is a principal in Bee’s Knees, an innovative company that has produced the new crawling pants for babies, which was recently featured on “Today” and “Martha.” Most recently, she has taken on a leadership role in Liberty Studios, a film production company.

Her client list has included corporations such as FedEx, Volvo Cars of North America, Jaguar, Land Rover, Coca Cola, Reebok, Norwest Mortgage/Wells Fargo and AIC Canada, the largest privately held mutual fund company in Canada. She has worked with communications companies such as Turner Broadcast, AOL/Time Warner, CNN and Fox Network. She has consulted with departments of Tourism for Jamaica, Bermuda, Turks and Caicos Islands, among others. She also has a celebrity clientele that at various times has included Russell Simmons, Sean Paul, Magic Johnson, Clive Davis and billionaire Michael Lee-Chin, who was ranked by Forbes magazine among the world’s wealthiest people.

Crawford organized and executed inaugural events for former Presidents George H.W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton. She managed events related to the XXVI Olympic Games held in Atlanta in 1996 for the city’s Olympic committee. She also hosts a number of gala events, including the annual “Tinseltown to Gotham” affair that precedes the Academy Awards, as well as a Pre-Grammy event, and ones related to the Super Bowl and the NBA All-Star weekends.

Crawford has already received numerous awards and recognition from business, civic, professional and media organizations. Her long list of honors include: the Gertrude E. Rush Award, the highest award given by the National Bar Association; the Woman of Excellence Award from the National Action Network; the Hispanic American Chamber of Commerce’s Corporate Executive of the Year Award; and the Leadership Award from the Human Services Council of New York. She was honored as an outstanding woman in marketing and communications by Ebony magazine and was among the 25 Influential Women in Business featured in The Network Journal. This year, Crawford will receive the coveted COMPASS Award from the Women’s Leadership Exchange.

Although Crawford believed all things were possible, she never imagined herself an award-winning business executive in marketing and public relations. While growing up in the relatively small town of Lancaster, South Carolina, she had one goal — she wanted to be an educator. “I always loved children,” she said. “I think teaching is the most important position one could have because you’re shaping a person for the rest of his or her life.” Crawford said that she’s a nurturer by nature. The youngest of five children, she is known in her family as “the godmother.” She explained that she got that name because, according to her siblings, she was always looking out for other people, even at a very young age.

Crawford attended the University of South Carolina, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology and a Master’s degree in behavioral sciences. She would later go on to complete an executive education program in marketing at the Harvard University School of Business. A licensed psychologist, she began teaching at a private school for behaviorally challenged students in Maryland. She soon decided that she could better help those and other children as a counselor. It was during that time that parents of some of the children she worked with discovered her talent for putting together creative and well-organized activities. She began to set up promotional events for local businesses. Realizing that this was a talent that paid, she organized her first company, TLC Inc., which she named for her parents Timothy and Lillian Crawford. She had a thriving business in the Washington, D.C. area, where she also taught promotional marketing and public relations at Georgetown University, until her consulting work for Prudential Financial took her to Atlanta. While in Atlanta, she also worked with the House of Blues, Olympic Committee and Trumpet Awards, an international broadcast which honors African-American achievement in the arts, science and politics. Prudential eventually lured her away from her business and to New York, by appointing her vice president for corporate public relations; within a year they promoted her to vice president for external relations. After three years, Crawford decided to return to running her own business. That was when she founded Primetime Omnimedia.

While she is most often associated with enormous events, lavish parties and celebrity clients, Crawford points out that most of her business is corporate. The hallmark of her business strategy is an integrated marketing approach that targets specific diverse, ethnic, gender and professional groups. She uses her refined databases and broad networks to help her clients develop effective marketing strategies that resonate with the targeted audience and directly affect their bottom lines. Another important part of her business formula is to create a synergy among people working in different areas of a company. She says that too often companies keep their public relations, marketing and advertising budgets — and people — separate. “When everyone knows what the total picture and objectives are, the company can be more cost effective and have a greater impact,” she said.

Despite all her success, Crawford describes herself as “a work in progress.” Years and miles away from the students she nurtured in her first job, she is still working to find a balance between taking care of business and taking care of herself. As an example, while she throws some of the best parties in town, she recently had her first real date in over a year. She admits that she works so hard for her clients and building her business that she doesn’t always take the time to build the kinds of relationships that are strictly personal.

Professionally, however, it’s all about relationships. While her expertise ranges across a number of f ields, including marketing, public relations, event management, promotions, business development, sales, corporate affairs and community affairs, Crawford describes herself as a “people broker.” Says Crawford: “I invest in relationships. That’s how I make things happen. I love and enjoy competent and loyal people.”

Crawford has built her business one relationship at a time, and that, she believes, is the key to her success. “People deal with people they trust,” she said. “You build trust by doing what you say you’re going to do, no matter what it takes. You build trust by going beyond the call of duty, investing in someone else’s dream and being effective,” she added. She believes that “it’s not ethical to build people’s expectations and not deliver.” But she also notes that it’s not good business. “My business is based on repeat customers. If you promise big and deliver small, they don’t come back.” Crawford says her clients come back because they know she loves the work. “In everything I do, I’m not in it just for a return on my investment. I’m working to help people reach their goals,” she declared. “I find that when I work with that attitude, I usually succeed at both.”

In her newest venture, Crawford is the vice chairman of Liberty Studios, a film production company that plans to release two movies each year for the next five years. The company will make films primarily for, and about, minority communities. She said that she was motivated to get involved with this project because she believes that films about minorities can be both critical and box office successes. “The industry leaders say that the African-American community will not support movies of substance about our culture,” she observed. “We want to prove them very wrong. It is about doing good business and making good business decisions.”

Liberty’s first feature film, “My Brother,” will be released in April. Written and directed by Anthony Lover, it has an all-star cast that includes Vanessa Williams (UPN’s “South Beach”), Nashawn Kearse (ABC’s “Desperate Housewives”) and Academy Award winner Tatum O’Neal (“Dancing with the Stars”). Crawford says their second film, “The Promise,” is in pre-production, and that the company will be accepting new scripts after May.

Despite her busy work schedule, which has her constantly flying from coast to coast, Crawford provides time, talent, and expertise to a number of nonprofit and educational ventures. She on a number of major boards, including the Larry King Cardiac Foundation, Dress for Success, Madison Square Boys and Girls Club, Museum of African Arts, National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts and the Wyclef Jean Foundation, which supports music education for inn city youth. She is an advisor for WKIDZ, a children’s multimedia firm that produces animated television, film and radio programs. She also serves on the Women’s Leadership Exchange Multicultural Advisory Board, the Billboard Steering Committee for Money and Music, and the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Foundation Executive Advisory Board, among other mentoring and volunteer activities.

Why does she use her precious little free time to help the people served by these organizations? “I have to,” she declared. “It’s not an option. I would not be happy if I were not giving back.” She adds, “The fact is, they give me more than I could ever give them.”

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

Message L. Marilyn Crawford and the AAPRC and tell them what you think

By Gwendolyn Quinn on 6/27/2006[read on] [8 comments]

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