Columbus’ Kimberly Blackwell on results as a Black lady marketing and advertising CEO
7 min read
Kimberly Blackwell has superpowers: “I can see about corners and present options,” states the CEO of PMM Agency, the Columbus-based mostly advertising, advertising and new media agency.
And, like quite a few superheroes, Blackwell has a top secret identity. Type of. While she’s not exactly a stranger to the C-suites of Columbus, “I do seem to be better acknowledged nationally than in Columbus,” muses the head of PMM, which has provided services for numerous very well-acknowledged brands including Toyota, Walmart, Jackson-Hewitt and ViacomCBS.
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Like other superheroes, Blackwell’s origin story also is clouded in a little bit of mystery. For illustration: her age. “Forty-one thing,” is all she’ll say. PMM? “I really don’t say what it stands for, we just use the initials.” So quite a few possibilities for 3 letters. And then there’s her father, Ken Blackwell. “He experienced a temporary stint with the Dallas Cowboys,” is all Blackwell initially said about her father, when describing her childhood in Cincinnati.
She didn’t divulge he’s “the” Ken Blackwell, the previous mayor of the Queen City, previous Ohio Condition Treasurer and Ohio Secretary of Point out, and the to start with African American important bash (Republican) prospect for governor. Kind of a significant offer.
“I can not even tell you a single time she played off her father in any way, shape or sort,” says Larry James, a longtime spouse and children mate and the managing partner of the Columbus regulation firm Crabbe Brown & James. “She manufactured sure to gain everything on her individual merits, and it’s a double whammy for a Black female—it’s twice as tricky to do what she’s done. Her point is, enable me do this on my very own.”
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Blackwell has done it on her possess, and she has remained true to who she is: A Black woman CEO determined to crack barriers for herself and her company and to open doors for some others.
Blackwell served in the Obama and Trump administrations as a member of the Countrywide Women’s Company Council was named just one of the “Most Impressive Girls in Business” by Black Enterprise has been awarded the PR News’ Best Females in PR, and has been stated in the Ebony Power 100.
Love letters
When Blackwell didn’t initially go into element about her famed father, she bragged hard on her mom, who broke via several barriers. Rosa Blackwell was a trainer who worked her way up to superintendent of the Cincinnati Public Schools in 2005. “They were genuinely finest mates, and I grew up in a house of adore,” Blackwell suggests of her mom and dad. “My dad even now writes my mother love letters.”
The Blackwell property was filled with love—and a great deal of students.
“My mom is one particular of individuals village mothers, a single of those people teachers who introduced her pupils household with her to make sure they bought their get the job done done and weren’t acquiring into any difficulties,” Blackwell claims.
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Another role model was Ross Love, her father’s finest good friend, whom Kimberly Blackwell calls Uncle Ross. Love was the first African American to be named vice president of marketing at Procter and Gamble, and, for an encore, he created a successful network of radio stations, Blue Chip Broadcasting. Ken Blackwell was an trader.
Studying the business
Soon after graduating from Syracuse College, Blackwell discovered her like of business and went to function for the Columbus Quest in advertising and marketing and communications. The staff received the American Basketball League’s championship in 1997 and 1998, led by Katie Smith and Tonya Edwards. Blackwell them moved on to Zero Casualties Inc., an urban apparel small business, splitting time involving Columbus and New York. These first two jobs “allowed me to make a powerful get in touch with list and create strategies and product or service placement and endorsement bargains,” she claims.
Even with these successes, Blackwell needed more. A whole lot additional. And had a prepare.
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She went all in with PMM in the early 2000s. Toyota was one of her to start with customers, adopted by Nationwide, Macy’s and Fifth 3rd Lender.
Blackwell wrote speeches for executives, worked to develop and diversify the company’s supply chain, and structured events to support the automaker reach a much more numerous inhabitants. For Nationwide, Blackwell “helped them associate in underrepresented segments, with African-Americans and Latinx,” she says, adding PMM helped recruit spokespersons from the sporting activities and entertainment worlds, and developed national Nationwide tours that promoted money training, financial empowerment and entrepreneurship to underserved populations.
“Kim brings what we’re searching for when we seek the services of an exterior husband or wife,” says Gale King, Nationwide executive vice president and chief administrative officer. “Which is, do they have an understanding of who we’re functioning with? And she understands the African American room and what we need to be executing in that area.”
‘The Black tax’
Reaching out to African People and other underserved minority populations is often how Blackwell and PMM initially get their foot in the door and into conferences. But as soon as she’s acquired a toehold, Blackwell genuinely goes to function and utilizes her superpowers.
“My detail is to never just meet anticipations, but to always exceed them,” Blackwell suggests. “Always overdeliver.”
This approach was the essential to survival in the early days of PMM.
“I’m Black, and I’m a girl, and I’m participating in in a place dominated by white male [chief marketing officers],” she states. “So, it is being familiar with how to seize an option, and the best sort of compliment I can get is when a consumer says to me, ‘You genuinely shipped, but we experienced no notion it would be like this.’ ”
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Blackwell and PMM, which has 30 staff, are frequently hired initially to consult on how a corporation can achieve a additional numerous audience. “Welcome to my planet,” she suggests. “We’re normally seen as the 1st responders to the Black box or the brown box.”
She’s Alright with this because Blackwell is confident she will overdeliver, impress the heck out of the CMO who hired her, get to meet with other C-suiters and have the opportunity to say to CEOs: “What are the points that are trying to keep you up at night that I can aid you with? Maybe I can enable.”
Larry James calls what Blackwell is up against “the Black tax. And so, you have to go in and hold your moi in check out and then outperform your level of competition,” he suggests. “She has completed this a number of instances.”
The tricks to standing out
“Opportunity does not appear in a person way, condition or sort or person,” Blackwell says. And so, she reaches out to everyone and absolutely everyone and serves on several regional and national boards to add and make connections.
Conferences are the important to accomplishment, right?
Blackwell has a different interpretation: “I’ve come to study that often the conference right before the meeting [that you weren’t invited to] is where by a large amount of the selections are designed.”
Like it or not, Blackwell states, everyone is their personal brand these days, so you could possibly as well embrace this point. Her brand is to be (1) bold, outstanding and decisive (2) overdeliver and impress and then (3) get on new jobs for a client and then repeat measures 1 and 2 in excess of and in excess of yet again.
Blackwell has 40,000 Instagram followers. Her posts feature her achievements, pics with well known mates, and extra than a tiny glamour. This lady is familiar with how to costume, and she can even make a mask appear trendy.
Blackwell says there are nonetheless occasions when she’s in a meeting, serving as a member of a board or committee, or making a presentation on behalf of PMM, and feels “like a unicorn.”
“It can’t just be the assorted major the varied,” she says of the lack of men and women of color and females in positions of electrical power. “We have to unlearn all this and reimagine the way we do organization. How do we get far more ladies and minorities to the desk?”
Steve Wartenberg is a freelance writer.
Kimberly Blackwell
CEO, PMM Agency
In placement given that: 1999
Prior: Director of basketball operations for Columbus Quest vice president of marketing and advertising, Zero Casualties.
Schooling: Bachelor’s diploma, Syracuse University master’s diploma, Xavier College.
Personal: Resides in Columbus
