Dee Clark is a Clark Atlanta University alumni with an MBA in sports and entertainment. What started as an internship during his college days, landed him a brand partnerships coordinator position with Rap Snacks.
As Rap Snacks continues to expand, Clark is one of the marketing forces behind the brand.
Clark talked about his daily responsibilities, what Rap Snacks has on the way, and the collaboration with his label, Hood Genius Entertainment.
What are some of your daily responsibilities?
In the marketing department, we think of things that’ll create us as a household name, and of course, we have to generate revenue. We have to try to also figure out how we want to close on certain partners and certain views, because everything in this day, and we’re selling a product, but it’s a creative way to do it by partnering with people and all that good stuff. Now we meet the old brand partnerships inside of the marketing department, and I’m deep into that system. I have a lineup of different businesses, entities, and relationships that I have to keep up with now on daily and new ones that come like every week.
What does Rap Snacks have coming up?
I was able to start a partnership [for Rap Snacks]with Sodexo [Dining] inside Clark Atlanta’s campus. Sodexo is already a partner of ours, but I was trying to see what we were doing. Like, “Why haven’t we pressed the gas pedal yet?” So I was like, “Let me press it and see what I can do.” Long story short, we started in Sodexo this fall, so we’re about to have a pop-up shop on the 21st of this month. We’re going to be navigating our way up to 300 to 700 Follett locations, and Follett is the bookstore vendor that’s basically like Barnes & Noble. They’re distributing to other institutions, not just HBCUs but other locations. That starts in November, so we’re putting together that rollout, putting together that plan, and how that’s going to look for us moving forward.
What inspired Hood Genius Entertainment?
I’ve always been inspired by music. I’ve always been inspired by entertainment. It was probably around my last year of college and I was like, OK, I’m already managing basically, I’m already figuring out how to put this brand with this brand, figuring out how to get sponsorships and partners before I knew what that was. This was right before the pandemic, so I always figured that’s what I would do, but I didn’t know how to channel it. Then eventually I was like, “You know what? I’m going to just make it full circle. I’m going to have a label regardless of what it sounds like.” I said, “Well, I can piece this stuff together to form it until I’m able to generate the capital to get all those things that come with it.” That’s where the whole initiative came from.
