Meet Dre Manning of Black Crown Media

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dre Manning.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Dre. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I got started in video marketing in a very unconventional way. While most people know they wanted to work in marketing. I wanted to be a rapper. I swore before God that Jay Z was going to sign me one day. I did get to meet him at his office but he didn’t sign me. As my love for creating music began to fade my focus shifted to filmmaking. I taught myself with the help of YouTube how to write, film, and edit short films.

With aspirations to create bigger projects, I ran into a brick wall when it came to funding my bigger projects. This is something all aspiring filmmakers are faced with. Instead of applying to grant programs and playing the waiting game, I took control over my destiny. I already had the technical skills to produce the video content but I also had this knack to sell products. I understand how to invoke emotions and feelings in a consumer without having to say a word for them. At this moment I realized that video marketing and advertisement would be the ideal pivot to help fund films and tv shows.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
My road hasn’t been smooth in any way whatsoever. I chose to leave my 9-5 job in late 2019 and was forced to take 10 steps back because I had no foundation. People were approaching my company with skimpy budgets asking for grandiose returns. As I built out that foundation, I was positioning myself to make 2021 “my b-word”. Unfortunately, COVID-19 had other plans. This temporarily railroaded my company which had contracts lined with several businesses, who pulled out before the pandemic settled in. Now being in a forced recession we had to figure it out. Once again, we pivoted and this time, we moved into the digital marketing education space. So far it has been very successful.

We’d love to hear more about the company.
So I am the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Black Crown Media. Black Crown Media is a full-scale video production and digital marketing company that collaborates with small to mid-tier businesses and brands to help them make more. Whether it be to increase client sales, client engagement, client participation/sign-ups or to build trust among their target audience. We accomplish this by producing, distributing, and tracking cinema-quality video content that emotionally connects between the company’s brand and target audience. The thing I’m the proudest of is that I was able to take this journey with my friends and business partners Jamie Beckford and Steven “Flow” Pacheco.

What were you like growing up?
Dre Manning the child was the polar opposite of Dre Manning the man. As a child, I would cry a lot and I was very introverted. I spent the majority of my time rollerblading and listening to my yellow Sony Shockproof cd player and pretending to be a young Ma$e. I loved to read like a lot. I wasn’t the brightest kid in class but I wasn’t the dumbest either. I was pretty average.

Contact Info:

• Website: blackcrown.media
• Phone: 347-968-2841
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/blackcrownmedia
• Facebook: http://facebook.com/blackcrownmedia

Image Credit:
Picture of Chef – Lou Dynamit
The rest were shot by me

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