new york city Archives - Ketner Group Communications

A Day in the Life of an AAE: From Bagels to Broadway

Posted on March 8, 2022 | by Jenny Bradford

When you ask a PR professional about what they do on a daily basis you almost always get the same frustrating answer, “no two days are ever the same in PR!” At least, that’s what I always heard when I was in college and trying to get a sense of my future in the industry. And if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably looking for a better answer than that.

I plan to do my best to describe an actual day, start to finish, that I’ve had as an assistant account executive (or AAE for short) at Ketner Group Communications – even though it is true… no two days are the same in PR.

A day in the life at the NYC office

So a little bit about me – I joined Ketner Group as an intern in the spring of 2020 and upon my graduation from Marist College in May of 2021 I became a full-time AAE! (Check out my previous blog entries to learn more about what I do outside of the 9:00-5:00.)

I work in Ketner Group’s NYC office which sits right across from Lincoln Center and is even closer to the set of Live with Kelly and Ryan on ABC. I work from the office about two times a week and the other days I work from my apartment or a local coffee shop.

On this cold winter Monday, I started my day as every New Yorker should, with a bagel (paid for by KG’s monthly snack budget – we all get to spend $15 a month on snacks!).

Starting the workday

One of my favorite things about working for Ketner Group is that my role changes on every client account.

For example, sometimes I am primarily in charge of media relations while other times I lead content development, and other times I support my more senior team members with miscellaneous tasks as they come up. My account managers send weekly tasks lists on Mondays and are always one email or Slack message away for any questions I may have.

aae day in the life ketner group account

After checking my email and reading up on retail tech news, which I do every day, I began my first item on my to-do list: sending out a pitch. I used Cision to help build the media list with relevant editorial contacts at both trade and top-tier publications.

Then I switched hats, so to speak, and drafted a bylined article for another client based on an e-book they created. Bylines are my favorite projects. I really love working with our client thought leaders and compiling their ideas into a compelling story.

My after lunch to-do’s

After lunch, the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) committee met to discuss our plans for a company survey. Our committee works with The Courage Collective to make sure we are creating a supportive space for everyone and are living up to our company values. The committee is open to anyone so everyone has the chance to have their voices heard.

After the DEI meeting, I attended a client PR Update call. These calls occur regularly with each client as a way to catch up on ongoing tasks and strategy. My colleagues and I met with our client on Zoom and discussed current and future PR initiatives. After the call, our internal Ketner Group team met to make sure everyone knew their roles and responsibilities for the week.

Finally, I signed off at the end of the day and went to see a Broadway show (thanks to the Broadway lottery!).

What two years at Ketner Group taught me

While no two days are the same, there are certainly a few overarching takeaways from my time at Ketner Group. These include:

The title change from ‘intern’ to ‘AAE’ is a big deal – Since I joined full time, my responsibilities have grown tremendously. But, my previous intern experience (both at KG and elsewhere) set me up for success.
My team is always there to support me – Whether it’s on a project or with a personal matter, I can always count on my KG team to help.
Reading the news is essential – I listen to a news podcast every morning and spend about twenty minutes each day perusing the industry newsletters in my inbox. This helps me stay up to date on the happenings in retail tech!
Fun is just as important as work – At Ketner Group, we know how to have fun. We go to lunches and happy hours, take part in virtual celebrations like Halloween pumpkin painting and hold some great pop culture conversations in our #watercooler channel in Slack.

I couldn’t imagine a better place to have started my full-time career in PR and I would recommend Ketner Group to anyone.

If you’re interested in an AAE role, check out our hiring page or reach out to us today. I hope to work with you one day!

From College to Ketner: Rob Fallen, NYC Intern

Posted on June 15, 2021 | by Ketner Group

Hi Everyone! My name is Rob Fallen, and I am the new NYC Intern… coming at you remote from my childhood bedroom.

I’m a Senior at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY, but I grew up just outside of NYC! I’m an honors communication major with a double concentration in advertising and public relations with double minors in psychology and music.

Why PR?

Fresh out of high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do.

At Marist, I was placed into a program that helped me figure it all out. Thankfully, it brought me to an introductory PR course. Going into this course, saying I was terrified would be an understatement. My professor held weekly mock press events and challenged our writing skills, all in an introductory course?! Most people hated it, but it challenged me in a way I had never been challenged. From there, I was hooked.

Since then, I have had the opportunity to experience everything from PR writing to reputation management to communications research. PR has allowed me to not only be creative but be analytical in how I approach my work!

My past intern experiences have been in non-profit, academia and social media analytics. I have enjoyed getting to know the quirks about these different industries, and now I am super excited to learn about the retail technology industry with the Ketner Group team!

Outside the Office

At Marist, I try to keep myself as busy as I can! My two favorite extracurriculars include Marist Orchestra and Marist PRSSA!

I’ve been playing the violin for nearly 15 years, gratefully having the opportunity to continue at college. For PRSSA, I recently became our chapter’s president, which is quite an exciting opportunity as we transition back to “normal operations” this upcoming fall!

In my free time, though, you will probably find me perusing a record shop (or multiple) with a cold brew in hand. Over the past year, I’ve become a huge audiophile, expanding my vinyl record collection to cover my wacky taste in music. When I say wacky, I mean ranging from Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 ‘Pathétique’ in B minor to trans-artist SOPHIE’s Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides. Yes… feel free to judge me.

What About Now?

Taking on your first professional internship is not an easy task, especially with the backdrop of a raging pandemic and political unrest. I’m thankful for the morale the Ketner Group team has had, reminding me to have resilience. Overall, I’m thrilled to learn all I can from the knowledgeable and humble team at Ketner!

Jenny Bradford: The First NYC Intern

Posted on January 22, 2020 | by Ketner Group

Hello! My name is Jenny Bradford and I am the ~~new~~ FIRST intern in the NYC office. I am currently a junior at Marist College, a mid-size college in Poughkeepsie, NY. I am majoring in communications with concentrations in public relations and advertising and minoring in business administration.

This semester, I am participating in a program where a few students are selected to live in the city as we intern locally and take a few online classes. So, that’s where Ketner Group comes in!

Why I Chose Public Relations

Choosing a major for college was a daunting task. As someone who loves to learn and try new things, picking something and sticking with it seemed impossible. Luckily, I found public relations. I was drawn to PR because I love to write and solve problems and the flexibility of options within the industry excited me.

My past intern experiences have been in non-profit, healthcare, real estate and financial PR. I have greatly enjoyed diving in to all these areas, so I am looking forward to learning about the retail technology field next.

My Background

I grew up in St. Louis, Mo. before moving to Yorktown, NY, where my family lives now. I am no stranger to moving, but getting the chance to live in the city on my own has already been incredible.

In My Free Time

At Marist, I am the Director of Chapter Programming for the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA). Additionally, I am a member of the Dance Ensemble, the Student Government Association, and The Circle, Marist’s primary newspaper.

This semester, however, I am excited to go to Broadway shows and concerts. I consider discount ticket shopping to be one of my most valuable skills. As a result of this, my friends and I deemed 2019 the “Year of Concerts” and we hope to see even more shows in 2020, while somehow spending less than we did in 2019 (wish us luck).

To date, I’ve been to more than 20 Broadway shows and this semester Hadestown and West Side Story are topping my dream to-do list. Besides that, I am eager to explore new areas of the city and hopefully eat some great food.

That’s All for Now

I’m thrilled to be the first intern with Ketner Group in NYC. I know I will take away invaluable professional and personal lessons from this great opportunity.

Favorite memories of NRF – A Look Back at 12 Years of the Big Show

Posted on November 13, 2012 | by Ketner Group

This year, Ketner Group will have officially been going to the NRF Show for 13 years. A lot has changed since Jeff’s first trip to the Big Show in 2000 – an attack on our country, two wars, two presidents, a few recessions, numerous technology advances, just to name a few. We have been very lucky over the past twelve years to support more than 12 different clients at NRF, and make so many great friends along the way. Going to New York every January is something our team looks forward to every year, and this year, we are excited to launch a new KG website and our “Be Spectacled” marketing campaign. Be sure to seek us out at the show to get your own KG mustache and monocle!

To get you in the NRF mood, we’ve collaborated on our favorite memories from NRF over the years. Enjoy!

Caitlin: The Incredible (Yellow) Snow Storm of 2011

Hands down, my favorite NRF memory has to be the snow storm of 2011! As a Texas girl I rarely get to see inches of snow falling so quickly all around me, and I have to admit that my fellow Texas colleagues and clients got really excited, too. We had a snowball fight in the middle of Times Square and we all laughed so hard. My colleague, Valerie, picked up a fresh patch of snow, threw it at me, and we both realized moments later that the snow beneath it was…yellow. Yes, it was that kind of snow.

Jeff: Making the KG Mark at NRF

The very first time I went to NRF was in 2000, representing Cornerstone Retail Solutions, which later became 360Commerce. I met a senior editor at the time with Executive Technology, and she was bowled over that I had actually taken the time to connect her with a retailer to interview at the show – the client got an exclusive story out of the interview, which ran in Executive Technology and Women’s Wear Daily. Later that day, she brought a colleague by and introduced me as “the one PR guy at the show who really gets it.” My other favorite memories from NRF include the very first Rock and Roll Retail event in 2010. It was pure garage-band rock and roll and a great bonding experience. And 2011 was a blast, with the snow, a full complement of clients, and having our whole Ketner Group team turn out for the show.

Brittany: A Walk We Will Never Forget

My favorite moment was from NRF 2011. Catherine, Caitlin, Valerie and I finished up a long day on the show floor and dragged our tired bodies on board a complimentary shuttle bus that would take us from the Javits Center back to our hotel. Keep in mind that these Texans were all woefully unprepared for the extreme winter weather NYC experienced that week–10-20 degree weather, inches upon inches of snow, howling wind, the winter works. Even the 10-step walk from the Javits door on to the bus was uncomfortable. We found seats and settled in, and a few moments later the bus departed. Well, it departed only to completely die every time it came to a complete stop, which in rush hour traffic in the city is basically every 20 feet. The driver would brake, the lights and heat would go off, and the bus would go “guh guh guh gu gu g g” and would slowly lurch to a stop. You can only imagine the sighs of exasperation from everyone onboard by about the seventh break down, sighs that were only topped by the final breakdown, at which point the driver gave up, exited the bus and headed down the street – all without saying a word to any of us. So, there was nothing left to do but get off and walk back to Times Square. This walk, remember, is in freezing weather on frozen sidewalks. We slipped, slid, shivered and giggled uncontrollably the whole way home. And we couldn’t catch a cab to save our lives! If memory serves, it was an awful half hour for these freezing Texas girls, but we have never laughed so much at NRF, ever! A glass of cab in a warm hotel bar never felt so good.

Catherine: Bullets, and Babies and Broadway, Oh My!

NRF 2013 will be my 9thanniversary of attending NRF – wow! Thinking back to my first NRF in 2003 – I was newly married and so excited about my first trip ever to NYC. I remember being so excited to go out and explore the city as soon as I got there, but I was such a chicken (and was freezing to boot!) that I only made it a few blocks before I high-tailed it back to the Marriott Marquis. I really have so many favorite memories of NRF it’s hard to narrow it down to just one! Instead, I’ve decided to take a little trip down memory lane and highlight just a few of my most memorable moments from the Big Show:

2003: First NRF, first time riding in a cab all by myself, first time seeing a Broadway musical, and going club hopping with the crazy fun team from Wincor Nixdorf.
2004: Sal LoSauro and John Hall treated Jeff Ketner and I to a wonderful steak dinner in Manhattan then took us to see Rockefeller Center. After, we took the elevators at 30 Rock up to the (now closed) Rainbow Room for a fun cocktail party.
2005: I was pregnant with my daughter, Madeline, that year – so, when I wasn’t on the show floor, I stayed in my hotel room most of the time – watching TV and eating hamburgers and ice cream!
2009: Pregnant with my son, Nolan. That year, my favorite memory has to be when Valerie and I discovered that a client’s press kit box had been hijacked somewhere between Austin and NYC. Not only were more than half of the press kits destroyed, but there were papers in the box that were not ours, not to mention we found a bullet casing! Needless to say, there was a lot of freaking out in the hotel room that afternoon!
2011: This has to be the BEST NRF of all time. The whole KG team was in NYC that year, and that was the year of the great snowstorm that slammed the eastern seaboard. Because of the storm, we were snowed in for an extra day and got to explore the city – even got to explore Central Park! Snowball fights with our fun clients from Digby, braving a Russian Vodka room (which I think was a Russian Mafia hangout) with our fun client from Escalate, and we all went to a Karaoke bar and sang our hearts out until 2 a.m. Oh, and we did a little work, too!
2012: My favorite memory from last year’s show was getting to sit in the fourth row to see Mary Poppins on Broadway! Our last night in NYC, Jeff Ketner treated Caitlin and me to a Broadway musical, and we had a blast!