Tony Dinkins, president and CEO of Unlimited Events and Marketing in Yonkers, was preparing for a Mardi Gras holiday party recently when a reporter stopped by for a visit.
“We”™re an event planning company, so we have to go big!” Dinkins said and laughed.
Ever since high school, the Yonkers native recalled, he would gather people together for parties and events. One could say it”™s in his blood.
After graduating from Mercy College, Dinkins transitioned into work for Jet Magazine and sold advertising space. An emerging brand was looking to market its beverages and Dinkins said the company wanted a campaign in which consumers could sample the product.
“I thought, companies will pay me to put on events for them? That was the light-bulb moment for me,” Dinkins said.
He launched Unlimited Events and Marketing in 1994 out of his home in Yonkers and eventually moved the business into an industrial basement space. Two years ago, the company relocated to 92 Main St. in the heart of the Yonkers waterfront business district.
Though the company is based in Westchester, Dinkins emphasized the national scope of its work.
The company just procured a partnership with WorldTV, a Manhattan-based television service. “WorldTV specializes in delivering programming from India, Africa, Europe and Asia,” Dinkins said. “It”™s like a Direct TV type of service that carries very specialized programming in different languages to folks that are subscribed to the service.”
Dinkins said diversity is the driving force of company work, which primarily focuses on niche-marketing, both in a multicultural and mobile stance.
“One of our largest and most active clients is Western Union Money Transfer,” he said. “We work on their African, Asian, Middle Eastern, Eastern European and Caribbean regions ”¦ and our mission and assignment is to identify the means of targeting those particular nationals that are here in the U.S. and Canada; and how we can establish awareness about the brand and create affinity.”
Dinkins said Western Union has been a client from the company”™s inception and that in time for the holiday season, Unlimited is working with it on a “Santa Roadshow” and gift-giving program for African-American communities.
In his company”™s work with Colgate-Palmolive, Dinkins said he promotes a “Bright Smiles, Bright Future” campaign nationally, in which “Colgate created a community outreach program providing free dental screenings for children ”¦ they take an RV outfitted like a dental office and volunteer hygienists and dentists do evaluations and screenings.”
“We”™re seeing there is an acceptance of the need to have sensitivity in multiculturalism ”¦ not just from an ethnic standpoint, but from a generational standpoint,” Dinkins said.
It”™s that approach that is guiding the company in tests of WorldTV dish receivers at area ethnic churches, a mark of innovation in an uncertain time.
Dinkins said controlled growth is key, where the economy is concerned. “If you”™re a marginal company, this period is going to shake you up,” he said. “You have to make some hard decisions on where you”™re going to put your resources.”
