>> Publicity is something
you have a ton of experience with.
We often talk about ways to amplify the brand identity,
whether that's social media or
the different touch points that people
have to access you.
When is the right time
for an artist to think about engaging
in a publicist to
help them further amplify their identity?
>> The time part is a good part of that question,
like with everything we discuss in this,
we go back to why.
Why do you want to engage one?
I think there's often a confusion
about what publicity even is.
It's confused with marketing,
it's confused with promotion,
it's confused with building a fanbase.
>> What is it? [LAUGHTER]
>> From my lens, as somebody who's
been in it a long time.
Before I helped build publicity agencies, I hired them,
and I thought it was something else too when I was
representing artists and paying
the bill and hiring PR for them,
I thought it was something different than it was.
Number 1, a publicist's audience
is not the music consumer public,
a publicist's audience are writers,
editors, curators, people like that.
They have a narrow audience.
A publicist is trying to build
your credibility and your visibility
amongst that audience, not the public.
People think about it the other way around,
I'm going to hire a publicist,
everybody is going to know about my stuff and
my numbers are going to go up. Can they? Sure. Do they always?
No. It doesn't work that way.
The right time is when you understand what it
is first and then you understand why you're doing it.
A publicist is trying to build
the awareness level amongst people who write about music,
cover it, feature it,
and they're telling them your story and your music
with the intention of those people
covering it in some way,
putting it on a playlist,
doing an article about it,
doing a feature about it,
interview, whatever it may be.
Then when they do that,
that goes out to the broader audience
of that publication,
and that's the reach,
nobody knows what's going to happen at that point.
This is where your origin story,
usually for young artists,
the first publicity campaign
is about establishing who they are.
The most press around them is going to be
origin story based so you want to develop that first.
Publicity is a way to disseminate your origin story,
get it out there, so that when people discover you,
if they want to learn more,
they can with what I would
call context for the listening.
>> Okay.
>> When people learn about you at a deeper level,
they might listen to you different.
>> Yeah, totally.
>> Certainly has happened with me a lot.
If I know a particular story of
an artist and then a story of a record,
and then you listen to it, you hear it different.
So when? When you know what it is.
If you don't know what it is, ask somebody.
[LAUGHTER] I believe that it's the responsibility of
a publicity agency or a publicist to
educate the artist on it before they do it,
so that they know what it is.
Because then you're not set up for disappointment,
where you do 3-5 months of
publicity and your numbers don't explode,
they were never intended to,
that's just not how it works.
>> Interesting.
>> The publicist doesn't control
that, neither does the media.
There's another way to look at publicity too,
every piece of press that a publicist gets you,
especially nowadays, with everything
99.9 percent of things being digital.
Everything that they secure for
you is a piece of content,
so publicist are content creators, in a way.
>> Now they are?
>> Now they are. They are
creating digital content for you to
use on your social media as validating content.
>> Yeah.
>> Someone else is validating you and you
can use that as content to push out there.
Changes the perception of how people look at
you when you're being validated by others.
>> Yeah.
>> This is what a publicist is for.
It's about getting the attention of people who
are gatekeepers and curators in the music space,
telling your story in a compelling way,
and fighting for you, fighting for you to
get coverage like that's what the work is.
If you're an artist and you understand that,
then I think you're ready for it.
Doing the brand identity development work,
understanding your message,
understanding the narrative that you want to
be told about you,
that particular time in your career,
knowing those things,
knowing how it works, knowing what it is and what it
isn't, then you're ready for it.
>> That's the confusing part. Well it's easy
to think [LAUGHTER] that
a publicist's job is to put that together,
like package it all up and send it off.
But if you don't actually have
a very clear identity of who you are,
then they can't tell it to somebody else,
[OVERLAPPING] you have to do that yourself.
>> Because they're objective, so they can
help piece it together
but the core of it's got to be well thought out.
>> Yeah.
>> The story they're pitching can't be,
"Artist from wherever releases new single."
That can't be it, [LAUGHTER] that's not going to do it.
There's got to be an angle or something that resonates,
publicists are trying to find what's
going to resonate with a particular writer.
They might do this keyword exercise
on a particular writer.
>> Yeah.
>> The keyword mapping exercise,
this is a good match for this artist and
this story or this writer likes to
write about certain stories or certain types of stories.
You try to play
matchmaker with the identity
of the writer or the publication,
and the song and the story behind it,
it's the same type of work.
So publicists can help you pull this all together,
it's their job to help shape it,
but you've got to have the clay
put together for them to help shape.
You've got to sort that out.
That's important work to be doing beforehand.
>> Having been through this,
myself with a few publicists,
it's confusing because you were just talking about that
external validation is so addicting.
>> Sure.
>> Whether it's from
people that you care about
or people that you don't know about,
getting that external validation as artists,
is a really important thing,
that positive feedback to keeping you going.
People are always saying, "Well,
you should have people do reviews of your work
or send it out to blogs and get on a playlist."
Then people are like, "Well how?"
>> Sure.
>> This seems like an obvious answer
to the question in some sense.
But if you don't have, like you were saying,
those raw materials and you're not ready,
then it's a total waste of people's time and money.
If the timing isn't
right and you're not ready to do that,
I think that it's a slippery slope
and a dangerous path to walk down.
>> Yeah it can be.
You've got to try to work
with people who are going to be honest
with you about whether it's the right time.
Ultimately a publicist has to do the work.
So if it's not the right time they shouldn't
be taking it on because
they're the ones who actually have
to advocate on your behalf and push for you,
and if it's not ready, it's half-baked,
and not ready is a subjective thing.
>> That's true.
>> Now sometimes it can be early and
there can be little brand establishment,
but the material's really ready.
It's just early days and
that's fine enough to talk about.
>> What's an interesting place for
somebody to start thinking,
because labels don't exist
in the way that they used to exist,
where you'd just be signed and then
there's the publicity arm and the distribution arm,
[OVERLAPPING] artists have the ability to piece
together whatever it is that they think
they need at any moment in time.
>> Yeah.
>> Working with a publicist is, I think in some ways,
a really great decision or a great choice for
certain people at certain times
and in other times, not so much.
I learned a lot by doing
it the hard way and then the right way later on.
>> Yeah, it's tricky. It's really, really tricky.
Sometimes a publicist is
the only team member of an artist.
It's often the first one.
>> Yes. That was my experience.
>> Because you have a choice. You have a choice in that.
You don't often have a choice of managers,
you don't go shopping for them.
>> No. [LAUGHTER].
>> You can choose and it's like,
you can get somebody onboard early to help you shape.
A publicist is really part of
an artist development team in a way.
Even though their job is to do the media work,
they're often a psychiatrist
and an artist developer and a creative consultant,
creative director all wrapped into one.
They can be a valuable team member that does
more work than just the pitching side of it.
But you're also going to them because they have
relationships with gatekeepers or curators or the media,
because that's what they do all day long.
It's a more effective move to make than
trying to become one yourself,
do you wear enough hats as an artist?
[LAUGHTER] Going back to the perception side of this,
I got an email from an artist a few years ago,
and she was referred by a friend.
In her signature, she
had a press quote from Rolling Stone,
and my eyes went right there and I was like,
"Oh damn, she must be good.".
>> Okay.
>> My impression of her, my perception of her was
already that it was good
because it was validated by a credible source.
>> Yeah.
>> I clicked the link to listen to her music,
I was listening from a place of,
this is going to be good because they say so.
Changed the way I listened,
it also changed the way I responded to her.
It was more immediate getting back to her
because someone with a valuable opinion
in the music landscape
says something good about this person,
they must be good,
they demand more of my attention.
Even someone who's in the business,
I was influenced by it.
>> Yeah.
>> I think that's a sneaky little piece
of the value of doing that work.
You can pull quotes and you get
like this validation from different sources,
even somebody who doesn't read
Rolling Stone might know that that's credible.
>> Yeah. I think they know what Rolling Stone is.
>> Right. So that's
another way that you can look at this.
Then publicity is different,
also, people need to remember this.
A publicist and their job
is way different when they're
working with an established artist,
as to work when they're working with a new one,
one that's on the rise.
That is pure hustle and a lot of nos.
You get a lot of rejection as a publicist.
It's a hard job because you work really
hard and your win percentage is tiny,
and it's very, very competitive to get you coverage.
When you are publicist for a major artist,
you're fielding requests, is a different thing.
You do create and go out there, but you've got leverage,
you've got either social currency,
name recognition, lot of previous contacts,
you've got previous press you can leverage.
It's a different job, it's fielding
requests and finding the right ones.
Sometimes people who are coming up think that,
that's what they're going to get.
>> Yeah.
>> Like the publicist is going
to have stuff come to them.
Isn't like that, you've really got to hustle.
You got to know what
publicity is and be educated on that,
I think it's really important.
Then you've got to know why you're doing it.
What's the purpose of it? How to communicate?
You show up and you talk to
your publicist with the voice of your brand.
[LAUGHTER] That's really important so
that they start to talk with the voice of your brand.
People don't think about that too often.
If you show up a certain way to
any of your team members, over time,
they will start to mirror that
and they will start to talk to
other people in the voice of your brand.