PART 3: The Future

While some in the music industry are embracing social media, there remain significant numbers that aren’t. Notoriously bad at adapting to change, music industry execs at the highest levels still look to nonsense like Billboard’s Maximum Exposure List as a source for creative ideas. But it’s not just the high-ups that are the problem. From the confused artist to the oblivious publicist, social media still lies in the realm of newfangled gadgetry for many. With resounding cries of “I’m in the band, some one else should be doing this,” coupled with publicists that think, “That’s not my job,” the progress being made of incorporating social media into PR is slow, and so begs the questions, are we doing enough to incorporate social media into our PR strategies when breaking new bands?

Reputation/brand management is an important part of any business. When dealing with new artists or those flying under the radar, reputation/brand may be the most essential tool we have to work with. With limited resources and funds, this is often all a small band has to rely on. All communications affect the development of brand or reputation so all communication should be purposeful, with an eye on the consequences of said communication. With the prevalence of social media we can monitor fan and market response for any artist in real time, and adjust our strategies accordingly. Since this is new technology, it doesn’t officially fall under anyone’s specific responsibility. In the music industry the boundaries are becoming more blurred everyday and this is an opportunity for publicists to become a more important part of a band’s career. It is a chance to have longer, more involved relationships, constant campaigns, and larger impact. It is the evolution of music PR to a more encompassing level, blending elements of marketing, management, and publicity into a new kind of organized, team oriented, personal approach. There are several examples as to how social media is already being leveraged in new ways.

If you follow social media strategy, you’ve likely heard of Frank Eliason. As a manager of a customer service group at Comcast, Frank took the initiative to start tracking mentions of the company on Twitter and began reaching out to frustrated Comcast users addressing their customer service issues. Frank’s team now handles hundreds of messages a day and thousands of emails a month using the “ComcastCares” handle on Twitter. The effort has done wonders for the company’s reputation for customer service, and it’s all been accomplished by using social media to respond to customer complaints as they happen.

Another great success story is that of Dell, who has made $3 million from Twitter in the past two years. By offering exclusive Twitter deals, Dell Outlet deals, and outlet specific information via its DellOutlet Twitter handle, the company has grown to one of the site’s most followed users. The best part is that DellOutlet followers evangelize the company and retweet the outlet-specific info, spreading the company’s message even further.

Recently Amanda Palmer (on the left) of the Dresden Dolls made headlines by making $19,000 on Twitter in 10 hours. How? Simply by engaging her fans. She started with a spontaneous hash tag Twitter conversation, as the discussion progressed she designed a t-shirt related to the chat and put it on her online store while the chat was still happening. Four hundred shirt sales later and she’s sitting on $11,000. A few nights later during a similar Twitter convo, she started auctioning off random items from her apartment and custom-made postcards, taking in another $6,000. A few days later she tweeted about a donation only show for her Twitter fans, and brought in another $2,000. As Palmer so eloquently puts it, “Total made this month from using Twitter: $19,000. Totally made from 30,000 record sales: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.” Obviously not everyone can make this kind of money in a few hours, but the key thing to note is that Palmer accomplished this by using social media in a new and creative way to engage her fan base and deliver results. Not only did she make a significant amount of money, but she made headlines in the blogosphere and beyond.

A recent article in Advertising Age noted that nearly 30,000 journalists have left the profession since the beginning of 2008. This isn’t really surprising considering the faltering numbers of print media. The article then goes on to explain how major corporations are using social media to bypass the journalist and pitch directly to the consumer. Coldwell Banker, Best Buy, and MasterCard have all enlisted their PR agencies to develop unique, original YouTube content to engage their customers directly, delivering actual results.

While none of these examples are directly related to breaking new bands, they all represent the utilization of social media in new and exciting ways. They are delivering results and creating buzz not only amongst customers and fans, but throughout the business world as well because of their clever usage of PR. If this kind of innovation can exist outside of the music industry, then why can’t it exist within it? It is time that we caught up with the cutting edge ways of doing business. In an industry notorious for dragging its feet in embracing new mediums and technologies, it shouldn’t be difficult to make a splash. And we can do it starting with PR. As Francesca Caldara from Equal Vision said in Part One of this series, “Individuals are determining the news now and the press is just playing catch up.” While I believe there will always be a place for traditional PR, it’s time that we take the next step forward.