Hey friends,
I have been travelling (was in NYC last week) and slacking on updating the blog! But fear not, I’m back in action!
This blog post is about the importance of making promotional outreach personal. Here in Toronto, Audio Blood has made great efforts to get to know the people we work with on a day to day basis. The bloggers, the writers, the videographers, the people we’re sending emails to and constantly bugging about our bands, we like to know what they look like and what kind of beer they drink!
We’ve created events to get all these people together in one room, drinking, and enjoying music so that we can meet them face to face and enjoy their company! Do any of you recall the Hollerado Nacho House at NXNE last year? The NXNE Gala at the CN Tower last year? The CMW Rock n Roll Matinee? These events have allowed us to get to know the tastemakers in the Toronto community and build a network around our artists and brand! But more than that, we’ve been able to meet new great people who have wonderful tastes in music. That’s what we all are anyways; music fans, so to say this works would be an understatement. This approach works incredibly well.
We started bringing our philosophy to other cities. The Halifax Pop Explosion VIP Party was a great success and the Hollerado Nacho House in Montreal was a night to remember! After I toured this country and got to meet some great people along the way, these little Audio Blood communities had began. But as time went on I realized our Toronto based team was having a hard time making these personal connections with local media, industry, and artists outside of Toronto.
Audio Blood Publicity & Marketing Assistant Chelsea Dunstall and I put our heads together and decided it’s time we start bringing the love to other Canadian markets. We created the GMA position -it ststands for Great Music Ambassador! We set out on a hunt for the best candidates to represent us remotely in their home towns. We looked for the most eager and knowledgeable cats in town, with a passion for sharing good music strategically and an understanding of how we like to do things.
After a series of phone interviews we found the team! We now have GMAs across the board in Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Sudbury, Halifax, Kingston, Ottawa, and more! We couldn’t be more thrilled with our team and selections! I wanted to use this blog to officially welcome them to the family and say we’re excited to begin work together! Audio Blood staff are known to have a lot of fun, but boy oh boy do we work hard!
We are still looking for some GMA’s in a few select markets. If you’re interested in hearing which markets and more about the position please reach out to chelsea@audioblood.com.
The GMAs jobs will be to share music in their communities, keep their eye out for up and coming local talent, engage the community, organize events, and form personal relationships with the local, media, and artists. They will bring the warm and loving Audio Blood arms and wrap them around their local communities, one night big cuddly hug really.
As more and more of the marketing world moves towards digital solutions, we still believe a lot can be said for putting a face to a name. Being able to have someone tangibly represent a brand and a philosophy will engage and promote reactions to our music. Integrating street level campaigns with digital ones can result in some pretty strong marketing efforts and thus favourable results.
Audio Blood is expanding every day and are always excited to come up with creative ideas to help our clients achieve their goals. My favourite thing is when a client comes to us with a marketing budget and basically says “what do you think we should do?” From there I take it to the team and we get to come up with ideas that incorporate a number of marketing initiatives! Ohhh such fun! If you’re a marketing geek like me, you’d understand the excitement! We also lucky to have a very versatile team that can execute these campaigns from beginning to end – taking care of press, social media, media partnerships, sponsorships, event coordination, and more!
Whether you run your own label, company, band etc. it’s important to never forget the value of a personal relationship with your consumers! It’s easily forgotten in these digitally heavy times and lifestyle marketing budgets are constantly being slashed. It’s a fun time to be doing what we do because sky’s the limit really.
What are your thoughts on lifestyle/street level marketing? is it still important? Comments below!
Thank you for reading!
xo Sari
**read previous blog posts here!
