Stacey Sherman is a founder and media consultant at RSP Entertainment Marketing. Through her consultancy, Stacey promotes clients and coordinates all aspects of media, event, publicity, and image presentation. Stacey believes that everyone has a story to tell and she ensures that each clients’ story is heard.
It could be as simple as a rewrite and updated artist bio, a press release to let the media know about an upcoming CD release, or securing corporate sponsorships and planning a full-blown press tour–RSP Entertainment can handle it all. Stacey’s longstanding motto is stand out, be important, help others.
Table of Contents
3:07 – If you had to describe yourself as a band, song, or genre, what would it be?
4:40 – How did you get started in the music business?
7:30 – Can you give us some examples of what you do for clients?
15:20 – How do you work with clients? Is it expensive?
24:05 – Three things artists should be doing today to grow their fan-base and move their careers forward
If you had to describe yourself as a band, song, or genre, what would it be?
Most of my clients call me the rock n’ roll Barbie, because I have a penchant for shoes, and I have long blonde hair. So I would definitely say rock n’ roll, although I’m not like a hard, hair-band metal person. I can do a pretty good hair flip though.
The song that comes to mind when I’m working or when I’m trying to get things done for clients is the theme from Chariots of Fire. That opening credits scene where they are running on the beach. It’s all in slow motion with this awesome sound track behind me and I’m getting things done. Of course, none of that happens in real life, but that’s the song that I hear in my head. If I had a theme song, that would be it.
How did you get started in the music business?
How I got started as a publicist. I kind of fell into it, because I was always the go-to person when my friends needed something. I’m a planner, and they know that I can get things done. I was always the one coordinating—They called me the cruise director. So I was doing that because I had been downsized out of two corporate jobs over the course of 15 years. I was just muddling along and doing all this stuff on the side, and one day someone said, “Why aren’t you getting paid for doing this? You know, you’re kinda running the show, right?”
And I was like, oh no, no I’m not. But I stopped and thought about it later, and he was right. So I put the word out that I was going to be doing this officially. And a Facebook contact that I hadn’t heard from in a long time reached out to me and asked me to help with an EP release that was coming up. He wanted to get some press and generate a little buzz around that. That was my first major project that I did, and it ended up being this huge 10-day press junket. And things just snowballed from there.
Can you give us some examples of what you do for clients?
I do everything from basic stuff, like booking radio interviews for clients when they are going to be in a certain city, or if they have a new release that is coming out that is going to get airplay, I try and get them some radio interview time. Or a lot of morning news shows, the local shows have that extra hour of soft news where it’s kind of entertainment too. A lot of time, they have music on there, so I try and book that.
I’ve done things as crazy as getting a client a VIP tour of a zoo, because that is what they wanted to do. I worked with people at the zoo and did that. And I also helped create a couple of different charity partnerships for clients, one with Cindy Alexander, who tours with the Bacon Brothers.
I set up a partnership with Cindy and BreastCancer.org, where she is the celebrity ambassador for that organization. I also helped clients create endowments, or set up workshops with their schools or universities. It’s a varied, custom set of services that I typically provide to clients.
How do you work with clients? Is it expensive?
It’s not nearly as expensive as most people think it is. Although, I realize that ‘expense’ is a relative term. If you don’t have the money, anything is expensive. Indie artists especially tend to shy away from a publicist or even talking to people about doing PR because they think that it’s only fancy people or movie stars or major label artists that have publicists. They think they can’t afford someone like me.
And that’s just not true, because what I do is try and put things together, put packages together based on their needs. I tailor it from consultations for $100/hr all the way up to retainer agreements where it could go up to $1,000 or $1,500 dollars a month. At that point, you basically have me on call for, well, not 24-7, but as close to 24-7 as one could need.
Three things artists should be doing today to grow their fan-base and move their careers forward:
- Maintain your social media, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, on a consistent basis. Don’t just post pictures, “Hey, here’s me on tour.” And then a month later post, “Oh yeah, I’m going to get ice cream today.” You are not going to engage with fans, especially with all the algorithms and however Facebook is working these days. People don’t see your posts in their newsfeed. So you have to be consistent about it. I like to use the 80/20 rule. What that means is that you don’t want to be constantly battering your fans with messages. Like constantly encouraging your fans to listen to your music, or go to your SoundCloud, listen to your new song, buy this new record, etc. Instead, you want to give them something to connect with you. Fans want to feel like a part of what you are doing, like a friend.
- In order to grow your fanbase, bands and artists should research their current fan-base to see what they are doing on Facebook and Twitter. They should pay attention to what their fans are doing, and those are things that are not just related to you. Then start following some of those hashtags and groups. Interact with those people, because if your current fans are interacting with those people, then there is a tendency that they will have similar tastes in music. And that is a whole new potential fan-base that you could be tapping into.
- If artists really want to move their career forward and it’s not just their hobby, they need to start looking at what they do as a business. And treat it as such. That could mean talking to a publicist, or finding a manager. Have someone handle the business aspect of things. Not everyone’s drummer is an MBA, so have someone handle the business aspect for you. And make sure that you are putting a professional product out there. Don’t have typos on your social media or on your website or in your bio. Little things like that scream that you are not serious about what you do.
The best ways to reach Stacey:
On the web:
http://rspentertainmentmarketing.com/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/RSPEntertainmentMarketing
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/RSPEntMktg
https://twitter.com/rkstarprincess
Leave a Reply