I spoke at the Film, Stage and ShowBiz Expo at the LA Convention Center over the weekend. This is an excellent conference where the entire entertainment industry gets together, hangs out and interacts with each other, and works on really good specific issues for the attendees.
There were panels and round-tables on every aspect of movies, music, video, and live events. Naturally I was a part of the marketing sessions. And it was very gratifying to hear the important basics being brought to the forefront, even when talking to these incredibly creative musicians, actors, producers, and directors.
Mary-Ann Harris, the publicist for ShowBiz Expo made sure that everyone listening was aware that for good PR practices you have to know who you are ultimately talking to. It doesn’t make sense to spend time and money trying to get the wrong people. If you need to influence music fans between 12 and 20 years old, then that is who you go after. And you make sure you’re not wasting time trying to reach people over 45 or who aren’t interested in the latest music. Or if you are a musician who is writing for movies, then you want to make sure the blogs and magazines talking to the movie industry are talking about you.
Alex Ben Block, Editor-at-Large at The Hollywood Reporter echoed the ideas in my last blog posting. He said to not bother sending a press release to a journalist, because they don’t have time to read it. You have to email or call the journalist first to make sure they are interested at this moment. If they are, THEN you get to send the press release.
Joyce Chow of MBN, the Newsvideoweb company has over 40 million links on the internet gave some great advice on how to use the existing blogs. Richard Kelleher, “World’s first Marketing Sociologist,” gave the crowd excellent tips on how to use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube to get your message out there.
Next, Richard and I talked to a room full of musicians and music industry people. It is important for everyone who intends to become a star to know who they want to reach, what they want to say, and that they have a vision of what they want to achieve during the next five years. I told the story of how Nikki Sixx walked into my office all those years ago to tell me he was starting a band called Motley Crue. He then proceeded to tell me a very well thought-out marketing and branding plan! And he stuck to it!
That’s how I like to get musicians and actors thinking about their careers– think in terms of your brand, who you want to influence and what your five year vision is. And then stick to it, and don’t let anything stop you.
Tags: get famous, personal brand
Dennis was terrific. Everyone should hear the Nikki Sixx story. Tell him to do a video and put it up on YouTube. Maybe he already has!
Speaking of 21st Century marketing tools (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.), I discovered this post via Google’s blogsearch.google.com. This is the only tool I’ve found to exclusively search blogs, but I am open to learning of others. I’m also looking for a tool to replace what I used to do on Technorati – ping, measure my blogs traffic, etc. Any suggestions?