Everyone in business is anxious to reach the free-spending youth market, but how do you hit a moving target?
“Passing out fliers at a shopping mall or hoping somebody sees a poster doesn’t get through to today’s jaded, image-bombarded, media-savvy young consumer,” said Ron Vos, president and CEO of Hi Frequency Marketing.
Hi Frequency, based in Carrboro, N.C., promotes music, movies, fashion, video games and Web sites to youth. “Street marketing is practically an old strategy now, so the stakes are much higher when it comes to getting your message across,” Vos said.
Vos’ clients include hip record companies that promote musicians and rock bands such as Moby, Underworld and Limp Bizkit.
“What he (Vos) does is lifestyle marketing,” said Will Gibson, the general manager at Flip Records in Los Angeles. “He takes our sampler tapes to specialty stores, tattoo shops, concerts basically our tapes go to people who are actually going to buy them, as opposed to just any kid.”
For many record companies, this is just the kind of personalized marketing and publicity their bands and musicians need.
“We do grassroots stuff because it sells really well with a certain type of music,” said Karla Chee-a-tow, marketing coordinator of V2 Records in New York City. “If you see an ad, and then, you go into a jeans store and hear the music playing in the background, then you start making the connection in your head.”
A full-blown marketing campaign can run $250,000 for 16 weeks of work. For that price, Vos’ team came up with a campaign for branding the name of a new Internet video channel, IMNTV.com.
“Part of the project involved getting kids to send in videos,” said Vos. “We set up news crews to go out and videotape the kids; we also had to find contractors to mount satellite dishes.”
In the end, they gathered the feedback and put a full report together with photos and video footage.
The more outlandish the marketing idea, the better, said Vos. His goal for each campaign is to outdo the one before it.
“The music industry isn’t spending a lot of money (on promotion) lately,” said Vos. “Things are tightening up, but that just means we have to be more creative which I love.”
Working from dorm rooms
How exactly does Vos get the word out to his mercurial 12- to 28-year-old audience? Vos has 10 full-time employees based in offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, Carrboro and New York City. He also relies on an army of 200 field representatives doing marketing from their dorm rooms in 70 cities across the country.
“These kids are the types of people that can handle this work in addition to their homework,” said Vos, who says he plans on expanding his rep staff from 200 to 1,000 over the next nine months.
Vos prefers to hire kids with street marketing experience. “We’re looking for people who know their city upside down,” he said. “We want to know what clubs they go to, where they buy things they need to show us that they’re knowledgeable.”
His marketing jobs are posted on the Internet. The application can be accessed online at: http://www.music-industry-contact.com.
After submitting the application, a potential rep has to pass a written test. Then, they have to prove their reliability by quickly responding to phone calls and e-mails from the project managers.
“When I’m doing a project, I’m on the Internet and sending e-mails everyday,” said Vanessa Moody, a 23-year-old rep in Atlanta who manages two jobs outside of her marketing work. Moody says she works 20 hours a week at most, but some weeks she may not work at all.
“It’s either a ton of stuff or nothing,” said Moody, who eventually wants a full-time job in the music industry.
Supervisors check up on their young sales reps via phone several times a day. “We need to know if they’re responsible,” said Vos. “And the reps have to be outgoing enough to convince a store owner to put a poster in their window.”
Vos says he receives 100 applications a week for rep jobs. He pays them between $300 and $400 a month for a project that may require 10 to 15 hours a week of work. Reps do not get paid for music projects, however. Instead, he pays their expenses and gives them an opportunity to make contact with record label executives.
“I’m doing an internship, so I’m not getting paid,” said Moody, the Atlanta rep. “But the experience of meeting artists and working with record companies is priceless.”
Aside from pounding the pavement going store to store with ads, fliers and CDs by new bands, Vos’ reps also log on to Internet chat rooms to post ads, and hang out backstage at rock concerts with their digital video cameras.
Hangin’ backstage
“We give our reps digital cameras so they can bring back Web content for us,” said Vos. “If you want to see Buckcherry (a band) backstage at a concert, we’ll have live footage shot by our reps.”
Vos started the company five years ago in his basement with a used Macintosh computer that cost him $125. His passion for the music business began when he enrolled in a music business program at New York University.
Every week, someone involved in the industry spoke to the class. After college, Vos worked for Warner Communications helping a promotional rep ship records. He also worked for Mammoth Records and Geffen Records, obtaining marketing smarts along the way.
Reporting by Julie Neal. Jane Applegate is the author of “201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business,” and is founder of ApplegateWay.com, a multimedia Web site for busy entrepreneurs. She can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].
