Successful Musicians Podcast – Episode #47:  Unveiling the PR Mastermind with Andrew Seth Cohen

Successful Musicians Podcast Episode 47

Interviewee: Andrew Seth Cohen

Interviewer: Jason Tonioli

Hey, this is Jason Tonioli. I’m a piano player that grew up believing it wasn’t possible to earn a living and support a family with music. I’ve proven that idea was wrong and I’ve met hundreds of other people who have found success with their music. This podcast features stories of musicians who have found their own personal version of success and fulfillment in both music and life. This podcast is meant to inspire musicians and help them believe in their abilities and motivate them to share their talents with others. This is the Successful Musicians Podcast. 

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Jason: Welcome to the podcast today. My special guest is Andrew Seth Cohen. You’re one of the founders of Impact24 PR, and he’s a guy that’s been doing PR pretty much your whole career, it sounds like.

Andrew: Yup!

Jason: You’ve also worked on a bunch of really cool projects as a producer and a director. You’ve done a lot of music videos. Looks like I know you’ve done stuff. You did a project with Carrie Underwood. Nobody’s ever heard of her. You’ve had some really exciting things that I know you’ve done in your career, but I’m excited to bring you on today to just share thoughts on PR with musicians and people that are thinking, hey, do I need a PR? Or what even is PR? Welcome to the show.

Andrew: Thanks so much for having me, Jason. Appreciate it.

Jason: Andrew, I always like to start out and get the origins of how did you end up where you’re at now? It usually started with something with music. Rewind the clock back and share a little bit about what you do.

Andrew: Sure. My story and music actually start before I’m born. I’m a rare L. A. Native. I was born here. A lot of people are transplants here, but I was born here. Not only that, but my parents were also born here. Part of the reason my parents were born here is on my mom’s side. My grandfather moved out to L. A in the ’50s to pursue composing for television. He was a composer. He worked as a music supervisor and composer on shows like GunSmoke and Have Gun Will Travel and Wild Wild West and Twilight Zone and Y-5-0. He was a staff composer and music supervisor at CBS. I like to bring that up because I always like to say that even though I’m not a musician myself, composing is in my blood. I did choirs and stuff over the years in school, but I always was more drawn to film. I took a class in high school, and I thought Black and White films had nothing to offer me. I came out of the class with A Black and White film, Charlie Chaplain is the Great Dictator being my favorite film of the class. I just fell in love with storytelling, and I thought that film and television are a great medium to tell stories.

I pursued a degree in film studies and being from L. A., every summer I was fortunate to come home and try different internships. One of my first internships, by coincidence, was for a PR firm that was specializing in film, intelligence and television composers. At that company, I actually started out as an intern focusing more on production. Creating behind the scenes videos, studio tours, stuff like that. Eventually, I tried different things. I graduated. I worked for a year in film development. Couldn’t really find a job in development. It was just a competitive time. I looked around and I worked around. I hit up my old PR firm and I was like, Hey, do you have any openings? It was the right place, right time, and they were looking for an assistant. I was very fortunate at that company that the leadership who I was supporting as a PR assistant, recognized and empowered young leadership. After about six or eight months, I was able to climb my way up and actually start working with my own clients. I went to the Sundance Film Festival, and that was a really big change-maker for me in terms of even more client’s opportunities.

Fast forwarding a little bit, after about two years at that company, I banded together with a few of my coworkers, and we decided to co-found a new PR company, Impact24 PR, where I’ve been since early 2017. We still work with mostly composers, but we have a lot of other great clients these days too. Everyone from writers, directors and producers to sound designers to costume designers. We really pride ourselves in celebrating the unsung heroes behind the camera in Hollywood and beyond. It’s been a real joy to help champion and support so many great musicians and other creatives. I really feel like my approach is like a documentary. It’s helping you guys tell your stories through the medium of press, panels, social media, etc.

Jason: I think the whole concept to just PR in general, you hear the word PR, but for most people who haven’t been in a class in school, at least to even figure out what it is, in my mind, I think when I originally thought of PR, I thought public relations means okay, that’s the person who deals with when something really crappy happens at a big company. They’re the ones that have to talk to the newspaper reporters. In my mind, if I rewind back to when I was a kid, I don’t know what they do the rest of the time. Hopefully, everything goes well, and they don’t need a job, but you’re grateful for that problem person, but there’s so much more to it. Maybe just talk a little bit. I’m curious if you were a composer, one of these people that you work with, who are the individuals that really need to think about PR and why would they even worry about that?

Andrew: I think that the main motivations are that a lot of composers are interested in PR. I can speak the most to composers, but I can talk about musicians after. For composers, I would say number one is business development and job creation. An agent or manager is more so directly reaching out to people and negotiating deals. It’s one of those things where they are more direct, whereas a publicist is more indirect. It’s like after you finish the job, now it’s made sure people know about it because half the job is not just making great stuff, it’s also making sure people see that great stuff and then you’re positioning your sofa for the next project. 05:38 The idea is that the more press you have, the more buzz you have doing other things like panels and social media strategy, the better perception that you have and because entertainment in particular is very based on perception and buzz, it really does help to get more jobs. 05:52 One of the first things that happens when people are meeting you at a networking event or considering you for a job is that they google search you and if there are more recent and impressive results about you, it can build more trust in you that you’re the right person for the job.

I think it is really important in terms of business development. 06:08 The other main reason people hire us is for awards campaigns. It’s a different audience. You’re not trying to reach people who hire you. It’s more about your peers because most of these awards are voted by other composers and musicians. It’s more seasonal. It’s a little bit less press. It’s more social media, more advertising on social media, panels, networking. That’s a whole other ball game. I call it a war of friendship these days because to some extent people are not voting on just the specific work, but also voting on their friends. There’s a few other reasons people hire PR, which is rebranding or changing your title, moving from songwriting to composing. There’s also artist fees as we actually do, promoting nonprofits or social causes. Then for musicians, the biggest difference would be it tends to be a little bit more local. 06:59 It’s a hyper local press for promoting a concert or album centric press for selling more albums. That’s a whole other thing. I always like to say that I have an entertainment publicist that happens to work with a lot of musicians, not a music publicist, because a lot of my clients are more interested in the entertainment trades versus the music ones but occasionally, we still do a little bit on both sides.

Jason: If you’re a composer, songwriter person that’s trying to use a PR firm, how do you measure success? My background is I grew up in the banking world and had 20 years ago back when newspapers were a thing, and I still remember meeting with these newspaper reps that had come in and they’d want to charge you thousands of dollars because look, we have this many thousand people reading our paper and I’m thinking, okay, you got like 70 pages in here and I’m a little blip on that. Thank goodness for online advertising and the accountability that now exists within me if I advertise or spend money. I think what you’re doing with PR, it’s a little bit trickier too, what have you done for me lately? Or, What’s your return on investment? How does someone measure success?

Andrew: I think that with PR, there’s intangibles and tangibles. I think it also depends on what your goal is. The most common one being business development, a tangible goal is the best-case scenario is that an article comes out and you get a call from somebody that said, hey, I just read this article and I was really impressed. Are you available for so and so jobs? That’s the best-case scenario. Does that happen all the time? No, but it does happen here and there. The second best-case scenario in terms of success is just something we like to call the oh yeah test. That’s something where you’re taking a meeting, you’re meeting someone new at an event and you introduce yourself, they’re like, oh, yeah, didn’t I read about you and so and so? Or I see you everywhere. That’s so valuable in entertainment and in music that people just already have this awareness of you, and it really allows you to secure bigger stuff and build higher. It’s one of those things where I think there’s a lot of value in those intangibles. The more tangible value is the volume of articles or how many panels are you on or how much your social media fall or increase.

I think that it’s definitely one of those things that sometimes can be frustrating in terms of its inability to be like, pay for this and get this but at the same time, 09:25 for a lot of musicians, your name is your business, and just like any business, you want to dedicate some percentage of your income towards marketing, and we think that PR is the best version of doing that. It’s certainly something that can pay off not only in the immediate short term, but also in the long term, especially if you do bits of PR over the years.

Jason: Let’s say somebody is just starting out and they don’t have a lot of money, or they think, oh, I can’t afford a PR firm. I know there’s a lot of online resources where you can… There’s a lot of do-it-yourself options for these days out there. So maybe talk about some of those do-it-yourself options and then when does somebody know, okay, I need to graduate into having people help me, whether it’s you or another group?

Andrew: Yeah, I think that there’s definitely a lot of do-it-yourself options. There are certain sites that will have submission forms for music or for your story. You definitely can do what we do, which is build a press list, look up journalists in their social media or their emails, write a pitch. You can reach out as yourself and say, Hey, I’m so and so. I just have this new album released or I have this new show I did a song for. Those are things that you can definitely do yourself. You have a template, you have a list, you personalize each email a tiny bit, but not too much, and just reach out and do rapid fire stuff. I haven’t looked into it so much, but there supposedly are these AI solutions for PR now, so those are definitely interesting to look into. I think you can definitely be scrappy and just do your own outreach to press platforms, to panel platforms, to social media channels you admire, and see what their response is. People usually respect that you have the chutzpah, the gumption to reach out to these places. If you feel uncomfortable being personalized about it in terms of the eye, you can also create a fake PR grail, and like [email protected], and just be your own fake publicist. I think that that’s something that can be working as well.

11:20 Let’s not forget that social media also is a great form of PR. Even if you’re just posting to your own channels, you can put $50 on Instagram to help your audience increase even or more. You can make sure that you’re talking to other people and not so self-promotional. There’s different ways to use your own platform to reach people, celebrate your collaborators, and advance your career. In terms of when it’s time to hire a publicist like me, it’s when you can afford it, when you feel like you don’t have time because your time is valuable, and if your time can be better spent finding the next client or booking the next gig or recording your next album, those are all great things. Why not free up your time that you’d have to do the promotion by hiring someone who’s an expert on it and can do it faster. Yes, there’s a cost, but ultimately, it’s an investment in yourself, and hopefully it comes back times 10 because the new gigs you book or whatever are paying for the PR times 10.

12:17 I think it doesn’t hurt to have a conversation with PR people and really understand the costs and the commitment because intro conversation with PR is always free. There are definitely PR firms out there that will start as low as a couple hundred bucks because they want to invest in and they know that they can be affordable and flexible now and grow with you that as you guys grow together, they can charge you more in the future when you’re doing your biggest gig of all time.

Jason: I know having been in the banking world and been through a lot of PR classes, I think the thing that a lot of people think is or they don’t realize is what is newsworthy? If I am an artist, if I’m doing an album, it’s like, that’s great. You and 10 million other people who care? How do you coach these people that you’re working with? What’s some questions that they can ask to help them find the story? Or what’s that hook that makes you interested now? Do you have any exercises you’d help people go through? I think the reason I’m asking this is I know even for me as an artist, I think I’m boring. I’m like, oh, I’m doing all these things, but yeah, it’s not a big deal yet somebody from the outside like you or a publicist comes in there like, holy cow. Do you realize how cool this thing is? If we just change this one little thing, now we’ve got a story that could be blowing up that would be all over the place? How do you coach people through that to realize there’s opportunities?

Andrew: I think there’s a lot of different opportunities out there in terms of your projects. In general, yes, there are a lot of releases, but any new release is so impressive. The challenge always with PR is not why should someone talk to you, but why now? So having an upcoming project release, starting a promotional timeline one to two months in advance of your milestone or of your release is definitely helpful because a lot of press wants to write about something before it comes out or talk with you before it comes out so that the release day, they can publish their story. 14:11 In general, having good timing is a good strategy. I also think the other thing that is worth it is 14:22 to think about your promotional angles not only when you’re done with the product, but even before. Are there some cool collaborators you can feature? Like featured vocalists or featured session players? Make a list of all of your collaborators. What are their followings? What are their interesting aspects? Are there any cool, diverse or music elements that are worth noting? Just think about your angles. And if there aren’t that many angles, hopefully at least there’s some other stuff from your past career that you haven’t over-promoted in the past.

Promoting a new album or a new release can be a door-opener to promote your career as a whole. I think there’s definitely opportunities to do it. I think it’s just one of those things where you ask your friends what they think is promotable, ask yourself, write questions for yourself, and answer them. Hopefully, there’s a trusted circle of people around you or a publicist who’s down to give advice that can help talk it out with you. 15:12 For everyone, it’s a different way to discover what makes something marketable. If there isn’t anything yet, you can always make news things, like a music video or Instagram, real-style content or a cool album cover or a concert poster. You have to just keep finding ways to create things that make it feel more notable. The more you do, the more buzz you surround yourself with, the easier it will be.

Jason: I remember back in the… This would have been 10, 11 years ago, I left my career in the bank marketing world and wanted to start a software company, but we wanted to sell our software to banks. Banks, they want you to be a big deal, I guess, before they do business with you. I still remember we talked; we called it the pufferfish mentality. There were times where I would intentionally, if I needed to do… I do like a FaceTime call, and I know of other people who’ve done this too, where they’ll go sit in a big fancy hotel lobby. You’ve got some fancy background around you. When the reality is you may be on a card table in your closet almost doing music, but I think it’s one of those places where you got to help people think that you’re bigger than you are. Eventually, the PR is definitely going to be the thing that helps to not have to feel like, oh, my gosh, I got to look really cool now because you’ve got things out there that show who you really are now.

Andrew: Yeah, exactly. I think the more pressed you are, the more confidence you’ll feel. It’s all about momentum. It’s not always about what you have done, it’s also what you want to be doing. Especially in composing, where people are sometimes wanting to promote themselves with one of the right projects that they’re like, this is my best and proudest or my dream project. Sometimes you have to just still use it as a door-opener and be a bit more like manifesting. It’s like, here’s what I want to be doing. Here’s my dream project. The more you put yourself out there, the better. Also don’t oversaturate. You do want to be calculated. But it does build over time. There is the snowballing effect, and it is about momentum. 17:06 Whether it’s working with a PR or doing your own promotion, it’s always good to just be fresh and popping and find ways to celebrate your achievements, but also those of others. You look like you’re one person who gives back and everything too.

Jason: It was just at a conference. It was Dr. Bernhardy, I think, but he said that your future determines your present. If you think about that, if you’re thinking, okay, I’m going to become this thing out there, if you don’t have a picture of what that future is, your present doesn’t… Where you’re living today isn’t going to be able to make those things change or the things that have got to happen in order to reach whatever that vision of the future is.

Andrew: Yeah, definitely. It’s good to have a goal and work your way back and create those building blocks. Look at other people who’ve done this. What has been their path? How have they promoted themselves over the years? Then that’s always a great roadmap for yourself or for your PR person. Yeah, definitely a big believer and ambition and organization as it relates to future goals.

Jason: When it comes to these songwriters or the composers or people you’re working with, what are their mistakes, I guess, do you see that a lot of them neglect to realize they needed to start doing more of? I just know there’s so many people, and I’ve got close friends that have done really big projects that barely even have a website. What are those things that you feel like people really need to, at very least if they want to be in the industry, what do they need to be doing?

Andrew: Yeah, well, definitely a website is a good place to showcase your press and your bio and your music. It’s a good thing for SEO to just have it up there and your Google search results. Nowadays, Instagram is a second website, so I think it’s important to have some presence there. Even if you’re only posting once a month or every other month, have some place that people can engage with you and follow you because if they like you and they want to keep in touch, Instagram or other Twitter, Facebook is the easiest way, but really Instagram, I think, is the best.

In terms of other things, some people will choose not to promote themselves when they’re really busy because like, oh, I have enough business. I have so many projects. I’m successful. Why do I need to promote myself? Well, the easiest time to promote yourself is when you have stuff to talk about. It’s always important to do some promotion because if six months, several years later, you don’t have those products anymore and now it’s quiet and you call me like, can we do promotion now? I’m like, we can, but it’s going to be less successful. You want to strike while the iron is hot.

It’s important to consider promotional opportunities, whether it’s self-promotion or social media or hiring someone like us once a year at least, I think is a good barometer. Also, other mistakes I see are people not starting early enough. They’re waiting until after the product is released, but really the lifecycle of a product is really important to promote one to two months in advance, really a couple of weeks in advance at least is really helpful in terms of maximizing the prestige of interests. Then the second thing is documenting your process. If you have a chance to work with a cool soloist or you have an orchestra or you have a cool session you’re doing of some sort, at the very least, iPhone photo even better as video or pay somebody a couple of hundred bucks or 100 bucks, whatever it is, to document you because it’s hard to recreate those things later. If you ever want to do any signature behind the scenes assets, you’re going to really appreciate that you remember to do it in the moment so you can repackage that yourself or work with a video team or PR team to help figure out how to get out there. Those are some of the things I think that are super important to a successful PR campaign.

Jason: I think honestly, with a lot of these things, part of it is just having people recognize the need to do it. I think for me, with a PR, getting those articles or getting a couple of pieces in the news is critical. A lot of artists never even go that far where they get a story about them. The sad thing is 20 years ago or even 10 years ago, a lot of the newspapers that did articles and had websites have gone belly-up. I’ve had feature stories on the front page of a newspaper, and it doesn’t exist now. It’s like, such a cool thing, and now it’s not even around. Interesting. I’m just curious, do you have any examples of people or websites that people could check out and say, okay, here’s a good example, or is there somebody, a story that you can share that maybe somebody that really did it right, that somebody could go hack what they did and look at the process and, okay, this is a good example. I want to be like that person.

Andrew: I mean, a couple of examples that I think of in terms of great PR campaigns I’m really proud of recently. I’ve worked with these guys, Leo Berenberg, and Zach Robinson for six or seven years, and they put the work in. They invested in my team time and time again. They made a point to make great content. They put them out there at events at every different scale. We did a lot of different levels of audience. We did concerts, we did social media, we did press. Their biggest goal of anything was to get an Emmy nomination. This year we had our championship window with their product, the Beardale-Yankovic movie being in a less competitive category than we pushed it before. We’re like, this is our moment. Not only did they invest in me, but they invested their time. There’s only so much that I can do for an awards push. The person themselves needs to be out there. I think that if you look at the roadmap that we did with them, it was definitely patience, but persistence. That was the one I’m really proud of. Another one I think is cool is another Emmy-nominated campaign this year is with Andre Rosman, and Kara Talve, and Hans Zimmer as well for Prehistoric Planet.

That one, it was actually nominated for Season 2. Season 1, we didn’t have that much runway. It came out only a month before the awards voting. We spent almost a whole year building up their visibility. One of the things that they really invested in is social media content. They came up with an innovative idea for the score. They used this triceratone, which is like a replica triceratop skull turned into a bowed instrument. It’s not real bones. It’s fake, but it looks real. That was a cool thing because it became a really known part of the push. It was a good choice in the beginning to build into the story of it. I think aside from being a cool sounding instrument, it did really help my efforts.

Then the other thing that they really did is they really hammered on social media content, like vertical video. My classic thing is a two to four minute behind the scenes video with a composer. It’s one of those things where I think that those are still good and it’s nice to have a signature long-form story, but maybe these days content is better consumed in one-minute vertical portions because people are just on Instagram all the time.

They really taught me that the vertical video and short-form video, that doesn’t need to be the authoritative, full story of the campaign, can still be very effective, especially if you’re consistent with it. Not only did they get nominated, but also, Andre, in particular, who posted the most, he tripled his social media following because people were finding it on the reels and stuff like that. It’s ultimately a collaboration. I learned a lot from my clients. They learned from me. I push them. They push me. I’m just excited to keep growing with these people that have invested in me for years. At the same time, I am always looking for new people to work with. I’m excited to meet new people. My favorite thing in the world is meeting new people and helping them because I think of this job as creative problem-solving through marketing, and it’s really fun to help people tell their stories.

Jason: For sure. I know we’re about out of time here, but if people want to learn more about you, I’m sure you guys have some case studies, or they just want to get in touch with you. What’s the best place to find you?

Andrew: Check us out our website, https://www.impact24pr.com/, or our Instagram @impact24pr. We have contact information on that site. Really easy to reach out. It’s always free to have initial conversation, consultation. We’d love to meet you guys when you’re listening. Thanks so much for hearing my story, and I hope you learned something and if not, I guess all good but just appreciate your time, Jason. It’s been really great to chat with you.

Jason: Awesome. Thanks for your time, Seth.

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