Tips for culture marketing during A RECESSION
At our last IRL The Bu$ine$$ of Culture Event saw Sita Shah (Warm Street Creative Director and Daytimers and Sisu Crew DJ) hosted a selection of cultural game-changers at the frontline of their industries. We heard how they’ve been working smarter through economic ups and downs to build communities, create meaningful cultural activations and learned how brands can work with music and culture partners to deliver maximum impact.
Our panellists
Lauren Pavan
Former Chief Operating Officer at GRM Daily and General Manager at record label and artist partnerships company, GRADUATION*. A forward thinking marketeer helping artists leverage and engage with culture to grow their audiences.
Lodina Agyeman
Head of Brand Partnerships at Highroller, who are behind No Signal, RECESS, BIack in the Day, TLP and more, as well as being an all star Cultural Strategist for global brand campaign work.
Richard Thomas
Kano's manager, and a music industry expert and experienced manager with 20+ years experience as Director of Endless Entertainment. From the start, he has brokered countless collaborations that have solidified the East London MC as a multidisciplinary artist.
FOUR LEARNINGS
01 - PRIORITISE THE AUDIENCE
“For us, our audiences are the most important thing. Obviously we’ve had to consider raising prices as prices for shows and parties have gone up all around us. But we’re not doing it because our audience trusts us with this price. They trust that we’re going to deliver something really good and they trust that it’s not going to be super expensive. This approach is why people have invested in us and why we have such a loyal fan base that will follow us around the world. Keeping things authentic is the basis of what we do and runs through everything at all times.” - Lodina Agyeman (Highroller)
02 - MAKE YOUR FANS FEEL LIKE THEY’RE IN THE INNER CIRCLE
“We’re taking over Dreamland this year and one of our marketing ideas was to presell tickets through Instagram Close Friends. We have a decent social following but we wanted to make people feel like they’re part of a deeper Recess community. Through Close Friends, we’d show little clips of when we went to the recce, so it feels super personal for them.” - Lodina Agyeman (Highroller)
03 - THINK TRADITIONALLY ABOUT HOW TO CONNECT TO AUDIENCES EFFICIENTLY
"There are so many free tools out there that people can use: WhatsApp groups, Instagram Close Friends, Discord. We worked with Joey Valence & Brae (who are like the Y2K Beastie Boys). They have a really engaged, rebellious, anarchy kind of fan group and we created a Whatsapp group for them because they were doing a European tour. All these people joined so that they could meet people before the show and it’s the artist facilitating that space for them… It’s about creating value around community, and creating a community for your fans that isn’t just about shameless self promotion.” - Lauren Pavan (GRADUATION*)
04 - LISTEN TO PARTNERS, THEY KNOW THEIR COMMUNITIES BEST
"Brands need to listen to us because we’re the ones who understand our audience. We’ve had an incredible experience with C.P. Company recently where we’ve collaborated on reimagining an iconic piece. They were open to all ideas - while they had ideas themselves, they were 100% receptive to ours...” - Richard Thomas (Endless Entertainment)
