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Ready For Action!:
A Case Study in Creative Promotional Tools
By Kevin Anthony
Like all bands, my music partner Gene Harper and I began recording homemade tapes in our tiny studio apartment in NYC. We had intentions of getting a record deal with this demo that we were feverishly making. Once completed, we went to Staples and bought cassette labels, tape, and mailing envelopes. We then hurried back and labeled each envelope with the name of the A&R person we hoped would listen to our brilliant creation.
We sent our tapes off and gave them the usual two weeks before following up with phone calls. Not one of them was returned, and eventually we got tired of being pests and moved on to making more music.
One day while sitting in a panel discussion at the Winter Music Conference, I was suddenly struck with an idea-- in order to get our music heard we needed a different plan and one that involved a different approach than the U.S. Post Office. After chatting with several different A&R folks from different labels about how to get them our music, I realized the incredible amount of stuff that they receive. Most of it ends up in the trash and is never listened to at all. We felt our package had to be intriguing and should stand out from all of the rest.
We returned to New York and began to scheme up our new approach to getting heard. We designed a small cereal box that would contain a cassette tape. The cereal box had our name on it and all kinds of stuff like "fortified with vitamin bass", and "great tasty breaks," etc. We invented a crazy cartoon rabbit character and put him on the front. We took the files that we created in QuarkXPress to a local copy shop and printed them out on the digital color copier. Each color copy cost $1.49, so we ganged them up two on a page to save on costs. We then cut out color copies that we printed at the cut marks and pasted them onto stiff poster board. This gave the boxes a sturdier form and made them easier to fold at the edges to create a box top. The cassette tape was sealed up inside and the small cereal box went into a large box full of packing peanuts. Each cereal box cost around $5 to make and an additional $3 for shipping via the U.S. Postal Service. In all we made about 20 of these and sent them out.
We sent out a couple of these cereal boxes and got no response. It seemed that a huge box sitting in the mailroom was overkill. And in addition to that, I got tired of going to the post office and mailing huge boxes out every other day.
We then regrouped and came up with another idea. This time we would make some sort of nifty gadget that would better represent us. We were all about technology and how it affects us in our living society, so we thought of a computer chip idea. We went to Canal Street and rummaged around the junk computer stores and bought 50 or so motherboards of old computers for $10. We took them back to our studio and went to work with a hacksaw. We sawed little chips that were 2" x 2" and attached a tag to them that had the info about us and an orange sticker that was a warning triangle for loud sound (the stickers were used in plant operations where hearing protection was required). We found these stickers at a junk depot the Dupont Corp. uses to get rid of its technology and operational equipment in Wilmington, Delaware, and we bought a couple of rolls of them for 50 cents and used them on all of our packages. We then found a packaging company called Uline and ordered static bags used for shipping computer chips. We bought a box of 100 for $30-$40. We then inserted our photo, chip trinket and a CD, and mailed these out to labels. Each of these items cost $3-$4 to make plus $1.50 to mail out. We made a total of 50 or so.
This time, while following up, we got a response from the labels -- we were onto something! The problem was, however, that they liked the packaging idea and wanted to know where we got the stuff. Nothing was ever mentioned about the music that it contained. OK, on to another plan...
Sticking with the technology idea we kept the static bags and pressed a CD. We located a CD pressing company that would press CDs in bulk for around $1 each with no jewel case or packaging. Instead of putting the CD in a jewel case we bought some cardboard envelopes used for mailing diskettes from the same company that we got the static bags from. These cost around $30 for a box of 200. We created a label in QuarkXPress to affix to the outside of the cardboard sleeve with the name of the band on it. We then printed a white label on a laser printer, placed it on the cardboard cover, and put the CD and information in the static bag. This time we got some responses that were about the music! So now we were really onto something! Each of these cost $5 to make plus $1.50 for domestic postage. In all we had 1,000 CDs pressed and made around 100 of these newly designed press kits. .
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