MusicWeek interview – Rod Gilmore

Rod Gilmore is the creator and promoter of The Doctor’s Orders and SoulBrew events. In the last five years he has run hundreds of events, including three co-promotions with BBE records that attracted a total of around 10,000 people. He also hosts and promotes regular events in London, Brighton & Plymouth, as well as managing his own career as a DJ.

CISION: How important is the use of social media as a promotional tool when reaching out to your target audience?

RG: I think this is now the most important part of promoting our events. The joy of social networking sites is that the people you reach have signed up for updates and so are already clearly interested in the events.

What are the pros and cons of using traditional media outlets and social media platforms when targeting and communicating to your audience? How do you think this will affect corporate label marketing?

With traditional media outlets you can never be certain of how many of you genuine target audience are reached and they tend to be expensive. They are however a great means of contacting potential clients that as yet are unaware of the brand. Social media sites are extremely time consuming but are very cost effective and can work as a new means of word of mouth promotion. In terms of corporate labels I am afraid I do not know or care.

What challenges do you face when positioning yourself as a DJ/promoter, now that social media plays such an influence in today’s media landscape? How do you feel about marketing becoming a skill required by artists?

I think the key challenge is to keep a level of consistency across all promotions so that the public face of your promotion remains at a high standard. In terms of marketing becoming an important skill I think this has always been an aspect of an artist’s work but has perhaps now just become a little more pronounced.

Would you know how to strategically use the variations of social media outlets to promote yourself? How are you involved in the communication process of promoting yourself as a DJ/promoter?

I like to think so as I oversee all the online promotion for all our events.

Which social media platforms do you currently use? And for what purposes?

Facebook, myspace, twitter, last fm, 100’s of forums etc to spread the word of the events we promote.

Stay tuned for more interviews on UK artists.

Next: Peter Adarkwah