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Richard Dawes - Music PR

Richard Dawes (on the right) spent over a decade working with numerous chart topping artists as part of the press team at various labels within the Universal Music empire, most recently helping Take That regain their place at the top of the UK pop tree as Head Of Publicity at Polydor Records.

This summer he parted company with Polydor to join forces with former Outside Organisation publicist Stuart Bell to launch a brand new entertainment PR agency, DawBell PR.

We spoke to Richard about his career to date, the launch of DawBell, and his opinion of what is required for successful music PR campaigns in 2009.

By Unicorn Jobs

How did you get into PR originally?

I totally stumbled into music PR. I was in a band with some friends from school and finished university with my degree in Economic History in 1996 and thought, “I’d like to do something in music or film”, as you do.

I somehow managed to get some work experience at A&M Records through a friend. I was only filing paper and answering phones but I loved it. Sue Allen, the HR manager at the time, lived near me so she’d give me a ride home most nights during that two week period, which I guess kind of turned into an extended informal interview. I got offered a job at [A&M’s sister label] Island Records, in the press department. I learnt the basic idea behind music PR from watching how the other press officers operated, and by filing the cuttings I became familiar with the papers and magazines that covered music.

After my six month stint at Island I was moved back to A&M to work as the assistant in the press department there under Andy Prevezer, who I owe much of my basic knowledge of PR too.

You were most recently Head Of Publicity at Polydor, how did that job come about?

The aforementioned Andy basically took me with him when A&M closed down 14 months later and he was poached by Lucian Grainge to be the Director Of Artist Development at [another A&M sister label] Polydor. When an opening appeared in the Polydor press dept I took it and worked my way up. By the time I left Polydor I held the role of Head Of Publicity. I’ll miss it there, they’re such a brilliant bunch, and I owe a lot to my old boss Selina Webb who definitely helped mould me into the publicist I am today.

What inspired you guys to set up DawBell?

Both Stu and I had worked for big companies for over a decade and were both at that point in our careers where we felt it was time to have a go at putting everything we’d learnt into our own thing.

You obviously both have great music credentials, and your initial roster is music based. Will DawBell work exclusively on music projects?

We want the core of our business to be music as it’s important to have a speciality. Music is our first love too, so it makes sense. However, we are looking at a few other things outside of music that look quite exciting and eventually we’d like to diversify once the company is properly established.

Will you work primarily for record companies on album campaigns, or will you represent artists directly on a day-to-day basis?

We’re aiming to work on all aspects of music PR – album/single campaigns, tours, one off events as well as more personal artist PR services.

When you launched earlier this month you mentioned that DawBell will offer a wider range of communication services than traditional music PR, what do you mean by that?

Traditional PR tends to focus on the print press. We are offering a service that combines online and offline press with radio and TV publicity (and that’s hitting news channels and entertainment programmes rather than traditional music plugging – ie persuading Radio 1 and MTV to playlist a track), as well as using blogging and social media. Our strategies will cover all bases – meaning we offer powerful and high impact coverage on anything that we do.

Has the internet and social media had a big impact on entertainment PR?

Definitely. Any PR that doesn’t utilise Twitter, Facebook, bebo, MySpace and blogging to enhance the interface between the artist/client and the media, as well as the early adopters/connectors in the public domain, is being left behind.

The internet and social networking connects everything now – if an artist creates a talking point on a late night TV show it’s on the web the next morning, if a band split up it can be on Twitter before you get a chance to get out an official press release – there’s no hiding from the story anymore, it’s all about how you control it.

What skills do you think a successful entertainment publicist needs in 2009 – which old skills remain, what new skills are required?

Things like being a half decent writer and communicator are obviously standard. Beyond that, I think it’s still incredibly important to have great relationships with the media, especially the people that are at the core of the areas you speak to on a regular basis. PRs can’t just rely on a directory of media contacts to cold call. PR still needs to be personal, pick up the phone and speak to people rather than send off a blanket email. No-one likes a mail shot.

Be creative. We like to come up with things that haven’t been done before. Coming up with stories, angles, stunts that will get noticed or get people talking is incredibly important in an age where there is so much information travelling back and forth, artists/bands need to stand out from the crowd.

The ability to think on your feet is important, as things rarely go according to plan. We’re also all needing to adapt to a fast changing environment, it’s only the tip of the iceberg right now – I think PR is going to continue to change for the next few years and we all need to keep up with the new, inventive and most effective ways of getting publicity for the people and products we represent as people change the way in which they consume information.

What advice would you have for someone embarking on a career in entertainment PR?

Pursue an area that you’re passionate about.

Find a mentor, someone you can work alongside who’s been in PR for a while you can learn from.

Shoot high for the big accounts as that’s where you’ll get the most experience.

Ask questions.

Try to break away from being too methodical. It’s good to apply a basic science to PR as you need to cover all the obvious bases, but try to be creative and look for ways to do things that haven’t been tried before. Things that will make people sit up and take notice because they’re unexpected.

No job is too small, all the best PRs I know spent hours doing the cuttings and filing back in the day.

What’s been the high and low of your career to date?

High of my career has to be working with Take That since they got back together. It’s been an incredible experience working with a brilliant bunch of people. The low…probably in my younger days when I thought I was going to get fired when Q magazine put Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit on the cover with playboy bunnies who had been superimposed on without our knowledge! It’s all been fun though and I wouldn’t change a minute of it.

Richard on the web

DawBell’s website
DawBell’s Facebook
DawBell’s Twitter