A Badge of Friendship promotes bands, musicians, events, labels, small companies and individuals around London through their network. Interview with Claire below:

Hi, please could you let us know more about your background and A Badge Of Friendship?
A Badge of Friendship started with myself and Paul, my partner, promoting shows for DIY bands in London. We eventually had a club night at The Fly but decided to move into PR because there are so many great wee bands out there that need an affordable, more personable approach PR and PR campaigns.

Paul and myself come from different, yet quite similar backgrounds. Paul toured with his friend’s’ band, Biffy Clyro, and took the photos for their first album – Blackened Sky. He also directed a video for the guys and his other mate’s band Aereogramme. This led him to take photos for Fender guitars and he also worked for various media companies around London.

I used to write fanzines then fell into doing some student press stuff. When we moved to London I worked for the BBC’s kids channel Cbeebies (cleaning rabbit poo and making cardboard cut-out clowns!) and various other TV production companies and media agencies and then eventually Southern Records. A Badge of Friendship is now a proper full time business as of end of last year.

I also write in my spare time for fun, you can check my ramblings here: www.weeclaire.com.

As a PR company working on new bands mainly you are certainly dealing a lot with media on internet (mags, blogs, webzines…). Please could you describe from the start a typical ABOF promo campaign?
We really need to know the magazines, website and blogs on our database very well for each campaign. For example, we can’t send promos to a metal magazine if the band in question are an electro act – that wouldn’t make sense! We target each campaign individually. We then need basic tools like the music, promo shots, list of tour dates coming-up etc. We’ll then organise all the information, write a new press release and begin sending promos and emails to our targeted list. It’s a time-consuming and methodical process but very important.

Are media on internet easier to reach and get feedbacks from?
Definitely, it’s easy to see immediately from something as simple as a Google search how much the PR effects the visibility of the band. It’s also easier to take screen shots and grab quotes from reviews, plus the internet is so much more immediate than print.

How a success on the internet (loads of plays, downloads, great blogs coverage…) would help you to break a band into the traditional media?
I treat the internet as the “building blocks” of a campaign for a new band. When there’s more of a buzz online, it definitely filters out, like a rippling effect. Bloggers are very important too and often tend to feature lots of new bands as opposed to established ones – we never ignore blogs. I’m always interested to see how many plays bands get on Fairtilizer, Myspace, last.fm etc because you can see the effect the PR is having and what people prefer to listen to – some bands get more listens than others. Eventually, all the buzz and reviews etc does make it easier to break into radio and print, however, you still need to be relentless – the more people see a band online, on all the main blogs and websites, the more they’ll want to read about them in print and hear them on the radio too…

How do you use internet on a day to day basis? What are the tools you are using the most?
I’m always on email, I’d say this is the most useful tool. If there are elements of a campaign that are really time sensitive, I know I can always access my email wherever I am. I also use our website a lot because we have all the tools we need on there for print and online press – you can download high res promo shots, press releases and even listen to tracks from our artists. I always just send press links to individual artist pages if they need any information – much more efficient than sending huge files via email.

Would you be happy to get all the stats from your leaked tracks? Do you think that those stats (number of downloads/plays/leaks) are more relevant than the records sales now to know the popularity of an artist?
I would certainly be interested on seeing stats from leaked tracks but I’m not sure if they have any bearing or weight against the popularity of an artist or whether they are relevant to sales. What the internet has done is slightly diluted the charts, and yes, it has changed them and made an impact but the heavily marketed / PR-ed acts with big labels behind them still dominate because it’s more of an issue of money. More money equals more visibility. However, there are the few now, because of the net, that will break through and end-up gaining exposure through other means. It’s a bit of a ying and yang situation really…

Internet has changed a lot of things in the music business: faster communication, new way to monetize music but also piracy. For your experience what are the pros and cons?
I think the cons are the possibility of tracks being leaked early. Leaked tracks are annoying for smaller bands because that’s their bread and butter. Bigger bands like Radiohead can afford to giveaway their tracks for free, so it doesn’t effect them so much. Another con would be that it’s almost too easy to communicate via email and, actually, it’s sometimes better to meet editors, writers and other contacts face-to-face.

Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have made it easier to make initial contact with people but I always set aside a few days a month to meet everyone I’m emailing – it’s so much better to meet people in person and I think it’s important to remember that the internet and email is great but calling and going for coffees is better and has an effect on the way those contacts will listen to what they send you – they’ll definitely keep an eye out for what you send them then.

Please could you let us know your favorite sites/blogs?
I love Glasgow Podcart because they really champion new music. They primarily feature Scottish bands on their podcast / website but also feature talent from further afield. New kids on the block, The 405, are also great. The website started as a blog and has really grown. Both these websites are run with passion, openness and enthusiasm, which is what’s needed in this industry. Other brilliant websites I love are The Quietus and The Line of Best Fit – both feature great bands and brilliant writing.

How much money could you save by using more digital in your day to day operations ? Is it also important for you to use digital services to have a smaller impact on the ecology of the planet?
We generally work “digitally” around 90% of the time. The only time we really have to do something offline that costs money to both us and the client is when sending out lots of promos. It would be a lot easier if all publications, radio stations, websites and blogs just accepted digital. I can understand maybe radio needing physical copies, would be good if we could eliminate that aspect entirely though. When we had the postal strikes last December (’09), we literally had to go to the offices of magazines, radio stations and websites ourselves and hand promos in personally, if only some places would have just accepted digital copies of promos – would’ve saved us a travel card and getting caught in the rain!

We’re definitely up for keeping costs low and we run our business, trying to be as ecologically sound as possible. We don’t really use a lot of paper, keep all files on online hard disks and distribute our promos digitally where we can. It may be easier for us to do this at this stage since we’re a small PR company but maybe things will change as we grow. I would like to think we’ll always try to be as environmentally friendly as possibly though.

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