As a public relations practitioner, one may find it difficult the first time around trying to get that first breakthrough into the media and have them cover your story or event. In the music industry, it can be very competitive with artists and musicians constantly promoting new music or kicking off a new tour. So if you’re new to the game and have no credibility, it might leave you wondering how you could ever pitch materials that would get picked up by writers and reporters in the media.
One successful technique that can be used is an approach created by Adisa Banjoko, a marketing professional based in the Bay Area. This approach is called “Pendelum Pitching” which involves the concept of pitching to smaller local media which in turn will support pitching to bigger national media. It is much easier to get picked up by smaller media and build a relationship with those people rather than going directly to the bigger media publications, television and radio stations. They tend to be very selective with who they work with. They often call local media contacts and check to see if there is attention at that level so having credibility with local media is key.
Once you’ve established those working relationships and gained notable coverage with smaller local media, you can then use that to pitch to bigger companies. And as the term “pendulum” suggests, ideally you could use the bigger national coverage to pitch to local media that did not pick up your story initially. The whole thing is like a back-and-forth concept, kind of like a pendulum. Get it now?
This is just one of many techniques you can use to build your relationships and credibility when working in PR in the ever-competitive music industry. Hopefully this helps when you are promoting new music or events in the future.
Justin
Marketing & Public Relations
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