The Bailey Blog

Photo by Oliver J. Lopena: oliverlopena.com

But, the Music Biz Has Always Been About the Green!

The new mantra for every company is "Look how green I am!"

Why should the music business - or specifically, the musicians - be any different?

Ironically music has always been seen as a force of change, rebellion and rooted in social causes.

All of which sometimes seem to be way too fashionable and not too sustainable; I mean, I don’t care if you went to Woodstock - you don’t live on Love Street, you work on Wall Street; Live Aid was great but they still don’t know it’s Christmas time; Live 8? We got to see Pink Floyd come together.

So now the likes of Jack Johnson, Radiohead and the Dave Matthew’s Band keep trying their best of be eco-friendly - biodiesel tour buses, sending equipment to/from internationally via ship to reduce air-freight, smaller LEDs in lighting rigs to consume less power. All this is commendable and necessary - that whole process of thinking differently.

But new data has come from a Radiohead-commissioned study on the damage done to the environment by their last two North American tours; The conclusion was that the problem wasn’t the band, but the fans! The report reveals that 97 percent of the enviro-damage from the band’s 2003 tour - nearly 10,000 tons of CO2, the equivalent of 4,000 trans-Atlantic flights - was fan related. For example, when a festival takes place and there is seven-hour traffic jam to get in? Woops.

That points to the fact that most of America’s amphitheaters are located far from city centers with no means to mass transit.

Reducing fan travel by 10 percent is better than anything a band can do. But some venues are coming on board by allowing special lots and traffic lanes just for carpoolers and groups.

It’s a start.

However, when Dave Matthew’s went to tour stops and tried to convince venues to allow water stations where fans can reuse and fill water containers for free? No dice. Eight bucks for a bottle of water or two during a hot summer festival means a lot of green but not necessarily the environmental type…unless cash gets printed on recycled paper.

So what’s the solution? Education, and getting the word out to fans is the key - what can they do directly at a show and how do they find out how to do it?

Carpooling seems an easy step. The band has the forum via their own and record company Web sites. A communications plan to educate - cd jackets, info in tour announcement press releases, interviews to spread the word e.g., "Here’s what I meant by track five on the cd and if you are coming out to hear it, here’s what you can do…"

One day, instead of "Hello CLEVELAND! Are you ready to party!? Are you ready to have a good time? You’re a great audience!!" it’s going to be "Yo…Cleveland - you guys in the carpool lot ROCK…"

Tours aren’t going away anytime soon.

But nor should creative thinking if the bands and fans really care like they say the do.

“They are idiots.” “Bold and sometimes stupid.” “We want nothing to do with them.” “They are nincompoops.”

If you were the subject of a survey and those were some of the comments, it sure would make you pause and wonder what the heck you’ve been up to, wouldn’t it?

The ironic thing is that the first two comments were made by legislators about the media, while the latter two comments were made by the public about legislators.

Seems as though both groups have some public relations work cut out for them.

The public comments were made during a focus group about some commercials. The legislative comments were made during research for a recent story by MIRS, a capital news publication in Lansing, Michigan.

Given the legislators’ own abysmal review by the public, they don’t have much of a leg to stand on when griping about the media. But what’s more important is that legislators and others still haven’t learned how to work with the media.

Reporters can be your nemesis or your friend, and it’s much better to be friends with people who buy ink by the gallon!

Here, then, are a few tidbits from a media training program I use for clients and my students at MSU:

1. Be open – never lie. Hopefully, I don’t have to explain this one.

2. Be cooperative – journalists are people trying to do their job, just as you’re trying to do your job. They are going to get the story somehow from someone. Why not make it your story with your input?

3. Develop contacts – it’s about networking, just as in any other sector of your business.
Take good stories to the media – it’s not all bad news out there, but good news doesn’t leak out or have a court case started over it. If you have a good-news story to tell, go tell it.

4. Respond quickly – reporters are on deadline. They call it that for a reason. If you miss it, the story is dead. If you want to be in the story, which is generally better for you than not, you need to respect that reporters are often on a time crunch.

5. Never say “no comment,” – it’s about learning to say something to get your key messages covered.

It’s ok to say, “I don’t know” – but if you can get the answer the reporter will appreciate it and that helps you develop a good contact. (See numbers 2 and 3 above.)

There’s plenty more where those came from and, coincidentally, I happen to know a PR firm that offers media training as a service! But this is a start, so think about it the next time you have to deal with “The Media.”

As I’ve always said, “If the pen is mightier than the sword, imagine what a printing press can do!”