Christina Jensen, Christina Jensen PR

Who owns the problem of selling tickets and CDs?  Is it a publicist's job to secure press that will have a direct impact on sales, or does some press accomplish something beyond or different from sales?  Should marketing - ticket sales, ad copy, poster design - be kept separate from publicity, or do efforts often overlap?
 
This is an interesting question. I believe it is a publicist's job to worry about ticket and CD sales, which should follow as a result of good media exposure, but there are many other issues that influence sales positively or negatively over which publicists usually have little control and which remain the territory of marketing departments. For example, when I am publicizing a chamber music ensemble tour going to various venues across the country, making seven or eight stops, I am usually not consulted about ticket prices, when and where to hold the concert, or where to place ads. I do, however, always speak with the marketing and PR folks at the venues (often the same person anyway in smaller venues) to ask about the size of the hall, what they are doing to promote the concert, how many tickets they expect to sell and how many have sold, and which media outlets they usually see the most results from if they get coverage in them.  They are usually happy to discuss all of this with me - though a couple of times, I have been told that it is against the venue's policy to discuss ticket sales.  That's frustrating.  I try to fit my efforts in with what venues and labels are already doing, and if I think of ideas for what else they could do I don't hesitate to offer suggestions - even if it's technically a marketing idea and not PR. In some cases, I have been known to send emails directly to lists of teachers and schools in an effort to get group sales going.  I don't have a lot of rules about what I do and don't do.
 
All of that said, there is definitely some press that accomplishes something beyond sales. Feature stories in magazines like Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine, Strings or The Strad, International Piano, or general interest magazines if you are lucky enough to place a classical musician in them, are very valuable not for the number of tickets or CDs they move but for the opportunities they give for artists to define themselves. These stories are great for informing the classical music community, for including in press kits, and for sending to press in tour cities for background and interview preparation. I believe they are also useful for managers to send to potential presenters of the artist for future bookings.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

When in their careers should artists hire a publicist?

I think artists should hire a publicist when they feel like they have a plan to move their careers forward into the future - when they have a vision that a publicist can get behind and work with them to achieve.


If an artist doesn't have a publicist, what is the best advice you can offer them for self-promotion?

I would tell them to create a website and a list of email addresses of people that they know (or would like to know) and start keeping those people informed about their concerts and recordings.  They can also use Facebook or Twitter to let people know what they're up to.  There is a lot of contact information for press available online if you search for it, and I think it's fine for artists to send concert and recording information to them as well as long as they avoid messages that come across as desperately saying "please, please write about me, I am soooo interesting."


How do you choose clients? Is there a set criteria in your company, or do you decide on a case-by-case basis?
 
I decide on a case by case basis.  I have to appreciate their music and feel I can get behind their mission, when we meet or talk by phone I have to like them, and I have to have enough time available in my schedule to be sure I can meet their needs.  I talk to most of my clients a few times a week at least, and if we work together for awhile there are bound to be tough things to get through, so if there are any weird vibes or I don't feel like we see eye-to-eye on things from the beginning, this is a red flag for me.


Do clients on your roster know who the other clients on the roster are? Do they care?
 
Most of them know each other and many of them work together from time to time. 


Should publicists run Facebook pages, blogs, Twitter accounts, MySpace pages for their clients, or is that essentially the 2009-equivalent of answering interview questions for them?
 
It depends on the type of social networking you're doing. I maintain some artists' pages on MySpace, but these pages don't pretend to be the artist. I don't answer mail as if I was the artist writing. I would not ghost Tweet for anyone because it feels too fake for me.  I don't maintain any personal Facebook pages for artists, but I do have Facebook fanpages.  I often mention my clients on my own Facebook page and Twitter feed, because many of the contacts I have on those sites are from the music world (and the rest are family members and friends from elementary school in Independence, MO who already think I'm the crazy girl who moved to New York).


If you weren't a classical music publicist, what would you be?

Well, in reality I'd probably be doing some other arts-related job like grant writing or marketing. But in college I started as a chemistry/music double major, and entertained ideas of majoring in archaeology or English (they were summer school flings).  Just a couple of years ago I took the intro class at FIT in interior design. The real question is what would I be doing if I never played the violin, which I started when I was three.  Music has always been the main thing in my life, even when I've tried to get away to do something different.