Interview with Katie Carlson
Katie Carlson is WALK THE MOON’s Creative Director. Just out of high school she became part of their team and after graduating from college she was hired by the band’s management company and was soon working as their day-to-day manager. [ Links page for what was discussed ]
RW: How did you go from being a superfan of WALK THE MOON to working for them at Mick Management? Is that a common way to get into the business?
KC: There’s healthy mix of backgrounds of people who work in the business. The most important thing is to know the right people and have the right experience. Some people get there by going to the right college with the right program that leads into the right internship, and then land a job with a label. Some don’t go school but hustle with real life experience and get involved on a local level, start managing a band on their own, and then work their way into the industry that way. Then there’s what happened to me. I was involved on the local level. I came to college as a freshman already having a relationship with a band. I met WALK THE MOON after I had just graduated from high school. I was just turning 18 and was going to Butler University, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do for a major, I was just in a general marketing kind of thing, and I started working with the band. I had met them and ended up booking a show for them in Indianapolis and they were blown away that a person that they’d just seen once or twice had helped them. I ended up being what I call their “frienager”—a person who is just so excited to be involved, who loves the music. I wasn’t even totally sure what a manager even does, that term never even crossed my mind. I just followed my excitement for the band, and it turned into a lot of managerial work. I built a relationship, and when everything started blowing up they took me along on the ride as much as they could. I interned with their manager and got to be in New York for a summer. I was technically too young to have an internship for Butler credit, so we worked out a different arrangement.
I got to go back another summer and intern with their record label, SONY Music from being out in New York and close to the band, and going to meetings with the team. I was so young, I had no intention of trying to become their manager. I didn’t know what I was doing. Michael McDonald, who is one of the best managers in the business, was running their ship and just wanted to learn.
After college I worked at J.Crew’s headquarters as their receptionist. I just wanted to get to New York. The tough thing sometimes in the business is that the only way to get a job in to L.A. or New York is to already be there. It had been hard to take Interviews in Indiana and to tell people that I could pack my bags and be there tomorrow. There was this weird bias, so I realized that I needed to be in New York and found a temporary job. That way I could go to meetings, get in front of people, have coffee with them, do informational interviews. At some point the conversational they would ask “So what are you doing in New York?” and I’d say “I’m trying to get an industry job” and then they’d say “Oh, let me help you!” It kind of snowballed from there. Throughout all this I was still tight with the band. Being in New York, I’d often see them at shows. When it was time for them to make their next album they invited me to come back and work for them at Mick Management. After having been an intern there they knew I was competent, and I had a real resume and a strong rapport with the band. That’s kind of the journey.
RW: It’s so cool that you were already doing something on a professional level by your junior year in college, and while you’re on this meteoric rise with the band you’re building your skills with a degree in Strategic Communications. Most students don’t get involved at that level until after they have graduated.
KC: I was also working for MOKB, a local promoter and doing a lot of their marketing as well and getting a feeling for how shows work, talking to agents, things like that. I got heavily involved and plugged in on a number of different levels, and ended up learning a lot of stuff. I was super-interested in management, but knew I needed to learn about all aspects of the business. A manager touches every part of it, so they need to be aware of how it all works.
RW: Were you ever involved with WALK THE MOON’s street team? Since then do you still manage street teams? Is that something that is still important these days?
KC: We blossomed in the era of social media and used it to spread the word. The band came up right when all that stuff started happening. I created their Twitter account, and helped polished their Facebook. Social media ended up being their street team. They were always really good at using Facebook. Nicholas had a natural instinct for it, and because of that we never had a fan club or street team.
RW: You don’t need people to hand out fliers when you have Facebook.
KC: Right. We found that social media was easier and more effective.
RW: When you visited Ball State last year, you said that you spend a lot of your time trying to make their social media brand consistent. Do you work with the members of the band to stay on point, or would that come off sounding too artificial to fans? How do you maintain consistency while each member remains authentic? It could be a big turnoff for fans.
KC: That’s such a good question. We were recently in the studio prepping for their next album and I was conducting a lot of meetings with the band members throughout the recording process. We worked through a lot of that stuff. All these social media things now are so personal, and some bands are so transparent. When you look at an Instagram feed from a marketing perspective you want it to look editorial, have professional photos of shows, and have it read almost like a magazine. Different platforms have different styles and purposes. Twitter is a place where you can actually interact with fans, it’s also a great place for short bits of news. Facebook is better for longer text posts compared with Instagram and Twitter, which are very photo- and video-heavy. Facebook is great for uploading videos followed by a long paragraph about a charity you’re involved in, or something personal that happened to you. It’s very interesting. Back in the day you would post on Instagram and it would automatically get posted to Twitter and Facebook, it was all the same content. You’d say to yourself “Oh, I think I’ll make a post today.” Now you have to be more strategic. People want authenticity, but they also want consistency so that they can look at your page and understand it and understand what you’re talking about while they’re scrolling by. That’s really hard. Bands that are really successful at that are 21 Pilots and The 1975. I think they are both especially good at that, particularly in the alternative rock space.
In order to be consistent, the band has to agree on what the story is. WALK THE MOON had a really strong story in the beginning, and people understood what they were about. They were kind of quirky, ‘80s, with a DIY-look like they built it themselves, a band that felt really approachable, like your best friends that were next door neighbors and making this really awesome, fun music. As they’ve grown up that has certainly has changed. On the last record cycle we hadn’t anticipated the success of Shut Up And Dance and ended up chasing the story as opposed to being the ones to establish it. This time we’re establishing our narrative now and the band has agreed on the concept of it. What I mean by narrative or story is “Who are they now?” really diving into that, where they come from, how they want to speak to the interview questions that they get asked, and how they want to show that they’ve grown up and evolved.
As far as the question of individuality, I think there’s plenty of room for that. We just have to make sure that we’re all thinking about what is best for WALK THE MOON, not necessarily for what’s best for each individual member. A lot of stuff we’ve talked about is thinking of WALK THE MOON as one operating body that each of them contribute to. It’s about making sure that we’re doing the best thing for the story of the band and what keeps it all going, as opposed to the stories of the individuals. They each have their own individual accounts though that they can maintain and be the person they want to be, and follow who they feel most aligned with. Our bass player Kevin is amazing on Snapchat and Instagram stories and makes videos on the fly that are very funny. He’s very good in that space, whereas Nick the singer is really poetic and in touch with his emotions. You want to balance everything and find a way to move the story forward about the band.
RW: Do you interlink between the different streams on do they just branch off of your website? It seems like it could be an interesting to interweave them to help fans develop a more comprehensive view of the band, but maybe you want to just let fans focus on the stream from the band member that best matches their own sensibilities, like having a favorite Beatle. Does Kevin’s stuff link directly to Nick’s, and vice versa?
KC: Very good question. In the past we weren’t really connecting them with each other. Now we’re starting to tag people in pictures on the band account. Our bios link to the individual accounts so fans can find out more about each member.
RW: Did you explain to fans why the band took a break? Did you use to time to take the opportunity to work on a long-range plan, or did you switch off to other clients?
KC: We took a break because Nicholas’s father was diagnosed with Alzheimers.
RW: I remember that. That’s why Kevin was available to teach a class at Ball State last year. Did you let the fans know what was going on?
KC: Absolutely. We were obviously nervous because it was the biggest tour that we’d had yet. People had had their tickets for a while, but it just wasn’t making sense for Nicholas to be on the road. We made that call as a group. We had to think about it objectively, there were a lot of factors that went into it, including relationships with promoter that would be cancelling one of their biggest shows, but really it came down to family being first. That’s a value that the band has. We’re really proud we did that. Nick’s father passed in February, and he was at home with his dad.
RW: What a blessing that he could be there.
KC: It fueled his writing in the next album and thinking about where they should be going. The guys also needed a break—mentally, physically, emotionally. They’d gone through a really long two-year record cycle. They are coming back now completely refreshed, which is to our benefit. During that time we re-evaluated what the band needs. We had time to integrate the madness from Shut Up And Dance and think about what we need to do better on the next cycle, and how we can get ahead of all the things we now know about that might come, especially if we do our jobs well and have a record that is even better, which is obviously the goal. We took a lot of this time to reflect on how we could strengthen the brand and the story, and we’ve spent four months on planning.
What ended up happening is that we rearranged our team. I am no longer their day-to-day manager, I’m now essentially their Creative Director. I still work for Mick Management. I moved back home to be with my fiancé who owns a brewery. We’ve been long-distance for four years. I had been traveling so much with the band, anyway, so the company is totally fine with me working out of my home and continuing to travel a lot. There are a few other people in our company that are based in different places, and they’re fine with it. Now I just work on WALK THE MOON only.
RW: That’s really interesting. Most bands probably don’t have that luxury of time to look at the big picture.
KC: I think it depends on the artist. Some write on the road and keep it rolling. Some artists do well that way, others need time to set aside attention time. One of our goals in it all was to get the band all on the same page about everything and have a plan so that it will be easier and quicker to make decisions as we go into this cycle. Obviously unforeseen things will come up, but at least we have a strong foundation of where we’re coming from.
RW: How different is the new brand going forward? How does it change depending on who you’re pitching it to?
KC: It’s important not to offend the superfans you’ve had from Day 1. You don’t want to leave them behind or make them feel that the band has sold out. It’s also important to update fans into the present time, because it’s inevitable that four young men from Ohio who started to play music together at 23 are going to be different people at age 30, especially after having crazy success and going around the world, having all these new experiences, and having their lives turned upside down. We’ve been working on our campaign as a three-pronged approach. 1) Keep our superfans excited and included in the new story, 2) keep them as ambassadors and engaged for the new record, 3) convert the people on the periphery who have heard the song but don’t look up and follow the band’s social media and bring them into the fold with the story and engaging content. We’re working on strategies for each of the three prongs for the guys. Our new branding is essentially that they’ve grown up. The narrative has changed from “Aw, shucks, we’re those nice guys from Ohio who are just so excited to play your show” to the new story that is something like “You know what, we’ve been playing music together for a long time. We’ve been really successful. We’ve gone through trials and tribulations with each other. We’ve come out on the other side with a new record for you that talks about more adult topics, and we’re so excited to be a little more vulnerable. We’re still fun—we haven’t turned into a dark, brooding band—but the topics and lyrics are a little more mature, and we’re going to be less afraid of being ourselves.” That goes well with our fans, who are themselves also growing up. You have to mirror that, too. They’re not the same people either.
You have to remember that there is also a business-to-business story. How do we show our business partners that the band has evolved and that they should still pay attention to them? Industry buzz is really important.
RW: I’m thinking as you talk about how I’m going to transcribe this. I understand that of all the people I’m interviewing that you would naturally be the most concerned about what gets printed in the book since you don’t want to reveal anything that would jeopardize the band, or their relationships with fans or other professionals in the industry. But it sounds like a lot of what you are saying isn’t a big secret that you are trying to keep from your fans. Part of the magic of WALK THE MOON is its transparency and honesty. You’re not trying to manipulate anyone, it’s about genuine sharing. This work on the new brand isn’t some public relations campaign that you’re coming up with to fool consumers in order get their money, you’re just trying to clarify who you really are, and define the core part of it that you want to project.
KC: Absolutely. The thing that we keep saying is that it just makes sense. It’s the next chapter in the story. We want to capitalize on people wanting to know what’s happening. It will be revealed in the band’s interviews, photos, and Facebook posts. It comes from a very real place. We want to show people that they’re not alone, that their tough experiences are being mirrored In the music they’re listening to. They want to see themselves in the band, and the band wants to see themselves in the fans, so it’s a very symbiotic relationship. People want authenticity.
RW: You said when you were on campus last year that you use geotargeting for your posts. Can you tell from their accounts what part of the country readers are in? How technical do you get with analytics?
KC: Totally. We just had a big meeting, we called it our first “WALK THE MOON Summit”. We brought in our record label, our agent, our radio rep, our publicist, the people who work at Mick in analytics, Nick’s touring and marketing directors, as well as the band. We talked through the next album and a lot of planning stuff like calendars. There was also a huge focus and deep dive into the analysis of where the band is at with social. We’re trying to identify exactly who the audience is, who we are missing, what posts performed the best. We have historical data on each post so that we can measure growth against ourselves. Comparing ourselves with a band that has a million followers doesn’t really help us. We just need to look at each one of our posts to see how high it gets, notice whether video does better, on which platform photos are better, what type of text is favored, and what fans click on. That information helps to focus our efforts. We’re compiling this into some ideas on best practices for the band, and watching how their fans react to certain types of content.
RW: I don’t imagine that having a Summit with everyone in the same room is very common, to have all those professionals to come together for the same meeting. It sounds like it would be powerful to have them all in one place together.
KC: That’s right. WALK THE MOON is a special band in the sense that they are very involved in every level of their career and want to know what’s going on. They love feeling in the know, and to know the people who are working for them. They’re very team-oriented. My boss, the owner of Mick Management and I thought it would be beneficial for everyone to sit in the room and look at each other in the eye, to get excited about the new album together, to hear what the band had to say about the music, and to let the band also see how we were going to all work together. Bands often have misunderstandings and resentments about labels due to a lack of communication and transparency, but the truth is, we all want a project to be successful. If we can start at the beginning together it should maintain more of a balance.
RW: I realize that it was a private meeting and that there could be some company secrets discussed, but what a great opportunity to get capture some video for a documentary of the process! It would be the such a fascinating opportunity to be a fly-on-the-wall, and the ultimate behind-the-scenes view that superfans would be interested in seeing after the album comes out. On the other hand, it could make people clam up and interrupt the flow, they might not feel as free to be frank, which was the reason for doing it, and in the long run the meeting wouldn’t have as much more impact.
KC: Yeah, yeah. I thought about that actually, but it was our first one. It’s part of the band’s story, they have genuine relationship with everyone on the team, and wanted to be able to ask agents questions, like about particular shows.
RW: Did anybody at least take notes about the conversations? You might want to write some details down before they fade from memory and put together a booklet with a story and pictures about the Summit to add value to a special edition deluxe edition of the CD.
KC: That’s an interesting idea.
RW: When you collect emails, do you sort them by zip code, so you don’t send an announcement of a show to someone who lives a thousand miles away?
KC: Email is still a huge part of getting information to people. We often run contests, we just ran one for the 5th anniversary of their first album where people could win a signed copy and a bunch of old merch from the first record cycle that we needed to get rid of. We gave away some bundles of the CD and old merch and a grand prize for free seats at a future show. We are using a service called ToneDen which is really cool since they ask for name, email, and zip code, or you can just log in with your Facebook and we can go off that information. There are a lot of companies that give you all the information when you use their platform for contests and stuff like that. There are different creative ways to get email, the first is from the band’s website where fans can sign up or update their addresses.
The other thing we’re looking into is SMS for text messaging. It’s becoming a big thing because it’s the most successful, it goes directly to the person, and the link is right in the text. We text when there is a new single and tell people where they can buy or stream it. People are more likely to do it on their phone. It’s a more expensive platform but it’s more direct. If we can get people to give us their phone numbers we can text them, which is really cool, especially for younger audiences. Older audiences feel it’s a little invasive, but the demographic for this band’s fan base is 18–24 year olds, and they are already getting text messages from everyone, so it just doesn’t feel weird to them.
RW: That’s where they live.
KC: You have to reach people where they are.
RW: We’ve begun a series of initiatives to promote music of the Midwest. What do you think is special about the region? Kevin’s the one that put the bug in my ear about it being a good place to get started, since there are so many cities close to one another. His comment planted the seed in my mind to write this book.
KC: While I was living in New York I got a pretty good view of the Brooklyn band scene. It’s really over-saturated. The way people socialize there is very different from the Midwest, it’s very open and out in the public like in bars, because there isn’t’ a lot of room to host people. There aren’t many backyards there. In the Midwest we hang out at each other’s houses and backyards. We definitely still go out to shows, but we know a lot of the people who are there. There’s stronger community support for bands, and when a Midwest community gets excited about a local artist, that person becomes important and prominent and is supported by the local community. To me that’s the thing that you need to launch into a bigger space. You create draw and a community. In Brooklyn and New York each band can develop their own little following, but there’s rarely a band that comes out with a crazy following unless there is a lot of industry buzz around it I think here it is more natural. That’s what happened with WALK THE MOON. They were able to meet other bands and trade shows, they played in Chicago, Louisville, and St. Louis. They built their fan base slowly but surely, because they had a lot of the support locally in Cincinnati. I think that’s a huge advantage in the Midwest.
RW: We have a project at school called Middletown Music and are promoting music of the Midwest. One of the projects is creating and maintaining a database of small and mid-sized venues to make it easier for bands to find places to play. Do you think bands would find that useful, and if so, do you have any suggestions for how to reach them? Apart from the education value of the process of making, there won’t be a point in doing it if no one benefits from the collected information.
KC: There was a website that I used to use called indieonthemove.com, run by Kyle and Bryan Weber in New York. I used to use it a lot to book shows. You could search by city and venue, what the best way was to contact the booker, the best way to get a response, the person you needed to talk to. etc. It was super-helpful for me because I had no idea of what I was doing, I used a lot of that information to make cold call to venues. Your database would be very helpful. I love the idea of bands rating the venues, letting you know who you should talk to, this is how we got it in, and who are the cool local bands are that they might try to hook up with.
RW: Thanks for that suggestion on having the bands suggesting locals that they could share shows with. One of the reasons that sites like LinkedIn and Facebook have been so successful is that they get their users to do the work of adding value to their product. There has to be a value to someone if they are going to use the information in our database: bands can use it to help book gigs, fans can discover new music, and venues can attract more customers.
The information that bands report will be helpful, for example, to steer others away from places where they got stiffed or suffered a bad sound system. We don’t want to poison the well by having one band say a place sucks, when actually it is an important oasis that could be the key in getting you from Point A to Point B, so we’re thinking of including a “like” button rather than a star system of ratings. By having a large class work on this it can be more comprehensive and can be maintained from semester to semester, for example, to update and check who is working in each club, and to check if the submission process has changed. That’s something that one person by themselves isn’t going to be able to do because by the time they gather all the information it will be out of date. It’s also something that an AI bot can’t do, because the information is not out there waiting to be scraped, it’s built on eyewitness accounts that haven’t yet been written down. Venues don’t market themselves on their websites as musical oases because the customers they are trying to reach to don’t come out for that reason.
KC: Totally. I think it’s a really good idea. The more convenient you can make it, the more effective it will be. As far as getting it into the hands of bands, you might be able to get venues involved, and get them to help promote it.
RW: It needs to be a symbiotic relationship. Venues, bands, and fans need each other. Without any of the three the scene dries up. The second meaning of “Primer” in the title of this book relates to the desire to prime the pump, to help keep things going. The students can look at which bands have played in a club, and then contact them to get their data. It also good opportunity for them to develop their ability to use the telephone feature of their telephones to have conversations with people. Most students don’t seem to want to talk on the phone. We can give them the assignment of calling five people and talking to each of them for five minutes about their experience, after which they can put it directly into the database. It’s a win-win.
KC: The phone thing is funny. Our interns are terrified when we ask them to answer the phone. Many times when you get an internship you’re assigned to do that. It’s a huge part of the job.
RW: Being the receptionist is a big responsibility. You become the public face of the company, like a merch salesperson at a show.
KC: Absolutely. You’re the first person that people speak to. I solve so many problems by picking up the phone. Electronic communication will only take you so far. People misunderstand emails because they miss the speaker’s tone of voice. My boss always says “Pick up the phone, pick up the phone!” It solves so many issues. I always stress that when I talk to interns or a class. You have to learn how to use the phone. The little exercises you do with your class will be helpful.
RW: The part I’m enjoying most about writing this book is conducting the interviews. The part I like least is staying up until 6:00 a.m. every night finishing the writing. I love talking with professionals like you, beginning with the process of preparing for the conversation. I am doing what I tell my students to do to prepare for their interviews—taking time learning about each person and the work that they do, coming up with a lot of possible questions, and then organizing the best ones into categories. I print the pages out, highlight the ones I want to be sure to get to, and then as the conversation unfolds am able to jump around depending on where things lead, while checking things off and taking notes on the same paper. The conversation is stimulating, and it’s satisfying when the preparation pays off and something good comes out of it. It’s been interesting to see how all the different interviews for this book are interconnecting and relate to the concepts introduced in the chapters.
While listening to Kevin teaching the classes last year, I sometimes wondered what he might be thinking about the future. How much discussion did you have during your recent hiatus from touring about short and long term planning? Is it too early for the band to start thinking about an exit strategy?
KC: That’s a good question. Work is their life. They are around each other all the time. Even though it’s fun, it’s their job. We took some time in this process to get clear with each other about what they want. Kevin got married during this break. We talked about where they wanted WALK THE MOON to be by the end of this next record cycle, which could potentially be two years. What kind of rooms do they want to play? What kind of social media following do they want to have? A five-year plan is tough in this business. You just never know. It was better to focus on “Where do you want to be by the end of this cycle?” and just to be really clear about what they wanted as individuals. They’re 30 years old now and are growing up. They want other things in their lives, there are other things that they’re interested in. They got clearer with each other about that. We also talked about setting aside time in the calendar to go on that vacation that they really wanted to take with their partner. Nick loves to go to Burning Man, so he wanted time to go to there to do an art installation, those kinds of things. That’s the key to them staying more motivated to work, to be in touch with who they are, what they are doing, and why. Otherwise it can get really convoluted really easily. I think that’s very important. We’re trying to make more of an effort to keep them happy in that way.
RW: All this talk about the band’s process and the new album and tour has made me so curious to see and hear coming up with. I can’t wait to hear the new record and hope to catch up with one of your shows. It’s so great that you’ve been able to go along on this meteoric rise with them. It’s exciting that you’re moving into a new phase yourself and becoming more involved in the creative side of the operation.
Thank you for this inside look at management and marketing, and for sharing your story, which parallels a lot of the band’s rapid rise—going from an 18-year old attending a local band’s shows to now being a key member of the creative team and planning one of this coming year’s biggest tours.
KC: You’re welcome. It’s been a great ride, and we’re eager to see what the future will bring.
©2017 Katie Carlson and Robert Willey
RW: How did you go from being a superfan of WALK THE MOON to working for them at Mick Management? Is that a common way to get into the business?
KC: There’s healthy mix of backgrounds of people who work in the business. The most important thing is to know the right people and have the right experience. Some people get there by going to the right college with the right program that leads into the right internship, and then land a job with a label. Some don’t go school but hustle with real life experience and get involved on a local level, start managing a band on their own, and then work their way into the industry that way. Then there’s what happened to me. I was involved on the local level. I came to college as a freshman already having a relationship with a band. I met WALK THE MOON after I had just graduated from high school. I was just turning 18 and was going to Butler University, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do for a major, I was just in a general marketing kind of thing, and I started working with the band. I had met them and ended up booking a show for them in Indianapolis and they were blown away that a person that they’d just seen once or twice had helped them. I ended up being what I call their “frienager”—a person who is just so excited to be involved, who loves the music. I wasn’t even totally sure what a manager even does, that term never even crossed my mind. I just followed my excitement for the band, and it turned into a lot of managerial work. I built a relationship, and when everything started blowing up they took me along on the ride as much as they could. I interned with their manager and got to be in New York for a summer. I was technically too young to have an internship for Butler credit, so we worked out a different arrangement.
I got to go back another summer and intern with their record label, SONY Music from being out in New York and close to the band, and going to meetings with the team. I was so young, I had no intention of trying to become their manager. I didn’t know what I was doing. Michael McDonald, who is one of the best managers in the business, was running their ship and just wanted to learn.
After college I worked at J.Crew’s headquarters as their receptionist. I just wanted to get to New York. The tough thing sometimes in the business is that the only way to get a job in to L.A. or New York is to already be there. It had been hard to take Interviews in Indiana and to tell people that I could pack my bags and be there tomorrow. There was this weird bias, so I realized that I needed to be in New York and found a temporary job. That way I could go to meetings, get in front of people, have coffee with them, do informational interviews. At some point the conversational they would ask “So what are you doing in New York?” and I’d say “I’m trying to get an industry job” and then they’d say “Oh, let me help you!” It kind of snowballed from there. Throughout all this I was still tight with the band. Being in New York, I’d often see them at shows. When it was time for them to make their next album they invited me to come back and work for them at Mick Management. After having been an intern there they knew I was competent, and I had a real resume and a strong rapport with the band. That’s kind of the journey.
RW: It’s so cool that you were already doing something on a professional level by your junior year in college, and while you’re on this meteoric rise with the band you’re building your skills with a degree in Strategic Communications. Most students don’t get involved at that level until after they have graduated.
KC: I was also working for MOKB, a local promoter and doing a lot of their marketing as well and getting a feeling for how shows work, talking to agents, things like that. I got heavily involved and plugged in on a number of different levels, and ended up learning a lot of stuff. I was super-interested in management, but knew I needed to learn about all aspects of the business. A manager touches every part of it, so they need to be aware of how it all works.
RW: Were you ever involved with WALK THE MOON’s street team? Since then do you still manage street teams? Is that something that is still important these days?
KC: We blossomed in the era of social media and used it to spread the word. The band came up right when all that stuff started happening. I created their Twitter account, and helped polished their Facebook. Social media ended up being their street team. They were always really good at using Facebook. Nicholas had a natural instinct for it, and because of that we never had a fan club or street team.
RW: You don’t need people to hand out fliers when you have Facebook.
KC: Right. We found that social media was easier and more effective.
RW: When you visited Ball State last year, you said that you spend a lot of your time trying to make their social media brand consistent. Do you work with the members of the band to stay on point, or would that come off sounding too artificial to fans? How do you maintain consistency while each member remains authentic? It could be a big turnoff for fans.
KC: That’s such a good question. We were recently in the studio prepping for their next album and I was conducting a lot of meetings with the band members throughout the recording process. We worked through a lot of that stuff. All these social media things now are so personal, and some bands are so transparent. When you look at an Instagram feed from a marketing perspective you want it to look editorial, have professional photos of shows, and have it read almost like a magazine. Different platforms have different styles and purposes. Twitter is a place where you can actually interact with fans, it’s also a great place for short bits of news. Facebook is better for longer text posts compared with Instagram and Twitter, which are very photo- and video-heavy. Facebook is great for uploading videos followed by a long paragraph about a charity you’re involved in, or something personal that happened to you. It’s very interesting. Back in the day you would post on Instagram and it would automatically get posted to Twitter and Facebook, it was all the same content. You’d say to yourself “Oh, I think I’ll make a post today.” Now you have to be more strategic. People want authenticity, but they also want consistency so that they can look at your page and understand it and understand what you’re talking about while they’re scrolling by. That’s really hard. Bands that are really successful at that are 21 Pilots and The 1975. I think they are both especially good at that, particularly in the alternative rock space.
In order to be consistent, the band has to agree on what the story is. WALK THE MOON had a really strong story in the beginning, and people understood what they were about. They were kind of quirky, ‘80s, with a DIY-look like they built it themselves, a band that felt really approachable, like your best friends that were next door neighbors and making this really awesome, fun music. As they’ve grown up that has certainly has changed. On the last record cycle we hadn’t anticipated the success of Shut Up And Dance and ended up chasing the story as opposed to being the ones to establish it. This time we’re establishing our narrative now and the band has agreed on the concept of it. What I mean by narrative or story is “Who are they now?” really diving into that, where they come from, how they want to speak to the interview questions that they get asked, and how they want to show that they’ve grown up and evolved.
As far as the question of individuality, I think there’s plenty of room for that. We just have to make sure that we’re all thinking about what is best for WALK THE MOON, not necessarily for what’s best for each individual member. A lot of stuff we’ve talked about is thinking of WALK THE MOON as one operating body that each of them contribute to. It’s about making sure that we’re doing the best thing for the story of the band and what keeps it all going, as opposed to the stories of the individuals. They each have their own individual accounts though that they can maintain and be the person they want to be, and follow who they feel most aligned with. Our bass player Kevin is amazing on Snapchat and Instagram stories and makes videos on the fly that are very funny. He’s very good in that space, whereas Nick the singer is really poetic and in touch with his emotions. You want to balance everything and find a way to move the story forward about the band.
RW: Do you interlink between the different streams on do they just branch off of your website? It seems like it could be an interesting to interweave them to help fans develop a more comprehensive view of the band, but maybe you want to just let fans focus on the stream from the band member that best matches their own sensibilities, like having a favorite Beatle. Does Kevin’s stuff link directly to Nick’s, and vice versa?
KC: Very good question. In the past we weren’t really connecting them with each other. Now we’re starting to tag people in pictures on the band account. Our bios link to the individual accounts so fans can find out more about each member.
RW: Did you explain to fans why the band took a break? Did you use to time to take the opportunity to work on a long-range plan, or did you switch off to other clients?
KC: We took a break because Nicholas’s father was diagnosed with Alzheimers.
RW: I remember that. That’s why Kevin was available to teach a class at Ball State last year. Did you let the fans know what was going on?
KC: Absolutely. We were obviously nervous because it was the biggest tour that we’d had yet. People had had their tickets for a while, but it just wasn’t making sense for Nicholas to be on the road. We made that call as a group. We had to think about it objectively, there were a lot of factors that went into it, including relationships with promoter that would be cancelling one of their biggest shows, but really it came down to family being first. That’s a value that the band has. We’re really proud we did that. Nick’s father passed in February, and he was at home with his dad.
RW: What a blessing that he could be there.
KC: It fueled his writing in the next album and thinking about where they should be going. The guys also needed a break—mentally, physically, emotionally. They’d gone through a really long two-year record cycle. They are coming back now completely refreshed, which is to our benefit. During that time we re-evaluated what the band needs. We had time to integrate the madness from Shut Up And Dance and think about what we need to do better on the next cycle, and how we can get ahead of all the things we now know about that might come, especially if we do our jobs well and have a record that is even better, which is obviously the goal. We took a lot of this time to reflect on how we could strengthen the brand and the story, and we’ve spent four months on planning.
What ended up happening is that we rearranged our team. I am no longer their day-to-day manager, I’m now essentially their Creative Director. I still work for Mick Management. I moved back home to be with my fiancé who owns a brewery. We’ve been long-distance for four years. I had been traveling so much with the band, anyway, so the company is totally fine with me working out of my home and continuing to travel a lot. There are a few other people in our company that are based in different places, and they’re fine with it. Now I just work on WALK THE MOON only.
RW: That’s really interesting. Most bands probably don’t have that luxury of time to look at the big picture.
KC: I think it depends on the artist. Some write on the road and keep it rolling. Some artists do well that way, others need time to set aside attention time. One of our goals in it all was to get the band all on the same page about everything and have a plan so that it will be easier and quicker to make decisions as we go into this cycle. Obviously unforeseen things will come up, but at least we have a strong foundation of where we’re coming from.
RW: How different is the new brand going forward? How does it change depending on who you’re pitching it to?
KC: It’s important not to offend the superfans you’ve had from Day 1. You don’t want to leave them behind or make them feel that the band has sold out. It’s also important to update fans into the present time, because it’s inevitable that four young men from Ohio who started to play music together at 23 are going to be different people at age 30, especially after having crazy success and going around the world, having all these new experiences, and having their lives turned upside down. We’ve been working on our campaign as a three-pronged approach. 1) Keep our superfans excited and included in the new story, 2) keep them as ambassadors and engaged for the new record, 3) convert the people on the periphery who have heard the song but don’t look up and follow the band’s social media and bring them into the fold with the story and engaging content. We’re working on strategies for each of the three prongs for the guys. Our new branding is essentially that they’ve grown up. The narrative has changed from “Aw, shucks, we’re those nice guys from Ohio who are just so excited to play your show” to the new story that is something like “You know what, we’ve been playing music together for a long time. We’ve been really successful. We’ve gone through trials and tribulations with each other. We’ve come out on the other side with a new record for you that talks about more adult topics, and we’re so excited to be a little more vulnerable. We’re still fun—we haven’t turned into a dark, brooding band—but the topics and lyrics are a little more mature, and we’re going to be less afraid of being ourselves.” That goes well with our fans, who are themselves also growing up. You have to mirror that, too. They’re not the same people either.
You have to remember that there is also a business-to-business story. How do we show our business partners that the band has evolved and that they should still pay attention to them? Industry buzz is really important.
RW: I’m thinking as you talk about how I’m going to transcribe this. I understand that of all the people I’m interviewing that you would naturally be the most concerned about what gets printed in the book since you don’t want to reveal anything that would jeopardize the band, or their relationships with fans or other professionals in the industry. But it sounds like a lot of what you are saying isn’t a big secret that you are trying to keep from your fans. Part of the magic of WALK THE MOON is its transparency and honesty. You’re not trying to manipulate anyone, it’s about genuine sharing. This work on the new brand isn’t some public relations campaign that you’re coming up with to fool consumers in order get their money, you’re just trying to clarify who you really are, and define the core part of it that you want to project.
KC: Absolutely. The thing that we keep saying is that it just makes sense. It’s the next chapter in the story. We want to capitalize on people wanting to know what’s happening. It will be revealed in the band’s interviews, photos, and Facebook posts. It comes from a very real place. We want to show people that they’re not alone, that their tough experiences are being mirrored In the music they’re listening to. They want to see themselves in the band, and the band wants to see themselves in the fans, so it’s a very symbiotic relationship. People want authenticity.
RW: You said when you were on campus last year that you use geotargeting for your posts. Can you tell from their accounts what part of the country readers are in? How technical do you get with analytics?
KC: Totally. We just had a big meeting, we called it our first “WALK THE MOON Summit”. We brought in our record label, our agent, our radio rep, our publicist, the people who work at Mick in analytics, Nick’s touring and marketing directors, as well as the band. We talked through the next album and a lot of planning stuff like calendars. There was also a huge focus and deep dive into the analysis of where the band is at with social. We’re trying to identify exactly who the audience is, who we are missing, what posts performed the best. We have historical data on each post so that we can measure growth against ourselves. Comparing ourselves with a band that has a million followers doesn’t really help us. We just need to look at each one of our posts to see how high it gets, notice whether video does better, on which platform photos are better, what type of text is favored, and what fans click on. That information helps to focus our efforts. We’re compiling this into some ideas on best practices for the band, and watching how their fans react to certain types of content.
RW: I don’t imagine that having a Summit with everyone in the same room is very common, to have all those professionals to come together for the same meeting. It sounds like it would be powerful to have them all in one place together.
KC: That’s right. WALK THE MOON is a special band in the sense that they are very involved in every level of their career and want to know what’s going on. They love feeling in the know, and to know the people who are working for them. They’re very team-oriented. My boss, the owner of Mick Management and I thought it would be beneficial for everyone to sit in the room and look at each other in the eye, to get excited about the new album together, to hear what the band had to say about the music, and to let the band also see how we were going to all work together. Bands often have misunderstandings and resentments about labels due to a lack of communication and transparency, but the truth is, we all want a project to be successful. If we can start at the beginning together it should maintain more of a balance.
RW: I realize that it was a private meeting and that there could be some company secrets discussed, but what a great opportunity to get capture some video for a documentary of the process! It would be the such a fascinating opportunity to be a fly-on-the-wall, and the ultimate behind-the-scenes view that superfans would be interested in seeing after the album comes out. On the other hand, it could make people clam up and interrupt the flow, they might not feel as free to be frank, which was the reason for doing it, and in the long run the meeting wouldn’t have as much more impact.
KC: Yeah, yeah. I thought about that actually, but it was our first one. It’s part of the band’s story, they have genuine relationship with everyone on the team, and wanted to be able to ask agents questions, like about particular shows.
RW: Did anybody at least take notes about the conversations? You might want to write some details down before they fade from memory and put together a booklet with a story and pictures about the Summit to add value to a special edition deluxe edition of the CD.
KC: That’s an interesting idea.
RW: When you collect emails, do you sort them by zip code, so you don’t send an announcement of a show to someone who lives a thousand miles away?
KC: Email is still a huge part of getting information to people. We often run contests, we just ran one for the 5th anniversary of their first album where people could win a signed copy and a bunch of old merch from the first record cycle that we needed to get rid of. We gave away some bundles of the CD and old merch and a grand prize for free seats at a future show. We are using a service called ToneDen which is really cool since they ask for name, email, and zip code, or you can just log in with your Facebook and we can go off that information. There are a lot of companies that give you all the information when you use their platform for contests and stuff like that. There are different creative ways to get email, the first is from the band’s website where fans can sign up or update their addresses.
The other thing we’re looking into is SMS for text messaging. It’s becoming a big thing because it’s the most successful, it goes directly to the person, and the link is right in the text. We text when there is a new single and tell people where they can buy or stream it. People are more likely to do it on their phone. It’s a more expensive platform but it’s more direct. If we can get people to give us their phone numbers we can text them, which is really cool, especially for younger audiences. Older audiences feel it’s a little invasive, but the demographic for this band’s fan base is 18–24 year olds, and they are already getting text messages from everyone, so it just doesn’t feel weird to them.
RW: That’s where they live.
KC: You have to reach people where they are.
RW: We’ve begun a series of initiatives to promote music of the Midwest. What do you think is special about the region? Kevin’s the one that put the bug in my ear about it being a good place to get started, since there are so many cities close to one another. His comment planted the seed in my mind to write this book.
KC: While I was living in New York I got a pretty good view of the Brooklyn band scene. It’s really over-saturated. The way people socialize there is very different from the Midwest, it’s very open and out in the public like in bars, because there isn’t’ a lot of room to host people. There aren’t many backyards there. In the Midwest we hang out at each other’s houses and backyards. We definitely still go out to shows, but we know a lot of the people who are there. There’s stronger community support for bands, and when a Midwest community gets excited about a local artist, that person becomes important and prominent and is supported by the local community. To me that’s the thing that you need to launch into a bigger space. You create draw and a community. In Brooklyn and New York each band can develop their own little following, but there’s rarely a band that comes out with a crazy following unless there is a lot of industry buzz around it I think here it is more natural. That’s what happened with WALK THE MOON. They were able to meet other bands and trade shows, they played in Chicago, Louisville, and St. Louis. They built their fan base slowly but surely, because they had a lot of the support locally in Cincinnati. I think that’s a huge advantage in the Midwest.
RW: We have a project at school called Middletown Music and are promoting music of the Midwest. One of the projects is creating and maintaining a database of small and mid-sized venues to make it easier for bands to find places to play. Do you think bands would find that useful, and if so, do you have any suggestions for how to reach them? Apart from the education value of the process of making, there won’t be a point in doing it if no one benefits from the collected information.
KC: There was a website that I used to use called indieonthemove.com, run by Kyle and Bryan Weber in New York. I used to use it a lot to book shows. You could search by city and venue, what the best way was to contact the booker, the best way to get a response, the person you needed to talk to. etc. It was super-helpful for me because I had no idea of what I was doing, I used a lot of that information to make cold call to venues. Your database would be very helpful. I love the idea of bands rating the venues, letting you know who you should talk to, this is how we got it in, and who are the cool local bands are that they might try to hook up with.
RW: Thanks for that suggestion on having the bands suggesting locals that they could share shows with. One of the reasons that sites like LinkedIn and Facebook have been so successful is that they get their users to do the work of adding value to their product. There has to be a value to someone if they are going to use the information in our database: bands can use it to help book gigs, fans can discover new music, and venues can attract more customers.
The information that bands report will be helpful, for example, to steer others away from places where they got stiffed or suffered a bad sound system. We don’t want to poison the well by having one band say a place sucks, when actually it is an important oasis that could be the key in getting you from Point A to Point B, so we’re thinking of including a “like” button rather than a star system of ratings. By having a large class work on this it can be more comprehensive and can be maintained from semester to semester, for example, to update and check who is working in each club, and to check if the submission process has changed. That’s something that one person by themselves isn’t going to be able to do because by the time they gather all the information it will be out of date. It’s also something that an AI bot can’t do, because the information is not out there waiting to be scraped, it’s built on eyewitness accounts that haven’t yet been written down. Venues don’t market themselves on their websites as musical oases because the customers they are trying to reach to don’t come out for that reason.
KC: Totally. I think it’s a really good idea. The more convenient you can make it, the more effective it will be. As far as getting it into the hands of bands, you might be able to get venues involved, and get them to help promote it.
RW: It needs to be a symbiotic relationship. Venues, bands, and fans need each other. Without any of the three the scene dries up. The second meaning of “Primer” in the title of this book relates to the desire to prime the pump, to help keep things going. The students can look at which bands have played in a club, and then contact them to get their data. It also good opportunity for them to develop their ability to use the telephone feature of their telephones to have conversations with people. Most students don’t seem to want to talk on the phone. We can give them the assignment of calling five people and talking to each of them for five minutes about their experience, after which they can put it directly into the database. It’s a win-win.
KC: The phone thing is funny. Our interns are terrified when we ask them to answer the phone. Many times when you get an internship you’re assigned to do that. It’s a huge part of the job.
RW: Being the receptionist is a big responsibility. You become the public face of the company, like a merch salesperson at a show.
KC: Absolutely. You’re the first person that people speak to. I solve so many problems by picking up the phone. Electronic communication will only take you so far. People misunderstand emails because they miss the speaker’s tone of voice. My boss always says “Pick up the phone, pick up the phone!” It solves so many issues. I always stress that when I talk to interns or a class. You have to learn how to use the phone. The little exercises you do with your class will be helpful.
RW: The part I’m enjoying most about writing this book is conducting the interviews. The part I like least is staying up until 6:00 a.m. every night finishing the writing. I love talking with professionals like you, beginning with the process of preparing for the conversation. I am doing what I tell my students to do to prepare for their interviews—taking time learning about each person and the work that they do, coming up with a lot of possible questions, and then organizing the best ones into categories. I print the pages out, highlight the ones I want to be sure to get to, and then as the conversation unfolds am able to jump around depending on where things lead, while checking things off and taking notes on the same paper. The conversation is stimulating, and it’s satisfying when the preparation pays off and something good comes out of it. It’s been interesting to see how all the different interviews for this book are interconnecting and relate to the concepts introduced in the chapters.
While listening to Kevin teaching the classes last year, I sometimes wondered what he might be thinking about the future. How much discussion did you have during your recent hiatus from touring about short and long term planning? Is it too early for the band to start thinking about an exit strategy?
KC: That’s a good question. Work is their life. They are around each other all the time. Even though it’s fun, it’s their job. We took some time in this process to get clear with each other about what they want. Kevin got married during this break. We talked about where they wanted WALK THE MOON to be by the end of this next record cycle, which could potentially be two years. What kind of rooms do they want to play? What kind of social media following do they want to have? A five-year plan is tough in this business. You just never know. It was better to focus on “Where do you want to be by the end of this cycle?” and just to be really clear about what they wanted as individuals. They’re 30 years old now and are growing up. They want other things in their lives, there are other things that they’re interested in. They got clearer with each other about that. We also talked about setting aside time in the calendar to go on that vacation that they really wanted to take with their partner. Nick loves to go to Burning Man, so he wanted time to go to there to do an art installation, those kinds of things. That’s the key to them staying more motivated to work, to be in touch with who they are, what they are doing, and why. Otherwise it can get really convoluted really easily. I think that’s very important. We’re trying to make more of an effort to keep them happy in that way.
RW: All this talk about the band’s process and the new album and tour has made me so curious to see and hear coming up with. I can’t wait to hear the new record and hope to catch up with one of your shows. It’s so great that you’ve been able to go along on this meteoric rise with them. It’s exciting that you’re moving into a new phase yourself and becoming more involved in the creative side of the operation.
Thank you for this inside look at management and marketing, and for sharing your story, which parallels a lot of the band’s rapid rise—going from an 18-year old attending a local band’s shows to now being a key member of the creative team and planning one of this coming year’s biggest tours.
KC: You’re welcome. It’s been a great ride, and we’re eager to see what the future will bring.
©2017 Katie Carlson and Robert Willey