The following interview was with Nate Sirotta of Impulse PR and was conducted nearly two years ago by myself for my Social Media For Public Relations and Journalism class that was taught by Professor Barbara Nixon. Although there is one question missing from what was asked from me for this Corporate PR Class, I was fortunate in that I coincidentally asked the other four out of five questions.
Since this interview, Nate Sirotta has moved from committing to Impulse on a full time basis, to working at Total Assault, a Los Angeles-based digital marketing agency whose clients include Live Nation, EMI, and Polaroid.
So how did you get to where you are now?
Well I definitely have quite a bit of ways to go before I could be totally content with what I’m doing, but as far as getting into music PR, I was a touring musician myself for about 5-6 years and an early part of college as well. I toured in a band called Down for the Count, and while I was doing that, I was the one handling all of the band’s business needs, as well as media outreach and press coordination and all of that kind of stuff. So, that’s pretty much where I got my start and built foundation for my network.
What is your typical work-day like?
Usually Monday through Friday, seeing as those are functioning business hours for most people, well at the least, the press. Typically, I get up around 8 in the morning or so, and since I work from home, I just make some coffee and something to eat, I just jump right into emails right around 8:30-9:00 in the morning. I put out any fires from the night before, especially on Mondays where I catch up on things from the weekends. Usually I start making phone calls like usually (in the) late morning, between 10 and noon, like between breakfast and lunch. Those are two fairly constant parts of my day. Those are staples that happen pretty much every day.
As for the rest of my afternoon, sometimes I’ll have a meeting to go to. And living in LA, things will take forever to get to because of traffic and because the city’s huge. So you know, meetings take up an entire afternoon and at least once or twice a week I’m at a show or having a drinks with a client or potential client. It’s sort of a non-traditional work environment, but I really enjoy constantly changing, it makes for a good learning experience. I feel like I’m learning new things every day from the people I’m interacting with and obviously handling things differently maybe than I did last week. There’s a lot of trial and error as well.
What’s your favorite thing about music publicity?
I’m always in the corner of the underdog, you know? Clients that nobody else would take on, or bands that are sort of forgotten, have lost their way, or need a sense of direction? It’s really exciting for me when we that first piece published. It’s really exciting to see how the client is about having their music exposed to the masses. Because if you’re talking about a mainstream band, or somebody that everybody already knows, like The Used or Blink-182. If The Used’s or Blink-182’s publicist, then good for you, you’re probably doing pretty f***-ing well for yourself. But at the same time, everybody already knows about those bands, and you can think of new and exciting ways to tell the same story I guess, but with bands that are like amazingly talented and hardworking who have not been noticed, it’s really rewarding for me to be able to do the dirty work, get my hands dirty, sink my teeth in, and really expose stuff that’s unknown, different, and nobody’s heard before. That’s how kind of how I’m trying to build my company, by being a trusted provider of solid-clientele that’s going to be creative and innovative on a project.
What’s your least favorite thing about your job?
Well you know, being a smaller company, as far as our “flow” goes, our cash flow and income goes for the company, it’s fairly small as like I said before, we’re trying to be an affordable option for a lot of start-ups and stuff like that, but sometimes the bills have to get paid and you have to take on projects that you don’t necessarily want. It’s basically like you’re advocating or trying to sell something that you really don’t believe in at all. It’s kind of an internal struggle, you know? It is, it’s lying, and it’s lying professionally. You’re basically a professional bulls**t-er. A lot of times when that comes along, it’s sort of demoralizing, you know? That’s the “dark-side” of PR, because everyone knows what it’s like to be super-excited about a project or client that you’re working with, and you’re both passionate about the music and you’re just flowing with ideas. You sort of have to take what you can get, and I don’t do that very often, but sometimes you gotta take a project that is going to pay.
Since this interview, Nate Sirotta has moved from committing to Impulse on a full time basis, to working at Total Assault, a Los Angeles-based digital marketing agency whose clients include Live Nation, EMI, and Polaroid.
So how did you get to where you are now?
Well I definitely have quite a bit of ways to go before I could be totally content with what I’m doing, but as far as getting into music PR, I was a touring musician myself for about 5-6 years and an early part of college as well. I toured in a band called Down for the Count, and while I was doing that, I was the one handling all of the band’s business needs, as well as media outreach and press coordination and all of that kind of stuff. So, that’s pretty much where I got my start and built foundation for my network.
What is your typical work-day like?
Usually Monday through Friday, seeing as those are functioning business hours for most people, well at the least, the press. Typically, I get up around 8 in the morning or so, and since I work from home, I just make some coffee and something to eat, I just jump right into emails right around 8:30-9:00 in the morning. I put out any fires from the night before, especially on Mondays where I catch up on things from the weekends. Usually I start making phone calls like usually (in the) late morning, between 10 and noon, like between breakfast and lunch. Those are two fairly constant parts of my day. Those are staples that happen pretty much every day.
As for the rest of my afternoon, sometimes I’ll have a meeting to go to. And living in LA, things will take forever to get to because of traffic and because the city’s huge. So you know, meetings take up an entire afternoon and at least once or twice a week I’m at a show or having a drinks with a client or potential client. It’s sort of a non-traditional work environment, but I really enjoy constantly changing, it makes for a good learning experience. I feel like I’m learning new things every day from the people I’m interacting with and obviously handling things differently maybe than I did last week. There’s a lot of trial and error as well.
What’s your favorite thing about music publicity?
I’m always in the corner of the underdog, you know? Clients that nobody else would take on, or bands that are sort of forgotten, have lost their way, or need a sense of direction? It’s really exciting for me when we that first piece published. It’s really exciting to see how the client is about having their music exposed to the masses. Because if you’re talking about a mainstream band, or somebody that everybody already knows, like The Used or Blink-182. If The Used’s or Blink-182’s publicist, then good for you, you’re probably doing pretty f***-ing well for yourself. But at the same time, everybody already knows about those bands, and you can think of new and exciting ways to tell the same story I guess, but with bands that are like amazingly talented and hardworking who have not been noticed, it’s really rewarding for me to be able to do the dirty work, get my hands dirty, sink my teeth in, and really expose stuff that’s unknown, different, and nobody’s heard before. That’s how kind of how I’m trying to build my company, by being a trusted provider of solid-clientele that’s going to be creative and innovative on a project.
What’s your least favorite thing about your job?
Well you know, being a smaller company, as far as our “flow” goes, our cash flow and income goes for the company, it’s fairly small as like I said before, we’re trying to be an affordable option for a lot of start-ups and stuff like that, but sometimes the bills have to get paid and you have to take on projects that you don’t necessarily want. It’s basically like you’re advocating or trying to sell something that you really don’t believe in at all. It’s kind of an internal struggle, you know? It is, it’s lying, and it’s lying professionally. You’re basically a professional bulls**t-er. A lot of times when that comes along, it’s sort of demoralizing, you know? That’s the “dark-side” of PR, because everyone knows what it’s like to be super-excited about a project or client that you’re working with, and you’re both passionate about the music and you’re just flowing with ideas. You sort of have to take what you can get, and I don’t do that very often, but sometimes you gotta take a project that is going to pay.
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