CMJ.com, a leading authority on emerging music and media, will support the Oct. 19 launch of its CMJ Artist Services portal at CMJ.com with a major fourth-quarter marketing campaign.
CMJ.com is designed to help businesses, emerging artists and consumers use the Internet to discover, promote and distribute music. The Artist Services section will offer tools and services for developing musicians.
The marketing for this new launch will blend the online and offline channels that CMJ has carved out during its 20 years in existence. One of the more unique outlets the company will leverage is its national college rep network.
Armed with collateral bearing the campaign's tag line, “Artist development tools. For the real world,” the company's network of underground marketers will promote the portal in the top 50 markets in the country.
This small army will target the site's male audience age 18 to 29 with fliers and stickers as well as other take aways that will promote the benefits of the new site feature.
“We've been working with college radio and the college market for the past 20 years,” said John Hammond, director of marketing at CMJ, New York. “We have an outreach to music stores, instrument shops and record shop — the types of places where musicians are hanging out. They are also experienced with going to clubs. … They have relationships with doormen and sound people. It's an important part of what we're doing.”
The company also will run house ads in its two publications — CMJ New Music Monthly, which has a circulation of more than 100,000, and weekly industry trade publication CMJ New Music Report, which reaches 10,000.
The site's print efforts will branch out into six niche magazines, including Guitar Player, Gig and Guitar World. Between the six publications and a handful of alternative weeklies in major cities, the site expects to make 5 million impressions. Hammond defined offline impressions as the number of times a consumer sees an ad. This includes multiple placements within the publications. The ads will run in the November issues of these publications.
Creating a presence at industry trade shows and events also is a large cog in the company's marketing machine. The new portal will receive heavy play at the CMJ Music Marathon, MusicFest & FilmFest in New York, Oct. 19-22, as well as at regional events across the country. More than 1,000 bands and 10,000 industry members are expected to attend the Music Marathon.
A firm believer in e-mail marketing, Hammond will mail announcements to its band, industry and consumer lists. Each of the three lists contains approximately 10,000 names this month. It also will mail to the memberships of sites such as Garageband.com, MP3.com, and Localmusic.com. The combined effort should create more than 1 million impressions.
The e-mail will discuss the site's capabilities and will include a direct link to the new section. “The site is a strong offer in and of itself,” Hammond said. “We don't have to dangle things in front of them that aren't related to the company. We have built in assets that we're able to leverage. We're not coming out of the blue as a company that no one's ever heard of.”
The site also will purchase as many as 5 million banner ad impressions at industry-specific sites. The details for the buy had not been ironed out at press time. Hammond intends, however, to test rich media as well as static banners.
The Artist Services section will offer up-and-coming musicians the ability to build their own Web sites for free. Here they can upload their music for public consumption. Additionally, there will be a co-branded media player/e-mail application. Equipment discounts also will be made available wi
