How to become a marketing manager: Tasha’s story

Tasha: Hi I'm Tasha Damien and I'm a marketing manager at Sony Music.

So, today we're here at Metropolis studios in West London to shoot a brand new music video for Ill Blu featuring OFB.

So my role today as marketing manager is to basically look after the artist and the whole production. Making sure everything's in place, the artists are happy, the artists are on time and well fed, and fingers crossed the video goes really well. I think nowadays music is like this part of the campaign. No matter how good the track is, if the artist hasn't got a really strong brand it's really hard to get it anywhere. So a lot of what my job is, is to develop the brand around artist, what they look like, their voice, how they talk to their fans and just kind of who they are other than music. And then that way the fans kind of connect with you a lot better and then your musical can go a lot further. No two days are the same in the office. Half of my job is super organised, really numbers focused, talking about the budgets of the campaigns, what you're spending, whether it's worth it. Also looking into like stats and analytics behind your Spotify's, your Youtube's, your social media growth and being quite geeky with the numbers - which I love. And the other side is creative. So once you figure out the EP name or the album name or something with the artist, it's then my job to help them get super creative and make the brand come alive. So you end up starting with sometimes just a name and then by the end you see it on billboards and videos and yeah it's really exciting.

When I went to uni I study media cultural studies and that was similar in the sense it was half really academic and half super, super creative, but I always found myself really into the creative side. And I started blogging, actually. I just started writing about music videos that I like. Predominately from UK rappers, because that's always been my passion I guess. And before that I hated writing. I hated essays and stories and anything in kind of English at school. You were never told, back then, how to make this a real job. So I didn't think it was ever a real thing. If you hear people on the radio you're just like 'oh they got lucky' or you have no idea how they got there.

OK, so when you're working on the creative with an artist, it's really important for me to remember that you're here to amplify everything they're doing rather than change and dominate all the decisions. Sometimes you'll have creative conflict, but essentially all you're there to do is advise. When you're working with new artists they trust you with their lives. So, I mean, I think a lot of businesses sometimes can look at artist as 'oh it's like just money over there'. You kind of forget that this is someone's entire world and they're trusting you to represent them to the public and help kind of amplify everything they're doing. It's a real journey but then it can be really rewarding, because little by little you get the little wins. You feel like your building a nice relationship.

Over the years I did loads of work experience, worked for free loads, had a part time job on the side to kind of help fund my life. And then I got my first full time internship, which was at Channel 4 and Box TV, which was amazing. I was learning everything. I was learning how a manager wants to be spoken to, what a PR is, what an artist wants to hear, how record label works, how radio station works, what you'd write in a magazine. And then my break into record labels. I got a phone call randomly on a Thursday afternoon to do a two week temp position at Universal. I ended up being given an internship there, which was really exciting and then I just built up through the ranks. I was an intern and then I was promoted to assistant and the junior product manager and I just wanted it. I just worked so hard and then eventually just things started happening.

Ok. So if you want to get into this kind of job. My advice for you would be networking is key. Even if you have no experience the worst somebody can say is no. Ask people to go for a coffee, because that takes twenty minutes of their time. What you're asking for, make it as easy as you can. With the internet and social media these days you can do pretty much everything, so create a demand for yourself and then hopefully it will follow.