jacksonpollock.org

Hype Machine is closed, and recommended this to me to kill some of my time, and I did. Click it changes colors... Amazing stuff, I'm saving some screenshots...

So today is the last day before the release, thought I'd elaborate on what it took to put an event of this magnitude together.

Everything starts off with a connection We didn't want to have our album release at one of the same old spots, we wanted to work with the stigma of what we're trying to become, not where we've been, and that's the high fashion and industry elite that only the W represents in Scottsdale. So I connected with my man William Bastian II to help us get a proposal over to the people at the W. We put together a good packet for it, at the time we we're still working with a big media group and that helped, but mostly it was about us and our achievements, and how we planned to solidly brand the event to help Scottsdale set a standard for elite entertainment industry events.

William went straight to the owner and got approval to take it downstairs to the team for their approval. William and I met through the owner of the now defunct Lyte Lounge, and we connected when he wanted to use our song Heartbeat for his AMAZING one man play that he was shopping at the time. He has since pursued his love of acting to a solid degree of success, he plays an Irish killer for hire named "El Torro" (the Bull) in an upcoming Fox Searchlight film and is still getting everything together for his play to hit the road.

We had a battery of meetings with the W. They wanted to push the event for their Thursday's, which they we're trying to build. Our whole goal with the event was to attract club industry radio and media to the event as a kind of "networking to support Silver Medallion whilst consuming prodigious amounts of booze surrounded by aspiring models" event so we we're adamant about needing a Sunday afternoon, where most of these people wouldn't be working, as opposed to a work night.

What got us the deal was when we told them we weren't looking for any kind of percentage of bar, or promotions money. We wanted to be able to keep sponsorship dollars to cover our costs (paying for cds, pressing promo items, emails blasts, print invites, comping rooms for important people, paying subpromoters etc).

Once we got the event locked we made our timeline. We we're six weeks out, and had a lot to accomplish. We wanted sponsor materials ready to go a month out, sponsors locked by two weeks out, print approved two weeks out, and promotions to begin two weeks out. We met every goal. Our sponsorship deck was comprehensive and Skyy Vodka came in to cover our costs to promote their Infusions line. Nooka sent us watches for giveaways, and New Era sent us hats. We pressed up our dubstep mixtape, got Silver Medallion shirts from Bobby Fresh, and bags from King and Duck and we're ready to go for giftbagging.

The hardest part of the event was getting the evite designs approved, wording and imagery was so complicated with the W, but we're happy with the final product, it's classy and effective.

For promotions we sent 3,000 emails to the comprehensive lists we've built, borrowed and stole, used Spyder to send 5,000 myspace comments, and ate up facebook and twitter.

By this time we'd linked up with our good friend Brian Kelly and his new photography website Encore by Brian Kelly (EBYBK.com). His website is new and building steam and he's helped us a ton when he was with 944 so we thought it would be a solid collaboration to get him noticed by industry and use his promotions base to help us.

Our only requirement with the W was to sell ten rooms, which was scary until the last few days, now we're far above twenty and more adding every hour, all radio, djs and our friends ready to make the event a success.

We went through media approval and got photographers and reporters for New Times and AZ Republic approved, as well as articles for the events with both publications before and after, and featured event on AZCentral.com. We printed up business card invitations and dropped them to radio and media staff, then went bar to bar getting them to GMs and bartenders.

The last link for us was getting a birthday party for one of our favorite radio people to go down at the event, guaranteeing the presence of his coworkers and turning a lot of possible attendees into definites.

Today we're solidifying guest lists, making sure gift bags are right and prepping for what we're going to do with the photo and video content.