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REPRINT FROM NY SUN NEWSPAPER

That Buzz You’re Hearing May Be From Street Team Marketers

Devotees of Musicians Hustle To Promote Their Favorite Acts — All for a T-Shirt

By LISA SCHERZER Special to the Sun (3/25/04)

Well before pop singer/songwriter Ben Kweller performs at Irving Plaza on April 6, word about his American tour and new album will have already seeped through the appropriate channels.

Posters announcing his New York show will be plastered in local record shops, downtown cafés and bars, and even Laundromats. Fliers emblazoned with his picture will be distributed at music venues. And friends will be telling friends about his new album’s impending release.

This street-level buzz is accomplished not through heavy commercial promotion bankrolled by a big record company, but by a relatively new phenomenon called street team marketing. In this more personal and direct approach to marketing, an army of devotees volunteer to promote their favorite musician or band. All they expect to get in return for their work is a T-shirt or ticket to the show.

For an artist these days, a few thousand street teamers across the country can create the kind of awareness that no million-dollar Super Bowl commercial or billboard can buy. It’s the die-hard fan who is able to reach that crucial demographic — another potential fan.

The next concert James Herrity, a fan of jam bands, plans to attend is for a group called Particle on April 9. “I’m getting in for free because I promoted for them at the Jammys,” he said, referring to the award show that is the jam band equivalent of the Grammy’s.

In addition to handing out flyers for Particle at the award show last week, Mr. Herrity, who works at a medical legal consulting company in Manhattan, also promoted Particle at a concert he attended in Long Island. Mr. Herrity, 25, hits the obvious points of interest for jam-band lovers, like Village record shops, and Sam Ash and Manny’s Musical Instruments, both in Midtown. He noted that for the number of concerts he goes to, sticking around for a half-hour after a show to put up posters or distribute fliers is worth his while because of the free concert tickets he gets in return. “If I didn’t go to as many shows, I probably wouldn’t do it,” he said.

Allison Fell manages street team campaigns for about 10 bands and musicians, including My Morning Jacket, David Gray, Gov’t Mule, and the Dave Matthews Band. Mr. Herrity had originally signed up for the street team through Ms. Fell’s company, Colony Marketing, to promote Gov’t Mule.

“The best way to spread music is from one fan to another. Street teams provide an organized system for individuals that love a band to reach out to other people face-to-face, and turn them on to the music they love,” she said. “It takes a real person testifying about a band or album to convince this person to give it a listen. Hearing a friend — or even a stranger handing out materials at a concert — proselytize about an artist is the best way to pique someone’s interest and curiosity.”

Recently Ms. Fell sent an e-mail to the approximately 3,000 fans signed up to be part of the Ben Kweller street team campaign. Ms. Fell works with these fans, who live all over the country, and sends them packages with merchandise, including stickers, posters, and buttons. The e-mail solicits volunteers to help get the word out about the new album and tour, and evokes a “Howard Dean style” campaign: “We’re looking for fans who will hang posters and place handbills in popular spots…anywhere potential BK fans might see them.”

“They go to college campuses, record stores, coffee shops,” Ms. Fell said.

“Everyone knows where to go in their town.” The die-hard fans don’t mind not being paid.

Jacqueline Noguera, 39, volunteered for street campaigns in 2001 for the Dave Matthews Band and for singer David Gray’s tour in 2002. Her duties included putting up fliers at clubs and restaurants in Lower Manhattan. “I really like the idea because it had a really grass roots feel to it,” she said.  Ms. Noguera brought the same ideas behind street team marketing to Witness, a human rights organization established by Peter Gabriel, where she now works.

“I thought, what a great way to help a not-for-profit, using the same technique and ideology,” she said. This summer Witness’s street team will hit the Lollapalooza tour, where volunteers will be ready to evangelize about the charity. “To be able to use that same sort of energy to a greater good is what attracted me to the whole idea of street teaming,” she said.

The concept of street team marketing has evolved since its inception in the early days of hip-hop underground, where that kind of person-to-person exchange was the only way to get the music heard.

Rich Isaacson, co-founder, with Steve Rifkind, of the hip-hop label Loud records, helped pioneer the idea of street team marketing.

“We were trying to figure out ways to promote the music we were representing,” Mr. Isaacson said. Getting the music into the right people’s hands — club promoters, college radio stations, DJs, mom-and-pop record stores, hip-hop fans — proved successful.

These tastemakers, he said, were made the label’s ambassadors to the public at large. After hip-hop took off in the ’90s, street teams, or some version of it, became required practice. The dedicated fans, he said, “just want to be part of a movement, like campaign workers,” he said.

James Aquafredda knows the powerful impact street team promoting, or what he calls “peer-to-peer marketing,” can have on the career of an artist. When he was 16, Mr. Aquafredda, owner of the Web site myStreetTeam.com (and MusicStreetTeams.com), began promoting a then little-known New York band called the Ramones.

“I went to their shows, I was putting up posters, fliers. I ended up going on tour with them for five years.

 Your band today can be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tomorrow.”