Ariel Publicity

“The In-Crowd” is an inside look at crowdfunding, with Ariel Publicity Artist Phil Putnam and RocketHub.com co-founder Brian Meece.  Each Monday, the boys are giving us an honest look at a crowdfunding project in action and dish on how things are going each week.
What is crowdfunding?  Find out here.

What does it look like?  See here.
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WEEK 9-ish:  60 days in, 15 days remaining.  $3,888 raised (39% of the $10,000 goal), $6,112 needed.

Phil Says:

Having been raised in a WASP-ish household, I grew up understanding that social graces matter.  RSVP to invitations.  Never arrive at a party empty-handed (extra points if what you have in your hand is vodka).  A drunk bride is unforgivably tacky.  Don’t overstay your welcome.  Wear clean underwear, in case you get hit by a car, go to the hospital, and the medical community concludes that you’re a filthy slut.  And above all, handle every circumstance, good or bad, with style, satin wit, and grace.

You gotta recognize when people aren’t laughing at your jokes.  You gotta know when you’ve lost the room.  You just gotta be able to see when they’re not interested.  And that’s what I’ve done.  In general, people just aren’t interested in my crowdfunding project.  Besides the 60 sensational, faithful, deeply cherished friends and fans of mine who have supported the project, the rest of my community of fans/friends just don’t care.  Well, maybe they care, but the best I can see is that they’re indifferent.  Indifference speaks.  Caring acts.  Over the past 60 days, over 200,000 people have heard about this project directly from me, whether during podcast and radio interviews, videos they’ve viewed, facebook posts they’ve commented on and liked.  Over 200,000 people are aware of this project, and only 60 have taken action to support it.  That’s a 0.0003% response rate.  Three thousandths of a percent.  There’s no pretty way to paint that; it’s just not happening.  They’re just not interested, so I’m just not trying to push them to be.  Not anymore.  The party has crested, I’ve grabbed my coat, and I’m making the goodbye rounds gracefully.

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“The In-Crowd” is an inside look at crowdfunding, with Ariel Publicity Artist Phil Putnam and RocketHub.com co-founder Brian Meece.  Each Monday, the boys are giving us an honest look at a crowdfunding project in action and dish on how things are going each week.

What is crowdfunding?  Find out here.

What does it look like?  See here.
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WEEK 7:

44 days in, 31 days remaining.  $3,753 raised (38% of the $10,000 goal), $6,247 needed.

Phil Says:

Songs About You is at a point that has felt far off and surreal up until this moment: there’s one month left until the deadline.  This snuck up on me, mostly because I’ve been thinking of the timeline in thirds and I know that the middle third always feels the longest and most difficult.  Well, it was difficult, but it just flew right by and now I’m on the precipice of the last leg of the journey.  I’ll be honest, there is a sense of relief due to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  This experience has worn on me more than I anticipated, in ways I didn’t imagine it would.  The relief isn’t the lone sentiment in my heart, though.  I’m excited by the possibility that this could still work, that all the money could be raised.  It feels like a long shot, but it’s still in the realm of reality.

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“The In-Crowd” is an inside look at crowdfunding, with Ariel Publicity Artist Phil Putnam and RocketHub.com co-founder Brian Meece.  Each Monday, the boys are giving us an honest look at a crowdfunding project in action and dish on how things are going each week.
What is crowdfunding?  Find out here.

What does it look like?  See here.
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WEEK 5:

29 days in, 46 days remaining.  $2,598 raised (26% of the $10,000 goal), $7,402 needed.

Phil Says:

I’m convinced that milestones and kidney stones are of the same material.  They’re as tough as hell to pass, and the immense sense of relief you feel once they’re behind you is akin to making the final payment on your student loans, or successfully avoiding the fish tacos served at a restaurant where the cleanliness of both the space and the staff are questionable.  Brian had let me know that it was crucial for “Songs About You” to hit the 25% funded milestone before the first third (25 days) of the campaign had passed.  As if timed to the minute, that 25% mark came and went in the last hour of day 25.  Though, as a person, I am prone to hyperbole, especially for comic effect, these kind of dramatics are not really my style.  I was, shall we say, on heightened nerves as Day 25 wore on, and then just as heightened in excitement and gratitude when the mark was passed.

One element of the push to 25% that stood out to me is how much better the support response was among my fans/friends when there was a quickly ticking clock.  Several hundred dollars was given in the 36 hours before the Day 25 deadline in response to the facebook posts I was making about it.  Brian and Vlad and Jed, the RocketHub boys, have been telling me that people respond strongly to urgency, and it bolstered me to see that come to life.  That urgency is going to be even more important when we get to the last third of this project’s time line, as stats show that the last third is where the majority of the support is raised, provided that you’ve built enough momentum up to that point.  With crowdfunding, the consensus is that “momentum” is having at least 50% of the goal amount raised.

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“The In-Crowd” is an inside look at crowdfunding, with Ariel Publicity Artist Phil Putnam and RocketHub.com co-founder Brian Meece.  Each Monday, the boys are giving us an honest look at a crowdfunding project in action and dish on how things are going each week.

What is crowdfunding?  Find out here.

What does it look like?  See here.
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WEEK 1: After 6-7 weeks of prep work, Phil’s crowdfunding campaign has launched.  “Songs About You” is live, and some money has already come in.  Exciting road ahead.

Phil Says:

“I’m gonna vomit.  Really, I am.  No wait, I’m ok.  Ah, nope, there’s the burn.  I’m gonna blow.”

My internal monologue has run something like that for the past week.  There’s also been “$10,000 in 75 days…$10,000 in 75 days…$10,000 in 75 days…   …,” and “I swear, even if dragons fly down from heaven and breathe fire across 7th Avenue, I will NOT spend another night stuck at my laptop.  I WILL go to the gym!”

My crowdfunding project launched today, and it is not for the faint of heart.  I mean, there’s dragons involved.  It is, however, for artists who genuinely love their fans/friends and want to carve out prime space in the creative process for them.  The crowdfunding lightbulb went on for me in May while I was sitting 15 feet away from Brian (Meece) at one of the Networking parties we throw at Ariel’s place.  He looks like a character from a Michael Cera movie and rocks the Tom Ford-esque glasses without the faintest trace of irony.  Clearly, he’s good times.  He also, along with his incredible RocketHub co-founder Vlad Vukicevic, was the answer to a question that had been nagging me for months.  “My friends/fans respond most to my personality, even more than to my music…how do I put my personality to work?”  Crowdfunding; that’s how.

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The ever-elusive Facebook Fan Page.

Regardless of what you think about yours, you can’t deny its power: the ‘Suggest to Friends’ link provides an unbelievable opportunity to spread your brand (especially if you persuade your contacts to do the same), the wall allows for a rich content experience unmatched by the likes of MySpace or Twitter, the lack of “friend cap” (see: Facebook personal profiles), etc.

Recently, as if musicians needed more technological changes to deal with, the marriage between Facebook Brand Pages and Fans has extinguished. Users now only have the opportunity to “Like” a page. Please don’t confuse this with the Facebook’s traditional “like” function for pictures, comments, etc. I would have “liked” to see Facebook think about what they were doing semantically before giving two separate experiences on their website the same name, but nevertheless.

Many people are complaining about the new Facebook Page changes, mainly because they don’t understand them. Musicians, I believe that it is better for people  to “Like” your page rather than “Become a Fan.”

To be a ‘fan’ of something is a big commitment; to just ‘like’ something is much more casual. In the real world, I personally like a multitude of things, but rarely consider myself a fanatic of a particular sports team or band. Over time, people will be much more likely to engage in this “Like” behavior, strictly based on language alone.

Many artists have been complaining recently about the number of contacts on their pages dwindling. I’ve been getting emails from artists asking me, “Is there some type of Facebook virus? All of the fans on my page are disappearing.”

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Ariel’s Top 7 Facebook Apps for Musicians

Do you have a fanpage but still not sure how to make it pop?

Here are six Apps that will set you on the right path, help you to stand out from the pack and keep your fans engaged and interested in you on a consistent basis.

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