We were lucky to catch up with Heather Castillo recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Heather, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I knew very early that I wanted to work in the music business, so I made finding an internship a goal of mine as soon as I got to college. I cold-emailed the marketing assistant at Epic Records. I genuinely did not expect to receive an answer, but I got lucky and did. I was asked to come in for an interview and my real-life experience began. I’m a big supporter of cold-emails.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Heather Castillo and I’m the Sr. Marketing Director at the record label Big Noise. I’ve worked for several labels including Simon Cowell’s label SYCO and Amuse. I have also dabbled in tour and music video production, have worked as a marketing consultant, and been an artist manager across multiple genres.

I love supporting artist and their creative visions! Currently, at Big Noise I oversee all creative marketing ideas, commission music video producers/photographers/animators/other creators for artists’ projects, oversee all of our internal ads, manage all creative assets, and oversee all social media.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I had not visited previously. I didn’t have any connections in the music business. So, I started working for temp agency that placed me at Fox Network. I worked for a new department at the time called Fox Audience Strategy. The department was responsible for integrating their film and TV shows into the community through custom events. Under the department was also a new program called The Fox Writer’s Program. For this program, they selected 20 talented writers who would come in for weekly workshops and throughout the program they would develop a pilot. At the end of the program, they would pitch their scripts to network executives and one script would be chosen to become an actual FOX pilot. I love learning new things and asked the program director if I could help her in any way. I wanted to be involved and learn. She said yes, and I joined each and every workshop class helping her with admin work, research, planning for the day, and any tasks she needed. Being able to join these “classes” taught me so much about storytelling, writing, developing an interesting narrative, etc. All of these skills have been immensely valuable in music marketing! I use these skills when creating social content, when looking at a music video concept, when developing social media strategies, etc. So even though I had detour in my music business career, it ended up being incredibly helpful.

How to build an audience on social media?

Be authentic! Audiences are smart and can tell when you are faking or forcing something. It’s important to look inward and determine what is natural and organic to you. At Big Noise, some of our artists are social media naturals and don’t need a lot of ideas. Others prefer help, and in those cases, I work to truly understand the artist’s vibe and goals for his/her brand. I provide ideas that fit that authentic vibe and then ultimately the artist decides what they want to do. If you want to grow on social media, before thinking about numbers, understand your comfort level and be creative based on what’s authentic first. The numbers will follow!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bignoise.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bignoise/?hl=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGei9L_Rt5C_izWhLyPsQrA