We recently connected with Greg Lee and have shared our conversation below.
Greg, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with 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.
There are a lot of people in the music and marketing business, but not all have the relationships or experience to navigate the current landscape. While many in today’s world are busy looking for artist’s with huge streaming or social media numbers… while that data is important, it’s not as important as having a GREAT song.
It all begins with having a GREAT SONG…I am very blessed and grateful to have worked and learned ‘the craft’ of making hit records from my years heading up Promotion and Marketing at Warner Brothers Records. Working and learning from iconic players in the business like Mo Ostin, Lenny Waronker, Prince, Quincy Jones helped to form the way I think, create strategy and and market my client’s projects.
I also learned a lot from former CEO of General Electric Jack Welch who hired me to teach him and his family about the value of leveraging social media for business. He flew me to Boston to spend the day with his family and educate them on how they could use Twitter and other platforms to grow their ‘brand’. We developed a social media strategy together that is quite simple…’always be providing solutions or value in your content posts, and we also created what we called the 60/40 rule… which meant that social content posts should not be 100% always promotional around your product… spend 60% on promoting the product, 40% on providing solutions and value to potential and current followers. Give them a reason to follow and engage and they will.
You LEARN THE CRAFT by doing.. experience, relationships, and knowledge are the keys to success. And, sometimes it doesn’t work out, but learn from mistakes and always over deliver.
Greg, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am a big believer that things happen for reasons.
At 19 years of age, I was asked to join Pop singer LEO SAYER on tour as his road manager. I toured the US and Canada with Leo, and learned life on the road, and how important it is to have a great relationship with your record label (Warner Brothers). And, what are the chances that many years later, I would end up joining the label heading up Pop Promotion and Marketing in their Burbank headquarters? The people I met at 19, would later become friends and coworkers. After the tour, I finished college and worked as the Music Director and Asst. PD at KBDF an AM Top 40 radio station. It was there that I learned the various techniques and sales pitches from record promoters, all of whom wanted me to add their records. It was there that I learned what was right, and wrong about pitching. I experienced a lot of reps who did not do their homework nor had the passion for what they were presenting. If they weren’t excited about their record, how was I supposed to be inspired or motivated to play their song?
After this period in radio, Warner Bros Records offered me a job as their Local Promotion Manager in Portland, Oregon to cover the markets of Oregon, Idaho and Montana. My work caught the eye of several top execs at the company in Los Angeles, and I soon developed a relationship with folks who would guide and mentor me, and inspire me to go beyond the basic requirements of the job. While I had priorities, the Sr. VP of Promotion Russ Thyret took me under his wing and told me that whenever I felt there was a record/song that was not a priority, and if I could get it played, I would start a project from my success at exposing new music outside of the traditional priority system. Bands like The Cure, New Order, Depeche Mode, and others were all started first from my effort to ‘go outside the box’…
The head of Warner’s A&R department Michael Ostin saw what I was doing and he and others in the home office began sending me demos and advance music to get my thoughts before official release. It was during this time that I received a demo tape from an old high school friend. The group was Nu Shooz and the song was ‘I Can’t Wait’. I immediately heard a huge hit record and called my friend and he invited me to their studio where we remixed the song into the hit it became. I shared the story with Michael Ostin and he flew to Portland to come see and meet the band. While we did not sign the band, Michael and WB did give the band $4000 as a demo deal to make more music. Those funds went on to make what became their debut album on Atlantic Records (a Warner sister label) and Best New Artist nomination at the Grammies. ‘I Can’t Wait’ still resonates today and generates income to the band to this very day.
It was Thyret, and Michael Ostin who recognized my ability to hear a hit song, and how to take it through the proper steps to build it to a hit record. Thyret also knew I was a Prince fan and totally understood him, and he introduced me to him, and with Thyret, became one of his trusted execs at the label (even during the Slave era). Today, I represent Prince’s former manager and his client Mychael Gabriel (Prince’s god son), and Prince protege Sheila E.
Over time, the business went through many changes, and when file sharing and streaming changed us from a physical to a digital world…many in the business were slow or resistant to reinvent the way we did things. And, that is what set me and my skill set apart from the pack. I’ve always believed you have to have passion, vision and think like a fan to properly promote and market to an audience. Identify who the target market is, and define where they live online.
After leaving WB at the turn of the century (2000) I believed that many of the things we took for granted in business were about to change. My first client was Disney, and while they had a strong brand, they did not grasp how the world was quickly evolving from physical to digital products. They introduced me to eBay and Amazon where I studied their business models and it was then that I realized the future was distribution via digital would change everything we knew….and via Amazon we’d never have to leave our home to get products.
I then developed a strategy called Fish Where The Fish Are…. matching up keywords, and identifying tags that identifed the ideal customer or persons most apt to have interest in your brand. Like Match.com, match key areas of interest and you connect and build a social community of the right fans, not numbers or false fans… real fans who want your product;
This strategy caught the eyes of Random House and Harper Collins who hired me to help market an important book for iconic feminist Erica Jong, and later for Jack and Suzie Welch. And, we began using social media to drive sales and buzz for their books, eventually all on the NY Times Best Seller List.
I also did similar work for actor Val Kilmer, whom I was asked to meet him in his Brentwood home. I soon learned he had a medical condition that was hard for him to act on camera and be under the spotlight as he once was. I developed a strategy for him that was based on dealing with issues and the daily news cycle. At the time he had not gone public with his medical issues. He jokingly started our meeting by telling me he now sounds ‘like Marlon Brando on quayludes’… which was kind of funny and made everyone in the room laugh. I suggested he use that line, and asked if he would go on morning drive radio in LA and he agreed. Within days, we were on air at KRTH 101 with Gary Bryan (#1 morning show in lA), and afternoon drive with Mark Wallengren at KOST FM (iHeart). Within hours every talent booker in the world was calling me asking for Val to come on their show. This helped get him slowly back into the public eye, and last year he was featured in the reboot with Tom Cruise for Top Gun.
To learn more, visit my website ImagineNation at: http://imaginenationLA.com
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Always listen and respect the wishes of the artist or client.
Lesson learned: While at Warner Brothers, I had an artist named Tommy Page who had a record he wanted released the end of December, traditionally a time in the business when nobody releases music because of the holidays.
Page and his manager Ray Anderson pushed for a release before New Years, and after a meeting with Russ Thyret, we opted to weigh in favor of the artist who truly believed he had a major hit song.
We release the record per their request, and within weeks the song climbs to #1 on the charts. Proving, you don’t always know everything, and the artist who creates the art, should be respected when he/she believes in something.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Sure, never give up on what you believe in. The heart and gut are powerful tools, but you need to back it up data with reasons to stay the course.
Example: Two vivid examples-
PRINCE: ‘1999’ a song you hear on the radio still today… yet when released, radio did not embrace it immediately. We believed in Prince and his art and were determined to maximize the potential of the record as best we could…and it we reserviced the single in different picture sleeves (45 rpm) 4 times over the course of several months… and eventually, the world came to the party and our vision was correct.
PAUL SIMON: ‘You Can Call Me Al” from the Graceland album. We had a hit music video with Paul and Chevy Chase, but radio was still resisting, meanwhile the album was receiving critical acclaim and press and eventually won Album of the Year at the Grammy’s. After reservicing AL like 1999, eventually the world agreed.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://imaginenationLA.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialgreglee/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GregLeeImagineNation/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/imaginenation
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV2Pr-O_SIxZEwsrB0Q5DTw