After Cardi B released her new single "Hot Sh-t" featuring Kanye West and Lil Durk this summer, one of the label's first calls was to increasingly in-demand digital marketing agency Get Engaged Media. The Atlanta-based company's social media campaign for the rapper's song garnered more than 100 million views in the first two weeks of its release.
College friends Cameron “Cam” Fordham and Ben Hiott founded the company in 2016 to quit their day jobs to monetize popular Facebook pages by curating their content. Alex Dermer, who fronts Waka Flocka Flame, joined forces six months later and the trio formed Get Engaged Media. Six years later, the company runs social media campaigns for artists ranging from DJ Khaled, Wiz Khalifa and Imagine Dragons to Walker Hayes and Ozzy Osborne. This year alone, he's driven social media to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart with Jack Harlow's "First Class," Glass Animals' "Heat Wave" and Lizzo's "About Damn Time."
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The pandemic has benefited the company, bringing jobs and volume growth of more than 300% over the past two years, according to Dermer, who describes the company's mission as providing "fuel to create conversations and promote content."
During the COVID-19 shutdown, "there has been a massive reallocation of spending focus between sectors," Dermer said. "As your music gets tours, billboards and other aspects, they have to be aggressive in digital. Money comes to music companies through streaming, and there's a direct relationship between streaming and social media traction. So that's where we've proven massive transition to digital space technologies.'
The change came on Get Engaged with The Weeknd's After Hours and the album's single "Blinding Lights," which at 90 weeks became the longest-running hit in Billboard's Hot 100 history.
"The album came out when everyone was at a standstill and right in the middle of the pandemic, and so many people were hurt and scared," Hiot said. “We were able to create viral moments, especially with the 'Blinding Lights' dance, which brought happiness and joy to many people.
Get Engaged Media works with over 1,000 musicians and Celebrities and 10,000 influencers across more than 7,500 companies, which Dermer says have generated more than 30 billion views on social media.
In addition to working with artists on all three major record labels, his client list includes brands such as T-Mobile, Crocs, The Honest Company, Vita Coco, Major League Soccer, NBC Universal, NASCAR and Snapchat.
Earlier this year, Get Engaged Media expanded to Nashville and has worked with country artists including Cole Swindell, Parker McCollum and Kane Brown.
"I wanted a great team that could come up with creative ideas and help us capture important content because I couldn't keep up with [Kane] on my iPhone all day," Brown's manager Martha Earls told Billboard . “[Get Engaged] is unique in its approach to each artist. They understand the genres people are talking about, who their fan base is, and having that knowledge is a huge strength.”
In addition to opening a Nashville location, Get Engaged executives launched a record label this year called Series A Entertainment, which signed rapper The Letter M to a joint venture with 300 Entertainment. They also turned into executive management representing rapper SYMBA.
They also want to expand geography and possibly open offices in Miami and London. "There's a big Web 3.0 presence in Miami right now, so one day I could see some sort of satellite office," Fordham said.
Until now, Get Engaged Media has operated without the help of venture capitalists or other outside funding, but that hasn't stopped potential applicants from coming forward.
A few months ago, Jason Zerden, then VP of business development for Create Music Group, approached the founders of Get Engaged about buying the company. They aren't for sale, but Zerden is impressed with how Get Engaged competes head-to-head with much larger companies. "I came through CAA, then Stem and then Create Music Group, which are very big companies," he said. "These people run a business of 90 people in this country outside of Georgia."
Four months into Get Engaged, Zerden was asked to join as chief strategy officer. Impressed by their fragments, he started this month.
Here, Zerden talks about why Get Engaged has become a key partner for more and more artists and brands, and how he sees the evolution of social media and music companies.
What drew you to Get Engaged Media?
I was impressed by the depth of their relationships with [companies like] TGI Fridays, Raising Cane's, The Honest Company. ...Talk to a C-level executive, CMO. They don't just talk VPS marketing. These people without traditional Hollywood backgrounds have been able to break into Hollywood, media and brands in impressive ways.
How would you describe your role in the company?
I see the business holistically. There were 90 people: 60 in Atlanta, 15 in Nashville, and then some scattered around Los Angeles, Boston, New York, and so on. We have many regular customers. Our activities are divided into social, web content, music and business content, and most of the time is dedicated to music, web and content. But at the end of the day, it's social media management and project management.
Many artists are told to continue producing TikTok videos and other content in addition to the touring and recording they already have. How is Get Engaged positioned to help ease this burden?
I had a conversation with the head of a digital label because some artists don't want to use TikTok. Traditionally, there are two verticals: music marketing, like the TikTok seed, and the Instagram seed. Being on Instagram is more of an opportunity to let cultural sites talk about you, like Music Generation Our [Instagram page], DJ Akademik or RapTV, and we have a lot of material for that. But we also have a huge Snapchat network with about 80 apps owned and operated by Get Engaged Media. To be able to go to a label and say, "We're thinking more creatively here." Why not create a show and [follow] the artist from the [album] inception to the album release,” and then be able to buy all the advertising associated with that Snapchat show.
How did this Snapchat strategy evolve?
We're in talks with every major [label] right now to really figure it out. The direct play we started was buying advertising distribution, so if Universal comes along and wants to buy all the advertising around the show, with the name next to that artist, we can buy it. This allows us to highlight our core offerings. Few play Snapchat when it comes to land grabbing, and we currently have most of the land in this space.
What metrics do you use to determine if a campaign is successful?
The goals for each company are different. Every label says, "Hey, we want this to go viral." We want this number of likes or comments. Many rappers don't care about the number of views, they care about which pages they share their content on. Brands like Raising Cane have KPIs [key performance indicators] that are very metric-based, so it makes a big impression on them.
We have the purchasing power. Let's say an artist calls you at 12:01 on a Thursday night and says, "Hey, I want to be on this page in the next five minutes," we've had the ability to do that because we've been buying a lot. We heard from the label that we are the only partner capable of doing something like this. It's not unique that we do this, but what is unique is the time and speed we put into making things work, and that's a competitive advantage.
What is the total price of the company?
There is no fixed price, but most of our campaigns cost between $20,000 and $50,000. Sometimes we take on smaller companies, but it depends on the project and the artist, the requirements, and if he's in it from the beginning and we can really tell the story.
If there's a song or dance that's perfect for TikTok, what's the process?
We have over 5,000 content creators in our network, so we can send songs to our creators. When we talk about TikTok, we can say, “It's a dance, it's a shared creativity. We would like to know your views on this matter.' And it repeats itself. Let's put out dances, and if one of the dances goes viral, it will change the company. Based on UGC [user generated content], now it's a viral track that we have to run.
Who are the best content creators in your network?
DRUSKI, Lele Pons, D'Amelio Family, Noah Beck, Just Maiko and Michael Le are just a few.
How do you know when to start working with a new content creator?
When creators of exciting new content come online and we see things run smoothly. That's the beauty of social media: who was popular last week will be different than who will be popular next week. It is easy to maintain and based on culture. Having a very diverse company also helps in this regard, and we get to see the whole spectrum and see fantastic young creators in the subcultures of the world. There are so many subcultures emerging that we cannot predict.
What subcultures are currently developing?
It's really a place and an era, you just go to an area where there's an interest in a certain type of music, like what you saw with New York Drill Music and Ice Spice. He had Pop Smoke, then he went to Ice Spice, and now he has a flashlight. It simply sees the culture in real time and can move at the speed of the culture. One thing I see about this place that is different from most other markets is the live section. Live entertainment interests people a little more than other genres. And branded goods because Indonesian artists are usually very confident in their brands. If you're a country artist, you can get brand endorsement deals faster than if you were in any other market.
What are the biggest misconceptions you see in digital marketing?
Some people think you put yourself on a playlist like [Spotify's] New Music Friday and you're done. 60,000 songs are released on DSP every day. There are so many playlists, so it's a comprehensive campaign. And in a world where people are going to concerts and events again, there is a real and practical element to that.
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