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Hey Sarah! What should go into a promo pack?
QUESTION: Taken directly from your article How to write an email to a promoter or venue...
"If you don't know what should go into a promo pack, ask me."
Hey Sarah! What should go into a promo pack?
ANSWER: Creativity is key!
Promo packs are a dying art. Once upon a time, they were the only way to alert promoters, venues, booking agents, labels, managers, radio stations, etc., to your band's existence. You'd put a ton of information into an envelope along with some photos and music, pop it in the mail, and call its recipient a couple weeks later to make sure it arrived and talk about its contents.
These days, thanks to the internet, people are saving time, money, and trees by sending electronic press/promo kits (or links to an online profile that contains the same info). But that doesn't mean an old-fashioned promo pack won't help your efforts in getting noticed by these people. In fact, I would argue that nowadays, a good promo pack is going to make a bigger impression than ever before, simply because people aren't sending them and yours will be more likely to get noticed. Take that, internet!
(Real quick side note: being that I am OCD about things like grammar, spelling, and using the proper titles for things, I want to say that the very slight difference between a "press" kit and "promo" kit is that one contains press-related materials such as press release, reviews, interviews, mentions in publications, etc.; the other contains strictly promotional and informational material such as photos, bios, music, flyers, merchandise, etc. For the sake of this article I will stick with the idea of a promo kit by that definition.)
A promo pack needs to do the following:
1. Catch the eye of the person it's being mailed to,
2. Contain enough information to peak the recipient's interest,
3. Make you stand out from everyone else who is contacting the person with that same information, and
4. Provide contact information.
Your promo pack should ALWAYS contain the following:
1. Bio. Keep it short, to-the-point, professional, interesting, and informative. Cover your band's genre, current members (no one cares about the revolving door history of your break-ups, name changes, and line-up changes -- NO ONE!), accomplishments, touring history, discography, and accolades.
2. Band photo.
3. Quotes from reviews of live shows or albums.
4. Website URL, Myspace URL, email address, phone number.
5. Music. This can be a burned CD-R of sample tracks, or an actual album, or a download card from somewhere like discrevolt.com.
Beyond that, it's up to you to make the promo pack unique and creative. You can include a personal cover letter to the recipient (hand-written is always interesting, as long as it's legible), a sticker, button, patch, poster, flyer, t-shirt, or whatever else you want! Make it funny, artistic, thoughtful, handmade, etc.
Ironically, the most important thing is not what's INSIDE, but what's outside that will make the biggest difference: your packaging. A plain manilla envelope with a sloppy, hand-written address will say to the recipient "this band is not interesting, professional, or unique." But a red-and-yellow striped box with neon blue address label? Well, that might just say "circus freaks" -- but you get my point. And just because you're broke does not mean you can't be creative!
I used to go through hundreds and hundreds of submissions in the Warped Tour office before I put up the online application for the Kevin Says Stage, and it got to the point where I could look at a pile of packages and know which ones were going to go in the "no" pile, just based on what the band had chosen to send the promo pack in. I was right 99% of the time.
From the other side of the fence: I have sent out hundreds and hundreds of promo packs myself over the last decade. I learned quickly that a couple extra minutes and a few more dimes per-package paid off ten times more than the cheap/fast/easy route, when it came to creating and mailing out promo packs.
And, in case you were wondering, my "Best Press/Promo Kit Design of All Time" award goes to THIS GUY.
Comments
Thank you for writing all these articles to help us clueless bands out! lol
~Mary~
what a tasty looking press kit hahaha
clay
