By Luba Patlakh
Representing clients in the mainstream music industry, an entertainment public relations guru, Theda Sandiford, spoke at the University on May 3 the inner-workings of the public relations profession.
At the event, sponsored by PRSSA, Sandiford spoke to students about success secrets of the entertainment public relations business and explained the importance of the Internet to the field. Sandiford ran her college radio station at Tufts University in Boston, where she met Percy Sutton, the grandfather of one of her friends who told her to look him up when she graduated.
“I called him every single week for a year until my graduation. Then when he gave me a job, everyone in the office knew me: the secretary, the assistant,” Sandiford said. “You need to take that extra step to be remembered; 19 years later, he still remembers my phone calls.”
She also mentioned the importance of having a MySpace.com profile. “Everyone has one and it is so easy to find people on there,” she said. “Each day, about 500 people friend Russell [Simmons] and 200 to 300 people e-mail him, and I spend several hours answering the e-mails and accepting his friends.”
Sandiford said she finds interns on MySpace. “It is the best way for people to connect today, and, in PR, to get your client’s name out.”
“I built Def Jam’s first Web site and taught Jay-Z how to use a computer,” Sandiford said. “I pretended to be Redman in all of his online chats, I never thought of this as PR, but it is.”
Sandiford is considered an innovator for her multimedia experience and ability. “PR is a thankless job, a fun one, but you are literally always someone’s babysitter, mother, sister, brother, yes you got to be [a brother], too, sometimes.” Sandiford explained the importance of connecting with clients by listening to their music and reading their books. This way, PR professionals can win over potential clients by using their lyrics.
After graduation in 1992, Sandiford was given the opportunity to work at WBLS, a commercial radio station in New York City. “I was told it would take six to seven years before I got a good job, but here I was a month out of college with one.”
Sandiford’s first job paid $14,000 a year to start. She left WBLS in 1993 and became the first black major programmer at a country station (WYMY). She won the best music programming director award from the Country Music Association. “I made some of the best relationships I ever had with people that I met through country,” Sandiford said. “Just because it was a job where I was not familiar with the music so much, does not mean I just write off the people who work there.”
After leaving radio and moving into print media, Sandiford began working at Billboard magazine. Sandiford was hired to write the column “Hot 100 Singles Spotlight” and manage the “Hot 100” chart every week. “My column was written from the point of view of a trend watcher and how I felt the trends might affect the sales of popular music,” she explained. “I was one of the first writers publishing an e-mail address, everyone wanted to be nice to me, [after all] I chose the No. 1 record.”
Sandiford suggested that students heading into the world of PR be prepared. “I suggest taking a marketing class and a psychology class,” she said. “Public relations is an extension of marketing, and psychology is needed because it helps you understand why people choose and do the things they do.”
She suggested being able to give oneself an edge and showing the employer how one stands out from others. “I encourage students to write everyday because later if you are going to write press releases or articles, the ideas will come naturally.”
Public relations guru, Theda Sandiford, encouraged communication majors to network on Myspace.com.