Andy’s making it a week to remember
Nov 17 2007
by Michelle Rushton, Liverpool Echo
Andy Owen, assistant marketing manager at Cream Group, is preparing for Liverpool Music Week, running from November 29 to December 9. This is his day...
5.30am: Sam, my six-week-old son and part-time alarm clock, wakes me and my partner Jenn. I sit talking to Jenn to keep her awake while she feeds Sam.
7am: By now Sam has settled back to sleep, so I try to as well before my day starts for a second time.
8am: My actual alarm clock rings and I climb out of bed, shower and dress for work. I’m usually planning my day at this point, making a mental list of what I need to get done – which is a lot with Liverpool Music Week only two weeks away!
8.30am: I make Jenn and I a cup of tea, turn on my computer, read the news headlines online and check through my personal emails.
9.30am: After making a quick sandwich for my lunch, I leave the apartment and walk the short distance to the Cream office.
10am: I get stick for never making the tea at work, so I make an effort and make everyone one. It’s a rare occasion. I log onto my PC and start wading through the dozens of emails, replying to any requiring a short answer and saving the more detailed ones for later.
10.30am: We have a marketing meeting for Liverpool Music Week scheduled for 11am, so I start to prepare all the information I’ll need for that. Sales figures, forecasts and other analysis all need to be up to date, and I need to know exactly what activity we have planned as well as report back on what has been happening.
11am: The meeting starts and there are eight of us today. After a quick recap of the last meeting we begin by looking at the street campaign. There’s one final poster campaign left, so we agree on design. We also discuss the distribution of the Liverpool Music Week brochures – these are the ‘bibles’ for the event and give all the info anyone needs about who’s playing, where, when etc.
12.30pm: This week’s meeting is over slightly quicker than normal, mainly because people are so busy in the last few weeks before the opening show on November 29.
1pm: I send a few quick emails, including one about promotion on artists’ MySpace pages. There are 270 acts playing this year, including Kaiser Chiefs, Madness, Hard Fi, The Chemical Brothers, Good Shoes, New Young Pony Club and much more. We’ve designed an ‘I’m playing at..’ graphic for the bands to put on their pages.
1.15pm: I spend an hour finalising the script and soundbed for a radio promotion we have running on Radio City, our exclusive radio partners on this year’s event.
2.30pm: I put some time aside to work through the remaining emails, including a web traffic report for our website www.liverpoolmusicweek.co.uk, and an e-flyer plan for the host venues such as Bumper, Korova, Metropolitan, Barfly and Magnet. There’s also a plan to distribute the 30,000 festival brochures.
4pm: I spend some time finalising the listings posters for each of the venues. It’s great to see the event come together like this, and the hundreds of listings really do show how much is happening from the 29th.
4.30pm: I make several phone calls to the companies pitching to design the artwork for Creamfields 2008. We still need to make appointments for each pitch.
4.50pm: Today’s sales figures begin to arrive. There’s smiles all round when we discover that the first of the Liverpool Music Week shows has sold out. Pendulum live at Carling Academy three weeks in advance – fantastic!
5.15pm: I begin work on the final poster campaign for Liverpool Music Week after this morning’s meeting. The design is drafted and print and distribution costs are worked out and put into the budget.
6.45pm: I leave the office and walk home, looking forward to seeing Sam and Jenn.