Atlantic Records

As the Senior Vice President Of Marketing, Joi Pitts oversees the entire urban marketing department, but although her job requires a great deal of responsibility she finds it to be incredibly rewarding to help Atlantic artists market themselves in new and creative ways. We sat down with Pitts to find out how she became the marketing guru that she is today and also got some great advice on how you can pursue a similar path if you’re willing to work hard and fully commit yourself to the worlds of music and marketing.

What does being Senior Vice President Of Marketing entail?
As a department head I work to drive innovation and initiatives that the company sets and make sure I’m implementing them with particular artists or Web sites, whether it's making sure that my team is knowledgeable when it comes to how we're strategically selling our music or it's new marketing ideas and outlets. I also have my own roster of artists who I handle and do the marketing for as well.

Which artist do you work with on a day–to-day basis?
Tank, Musiq Soulchild and Estelle, T.I. Estelle is getting ready to come out with a new album, Musiq Soulchild is putting out a new album in May and we're maintaining and promoting Tank’s current album [Now Or Never]. I also work with different departments like digital to make sure we're driving internal traffic and ideas and marketing them across the board. I work directly with the President Of Black Music [Michael Kyser], so I’m kind of his right hand person; we work hand-in-hand in the sense that he oversees the entire urban music division and I work underneath him to make sure we're doing everything that's possible in every area.

How did you end up at Atlantic Records?
I started at Undeas Records which was an indie label founded by Biggie [Smalls] and Lance Rivera. It was a partnership they started and their artists were Lil Kim and Junior M.A.F.I.A. I worked with them on an indie basis but both of those artists' projects were distributed through Atlantic so I worked with Atlantic in an indie marketing capacity — and when the opportunity came when they needed a project manager, [Atlantic Records’ current Co-Chairman and CEO] Craig Kallman called me since we had worked together closely on those two projects. That happened in 2000 and I’ve been here ever since.

What are some important qualities for you job?
Number one is that you have to learn how to multi-task because you can have two or three artists active at the same time and you're dealing with publicity, sales, video promotion, video production art and creative photo shoots all the same time for each artist. Time management is really key because you have to learn to prioritize what you need to get done now or you're going to leave a lot of stuff undone; music is so timely you can't afford to not understand how time sensitive things are. You also definitely have to be a people person because you interact with every single department in the building and externally; you become the artist's internal manager in a sense, so you have to be able to have a strong relationship with the artist as well.

What advice would you have for someone who wants to work in marketing at a major label?
If you're in school and you have a business background I think you can fare well at this job because while some parts of this job are specific to music overall, when you look at marketing a brand coming from ideation to conceptualizing your idea to implementing it, it's the same kind of checklist you go through if you were working for, say, Coca-Cola. You also have to be a somewhat creative person because a lot of what we do is taking something that's a square peg and creating a campaign that makes that larger than life; our goal is to try to sell our music to consumers and make sure our bands and artists are connected to our fan base so we constantly have to come up with cool ways to do that.

Do you have any exciting stories from your time at the label?
Four years ago or so Sean Paul was nominated for a Grammy and they wanted a performance. They paired him with Sting so I got to fly to Denver with Sean and watch them rehearse and then we stayed for the concert that night. It was me, Sean, Sting's guy, Sean's road manager and Sean’s brother in one room for hours while they worked on the song. That was amazing.