Receptionist: Jana Fleishman’s Office
DX: Hi, is Ms. Fleishman available?

Receptionist: May I ask who’s calling?
DX: Brian Sims, HipHopDX.com.

Receptionist: May I ask what this is in regards to?
DX: Sure, an interview request.

Receptionist: For who?
DX: For her.

Receptionist: For her?
DX: Yes, for her.

Jana Fleishman is, by many accounts, one of the best people in the business…. which is tough to explain, given her larger-than-life day job of handling publicity for the world’s biggest Hip Hop and R&B artists at the world’s most famous rap label. The totally unassuming and down-to-earth Fleishman persona masks a storybook tale of hard-fought professional victories at many of this industry’s most important recording labels. What began in the early nineties as an internship has blossomed into one of the most powerful positions in urban music. Somehow, as it would appear from my brief exchange with her receptionist, she’s managed to perfect the art of publicity without becoming consumed by the public herself.

So much so that I had to convince her that I wasn’t out for personal information or juicy details about the celebrity lives that she offers for mass consumption- before she’d agree to an interview. In this installment of Industry 101, DX learns from a true media professional- Island Def Jam Publicity guru, Jana Fleishman.

HipHopDX: Technically speaking, what is your job title?
Jana Fleishman: I’m VP of publicity for Island Def Jam Music Group, that’s my official title. And basically it’s getting as much electronic and print exposure as possible for the artists.

DX:Do different companies have different approaches to publicity or is there more of an industry standard?
JF: I think that every place, umm no matter what, everybody wants as much publicity as possible. That’s sorta the bottom line. It’s just that there are different cultures at different companies.

DX: What do you mean by "different cultures"?
JF: There’s a different way of maybe attacking the projects and just promoting it in general….It’s been so long since I’ve been anywhere else.

DX: Is publicity different than promotion?
JF: Promotion is traditionally all radio. Also an offshoot of that is going to the club and dealing with deejays and all that. Radio is a whole different ballgame.

DX: Besides the obvious budget differences, what are some of the key differences between doing publicity for smaller artists versus the huge mega-stars?
JF: No matter what, you’re going to go to outlets that represent your artist the best. Whenever you get a project the perfect scenario is that you assess it and say, “Where is this person’s audience?” …and you’re going to go and get that audience. Once certain artists get to a certain level you have to be a little bit more careful; a lot of times less is more when you have a larger artist, because larger artists usually [generate] larger pieces and are much more in-depth. One little thing is going to make a much larger impact. Smaller artists, you just want everywhere.

DX: How much of your work is local vs. national campaigns, and what’s the difference?
JF: Local…the only time you’re really going to do local now is when someone is on tour. Either a tour or also wherever the song is doing really well. The Internet has changed everything. Now, even if you’re doing local press, it can usually be turned national. And then the national campaigns now are centered around the launch of a particular product or event.

DX: How is publicity impacted by all this new technology (i.e. new media…YouTube, MySpace, blogs, etc)?
JF: The game playing field has changed completely. It really really has. Some time before, you would do an article and people would only know about it through word-of-mouth or if they actually picked up the article and read it. Now you can do a story and all of a sudden it’s on every single website. News travels in a few minutes now. And also it’s changed; if you do something now, everyone is going to know about it. Media has changed how you watch something, how you make an announcement. Before, you had to go to one big national thing, like a press conference or something like that. And we still do press conferences and everything, but now you can almost do one interview with one site and it’s picked up all over.

DX: Would you say that the labels are leading that, or are they just trying to play catch-up?
JF: I think that people are finally catching up to the importance of online media…even just getting music out. Because there are people from a generation who have never walked into a music store, never brought a magazine. So you have to know how they’re getting their information, how they’re getting exposed to things…because clearly if they’re exposed to it and they like it and they like the person and really want to support, they’ll buy it. I think it’s just that we have to realize that you have to serve people and give them what they want. People just want information constantly.

DX: Why do “big name” artists traditionally only talk to the “big name” outlets?
JF: I think that is slightly changing as well… I think it’s… I know this might sound crazy, but a lot of it is about time. I know what I try to do is if I have releases I love being able to do a conference call with a whole bunch of outlets. Just so everything is condensed. Also, with a lot of artists, it gets tiresome to do the same interview with 25 outlets. Especially now, in this day and age, like I said, when you do one interview, if that person can hit on the 10 questions that you know are going to be asked in every single interview, everyone already has their answers. So sometimes I go into it and say, “Okay, so what’s the difference if I do this one outlet, everybody who would read this outlet has already read it here.” There’s an audience that traditionally will read or go the same magazines and websites. So you know if you do the interview with one magazine you know that audience already read it. If that makes sense…. Continued on page 2 »