Industry 101: Mary Datcher
One of the often overlooked aspects within the Hip Hop industry and culture is the public meeting forum. Each year dozens of conferences, seminars, retreats, summits and meetings and festivals are held across the country. Although each may have a slightly different purpose or mission, collectively they represent our attempt at maintaining a sense of community identity.
Mary Datcher is one of those individuals dedicated to ensuring that the music industry has ways of reaching out and supporting its constituents, socially, politically, and financially. A native of Chicago’s Westside Austin neighborhood, Mary has always has a unique perspective on personal success. After rewarding positions at Def Jam, George Daniel’s Music Room, WGCI FM-Chicago and KBA Marketing, Mary formed On The Street Promotions and Marketing a firm specializing in executing field and event marketing programs with its primary focus on the music industry. In 2000 she created the Chicago DJ’s Summit, and four years later co-founded the Core DJ Retreat. Those efforts have culminated in the Global Mixx Music Retreat (GMIXX), an exclusive ‘trend influencer’ collective of industry professionals who participate in panels, seminars, workshops, showcases and convnetions.
HipHopDX: How did you get into the entertainment industry?
Mary Datcher: Well, basically how it started was I was in a program called Junior Achievement. I entered Junior Achievement during my sophomore year in high school and I was doing pretty well with some other the programs that they initiated, like the Dale Carnegie program of speaking and going on different trips and dealing with different people with different aspects of the community. And that’s how I feel in love with entrepreneurship. There was a program started by WGCI-FM, which at the time, was independently owned and not under the ownership of ClearChannel. It was managed by a predominantly black staff and they wanted to see how they could reach back in to the community. So that started a program that took Junior Achievers into the whole day-to-day operations of how to run a radio station. The had some extra air-time on their AM dial, to provide us (every Saturday) a forum to play what we wanted to play; having actual programming staff, sales staff, marketing staff, and that’s how I got pulled into that as another interest. This was something that I wanted to do, another interest of mine, and I learned how to really run a radio station. So I took to that whole-heartedly and ran from there and became an intern full time for the programming staff at WGCI and that’s how I broke into the business at the age of 16.
DX: How has the corporatization of radio affected promotions and marketing?
Mary Datcher: It’s affected it a great deal. When I was coming up, most of your major radio stations in major markets like Chicago were independently owned, black owned, with black management. They encouraged making sure that they dealt with record reps and people from the labels that were predominantly black promotions directors or indies. Instead of what you see now; everything is so consolidated. It’s not about the protection of community like it used to be. If a record rep that had been in the business for a few years that had become good friends or had a long standing relationship with the radio station…it was like family…back then, if someone was out of their job, everyone banded together to make sure that that individual got another job. And also because it was a predominantly black community on both records and radio, they made sure that they looked out for their fellow African American executives. So that it allowed us to really preserve what we were doing, not only on the artistic side but also on the employment side. That’s a difference that I see now, there’s no level of community like it used to be. There’s no sense of history of how the people before us fought hard to look out for one another. You don’t see that a great deal because of the corporate structure that’s been put in place to breakdown what we built. And not only on the structural side, but also the relationship side. It’s more machine ran than anything. That’s the difference that I see.
DX: One of the things that is most impressive about your background is the fact that you’ve got experience in lots of different areas of the industry; you’ve worked for record labels, in promotions, retail, etc. I’m interested in your perspective on how those different pieces work together...
Mary Datcher: One thing I believed in starting out in radio was really paying my dues. Having people in the industry say, “Hey you can go to college for this, but we don’t know if it’s gonna be beneficial to go to college E and major in broadcast communications when you have learned way more that the average college student within your two or three years in high school. There are other areas in this business that you can learn from.” And I started discovering that it wasn’t just about radio- it was also about the record side of things. And it wasn’t just about the record side- it was also about distribution. It wasn’t just distributions, it was about retail. It wasn’t just about retail- it was about marketing. And each area had their own way of working but they all cohesively had to work together. And that’s what really challenged me. When I would get bored or even burnt-out in one area of promotions with Def Jam, I could always go over- I had an opportunity to work with George Daniels on the retail side. And at one point I thought, “Man I did the distribution thing where I had to service all the retailers throughout the Midwest. And then I went from distribution to working records at radio and working with some of the best people there and now I’m a retailer?” It all kind of gelled together because it showed me not only the side of selling the record into the stores, but also the side of selling it to the consumer. That allowed me to hear one-on-one what the consumer had to say about certain records or certain ways that labels marketed certain records. Or hearing it as a retailer and hearing it on the other side of the counter. And I think that was so beneficial. So when I got back into doing promotions from retail, I knew both sides of the coin. And it allowed me to do my job even better and be ahead of the competition in terms of being well-rounded like I was. So you can never learn enough. That’s just how life is working right now in the business that we’re in.
DX: I know that you spent time at Def Jam during its early days. I recently spoke with a label rep there about the difference between publicity and promotions. Are there clear-cut lines between job titles in the industry outside of recording companies?
Mary Datcher: Well you know it’s funny cause we get stringent in our terminology in this business. Promotions in the terminology of the record structure would be considered radio. But when you really break it down… I remember when I was working at Def Jam as a little pup back in the day, we were still dealing with Columbia/Sony. We were the black sheep under the Columbia structure. Columbia had their Mariah Carey and their Celine Dion and their Fugees. They really had the crème de la crème of artists at the time. Def Jam was this Hip Hop, street, raw, kinda imprint type of label that they had just to make sure that they had a touch in the street. But they weren’t really taking us seriously. Our staff had to think beyond radio. Everything that Russell [Simmons] laid his hands on Def Jam was what we were part of. So if we had Def Jam comedians in our marketplace, we were responsible for making sure that they were taken to and from the venue. Or making sure that they were picked-up from the airport. We utilized Phat Farm to make sure that we serviced our deejays to make sure that they were trend influences for us. We took it beyond radio. We even had to take care of college. Whereas the average radio promotions director now doesn’t even deal with college; they just deal strictly with commercial radio. So when you talk about promotions, this is what separates what was going-on back then and what is happening now. Promotions is whatever outlet of exposure for your project. This is what keeps your job intact. When radio fails, you find other ways in which you can create a story for them to recognize your project. That’s promotions.
DX: What was your motivation behind starting the Chicago DJ Summit?
Mary Datcher: The Chicago DJ Summit was motivated when I was leaving corporate America. I worked for a major marketing field company called Kevin Bergin Associates (KBA). KBA was probably the top field marketing company in the country during the late '90s. We really grabbed the nightlife community through our programs with through Camel, through our luxury-on premise programs like Audi, and Cadillac and Oldsmobile and some of those particular key brands. I was taking what I had learned from the music industry and applying it to corporate America and making sure that the interpretation between corporate America and urban America was properly communicated. And I did a god job at that, but like always, I got bored.
I saw the need and the power of deejays. And I’m like “Wow this is my backyard.” At the end of the day, Chicago probably has the largest market of deejays next to New York and the Bay area. And the deejays are so segregated that they don’t communicate among each other. So I thought, “Why don’t we apply the same tactic that the Winter Music Conference does for the Dance community in Miami but not just focus on dance; focus on Hip Hop, focus on World music, Reggae, the whole-nine." That was the motivation for the Chicago DJ Summit, to really focus on community. Supporting deejays, allowing people to experience the nightlife. I made sure that if you had that badge, you had access to at least 15 different venues for free. What I learned was that deejays, in their own mind, feel like they are Hollywood. Although they have a silent respect for each other, but they don’t want to publicly show that respect. So we didn’t really have the numbers that we really wanted with the Chicago DJ Summits, because nobody wanted to come out and support one another.
So I just decided to step-back and see what the plan was. The plan was you want to bring into the marketplace what people don’t have access to. That is what I really realized about my backyard. You can’t change things overnight. But you can gradually spoon-feed people. Even if they’re eating grits, sell it so well that they feel like they are eating macaroni and cheese. That’s how Global Mixx gradually came to be, was really studying and researching the marketplace not only in my backyard but outside of my backyard.
I was also inspired by Rene McLean, the creator of the Mixshow Power Summit. I think that Rene has done an excellent job over the last eight years doing what he does. I think that its’ unfortunate that the labels don’t have the revenue streams like they used to to continue to support conferences and summits like he did. He really inspired not only me but a lot of other people that are now focusing on these types of retreats to do what we do. If it wasn’t for Rene McLean, a lot of these conferences or retreats or summits wouldn’t exist. And if it weren’t for the Miller Londons before him or the Sydney Millers before him or the Jack Gibsons before him…I think we all take cues from each other. Instead of disrespecting or down-grading we should just support. I don’t [put] down any other conference that exists. If anything it helps motivate and shoot a whole-different adrenaline into this industry.
DX: I want to talk about Global Mixx but I don’t want to glaze over your accomplishments specifically as a woman. What obstacles or challenges are there in terms of being a woman in what most consider a male-dominated industry?
Mary Datcher: When I started out doing street marketing, I didn’t think about myself as a woman doing this. I thought of myself as someone who loves the music and who was going to do whatever it takes to promote it and do my job. There were a lot more females when I started. Now, I’m more conscientious about my gender then I was 10 years ago. It’s a lot more male-dominated. It’s more of a secret-society of men. Half of them know that they’re not as experienced as their female counterparts, but they don’t care. It’s all about keeping it within their click. That’s the sad part about the business that we’re in. You see people that you know are negligent in their profession. They don’t pick up the phone, they don’t return phone calls, they drop the ball… But somehow they end up from one job to the next because they happen to have a colleague who’s their boss who makes a phone call to his colleague to make sure that his boy eats. If it was a woman who did the same thing, we’d be blacklisted and thrown to the curb and forced to find a job outside of our industry. So there is definitely a bias there.
DX: How has Global Mixx changed over the course of the last four years?
Mary Datcher: It really has changed. I can see it from an economic standpoint. The amount of conferences in smaller markets have sprouted out from the fact that Global Mixx has been happening and from the fact that the Core DJs Retreat the TJ’s DJ’s and Ozone conference, etc. These are major retreats that the industry looks at. Then you have the smaller ones in markets like Gainesville or Jacksonville, Florida or Jackson, Mississippi. They’re seeing that people are traveling far and beyond to meet major people at conferences like ours who are contributing or making influences on the music and entertainment side. What I’ve seen is the growth of the intimate level of deejays that we personally invite and going from not really doing promotions and media partnerships to now, us really having to fight for the attendance and credibility. Always proving ourselves every year to the same people that we are stepping to to make sure that they still have a job. And that’s the difference. Each year we’re building up, which should be easier.
DX: What can we expect for this years’ event?
Mary Datcher: This year is interest. One thing we’ve been building from last year is to evolve from just having a bunch of showcases and kicking it with a bunch of deejays to really embracing a broader range of people in the industry. We’ve expanded our panel and seminar portion of the conference. We are really trying to acknowledge key people that do their thing whether on the production, songwriting, media, marketing sides and really embrace other areas that allow us on the music side to function and become more credible and vice versa. So what’s different this year is that the music seminars are a lot more detailed and informative. The political process of the election year has really influenced what we’re doing with Global Mixx. We have a presidential candidate from our home state and our home city. That was one important aspect too, to make sure that our honorary co-chairs were apart of the political process as well. I’m really excited to have Alderman Walter Burnett, who is not only an alderman in Chicago but is also chairman of the mayor’s office of special events. He hosts a great deal of entertainment events throughout the city throughout the year. He’s the chair of the cultural affairs department which really engages the arts and entertainment community here. So he’s a very important figure here in our backyard. As well as Congressman Danny Davis of the 7th District, the largest congressional district in the state of Illinois. So these two gentlemen have been very gracious and supportive of what we’re doing. They see the importance of how the music and entertainment industry influences the youth movement and the credibility and connection between politics and mass media. And those are some of the things that we’re going to address at the retreat this year, as well as a last-minute voter registration drive on Saturday.
DX: What’s next for Mary Datcher?
Mary Datcher: Building up a multimedia company that focuses on the empowerment and education of the music and entertainment industry. Aligning myself with more and more on the divisional side of things. I love marketing. I love creating and building from the ground up and seeing once we create that brand and watching it grow long term. Hopefully providing a lot more opportunities for people whether young or old. If they have the same passion for the business as I do it allows me to be more of a mentor and provide some job stability for folks who are trying to stay in this business.
Mary Datcher is one of those individuals dedicated to ensuring that the music industry has ways of reaching out and supporting its constituents, socially, politically, and financially. A native of Chicago’s Westside Austin neighborhood, Mary has always has a unique perspective on personal success. After rewarding positions at Def Jam, George Daniel’s Music Room, WGCI FM-Chicago and KBA Marketing, Mary formed On The Street Promotions and Marketing a firm specializing in executing field and event marketing programs with its primary focus on the music industry. In 2000 she created the Chicago DJ’s Summit, and four years later co-founded the Core DJ Retreat. Those efforts have culminated in the Global Mixx Music Retreat (GMIXX), an exclusive ‘trend influencer’ collective of industry professionals who participate in panels, seminars, workshops, showcases and convnetions.
HipHopDX: How did you get into the entertainment industry?
Mary Datcher: Well, basically how it started was I was in a program called Junior Achievement. I entered Junior Achievement during my sophomore year in high school and I was doing pretty well with some other the programs that they initiated, like the Dale Carnegie program of speaking and going on different trips and dealing with different people with different aspects of the community. And that’s how I feel in love with entrepreneurship. There was a program started by WGCI-FM, which at the time, was independently owned and not under the ownership of ClearChannel. It was managed by a predominantly black staff and they wanted to see how they could reach back in to the community. So that started a program that took Junior Achievers into the whole day-to-day operations of how to run a radio station. The had some extra air-time on their AM dial, to provide us (every Saturday) a forum to play what we wanted to play; having actual programming staff, sales staff, marketing staff, and that’s how I got pulled into that as another interest. This was something that I wanted to do, another interest of mine, and I learned how to really run a radio station. So I took to that whole-heartedly and ran from there and became an intern full time for the programming staff at WGCI and that’s how I broke into the business at the age of 16.
DX: How has the corporatization of radio affected promotions and marketing?
Mary Datcher: It’s affected it a great deal. When I was coming up, most of your major radio stations in major markets like Chicago were independently owned, black owned, with black management. They encouraged making sure that they dealt with record reps and people from the labels that were predominantly black promotions directors or indies. Instead of what you see now; everything is so consolidated. It’s not about the protection of community like it used to be. If a record rep that had been in the business for a few years that had become good friends or had a long standing relationship with the radio station…it was like family…back then, if someone was out of their job, everyone banded together to make sure that that individual got another job. And also because it was a predominantly black community on both records and radio, they made sure that they looked out for their fellow African American executives. So that it allowed us to really preserve what we were doing, not only on the artistic side but also on the employment side. That’s a difference that I see now, there’s no level of community like it used to be. There’s no sense of history of how the people before us fought hard to look out for one another. You don’t see that a great deal because of the corporate structure that’s been put in place to breakdown what we built. And not only on the structural side, but also the relationship side. It’s more machine ran than anything. That’s the difference that I see.
DX: One of the things that is most impressive about your background is the fact that you’ve got experience in lots of different areas of the industry; you’ve worked for record labels, in promotions, retail, etc. I’m interested in your perspective on how those different pieces work together...
Mary Datcher: One thing I believed in starting out in radio was really paying my dues. Having people in the industry say, “Hey you can go to college for this, but we don’t know if it’s gonna be beneficial to go to college E and major in broadcast communications when you have learned way more that the average college student within your two or three years in high school. There are other areas in this business that you can learn from.” And I started discovering that it wasn’t just about radio- it was also about the record side of things. And it wasn’t just about the record side- it was also about distribution. It wasn’t just distributions, it was about retail. It wasn’t just about retail- it was about marketing. And each area had their own way of working but they all cohesively had to work together. And that’s what really challenged me. When I would get bored or even burnt-out in one area of promotions with Def Jam, I could always go over- I had an opportunity to work with George Daniels on the retail side. And at one point I thought, “Man I did the distribution thing where I had to service all the retailers throughout the Midwest. And then I went from distribution to working records at radio and working with some of the best people there and now I’m a retailer?” It all kind of gelled together because it showed me not only the side of selling the record into the stores, but also the side of selling it to the consumer. That allowed me to hear one-on-one what the consumer had to say about certain records or certain ways that labels marketed certain records. Or hearing it as a retailer and hearing it on the other side of the counter. And I think that was so beneficial. So when I got back into doing promotions from retail, I knew both sides of the coin. And it allowed me to do my job even better and be ahead of the competition in terms of being well-rounded like I was. So you can never learn enough. That’s just how life is working right now in the business that we’re in.
DX: I know that you spent time at Def Jam during its early days. I recently spoke with a label rep there about the difference between publicity and promotions. Are there clear-cut lines between job titles in the industry outside of recording companies?
Mary Datcher: Well you know it’s funny cause we get stringent in our terminology in this business. Promotions in the terminology of the record structure would be considered radio. But when you really break it down… I remember when I was working at Def Jam as a little pup back in the day, we were still dealing with Columbia/Sony. We were the black sheep under the Columbia structure. Columbia had their Mariah Carey and their Celine Dion and their Fugees. They really had the crème de la crème of artists at the time. Def Jam was this Hip Hop, street, raw, kinda imprint type of label that they had just to make sure that they had a touch in the street. But they weren’t really taking us seriously. Our staff had to think beyond radio. Everything that Russell [Simmons] laid his hands on Def Jam was what we were part of. So if we had Def Jam comedians in our marketplace, we were responsible for making sure that they were taken to and from the venue. Or making sure that they were picked-up from the airport. We utilized Phat Farm to make sure that we serviced our deejays to make sure that they were trend influences for us. We took it beyond radio. We even had to take care of college. Whereas the average radio promotions director now doesn’t even deal with college; they just deal strictly with commercial radio. So when you talk about promotions, this is what separates what was going-on back then and what is happening now. Promotions is whatever outlet of exposure for your project. This is what keeps your job intact. When radio fails, you find other ways in which you can create a story for them to recognize your project. That’s promotions.
DX: What was your motivation behind starting the Chicago DJ Summit?
Mary Datcher: The Chicago DJ Summit was motivated when I was leaving corporate America. I worked for a major marketing field company called Kevin Bergin Associates (KBA). KBA was probably the top field marketing company in the country during the late '90s. We really grabbed the nightlife community through our programs with through Camel, through our luxury-on premise programs like Audi, and Cadillac and Oldsmobile and some of those particular key brands. I was taking what I had learned from the music industry and applying it to corporate America and making sure that the interpretation between corporate America and urban America was properly communicated. And I did a god job at that, but like always, I got bored.
I saw the need and the power of deejays. And I’m like “Wow this is my backyard.” At the end of the day, Chicago probably has the largest market of deejays next to New York and the Bay area. And the deejays are so segregated that they don’t communicate among each other. So I thought, “Why don’t we apply the same tactic that the Winter Music Conference does for the Dance community in Miami but not just focus on dance; focus on Hip Hop, focus on World music, Reggae, the whole-nine." That was the motivation for the Chicago DJ Summit, to really focus on community. Supporting deejays, allowing people to experience the nightlife. I made sure that if you had that badge, you had access to at least 15 different venues for free. What I learned was that deejays, in their own mind, feel like they are Hollywood. Although they have a silent respect for each other, but they don’t want to publicly show that respect. So we didn’t really have the numbers that we really wanted with the Chicago DJ Summits, because nobody wanted to come out and support one another.
So I just decided to step-back and see what the plan was. The plan was you want to bring into the marketplace what people don’t have access to. That is what I really realized about my backyard. You can’t change things overnight. But you can gradually spoon-feed people. Even if they’re eating grits, sell it so well that they feel like they are eating macaroni and cheese. That’s how Global Mixx gradually came to be, was really studying and researching the marketplace not only in my backyard but outside of my backyard.
I was also inspired by Rene McLean, the creator of the Mixshow Power Summit. I think that Rene has done an excellent job over the last eight years doing what he does. I think that its’ unfortunate that the labels don’t have the revenue streams like they used to to continue to support conferences and summits like he did. He really inspired not only me but a lot of other people that are now focusing on these types of retreats to do what we do. If it wasn’t for Rene McLean, a lot of these conferences or retreats or summits wouldn’t exist. And if it weren’t for the Miller Londons before him or the Sydney Millers before him or the Jack Gibsons before him…I think we all take cues from each other. Instead of disrespecting or down-grading we should just support. I don’t [put] down any other conference that exists. If anything it helps motivate and shoot a whole-different adrenaline into this industry.
DX: I want to talk about Global Mixx but I don’t want to glaze over your accomplishments specifically as a woman. What obstacles or challenges are there in terms of being a woman in what most consider a male-dominated industry?
Mary Datcher: When I started out doing street marketing, I didn’t think about myself as a woman doing this. I thought of myself as someone who loves the music and who was going to do whatever it takes to promote it and do my job. There were a lot more females when I started. Now, I’m more conscientious about my gender then I was 10 years ago. It’s a lot more male-dominated. It’s more of a secret-society of men. Half of them know that they’re not as experienced as their female counterparts, but they don’t care. It’s all about keeping it within their click. That’s the sad part about the business that we’re in. You see people that you know are negligent in their profession. They don’t pick up the phone, they don’t return phone calls, they drop the ball… But somehow they end up from one job to the next because they happen to have a colleague who’s their boss who makes a phone call to his colleague to make sure that his boy eats. If it was a woman who did the same thing, we’d be blacklisted and thrown to the curb and forced to find a job outside of our industry. So there is definitely a bias there.
DX: How has Global Mixx changed over the course of the last four years?
Mary Datcher: It really has changed. I can see it from an economic standpoint. The amount of conferences in smaller markets have sprouted out from the fact that Global Mixx has been happening and from the fact that the Core DJs Retreat the TJ’s DJ’s and Ozone conference, etc. These are major retreats that the industry looks at. Then you have the smaller ones in markets like Gainesville or Jacksonville, Florida or Jackson, Mississippi. They’re seeing that people are traveling far and beyond to meet major people at conferences like ours who are contributing or making influences on the music and entertainment side. What I’ve seen is the growth of the intimate level of deejays that we personally invite and going from not really doing promotions and media partnerships to now, us really having to fight for the attendance and credibility. Always proving ourselves every year to the same people that we are stepping to to make sure that they still have a job. And that’s the difference. Each year we’re building up, which should be easier.
DX: What can we expect for this years’ event?
Mary Datcher: This year is interest. One thing we’ve been building from last year is to evolve from just having a bunch of showcases and kicking it with a bunch of deejays to really embracing a broader range of people in the industry. We’ve expanded our panel and seminar portion of the conference. We are really trying to acknowledge key people that do their thing whether on the production, songwriting, media, marketing sides and really embrace other areas that allow us on the music side to function and become more credible and vice versa. So what’s different this year is that the music seminars are a lot more detailed and informative. The political process of the election year has really influenced what we’re doing with Global Mixx. We have a presidential candidate from our home state and our home city. That was one important aspect too, to make sure that our honorary co-chairs were apart of the political process as well. I’m really excited to have Alderman Walter Burnett, who is not only an alderman in Chicago but is also chairman of the mayor’s office of special events. He hosts a great deal of entertainment events throughout the city throughout the year. He’s the chair of the cultural affairs department which really engages the arts and entertainment community here. So he’s a very important figure here in our backyard. As well as Congressman Danny Davis of the 7th District, the largest congressional district in the state of Illinois. So these two gentlemen have been very gracious and supportive of what we’re doing. They see the importance of how the music and entertainment industry influences the youth movement and the credibility and connection between politics and mass media. And those are some of the things that we’re going to address at the retreat this year, as well as a last-minute voter registration drive on Saturday.
DX: What’s next for Mary Datcher?
Mary Datcher: Building up a multimedia company that focuses on the empowerment and education of the music and entertainment industry. Aligning myself with more and more on the divisional side of things. I love marketing. I love creating and building from the ground up and seeing once we create that brand and watching it grow long term. Hopefully providing a lot more opportunities for people whether young or old. If they have the same passion for the business as I do it allows me to be more of a mentor and provide some job stability for folks who are trying to stay in this business.
