Celebrating Ten Years of Hold Tight
I’ll just roll out all of the clichés right off of the bat and get them out of the way. What a ride! Ten amazing years in the business and where did they go, bloody hell that was fast, you don’t notice the time going, my how we’ve grown etc etc and so on. You get the idea. A decade of PR, music, gigs, deadlines tighter than an Olympian’s spandex, late nights, later mornings and fun, so much fun along the way.
Hold Tight made it to ten! Somehow our wee agency that was started probably in the pub whilst several beers in, has been grafting away like a Trojan horse for a decade. That’s a lot of bands asking WHERE’S MY REVIEW! A lot of deadlines and a lot of journalists puked on, rain-soaked festivals barely remembered, and gigs oh my god the gigs. Ten years where we’ve grown older, not really wiser in some respects, grown greyer definitely and all whilst we’ve watched our client base expand, our team expand, our offices grow - so we’re clearly doing something right?!
We’ve seen bands come and go, we’ve seen bands hit the big time, we’ve watched labels birthed and labels die but most have stayed for the long haul. We’ve watched sites and magazines, radio shows and podcasts come, go, come back again, grow bigger…. change name. And not a week has gone by where directors James and Lisa haven’t shouted at the younger account managers in the team - YOU GUYS DON’T REMEMBER PAGERS AND FAXES, WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’VE NEVER SEEN TOP GUN….as we both slowly morph into Statler and Waldorf, the grumpy old men from The Muppets.
What started as a small PR arm to support bands for Basick Records has somehow grown arms and legs, gained bands and labels worldwide to the point where we’ve grown into some Cthulhu like behemoth that’s shifting, evolving and keeping up with the times and that’s where we’re at now, a leading force in rock and metal music publicity. It’s 2020 and we all agree it’s the weirdest of times. Murder hornets anyone? Bubonic Plague? Industry mostly in lockdown. Out of lockdown. Back into lockdown.
What we realised as a team throughout all of this was that we could no longer continue JUST as a PR agency. Our clients began to look for new solutions to their promotional needs, the music industry never sits still and is always changing, global issues demand that we adapt our service offering or we pack it in. So we’re growing, evolving, sort of like a mould, kinda like that weird thing in that film THE THING which starts out as one thing and grows into another, and although we’ll continue to have PR at the core of our offering for bands, labels, festivals and beyond, it’s time to look at where we need to be and that’s as a multi-faceted music marketing agency offering print & online PR, radio plugging, strategic planning and digital marketing services.
Not only does this allow us to offer our clients more, it means we can continue as a company and one thing we’ve worked hard on is continuing our business, even in the face of a global pandemic. We’ve watched people being furloughed right across the industry, in fact right across most sectors we cross into, and right from the start of it we were determined as a company not to go down that road. We owe it to our clients who are still working to push records out and shine a light on them and we owe it to our team to fight, so fight on we have.
As well as adapting our service offering to meet the changing needs of our clients, we’ve looked into how to improve our work environment so that our staff are not only secure in their jobs in what is undoubtably one of the most anxious times in our generation, but that they’re happy with a work/life balance determined BY THEM, because we are really conscious that PR is a high burn out industry in terms of stress and anxiety. So, this year we introduced unlimited paid holiday for all staff on top of existing benefits such as ‘Free Beer Fridays’ (or soft drinks and snacks), a comprehensive pension scheme, flexible working hours picked by them, hangover days, bonuses and surprise packages through the post ‘just because’. The business of being a business doesn’t just mean providing services for clients and making money to support our families, it’s important to provide a work environment where people thrive and that’s just as important to us, if not more. To do great work, you have to feel great and if you don’t feel great at work where you spend most of your day, then what’s the point? So we continue to evolve our offering to our staff as well. We listen, we adapt, we improve and we grow. Together. And although I’m biased I think we really do have the best team of people.
As we enter our next decade with a rebrand, new product suite and fresh coat of paint we’re excited to see what the future holds. Thanks to everyone who has joined us on our journey so far, from clients, team members and interns, the media we work with across the world day in day out and who have supported us throughout and continues to like what we do. We really do appreciate you.
You can read all about our exciting changes here: https://holdtight.co/home/2020/7/6/hold-tight-pr-relaunches-as-music-marketing-agency-hold-tight
About the author: Lisa lives in a forest in Scotland and likes to complain about the weather. She's a partner at Hold Tight and has a ridiculous amount of years PR and Marketing experience within the corporate, arts and music sectors. She can usually be found face down in a pot of fresh coffee, writing press releases for a myriad of bands, or trying to coerce musicians into things they generally don’t want to do. She also likes to harass journalists with pictures of cats. She’s passionate about progressive music and filthy as shit metal, cheese and Between the Buried and Me. She has 2 kids under the age of 6 and longs for the day when she’s able to write anything without having to get up to get someone a biscuit. For any enquiries contact lisa@holdtight.co
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