RECORD COMPANY
Chief Operating Officer • President • Chief Executive Officer
JOB DESCRIPTION
Ultimately responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of LaFace Records, Mark Shimmel concentrates his efforts on long term promotion and marketing strategy of label-signed artists' careers. He is heavily involved in each artist's touring plans and spearheads label, radio, and retail support. Internet projects are another scope of focus for him.
PREREQUISITES
Executives must have a solid understanding of the music industry and strong personal contacts within it. They must be able to discover new talent and to strategize the necessary marketing and promotion. Executives must motivate and manage personnel and skillfully negotiate deals. “Resiliency. The industry can burn people out. Your ability to go in every day and move past the arguments and battles; each day you have to recharge and revive yourself.”
A DAY IN THE LIFE
There is no typical day in the life of Mark Shimmel. He may meet with LaFace Records’ co-presidents Antonio “L.A.” Reid and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, followed by a promotion and marketing meeting to strategize a campaign for the new Toni Braxton release. Then there might be a contract negotiation or agent meeting about one of the label artist's touring plans. Between meetings he returns telephone calls, responds to e-mail, faxes, and other correspondence, and deals with pending deals or problems. He may telephone radio programmers about airplay on a new single or talk with a manager about sales figures and promotional ideas. Often he travels to New York, Los Angeles, and other cities to see artists perform. While there, he spends time with some of the key radio people in the market and schedules other business meetings.
CAREER TIPS
“A critical component of being successful in the music industry is you need to figure out how to recharge your energies. One of the best ways is to really enjoy the people that you work with. You want to make it an environment where people are not afraid to sit in a room and come up with a crazy marketing idea, where they are free to give off their thoughts, because you may have to go through 25 ideas before you get the winner.”
“The entertainment business is probably the most documented of any industry. You walk into a magazine shop and there are 15 magazines every month that can help expand your knowledge of it. Read every one of them. Immerse yourself in the business. Every month I sit and read all the trades: Billboard, Spin, Rolling Stone, Variety, Gavin, and I read the Living Arts section of The New York Times and the Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Time. It's a lot of work, but I never feel when I walk into a meeting that I don't have a working knowledge of lots of the music/entertainment industry. It is really important to take advantage of the wealth of information that is out there.”
POINTERS FOR THE JOB SEARCH
“Sometimes this industry takes you where it wants you to go rather than the other way around. The key thing is, wherever you go and whatever the opportunities are, you need to make the most of them. You absolutely have to be fully dedicated to whatever task you're working on at that particular time. If you're good and if you get a little bit lucky, people will notice and will open up opportunities. I've never looked at any of the things I've done as steps toward something else. Every job I've held in this business I dedicated myself to thoroughly and passionately and just through circumstances of life and business, other opportunities opened up.”
MARK SHIMMEL, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING AND ARTIST RELATIONS, ARISTA RECORDS
Initially, Mark Shimmel wanted to be an actor. After hanging out at Yale Drama School and working a few dinner theater gigs in his early twenties, he realized that he was much more passionate about music than acting. He moved to Los Angeles in 1981 and found work in a small booking agency that sold talent to military bases, but quickly discovered that it was not what he wanted to do. After running his own successful agency, enabling him to bypass the mailroom and the assistant positions, he was hired as a full-fledged booking agent by Regency Artists, before moving to International Creative Management (ICM).
In search of a new challenge, Shimmel left the talent booking business to open a company specializing in corporate sponsorship. He set up deals for Jimmy Buffett with Corona Beer, Bill Cosby with Kodak, and George Michael with Coca-Cola. A job lining up sponsorship for Arista Records' anniversary show at Radio City Music Hall segued into negotiating broadcast rights with CBS Television, and Shimmel established a friendship with Arista label head Clive Davis. After scoring such major deals, Shimmel felt there was no way to top his own success, and began looking for a new challenge. While settling a disagreement between George Michael and Coke, he realized that he was more comfortable representing the artist's point of view. He went to work with Michael's management team for several years, until the artist's dispute with Sony was settled at trial.
After opening his own artist management company, Shimmel got involved with the urban music market and later merged his firm with artist manager Rob Kahane, whose clients included George Michael, Morrissey, and Jody Watley. Together, they launched Acme Records in 1993, with Shimmel being named senior vice president and general manager.
Shimmel left to form another management company, with John Denver, Broadway composer Frank Wildhorn (Jekyll & Hyde), and others as clients. The signing of Arista recording artist Tony Rich brought him into contact with Antonio “L.A.” Reid and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, founders of Arista subsidiary, LaFace Records. In 1996, Reid approached Shimmel about a change of career. Already having a relationship with Arista and its founder, president and CEO, Clive Davis, and impressed with the creative energy at LaFace, Shimmel moved to Atlanta and signed on as the label's chief operations officer.
LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT THIS JOB:
“I have to say ‘no’ a lot. Having to say ‘no’ because there are certain things that become economically unfeasible.”
THE BEST THING ABOUT THIS JOB:
“The ability to provide leadership. The power to execute ideas and get things done; to be able to focus money and resources into a very specific area whenever I want to, when it is feasible. The ability to sit down with an artist and lay out a marketing or game plan, predict how their record will develop, and see the plan executed and done almost perfectly. There is a real sense of accomplishment in that.”
In 2000, Reid was named president and CEO of Arista Records in New York, succeeding Davis, and Shimmel went with him, becoming senior vice president of artist relations. Eighteen months later, he was promoted to senior vice president of marketing and artist relations. Reporting directly to Reid, Shimmel oversees product development and marketing duties for all Arista artists and acts as a day-to-day liaison between the label and its talent roster. www.arista.com
Additional topics
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