Interview: Jesse Coolbroth
Vice President of Fan Engagement and Digital Marketing at Warner Records
First joining Warner Records in 2005 as an International Marketing Coordinator, Jesse Coolbroth now leads a team in the Fan Engagement and Digital Marketing department as Vice President, having worked across both domestic and global campaigns for Jason Derulo, My Chemical Romance, Charlie Puth, Dua Lipa, and many more.
We spoke with Jesse about his career, the impact of digital on music and marketing, and how to measure and maintain fandom.
1. First things first—how did you get involved in the music industry?
I started in the industry at Warner in 2005 on the domestic marketing team. At that time, I was assisting the marketing staff across artists like My Chemical Romance, The Used, and many more. Previous to joining Warner, I was studying Music and Business while in bands, always having the end goal of mixing the two and working for a record label…even though I probably didn’t totally understand what they did at the time!
After joining Warner marketing for about 8 months, I transferred into the International Department, as I always wanted to work in a global capacity and to learn about building and breaking artists around the world. After a few years, I decided to finish my Master’s degree and moved to Sydney, Australia to work for Warner Music Australia on the digital team. At that time, the digital team was more focused on partners like MySpace promotions, DSP support across iTunes, Amazon, and the beginning stages of social marketing.
After a year in Sydney, I moved back to Los Angeles. I quickly joined the Warner Records team again in domestic marketing, before transferring to the London office in the International Marketing headquarters of the company at the time.
I became the Global Marketing Director, working with artists like Linkin Park, Jason Derulo, MCR, Deftones, Charlie Puth, Nate Ruess, and more. The role was to amplify marketing and promotional activities across all Warner Music Group labels such as Warner, Atlantic, Nonesuch, Roadrunner, etc.
A few years into the role, our head of global digital marketing left the company, and my responsibilities expanded to take on digital responsibilities, including advertising, social, and online fan activations. Fast forward to 2016, I was able to transfer back to Los Angeles to work in the newly formed Fan Engagement department at Warner Records.
I am now the Vice President of Fan Engagement & Digital Marketing while also being the lead on digital advertising for the label. I currently oversee a number of Digital Marketing Managers as well as a Digital Producer, working across domestic and international repertoire like Dua Lipa, Bebe Rexha, Rufus Du Sol, Foals, Royal Blood, and some marketing activities with OVO Sound.
2. When you entered the industry, both music and marketing were becoming increasingly digital. How did your work change during this shift?
This is a very big question with lots of answers and input! The proliferation of digital products, platforms, and online engagement almost completely changed the way we approach our marketing activities.
The quickest way I can approach this question is to point out that almost weekly, our jobs change with new platforms, new types of activations, features across social accounts, and digital ad tech.
The biggest way that digital has changed our activities is that everything is so immediate. We used to window releases and have exclusives, whereas now we are all globally-minded. We also have many direct-to-fan paths of communication across all social channels, YouTube, web, and advertising methods.
We also have the opportunity to instantly read the market on releases due to immediate fan reaction, comments, engagement, and a variety of metrics.
This has led to reduced timelines for artist set up, and a need to have almost constant, authentic content to feed on and off release cycle. To me, all marketing is now digital and digital is marketing. The lines are blurred between disciplines and will continue to do so in the future.
3. For the past three years, your role at Warner has focused on fan engagement. What are some clear signs of fandom today? How do you measure fandom?
There are quite a few ways we try to build and foster fandom, as well as measure success in terms of fan growth. The key ways we identify fandom is to look at basics like follower growth, engagement percentages, interactions (number of shares, comments, likes, etc.). We also dive deep across all platforms with fan sentiment—how fans engage with an artist, what they like sharing, themes that surface through fan comments, and more.
From there, we measure fandom using multiple analytics platforms and fan sentiment analysis. We want to identify whether engagement is increasing organically and authentically. To do this, we look at overall follower growth, demographics, psychographics, and behavioral highlights.
We always try to include fan activations and a call-to-action to accurately measure where fans are in the commitment funnel, i.e., are they just liking a post without real engagement? Or are they searching for an artist, following on social, sharing appropriate content, signing up with their email address, and so on?
4. You also led a team that helped break artists outside their home territories. While I imagine each artist required a different strategy to breakthrough, how did you determine the right channels for their marketing? What was that process like?
When I started, the global marketing process was a bit more straightforward than when I moved back to Los Angeles. Initially, we had a team of Global Marketing individuals who worked with their respective label’s International Marketing team. We would add value to cross-territory creative assets, marketing plan ideation across multiple countries, promo trips, and the overall organization of a project for each repertoire owner.
As streaming, social, global release dates, and the proliferation of the internet happened, we had to adjust our responsibilities, especially when identifying where we could add value to each label and artist.
We started to build out our digital skills more to include streaming reporting, global playlist support, multi-territory digital advertising campaigns. We also worked in additional digital creative that could be useful across markets, and did additional planning with DSPs like Spotify, Apple, and Amazon.
5. You’ve handled campaigns for both R&B/hip-hop (Majid Jordan, DVSN, Jason Derulo) and indie acts (Foals, Kimbra). How do you approach marketing for these different genres?
Great question, and this changes all the time. I would say the number one thing, and probably the most important thing we try to do is to listen to our artists and management partners on the vision of the artist and/or project.
I always ask the artist/manager/marketing director about how the artist wants to present themselves to their fanbase. Do they like engaging directly? Do they want their voice heard? Do they want to maintain mystery and few posts? Or do they want to go for it on all platforms? I think it’s important to listen to how the artist wants to present themselves. From there, we build things up appropriately.
The approach also depends on the genre of the artist. Some artists in the pop and rock space have more time to set up a single or album and want properly planned out creative and copy, while some urban artists prefer to drop music and limited creative in a very short time period.
Our job is to take what the artist presents to us and make it the best it can be, to as many people as possible.
6. During your time at Warner, you’ve worked in Australia, the UK, and the US. How does the music industry differ across these three places?
All in all, the industries are set up similarly but with local nuances that make them quite different. Of course, the number of DMAs by territory, the length of time it takes for a song to grow on radio and streaming services, and even the type of content on socials can differ slightly.
We tend to discuss the timelines between releases and content promotions, for example, a song needing 6-8 weeks at radio in the UK versus what could be months in the US. So, the content strategy and rollout could be drastically different between just two territories, let alone having many more to plan for accordingly.
7. Many artists now take an “always-on” content strategy. Do you think this is a sustainable approach? What are some ways for artists to create content that can last for longer periods of time?
We try to communicate the need for continuous content, however, we also strive for quality and authenticity. An "always-on" strategy is a good thing for social consumption, but it can also hurt one’s profiles if done incorrectly or if the content isn’t engaging, and is only being promoted for the sake of it. I think we are all getting smarter about this.
I’d rather have content be more spread out, as long as it’s still exciting and good. We see many accounts where the overall engagement drops over time due to poorly executed and constant content roll-outs. This hurts both from an algorithmic point-of-view but also from an organic consumption view with fans.
I believe there are some ways to create a seemingly "always-on" content plan by including video posts, and additional behind-the-scenes footage, themed posts (i.e., "fave locations" while on tour). The hardest thing is the time and thought put into decent content.
I don’t believe most human beings, especially artists, who are trying to find time to be creative, record, tour, and hopefully still have a life that an ‘always on’ strategy is sustainable. That’s where we come in and help artists with that process, ideation, creation, and execution.
8. What do you think the next 5 years in the music industry will look like?
I think the next 5 years will see various iterations across multiple departments. Specifically, in Fan Engagement and Digital Marketing, I feel that there are a couple of key areas that will continue to evolve.
Firstly, the use of more and smarter data to bridge the gap between social, advertising, streaming, and consumption behavior. For example, we strive to make the connection between activities on TikTok and how that affects Google Trends, Search, social uplift, and streaming. Furthermore, how these connections can be amplified using paid media spend online.
Secondly, as pretty much all our digital partners are selling our audiences back to ourselves via paid media reach and engagement, these areas will continue to grow and diversify.
Where once we focused on Facebook advertising, we now have a much wider media mix to focus on. Facebook, Instagram, Stories, TikTok, Snap, Google Search, Spotify...the list goes on. Each of these areas then require a content strategy when it comes to organic and paid creative. We also have to expand the funnel where we identify audience segments.
Thirdly, we will need to grow our digital creative endeavors over the next few years. As mentioned, we are growing rapidly in the amount, quality, and formats of digital creative needed to feed socials and digital advertising. The two disciplines, in my opinion, will continue to merge between digital marketing strategy and digital creative.
Finally, and just on a general level, I feel as a label and industry, we are on a really positive path with extraordinary potential for growth and success. Compared to even a few years ago, we are a totally changed label and I can only imagine where we’ll be in another five years in terms of the caliber of artist signings, growth potential, social and creative quality, streaming success, and technological adoption.
