Jukebox Media

How I Built & Scaled A PR Agency To Over 250 Clients

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About
Business

Alex Jukes

Founder, Jukebox Media

Founders

Employees

Jukebox Media

jukeboxpr.co.uk

from London, UK

started August 2011

Founders

Employees

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Hi, My name is Alex Jukes and I’m the founder of Jukebox PR. I am a travel and music enthusiast who has built a global agency driven by these passions.

Since founding the agency I’ve traveled to over 350 festivals in 40 countries, as an agency, we can work with 250+ clients a year across festivals, music, and tech, and we’ve had to increase our team from 12 to 25 staff in the last two and a half years as we cemented the agency as web3 experts being one of the top 5 agencies working in this space in the last two years.

We work across a range of clients such as We are Festival, SXM Festival, Moga, Amnesia, Carl Cox, etc. and since we expanded into the web3 space we’ve started working with clients such as Forj (part of Animoca brands), SeatlabNFT, Volta, Caduceus amongst others.

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

I started it about 15 years ago after doing some freelancing for a few PR companies and realizing I could do it better myself. I started to work for a few artists and quickly found I had a knack for it. After about two years I realized that there was a huge gap in the events PR world in the UK, so we started working for a lot of clubs and smaller promoters, working on each of their shows and securing press nationally and locally.

Over the last few years, we have started to work on a global scale; traveling to far-fetched places to attend events and festivals and meeting promoters and telling them about what we do. The relationships we have built up with festival promoters around the world have been key to our success; we have an amazing team of people who live and die by music and love traveling.

I have traveled to over 350 festivals in over 40 different countries. I’ve started documenting some of my life and the special places where we get to work on Instagram.

As a company, we now have a staff of 25 operating from London, Ibiza, New York, and Bangkok, specializing in PR for festivals, events, artists, and record labels, including brand partnerships, sponsorships, community management, event programming, and influencer marketing.

The business has grown exponentially, and for a long time I’ve been very hands-on, but now find myself delegating much more. As such it's been critical to building a team that is both extremely hard working and knowledgeable in their sector, as well as able to work harmoniously with each other, as we spend a lot of time on the road. At times it feels more like a dysfunctional family than employees. But if anything, I feel this helps us excel, and the fact that our team is highly thought of, as well as friendly, approachable, and fun, is beneficial both with clients and the media we work with.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

Even though we’re 15 years in, we’ve never got complacent. We’re constantly evolving the business and our offerings and take every opportunity presented to us to innovate and grow. We’re always looking at new ways to demonstrate our unique insight, strategic thinking, and approach. Whether setting up and launching festivals in some of the unique places in the world, dropping P Diddy’s latest NFT, or creating our influencer platform, we never sit still or rest on our laurels.

We are a client-servicing business, and client retention is everything. Most of our clients have been with us from the very beginning and we always look at all of our client relationships as true partnerships, we are all one team. We challenge our clients to be the best they can be, we are true results driven. We only deliver work that will drive maximum return for the business, and we're straight-talking and candid with clients. At the end of the day, we care about our clients and helping them to succeed.

Don’t be afraid of failure, some of your best ideas can come from mistakes you’ve made.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

As the music and live entertainment industry was put on hold in lockdown, we realized that we needed to diversify the business to survive.

We work on approximately 150 festivals a year and then one day every single one was canceled. It was a scary time for a few months, working out what we were going to do, but then a lot of artists, DJs, and celebrities started creating NFTs and we were put in touch with Lewis Capaldi and then Logan Paul.

In six months, we did about 15 NFT drops – it was an exciting new world. We now work with around 20 clients on Web3 projects from strategy and NFT ticketing to blockchain and incubator projects, and we recently appointed Chris Alderton as its first head of Web3. Chris has been with us for five years working on festivals, and crypto and blockchain were his hobbies – he’s now turned it into a job and because he understands it, he can explain how it works to non-crypto natives.

The agency’s Web3 clients include NFT technology company Forj (part of blockchain gaming developer Animoca), NFT event ticketing marketplace SeatlabNFT, mixed reality performance platform Volta, and metaverse blockchain developer Caduceus.

Web3 and NFTs have started to become more mainstream, with luxury brands coming into Web3 and doing amazing things in this space, building communities and offering utilities and assets. We began to think we had something just as all the festivals came back – we went from 12 to 26 people almost overnight. It’s all tying together – we’re helping people with Web3 strategies, taking Web2 brands including festivals, labels, and artists into Web3, giving them ideas of how to engage communities, and then doing their PR around it.

Web3 is just about communities talking to each other. We’re from a music and culture background, and dance music was based on communities, so it’s been an easy transition for us to come into Web3, using our PR and music promotion techniques from building teams to promote festivals and starting club nights at Fabric. Our skills are just transferring into a different world.

We’ve also appointed former Ministry of Sound brand manager Josh Karpf, who has driven the agency’s growth as director of operations since joining in 2020, as Jukebox’s first managing director.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

Don’t listen to anyone that says you can’t do it. If you believe in something, go and do it and work your arse off, harder than anyone else, until you achieve it. Secondly, PR is all about relationships, so making friends all around the world and nurturing those relationships is key.

Always be prepared to pivot and innovate and never be afraid to try new things, if we hadn’t done this we would not be one of the top 5 web3 agencies in the world right now.

Grow and develop with your clients and if something doesn’t already exist, create it yourself. The last couple of years have seen us evolve and grow at an exponential rate, building an incredible team across our multiple divisions which have put us at the forefront of the music, lifestyle, tech, and Web3 industries.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

Jukebox has also grown its influencer network, The Tribes, which has worked on more than 500 campaigns in the last year promoting new music, festivals, artists, and products across more than 100 Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook music communities to an audience of over 50 million, as well as its network of 70-plus TikTok creators and influencers.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

Book - Mr Nice

Talk sport daily podcast

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

Never give up
Do what you love, try and turn your passion into a career
Don’t be afraid of failure, some of your best ideas can come from mistakes you’ve made
Never be afraid to take risks and innovate