“A pop-punk dream come true:” Restless Digital on marketing their favorite bands
Restless Digital is a digital marketing company many years in the making. Founders Geoff Funk and Caroline Kimiko Jensen partnered up after years of internships (and full-time jobs) between them. Funk alone racked up more than 40 internships in music and companies such as WWE and Marvel, while Jensen shadowed at Live Nation and Fearless Records. Having established relationships with artists such as No Doubt, the Offspring and Alkaline Trio early in his career, Funk brought them to his new company to join a roster of 60-plus acts including Waterparks, Bayside, Say Anything, New Found Glory and Good Charlotte.
Both Funk and Jensen attribute internship experience and networking opportunities in affording them the ability to work alongside some of their favorite bands, gathering content on music video shoots (such as the No Doubt/AFI supergroup DREAMCAR’s on the day they chatted with AP), in the studio or at a show to share via social media. If you take away one thing from this interview, it’s that digital promotion isn’t a job—it’s a way of life.
How did you get started in digital marketing?
GEOFF FUNK: I’m actually from Cleveland, Ohio, [and] when I was 18, I moved to Los Angeles to go to college. I had a friend who was from Cleveland, and he was working at a record label out here. I had initially thought about going to Columbia in Chicago or Berkeley to get a more music-focused degree. In addition to doing music marketing and digital, I was doing filming, editing and design. He was like, “No, you need to move out here, and you need to intern.” That totally changed everything for me. It wasn’t something that was really emphasized when I was growing up.
I moved [and] started looking up who was managing a lot of my favorite bands like Green Day, Alkaline Trio, Rancid, Blink-182 and [their] record labels and agents. I started reaching out to them to see if people needed interns. It started working really well, and as I started doing it, I became so engulfed in this internship culture where I was able to get even more internships through the internships I was doing. I would be interning for someone at Interscope, and they would go to a management company and bring me with them. It was really helping to build my relationships there and helping to get me into all these great companies. I did something like 40-some internships in four years. It was so much work, but it really helped me to be able to build [Restless Digital]. I was able to look back and reach out to those people after I graduated. When I graduated, I started working at a digital marketing agency in LA, [Total Assault]. I was the head of social media there, and we worked for a lot of the same record labels like Interscope, Capitol, Geffen and Warner Bros. That was really great, and I did that for three years. In 2012, one of the places I had interned for was looking for a digital person. Rebel Waltz, —the management company for No Doubt, Gwen Stefani, the Offspring and some other artists—were looking for someone to handle all the digital for No Doubt and Gwen and the Offspring. I got the job and did all of Push And Shove, which is No Doubt’s 2012 record. I was in the studio with them, and the Offspring’s Days Go By record came out that year. I was working on those and helping with Gwen’s various companies that she had.
CAROLINE KIMIKO JENSEN: I used to write magazines just for my friends [in elementary school] about music news on pop stars. When I got to high school, there weren’t internship opportunities in Northern California for me, so I started my own online music publication, Rock Show Addiction. I started interviewing bands, and I bought a camera and started taking photos at shows and getting press passes. [In] college, the first place I interned was Live Nation. I helped them with social media stuff and online giveaways for Nickelback and bands like that. I kept interning every semester, and I didn’t even have a car then. I was taking airport shuttles, buses and trains three days out of the week, which was crazy, but it was totally worth it.
Next, I interned at Linkin Park’s company, coordinating their meet and greets and social stuff for their fan club. After that, I interned at Fearless Records for a year doing everything social—writing up tour dates and doing targeted posts for [bands like] Pierce The Veil and Motionless In White. I really started delving into the social media world and engaging content. It was updating the band and label social media pages, creating digital marketing plans for tours, albums [and] contests for bands like the Summer Set, and coordinating with all the venue promoters for each tour to make sure they have all the graphics to push. I really started learning all the skills for what I do now.
After that, I interned with 5B Artist Management who at the time [managed] Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, Asking Alexandria and Trivium. I worked under their digital guy for a year there, managing artist Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube accounts. I did the same thing with creating and implementing digital marketing plans. That is where I realized it might actually turn into a career after I graduate college. I didn’t go out much in college other than shows and networking things that were work-related because I just wanted to be in that world already.
After I graduated, I worked for Ricochet Artist Management handling socials for Memphis May Fire and Suicide Silence. I did that for [about] two years. I worked really closely with both of those bands, and that eventually led me to Geoff. I was helping Mercenary Management on the side, interning for them while I was at Ricochet. I helped handle socials for Black Veil Brides, Andy Black and Zakk Wylde for a couple of months. Their lead digital guy looped me in with Geoff because he was looking for someone for his team. We met for the first time in January of last year. Now he’s one of my best friends and we’re always working together [for] almost two years now. We became partners a few months ago, which is amazing. He does so much, and he has such a crazy resume. He’s worked with everyone. It’s been great to work with him and work alongside him and all these bands. Good Charlotte were the first band I ever liked. In elementary school, I wore their shirt all the time and thought I was so cool for listening to them. Now, we work out of their office a couple days per week and collaborate creatively with a lot of stuff. It’s crazy to be working alongside all these bands that I grew up listening to and be able to help them stay connected with their fanbases and help push their tours.
How did Restless Digital come about?
FUNK: In 2014, I started to take on some other clients, [so] I needed to fill time. They suggested I take on other artists because I had been really well-connected in that community. It started with the Used, then Blink-182 and New Found Glory, and it kind of built from there. In the last two years, I’ve been working with Caroline, who’s my partner at the company now, and now we have about 60-plus bands. I’m very much into punk rock, pop punk and rock music, so I handle Sum 41, Good Charlotte, the Offspring, No Doubt, Soundgarden, Chris Cornell, Audioslave, Temple Of The Dog, Dreamcar [and] Alkaline Trio. We handle all the digital for MDDN, which is Benji and Joel Madden’s company from Good Charlotte. We also do Skiba Clothing, which is Matt’s clothing line. Caroline handles some of the younger bands like Crown The Empire, Dance Gavin Dance, Bayside and Say Anything. We went from having 20 bands a year-and-a-half ago to almost 60, which [shows] pretty significant growth.
I’ve never really been much of a business person. I’ve been a digital person and someone who just loves music. It was never my intention to form a company, so I never really promoted myself. It was just always my name, and I just had my roster on there. As we started to really build and started hiring on more people, we really needed to create a company. I thought it was really important for people to know that I was just someone from Cleveland who was able to work for all of their favorite bands and didn’t know anybody. I moved out here and met my roommate on Craigslist, and I just interned a lot. I really went to college for internships and just minored in marketing and arts. That’s really what I was doing was building my relationships with people, [and] I was able to do it all myself without knowing anyone, [which] stresses the importance of interning [and] building your relationships. I’m a guy who makes a living working for pop-punk bands, which not many people can really say. [Laughs.]
JENSEN: I worked really hard with Geoff for the past year, [and] he asked me a couple months ago if I wanted to partner up with him. We just started building from there, and we just keep getting so many clients. Over the past couple months, we officially have DREAMCAR , Soundgarden and Rise Against. We started out with a couple of MDDN’s clients like Good Charlotte and Sleeping With Sirens, and they’ve asked us to take on pretty much their entire roster like Anti-Flag, Hollywood Undead, Waterparks, Architects and a bunch of other artists. It just seemed like the perfect time to partner up and also add some other people to our team so we could keep growing.
How important is social media in allowing you to do your job?
JENSEN: It’s everything, honestly. It’s the key ingredient to everything right now, especially with bands who are up-and-coming. It’s the main tool for them to get their name out there. If you have a million views on YouTube or you have a blue checkmark next to your Instagram name, it holds a lot of weight. It’s silly to say almost, but it’s really important. One of the biggest tools we use is Facebook Live and Instagram Live. We try to get them to utilize it as much as possible because it’s so easy for pages to look not as personal as it should be, so it’s great when they can hop on and engage and talk to their fans directly. People are always checking their phones and always on Facebook, so if you can log on and start a video chat with your favorite band, it’s so meaningful and personal. The bands love doing it too, because they can see a direct connection with their fans.
Having done so many internships, how important would you say networking has been in getting you to this point?
FUNK: It was the absolute—well not the absolute most important because I work a lot. Everyone who works with me [knows] it’s not a nine-to-five. We’re really working seven days per week. We have shows, and we’re going out and collecting content. We’re filming and doing photography. We handle all that stuff in-house—content creation, building the sites, email lists, all the bands socials and graphic design. We even do physical print for the bands when they need it—guitar picks, dressing room signs, set lists, backdrops and the bass drum heads. We’re very, very, very much involved. It’s not something we can quantify as a nine-to-five job, so for me, the two most important things were having that work ethic and really developing those relationships with people. I really owe so much to my parents [who] helped support me for four years so I could work mostly for free. In retrospect, that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me because that’s what really enabled me to be able to build. I got a job while I was still in college during my last semester just based on the word of someone who worked at one of the management companies I was at. Everything I had done in the past was all just very low-key. It was just Caroline and me, and we have Ashley Osborn who works for us as well. She handles digital and digital strategy, and she also does photographer acquisition where she will secure photographers and videographers for all the shows. This is global, so if we have Sum 41 performing in Paris tonight, she has a photographer shooting there for us. She’ll have someone handling videos for us in Estonia, United Kingdom, Ireland or just in California. We have another girl named Erica Lauren who works with Caroline mostly on her projects. I really wanted it to be about everyone because everyone puts in so much work.
I couldn’t recommend [interning] highly enough. That would be the No. 1 thing. I used to talk to colleges about it because I thought it was so important, especially to colleges outside of California. When I was growing up, I never knew much about how to get a job working in music. I just thought, “Oh, I’ll go to school, get a music business degree and then I’ll work at Interscope.” I didn’t know how important it was to have these relationships. A lot of jobs [in the industry] just go internally: They’re not even made public. They’re sent around internally to a database of employees, former interns, trusted partners, colleagues and people who are looking for a position. Plus just the knowledge—when you working in digital, it’s super, super important to be able work with someone like Chris Mortimer, who is now the head of digital at Interscope. I was his intern for three years, and he’s a very close friend of mine. Francis Ramsden, who was the head of digital at the Collective, which is a big management company, I had interned for him for a long time as well. It’s important to learn the foundations through textbook, but actually being out there on the forefront and working with those people, it’s so much more important, in my opinion.
For digital, everything is ever-changing. There’s platforms, algorithms, even dimensions for designs—things as menial as that—but by the time a textbook is published, those things are obsolete. It’s so important to be surrounded by all these people who know so much more than you do. [Laughs.] That’s really where I attribute basically everything I learned at that point from them, and then I just learned the foundations of marketing at college and got a degree. For me, with digital specifically, it was so important to work with those people because things change so frequently, [and] to be surrounded by people and teams like that to be in those meetings and see what a lot of these large bands are doing. It’s really wonderful.
JENSEN: [Networking] has been so important. I don’t really know where I would be if I didn’t go to things like SXSW and NAMM. I went to as many shows as I possibly could in college to try to meet as many people as possible, and it’s still people I see all the time who I met at my first SXSW or NAMM. It’s also people who I just reached out to have a coffee with, and I still talk to them now. It’s funny because people who I interned with back in the day, I’m working with them on projects. I think just making as many genuine connections as you possibly can and just showing people how hard you can work and how much you care, really sets you apart. I’m really glad that I did that.
Why did you pursue digital marketing as opposed to other career paths available in the music industry?
JENSEN: [Making my own website, Rock Show Addiction], was what was available to me, and I also really loved writing growing up and interviewing bands. I always used to read—and I still do—but growing up, I read AP and pop magazines like Popstar to find out more info on people’s lives through non-typical questions [such as] meanings behind specific songs and things I think the artist would really want to talk about. They showcase what they don’t really get to discuss. I wanted to learn more, and I loved that I could coordinate directly with publicists, management and tour managers and learn how the industry works that way. It was cool, and I learned how to conduct myself around artists and other people at an early age because of that, which was super-beneficial. There’s so much to learn and so many things to be a part of. Working with promoters or labels and just learning from as many people as possible—that’s what I’m trying to do right now. I’m 26, and I still want to absorb as much as I possibly can. It’s fun doing it and coming up with creative ways so you don’t even know you’re being marketed something. Just posting a picture of Good Charlotte and Waterparks hanging out is a discreet way to promote they’re going on tour together. Having Sleeping With Sirens do a Facebook Live with Benji or Joel promotes the MDDN management brand and both bands cross-promote on their socials. It’s cool to come up with ways and people don’t even realize it’s marketing because it’s just the guys hanging out and having fun. Doing a Facebook Live from a band’s rehearsal page gets people excited about a song, and they think, “Oh, I really want to see them play soon,” and maybe they’ll go buy a ticket. I don’t want to see someone post the same tour flier every single day—that’s not going to make me want to go to a show—but if you’re going to post a Throwback Thursday of a song I really loved in high school or a Facebook Live of you rehearsing, I’m probably going to pick up a ticket.
What is the best part and most challenging part about your job?
FUNK: The best part about it is you’re able to be a part of something. You’re able to work so closely with all of these bands and be a part of all these successes. You really get to be so involved, work directly and be a part of something. Obviously the most challenging is with digital; it’s never-ending, basically. There’s always things you could be doing, so you’re never really completely done with anything. There’s always work to be done. It’s not necessarily challenging, but it’s a hard lifestyle for a lot of people because one thing that we’ve always done is make ourselves really available to people. We have a lot of artists that get a lot of last-minute opportunities like they’re going to perform with somebody live and join another artist onstage, or they’re going to join a tour. It could be 10 o’clock on a Friday night and you’re getting a text about having to post something or [they’re asking] for a photographer to shoot video at 8 a.m. tomorrow. There’s things that are always happening, and it’s definitely not a lifestyle for everyone. I always like to be busy, so if you want to keep yourself busy, it’s a great profession to get into.
JENSEN: The best part is working with people who are so passionate about the business, music and [the] same bands I like. In some jobs, I feel like you can’t truly express how much you love working with a client or how much a song or band means to you. In this one, it’s great because the more you connect with and have a relationship with that band already and the more you understand, the better you will do at your job. For Good Charlotte, I know what songs are most popular or which ones resonate the best among their fanbase. I know what sort of content should be posted or what Throwback Thursdays would do the best. It’s great working with people like Geoff and Ashley who are on the same page with that. Obviously being able to go out to these shows and see all these bands all the time. I definitely love that. The most challenging would be…I would say not sleeping could be a challenge. [Laughs.] It’s fun [and] I nerd out looking to see how people are online and liking things right away. Bands like Asking Alexandria have over a million followers on Instagram, so it’s always exciting to look back even five minutes later to see how many people are engaging. That makes my day.
What advice do you have for someone interested in pursuing digital marketing?
JENSEN: Be a self-starter, and start your own thing. Find a couple bands that you really believe in and work with them to learn that way. Reach out to people that you want to eventually work with or that you look up to. Growing up, I always looked at the page in [AP] where you’d highlight someone in the industry like Taking Back Sunday’s manager and things like that. I’d post them up on my wall just for inspiration. I think it’s important to go out and network. Make your own little business cards to bring to shows or any networking thing you can find. Travel. I would book my own flight across the country to Bamboozle in New Jersey in college just so I could volunteer for the Equal Vision tent for the weekend and work alongside someone at their label [to] learn every aspect of the industry as much as possible. I think just being independent and going out and trying to meet as many people as you possibly can is great. Message people on LinkedIn or shoot someone an email and be like, ‘“I really admire what you do, can I buy you a coffee and pick your brain?”’ I think people like that sometimes because it’s great to meet people who are passionate about this. I’m super- shy and awkward and dorky, and I’ve been able to work really hard. I don’t think you have to be the most outgoing person to excel in this field at all. I think as long as you work really hard, then you can make things happen for yourself.
FUNK: I would definitely suggest interning [and] always keeping up [with] podcasts and blogs like Mashable and TechCrunch. Watch the livestreams from digital events to keep yourself on the forefront, and monitor what other bands are doing to see what apps are there and who they’re working with. It never hurts to also familiarize yourself with code and learn graphic design, video editing or shooting because those things are progressively becoming more and more important. One of the smartest things I did was while interning [at Frontline]. ne of the artists they managed was Weezer, [and] they were looking for someone to handle their video. I knew a little bit about it: his was when I was a freshman in college. I really wanted to do it, so I spent the entire Christmas break learning as much as I could. I continued to learn, and I was doing tours with them on my breaks. I was able to shoot all their video, edit it and use it as projects in college. That type of thing was really important, and I’m really glad that I did that. Even though, at the time, I wasn’t as confident, but I just thought, “I’m going to try it.”
I want to really emphasize to people how important it is to intern and also that anything is possible. As easy as it sounds, it’s also so true. I’ve worked with the Offspring for a really long time, and Dexter [Holland] has a hot sauce company called Gringo Bandito. I handle all the digital for that, as well. They have food competitions every year, and there’s people who make a living just eating food like [Takeru] Kobayashi. If a dude can make a great living eating food, a dude can make a good living working for his favorite bands. Anything is possible.
