Slush Management Taps companyX to Help Expand Brand Strategy for Artists

Slush Management, the boutique artist-management steadfast down Porter Robinson, Jai Wolf and EDEN has entered a strategical concern with companyX, the New York- and London-based brand-partnerships and strategy bureau founded by Mara Frankel successful collaboration with ATC Group and ROAM.

“Slush Management is focused connected world-building astir each of our artists, and that requires a heavy knowing of however to link with like-minded brands to standard each artist’s vision,” Aaron Greene, co-founder of Slush Management, tells Billboard. “We’ve ever taken that attack portion partnering with immoderate of the biggest brands successful the world, and our concern with companyX is the adjacent measurement successful expanding that capability.”

Founded successful 2022, companyX grew retired of Frankel’s 12-year tenure starring marque partnerships astatine Atlantic Records. Her caller task was designed to span the spread betwixt brands seeking authentic voices and artists acceptable to physique meaningful campaigns beyond one-off sponsorships.

“I’d spent years watching the aforesaid 10 to 15 large artists onshore the large marque deals,” Frankel tells Billboard. “We wanted to make an bureau that opened those opportunities to a wider radical — artists who person the close instrumentality basal and involvement but not needfully the infrastructure. companyX became a benignant of people’s brand-partnerships agency—an outer squad that tin plug into a absorption institution and assistance physique retired opportunities that consciousness strategical and meaningful.”

Her past successes see campaigns specified arsenic Mt. Joy’s marque woody with Coors Light, resulting successful a multi-year concern spanning circuit sponsorships and content, and Kimbra’s enactment with Candy Crush Saga, which produced a bespoke opus and video aboriginal integrated into the artist’s medium rollout.

Greene says Slush’s roster has agelong attracted involvement from forward-thinking brands successful gaming, tech and fashion. But until now, Slush managed those relationships internally.

“We’ve done everything from world-building experiences with Crunchyroll to integer collaborations with Magic: The Gathering,” Greene explains. “But we’re managers, not specialists. Having idiosyncratic similar Mara — who lives and breathes marque strategy — allows america to standard those opportunities and find caller ones we wouldn’t person the bandwidth to pursue.”

For Neal O’Connor, Slush’s different co-founder, the concern is astir deepening the artist-fan connection.

“These partnerships aren’t conscionable transactions — they’re opportunities to conscionable fans successful different parts of their lives,” helium says. “By partnering with companyX, we’re doubling down connected that attack and expanding what’s imaginable for our roster.”

Under the deal, companyX’s services go disposable to each Slush clients, with Frankel and her squad embedded into the absorption cognition portion maintaining their ain outer lawsuit base. “I’ll beryllium moving crossed the roster,” Frankel notes, “reaching retired to my web for caller opportunities and besides gathering connected relationships the artists already have. It’s astir creating a much comprehensive, sustained beingness successful the marque space.”

Frankel describes the modern brand-partnership scenery arsenic “an unusual matrix” wherever managers, agents, labels, adjacent relatives whitethorn each pursuit deals. What matters, she says, is proximity to the artist’s story.

“The powerfulness of absorption is that you tin telephone a marque and say, Porter Robinson wants to enactment with you,” she explains. “That’s a wholly antithetic speech than a acold bureau pitch. It’s rooted successful the artist’s existent passions.”

Greene agrees, emphasizing that galore Slush clients crook down lucrative but mismatched offers. “A batch of our artists person a precise circumstantial vision. Sometimes that frustrates accepted agencies,” helium says. “But authenticity is non-negotiable for us. With Mara, there’s an knowing that not each creator wants a paycheck—they privation partnerships that align with their universe.”

As Slush and companyX formalize their collaboration, some sides spot it arsenic a exemplary for however boutique absorption firms tin germinate without losing their originative core.

“Not a batch of autarkic absorption companies connection this benignant of service,” O’Connor says. “We’re excited to ...