As long as there has been art there have been those whose goal was to find a way to experience it. Too read, watch, listen, whatever the means by which one can ingest these creations, society benefits from it. Royalty, the church, and of course business professionals have all been the conduit for us all to experience the products of artist’s imagination. There are a variety of ways in which we receive this in today’s society and this has expanded on an international scale. To bring this global community of artists and those who display/distribute their works requires events of epic proportions, produced by someone like Ian Pickup. Through his work with RTM (Red Touch Media), Pickup has manifested the types of gatherings that bring the greatest purveyors of entertainment, all for the result of assisting artist, public, and business to be more diverse and empowered. You likely have a mental image of that person in your secondary school or university who threw the types of parties that everyone talked about for months. Ian Pickup is the entertainment professional version of that person. He seems to lack boundaries that delineate music, film, even sports in the hopes of bringing more excitement into the lives of just about everyone.
RTM is to entertainment what vinyl was to music in the last century; a means to allow people to experience, possibly possess that which entertains and moves them. The RTM platform is a combination of content distribution and content management. RTM handle over 2 billion (yes, with a “B”) files every month. Their platform enables the management of millions of songs, movies, books, etc. in a format that has made access, reporting, status, etc. so much easier than any other product previously available. The actual distribution is available via a simple download but RTM’s “secret sauce” was figuring out how to get content to places which did not offer robust infrastructure or access. As an example, RTM developed a method to allow digital downloads over dial-up infrastructure (without requiring several minutes to do this). Of course having the best product in the world means nothing if people don’t know about it. Ian
Pickup is the producer in charge of the events for RTM showing its content management system as a way to enhance production as well as distribution of their content. In this role, Ian “sets the stage” for celebrities, executives, and the public at some of the most well-known gatherings in the entertainment world. When RTM is being presented at the Sound City Music Festival, or any other number of key happenings in the world of TV, film, & music, it’s Ian who has carefully created the environment to be a conducive one.
While these events take place in the US, RTM and Ian’s role works on a global scale. To illustrate, working with the Telford Tigers (Telford, England), RTM placed Pickup in charge of Marketing Operations for a concert by pop group Boyzone at the team’s hockey stadium. The event was created to both show appreciation for the team’s fans and prompt an increase in ticket sales to games. For this all day concert featuring about a dozen bands, culminating in the final performance of the evening by Boyzone, Ian managed the activation, coordinated the crowd & hockey players, a staff of fifty people, and retail. The attendance of 10,000 attested to the success of the concert and Ian’s skill overseeing such a massive event.
This producer also introduced RTM at the Sound City Music Festival in Liverpool, England. At the week-long festival with over 20,000 in attendance, Ian coordinated RTM’s multiple booths, corners, & social media programs which presented RTM’s software platform to Celebrities and the general public. His work focused on the interactive/discussion side of presenting RTM software to attendees, and working with bands that were sponsored by RTM.
As RTM’s brand has grown, so has the size of the events. While the crowds don’t always number in the tens of thousands, a group of this size can be difficult to assess. Pickup likes to get a personal feel for the people and their tastes. He communicates, “I think one of the things I have learned over the years is that it is always good idea to take a break and see what is happening at the events you are working on. It is easy to get too mixed up in the work and miss something. So taking a break from the work, as it were, can actually really help the work. Artists want to know how their music will get a wider audience. Producers and distributors want to know how to increase sales. The general public wants to know how to make access easier. In each case, we have things that we can say to appeal to their questions. My role is to have the answers, to help others explain, and to make sure the infrastructure behind the demonstrations is spot on. When I step away for a few minutes and mingle as an individual, I feel that I get a different perspective that is essential to understanding the big picture. I have a responsibility to the company, the public, and myself to make sure we all have the same goal.”