Concrete Marketing
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| Industry | Marketing |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1984 |
| Founders | Bob Chiappardi, Walter O'Brien |
| Website | concreteplanet |
Concrete Marketing is an independent marketing company based in New York, USA, founded by Bob Chiappardi and Walter O'Brien in 1984.
Concrete Marketing was founded by Bob Chiappardi and Walter O'Brien in 1984. Chiappardi was working in the mail room of Arista Records in New York whilst managing a few bands from Long Island and O'Brien was the founder of Relativity/Combat Records. The company name was chosen by plucking a name blindly from the Yellow Pages. Concrete’s first client was RCA’s Grim Reaper. It was during the group's first tour that Chiappardi and O'Brien decided to start working as a marketing company, realizing that there were few people out there to properly service the metal community.
During the 1984 New Music Seminarthey distributed around 200 flyers advertising Concrete and its services and by the end of the first day they had been approached by Rick Dobbis, then VP of marketing at Chrysalis Records, and were hired to work the first full length Armoured Saint record.
In 1990 Chiappardi and O’Brien amicably split as business partners with Chiappardi taking the helm of Concrete Marketing and several other companies they had created, whilst Walter O’Brien took Concrete Management, the management company that looked after Pantera, White Zombie and Prong.
In 1992 the company began ‘Concrete Corner’, the purpose of which was the promotion and distribution of heavy metal records. This was achieved at a retail level by creating a unified sales force from the blending of independent and select chain stores that would adopt the program thus promoting select hard rock/metal/hardcore/alternative releases.
The format of the program was a store within a store concept and featured point of purchase displays, instore play, sales pricing, clerk recommendations and 15,000 monthly sampler CDs. A free hard music magazine ‘Concrete Corner’ was available for the consumer, while ‘Network Newz’ provided information for the store owner. Key reasoning behind these strategies was that small retailers fared better with niche markets such as heavy metal.
Occasionally for selected record launches, listening parties and midnight sales would be held the day before the release of the album proper. The first listening party and midnight sale, in which 318 of the 325 stores participated, was for a Metallica boxset.
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