Industry 101
ECHO HATTIX
With a client roster that has boasted everyone from Shaquille O’Neal to Gnarles Barkley, Echoing Soundz founder Echo Hattix has definitely made an impact. Her company has blazed trails in the fields of publicity, promotions and branding by meshing the three into the ultimate exposure tool for artists and products. With a staff of seven people stretching from its Los Angeles headquarters to New York and points in between, Echoing Soundz is growing into one of the leading national urban brands and firms in the industry. Ozone caught up with Hattix to get her to speak on everything from her original dreams to why it pays to have a lot of famous (and goodlooking) friends. Where are you from and how did you get started? I’m originally from Memphis, TN. I went to college at Southern Illinois at Carbondale, majoring in Mass Communications. At the time I wanted to be a music video director; that was my passion. My grandfather was a band instructor so I was already into music, already knew how to read it, and I loved to write too. My plan was to get my Master’s Degree at the Academy of Art in San Francisco in Motion Picture. But I like people, and I would have been in a room by myself editing. So I pieced it together; I liked music, I loved to write and I liked people. So I told myself I’m going to get into this thing called “the industry” (laughs). It was going to be either through radio, television, film or video, but I was going to get in the “industry.” I didn’t know one person in it though. But I saw this thing called ROOTS Magazine. It had Erykah Badu and Biggie on the cover at the time. It looked so whack that I figured they could use my help. So I called the managing editor for two weeks straight and lied to him and told him I was a journalist from Illinois. He told me I could come to a listening party, and it would be my first story. The party was cool. I met all these people and thought I was in “the industry” that night! Two or three months after writing for the magazine, the managing editor and his whole staff left. My boss started getting me bigger names to interview, like Ice Cube, Cam’Ron, one big name after the next. All these guys would ask me what I’m doing afterwards and wanted to know what there was to get into. I would start calling all the artists telling them about parties and wound up taking them
there. After a while club promoters would start asking me who I’m bringing next week. I didn’t put two and two together and realize I was doing publicity. I hated publicists. They were always nagging, always selling me on something. You do wear a publicist hat from time to time. What made you want to get into that aspect of the business, since you hated them? One day a publicist named Tresa Sanders called me, and she was one of the only publicists I liked to talk to. She asked if I ever thought about being a publicist. I didn’t want to, but she told me she thought I could do it and said she really believed in me, so she asked for my fax number. She faxed me her entire database, which is unheard of. But I learned that just because you have a database doesn’t mean you have connects; people can be very rude. Eventually I started getting know to some of these people, and things were going good. But both of my parents got really sick and since I’m an only child, I had to move back to Memphis to take care of them. I didn’t want all my work and connections to go to waste so I figured I had to start some sort of sort of company to keep things going. I couldn’t think of a name. This guy told me I should call it Echoing Sounds, since it was my name. Then one night at 11 PM this guy calls me and says, “What’s up weeples, what it dookie?” I was like, “Who is this?” and he said, “This is Mr. Flamboyant, E-40.” We’d always seen each other but never kicked it. He said he had a new group and heard that I did good publicity and asked me how much I charged. I told him, and I had the check FedEx’ed to me the next day. I’ve just been going ever since. What would you say has made your company grow over the years? The thing that grew the company was that I always liked parties. So I started doing them. I had a lot of celebrity friends, plus I was writing for XXL and The Source myself and I was known for speaking my mind on reviews. A lot of the artists either feared me or loved me to death. I had a lot of hot female celebrity friends, and all my friends were writers and photographers too. So having all those people come through made the parties bigger. One night I was doing a listening party for somebody and James Lopez from Atlantic Records said I should do one for Twista. I had relationships with all of the clubs, so I did it for his Kamikaze album. We started doing parties across the country after that. The parties also acted as a form of advertising, and that helped me get more clients. Does most of your client base come from labels hiring you or the direct relationships you’ve built with the artists? Most of our clients are artists directly reaching out to us. Labels will call here and there, mostly around the holidays. But 80% of the time artists contact us directly. They want direct, hands-on contact with what’s going on. That’s why my
motto is “when publicity is personal.” Lately we’ve seen a lot of publicists shifting gears and becoming overall branding agencies. Would you say you were one of the first, if not the first to do it? I think so. I think we built the formula for not only publicists, but promoters. If you have a couple key elements, it can become a blow out and your product can get a lot of awareness. People watched us and saw what my ingredients were and took what was my natural lifestyle and did it. And now everyone is doing it. I see tons of swagger jackers. I don’t hate on it, I just expand on what I’m doing . We’re going international because they don’t know how to do it over there. Germany, Madrid and Japan are what we’re looking at. Being in the industry these days is getting tougher. Would you say the market is still open for a newcomer to get in and do what you’re doing? I’m always gonna say it’s open, but it’s harder to get in. My work ethic alone set me apart. I came into the game when there was a lot of money and people were living off the label. I’m getting up at 5 AM and going to sleep at 2 AM. The interns that we’ve had lately? They’re lazier now, and they think things will be given to them. Plus people are paranoid about doing business with new people. I encourage people to come into the market, but know that you won’t be welcomed with open arms. You have to come in fighting, and you have to come in confident. If you’re an emotional person, kick rocks. // Words by Maurice G. Garland
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