Camp Conversations: Aimee Berger of Camplified

Welcome to Part 5 in our series of Camp Conversations here at The Camp Blog. After a break at the close of 2010 we are ready to re-launch our series with some really cool people who have established themselves in the summer camp industry and beyond. We spent some time with Aimee Berger of Camplified, discussing the past, present, and future of the touring production, the music business, and camp life! Check It Out:

__________________________________________________________________________________________

How did you build the Camplified Concept? Is it everything now that you hoped it would be?

Eleven years ago, I was an entertainment attorney that had just left a major record label to focus on managing producers and songwriters. Those producers worked with some bands that were signed to record deals.  However, these bands were not getting enough marketing support and as a manager it was sink or swim.   I grew up in Florida, warm weather year round; we learn to swim when we are infants. Sinking was not an option.

I had been a camper as a kid and teenager, at both day and resident camps.  My camp years shaped my life through friendships that still exist today and relationships that helped solidify my position in the music business.

At dinner one night, with my hands on my head, I had one of those moments you never forget.  It felt like a lightening bolt, a thought comes to mind and you know its not rocket science.  You are not discovering electricity but you are positive you are onto something.   That something came in the form of a question. “What if I brought emerging bands into summer camps to play for captive audiences of campers?”  At Kutsher’s Sports Academy where I went to camp, sports celebrities appeared on property for demonstrations and Q&A’s.  Those days were impactful moments, for me as a camper.   I began to believe the same principle might apply with up and coming rock stars.  From that dinner, I went directly into 5th gear to map out a plan that would lay claim to a made up word called “Camplified”. Now it is a real noun. Camplified is the foundation layer that made it conceivable to fuse my two passions together – music and the camping business.

When you set out on a journey that first appears a figment of your imagination, it resembles something that looks like clay, but in your mind you  see the finished sculpture. You don’t know how to mold all the pieces together but you do know it is going to take rolling up your sleeves, dirtying your hands, and some mental anguish.  As you set out to build this sculpture, you cant totally predict the outcome.  There will be trial and error to contend with and learn from.

As I committed to moving this forward, a childhood friend of mine introduced me to a friend of theirs.  That was Aimee Skier of AMSKIER Insurance.  She knew nothing about me, I knew nothing about her but what we both know now is how blessed we are to be a part of each other’s lives.  Many defining memories for us both, over, the last 10+ years.  The AMSKIER family which includes their staff  (leaders in insurance for camps and extreme philanthropists for many different causes not just camping), welcomed me into their world.  It became part of their mission to help introduce me to a forum of camp owners that set the standards that exemplify everything that camp needs and should be about.  The Skiers gave me the SKIER stamp of approval and those camp owners whose relationships with the Skier family is superior, gave me the chance in Year 1 to introduce the Camplified tour.  What began as a business relationship with AMSKIER, turned very quickly into a kinship beyond just friendship.  I sincerely am treated as a member of the family and continuously mentored by Henry, Jeffrey and Aimee Skier.

To ask if Camplified is everything I had hoped it would be – it is easier to answer this by saying it is the beginning of everything I had put in my plan.  The first book in a series, I set out to write.  What comes next in the series?   I am still writing….. Camplified is embarking on a new journey and will continue to do so.   It is certainly self-fulfilling and it has allowed me to reconnect with many individuals in the camping community that I had not spoken with for years.  Not to mention, all of the new people who have entered my life and supported my endeavors and have helped educate me further into the camp lifestyle.

Getting Started Couldn’t of Been Easy – Was It Always This Successful?

Success as we knew it in the entertainment business was to sell 100 million records worldwide with an artist or a blockbuster hit at the movies that creates ROI beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.  The entertainment business and particularly the music business have undergone massive changes.  Camplified is not its savior, but it certainly plays an integral role in artist development and the marketing of new brands, movies and tv shows that tweens and teens become fanatic about and communicate their shared experience with their friends.  My definition of success, with regards to Camplified is not determined by reaching 200 camps with six concert tours on the road wrapped with branded activities for campers.   That was merely the plan to allow us to begin to exist in the camp community and to be a trusted resource to this industry.  I believe our feet are now firmly planted.  Our greatest advocates also have a strong voice in camping, camp related charities and additionally associations like ACA and The New York State Camp Directors Association (NYSCDA) which represents the children’s camp industry in New York State by monitoring and responding to all legislation and regulation that might impact children’s camps.

As an attorney, a former camper and a professional who now services both industries, our company can serve a greater purpose by being active in the areas of camping that need attention.  We can be a direct link to a camp bringing in new activities that further interest their campers, for which our company has ties.  We also have the capabilities to introduce camps to brand partners of our company.  For example, Wilson tennis balls, working with Wilson and our camps to provide free product (tennis balls) to the camps, therefore eliminating some camp expenses, in return for the camp mentioning Wilson in its newsletters to parents, on its website and signage on its tennis courts.  Through executives, in our business, who also have extraordinary ties to legislation, we can also support the camp community by speaking out on the role camp plays in the lives of tweens and teens who eventually grow up to hold powerful positions in various industries.  These are individuals who believe that their years at camp provided the energy, competitiveness, personality, team spirit, creative input and drive to succeed in the marketplace.

Camplified continues to be a work in progress that has emerged into some other areas that will continue to be the go-between in forging relationships with brands, talent, athletes, authors, actors/actresses, charities and speakers within the camping community in a very unrivaled way. We have emerged from a concert tour in the Northeast to a national tour in the South, Midwest and West Coast.  These next objectives of our company are rolling out in real time and now starting to be introduced within the camp world.

Camplified has had some pretty awesome bands in its nine year run – how do you go about picking these emerging artists?

Hear Here which is the live events division of Primary Wave Music and the home of Camplified is a company that owns and administers the rights to many iconic artists and songwriters (Steven Tyler, Kurt Cobain, Def Leppard, Chicago, The Matrix, and Gregg Allman to name a few) and developing acts such as Saving Abel, The Airborne Toxic Event, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Blue October, Cee-Lo and The Constellations etc.  Primary Wave Music is also a full service entity with strategic partners in music management, a marketing agency called Brand Synergy Group, a major talent booking agency and a digital online marketing arm called Brightshop.   Between all of our agencies and employees, we are constantly in touch with the firms who handle the most cutting edge artists and at the same time also developing new talent.   We receive a lot of submissions from these contacts and we begin the process of surveying what artists fit appropriately for the campers.  We look for a menu of talent for each camp.   On tour, we bring three artists to each camp with the intention of making sure there is something for each camper to be moved by musically.

What do bands get out of the Camplified tour?

Do you mean besides bug juice, access to the incredible lakes, climbing walls and go karts that the camps graciously allow our artists to use, during various times of the day at camp.  These bands chosen get featured on all our tour posters, websites, partner sites, write ups on our blog sites, intros to our brand partners in hopes the brand may work with the band in the future, access to campers whereby they can do Q&A’s with the kids, meet n greets, guitar clinics and performing their music for 50,000+ campers over the course of the tour.   They get to interact with their fans more intimately unlike touring venues, just performing and never getting to meet all the fans that came out to support you.  The artists take many pictures on tour, receive photos from their new fans, links to social media platforms like twitter and facebook which campers often utilize, post summer to stay in touch with these acts.  As campers and counselors express their enthusiasm and love for live music, these acts feed off the warm reception.  As these bands move forward after Camplified, many managers have conveyed that Camplified for bands, also represents an opportunity for bands to do live rehearsals in front of a very energetic crowd before hitting the road, in support of other talent and perhaps not getting the same warm welcomes received at camp.

Entertaining Kids, is perhaps, harder now than it was 10 years ago, can you comment on that – and what is the process like of creating/building a touring production and feeling the need to change with todays youth.

When I went to camp it was all about one with nature – from arts and crafts activities, to hikes, horseback riding, white water rafting, water skiing, playing tennis and campfires. Although I was not a trouble- maker, I will admit to starting a poker ring in my cabin which I thoroughly enjoyed especially when winning.   I also could not wait for my friends, parents and grandparents to send me SNAIL MAIL and to have letters to open and care packages with great goodies.   Something about opening a letter or writing one home that can never be duplicated by email.  Twenty + years later WOW things have really changed.  Some camps truly remain one with nature and campers go there because that is exactly what they are looking for in a specialty camp.   I also believe camp directors do a great job of trying to keep camp as traditional as possible.  But you can’t completely compete with technology and you certainly can’t stop it.  It continues to move at lightning speed and having had many conversations with camp directors, I have found that they are very in tune with this revelation.  While they maintain a strong stance on no cell phones at camp, no bringing computers, no X-Box, WII or Ipads to name a few, they are extremely receptive to special events that may call for a day at camp where a concert and branded activity experience on property, has activities that involve computers and gaming consoles that are not a part of every day programming at camp. They certainly want their campers to be excited to come to camp and to recognize the need to leave their cell phones and X-Box’s at home. Camp directors thrive on bringing special events and programming to their camp that is original and give reason to why a camper chooses one camp over another.  Being at camp and participating in every day camp activities, allows for all the amazing things you do at camp and don’t regularly do at home.   For example, climbing walls and making music in recording studios, which are now popping up on many camp properties.  As a company, we have begun several conversations with a handful of camps that are looking to build recording studios on camp property. These camps would like a producer on staff to teach the campers about music production, recording camp songs, writing lyrics and the mechanics of making music.   Building a recording studio on any level is a huge undertaking, not to mention expense.   Several of our business colleagues have built the studios of many A-list music producers and artists.   We have put a few of them in contact with camps and have asked them to drastically reduce the expenses of a recording studio set up, so that camps can afford these studios.   We are also working with camps who have existing recording studios to develop programming at camp whereby a producer whose music the campers are very familiar with (Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Jonas Brothers, Justin Beiber, The Fray) can come into camp, work with campers and perhaps take the Camp’s song and turn it into a recording that mimics the sounds and beats that campers’ recognize in the songs they already love.

Camplified now in its 10th season is always a challenge.  The biggest hurdle is the routing now that we have moved into other regions.  As a result, if we need to put two tours on the road simultaneously, we will.   Our production team and crew are excellent. They are handpicked because this is not a typical concert tour where you are advancing shows with a venue and you and the venue manager speak the same “music” language.  A lot of preparation goes into Camplified by my staff and me at the office. But, once we hit the summer, I am very reliant on my staff on the road and they are cognizant of my expectations.  We are dealing with camp directors and the safety of their campers. It is crucial that my staff is sensitive to the needs of the camp.  Our production crew that sets up these shows is conscious of the fact that we do not want to damage a camp’s property with our vehicles.   Just like camp directors do due diligence on their staff, we do the same.   Our contracts with our staff and artists have a no tolerance policy and everyone is aware that without a camp venue, we do not have a show.  The camps are our customers and without them our tour cannot exist.   In an effort to keep the tour fresh every year, we bring new artists and our brand partners always have new products to market as giveaways and prizes.

Camplified will be entering its 10th Touring Summer in 2011 – (a) Do you feel that the tour is now a staple in this industry? (b) What surprises (if you can share) will you guys be unveiling for the 10th Anniversary Tour.

Billboard Magazine recently did an excellent story on boutique music companies that are succeeding in the music business, taking chances and forming creative partnerships that drive profitability.  Primary Wave Music was prominently featured in that article and so was Camplified.  The reason for this was because in the history of the music business it would be unprecedented for a music publishing company that owns the copyrights of iconic artists to enter the Live Events business.   Primary Wave’s CEO’s vision remains to hire entrepreneurs and align with strategic partners who are not afraid of failure and thrive on taking calculated risks and are determined to succeed.  I know that the major record labels are in an incredibly tough spot and no longer exist as they used to and for that matter some do not exist anymore at all. It used to be a requirement for a band wanting mass marketing attention to be signed to a major record deal.  This is not entirely the case anymore.   You need to be savvy and you need to not take “no” for an answer.  You need to hustle and you need to take advantage of the vehicles available on the internet and tours like Camplified which provide a captive audience for bands to make new fans.  The industry most certainly recognizes the attributes Camplified has to offer, but as I alluded to in question #1 it is not rocket science.   You can either tour venues across the country and play for 10 people a night that by chance just happened to be at the bar you are playing. Yet, to truly develop your career and reach your core demographic, you need a setting that brings many people together in one spot where the likelihood of them leaving is just that, highly unlikely due to certain circumstances.

As far as surprises for the 10th Anniversary, it’s not really about surprises, we are not magicians, but we are a company with many staff that went to camp and now have kids in camp.  We all maintain a very youthful spirit and we recognize the opportunities that we can create with camp directors and owners as friends and partners.  Individuals who in their own right are entrepreneurs who worked their tails off to establish an environment for kids that is like no other.  No matter how fast the world is changing and technology is moving. They want to make in impact and continue to grow their business, just like us, and if we can play some role in that, than we have succeeded in doing what we set out to do.

What will the next 10 years of Camplified be like?

If anyone knows the official answer to this tell them to get in touch with me and if they know how to execute as well, tell them they have a job at my company.   Obviously, answering this question is nearly impossible, as so many unexpected occurrences have taken place in our world for which none of us could have ever imagined.   Those occurrences are well beyond the control of any of us.   While I remain fiercely optimistic and confident in the work ethic of the staff at my company and the individuals who have unconditionally helped make in-roads for us, it would be a little unrealistic to put a definitive answer down to this question.  However, it would also potentially show a sense of uncertainty within me to not answer this at all.  I am most certain Camplified is just the first layer of brick in the overall design for this property.  Recently, I was asked by my CEO, a similar question, which was to present my strategic plan for growth over the next five to ten years.  As I prepared that and shared my vision with him, the one thing missing was an exit strategy.  For me, I am living my dream, working with camp directors, camp owners, the AMSKIER family, charities, attending camp conferences, speaking on panels, meeting music executives, film and tv executives, advertising agency executives and getting a hands on education in two very meaningful industries – camp and entertainment.  It would be impossible to think of an exit strategy when you never want the dream to end.   Camplified will continue to bring concert tours and branded activities into camp for that VIP Interactive Experience to entertain campers and to introduce bands and brands to their target demographic. That property will continue to exist as is.  But the company Hear, Here which owns Camplified will bring year round elements, promotions and programs to what began as just a summer concert tour.  Currently, our company is putting together an interactive community online that will be very camper-centric and will have unique content for campers that cannot be accessed anywhere else.  The details of this community remain confidential at the moment, but it will be everything that campers’ love about camp sprinkled with “smores”.  We will further expand our middle agency for our brand partners, as we handle all the logistics from A to Z.  We will introduce them to the camp world and to campers for the benefit of everyone – the brand, the camp and the campers.   If there is not a substantial benefit for everyone than it will not work and we are not interested unless everyone stands to gain. Last year, we launched the middle agency and we brought an activity into camps that had nothing to do with Camplified. One of the stipulations required by us with the brand was that if we were going to handle all aspects of this for them, that every camp that agreed to participate (the activity was free to camps), the brand partners had to donate $200 per camp into a charity to be named by us.   We chose S.C.O.P.E as the beneficiary.    Going forward, we will continue to do the same but we will include additional charities and we will also invite camps to name a charity of choice if they would like too. Camplified is also in the beginning of putting an advisory board together that will consist of individuals from the camp, entertainment, banking, philanthropic and media industries.  These individuals will help us continue to expand and at the same time utilize their years of experience in their businesses to guide us on our path without any of us losing sight of continuing to want to make a difference.   As the founder of Camplified, I will continue to be more visible and active as a voice in the camp community, just as I have been as a voice for years in the entertainment industry.   The birth of Camplified has afforded me many personal benefits that cannot be easily articulated, so I know it is my responsibility to help provide the same to others.

People say the music industry is dead – comments?

The music industry is definitely not dead.  It is very much alive as new developments continue to breath significant signs of life.  Bands continue to make music and consumers continue to be emotionally affected.  E-commerce sites like i-tunes continue to sell music and allow consumers to buy exactly what they want.  They do not need to buy an entire album to own the song they love.   Consumers continue to buy other merchandise from their favorite bands and attend concerts.   Film, TV, commercials, video games and apps continue to sync music to their properties because without music it is not easy to tell a story or maintain the energy of the consumer.  This is evident in how much music is now in video games.  New music is being discovered by those watching commercials and TV shows like Glee which assist the spike in sales of a particular band after the music is heard on that show.    What seems like ancient history is the way in which record labels once were allowed to operate. They continue to refuse to believe that those days are over, but their opinions no longer have the weight they once did. None of us are listening to them anymore.  Napster was the beginning of the end for record labels as we once knew them to be and instead of embracing new technology, they attempted to play hardball and lost the battle.  Any executives at record labels willing to embrace the change were fired and have now opened up their own successful companies or joined forces with companies like Primary Wave who were not living in fear of what we call the new business of music.

Can you talk about Social Media and how Camplified has advanced with the times, especially in the last year.

We are certainly not the first to recognize the attributes of the internet and how easily the dissemination of information is retrieved by many people at once.   While every camp has a website and now most have twitter, facebook and blog sites, Camplified has followed suit as well.   It is great to be directly linked to the camps you do business with through these social media platforms.  Campers follow us on these platforms as well.  Amazing that with the push of a button, you post something and it automatically appears on all the social media platforms you and others subscribe to in real time.  These social media platforms are another opportunity to share great stories and post pictures sent to us by campers, camp directors, bands and our own staff that are on the road during the tour.   We have had camp directors and campers guest blog on our camplified blog site.  We often do contests on Fridays called Freebie Fridays where we initiate giveaways from our brand partners to our twitter followers.   As I mentioned in a previous question, we are taking concerted efforts to build out this community camper site which will be an extension of our existing Camplified website.  We will continue to provide information of interest to camps, brands, bands and campers through our current site.  The community site will be just for campers who choose to register with parent permission, if they are not of the legally required age to do so on their own.   We continue to look for suitable and appropriate ways to also advertise our camp partners, brand partners and artists.   We are developing technology with our digital team that will provide campers on property a more emotive experience while engaging with our branded activities in a forum that is safe yet somewhat futuristic.  Think James Bond, Mission Impossible and then mix that with traditional camp!

_________________________________________________________________________________________

To learn more about Camplified and the big 10th Anniversary Tour – visit their website by logging on to www.Camplified.com!