Facing the music
by Liz Wolf Though people may not recognize the names Darren Drew and Brian Reidinger, if they watch TV, listen to the radio or go to the movies, they’ve heard their music.
Drew and Reidinger co-own Minneapolis-based In the Groove Music, an audio production company that writes and produces music for television, radio and special events. Their client list includes Michelob Lite, Toyota, Fox NFL, Busch Gardens, Bacardi Silver, TNT’s Listen Up! sports show with Charles Barkley and Ernie Johnson — and The Outdoor Life Network, for which they wrote the theme music for its coverage of this summer’s Tour de France.
They also created the music for Coco-Cola’s national advertising campaign Football Town, which began airing in September on TV and in movie theaters. And one of the duo’s biggest contracts was the re-launch of a new music package for ESPN’s SportsCenter in June.
They say their strengths are creating music for sports, youth culture and anything demanding energy. “We’ve been told our stuff has some testosterone,” Drew says.
The two musicians met at a recording session in the early 1990s and hit it off. Both had played in Midwest rock bands for years, Drew on the keyboard and Reidinger on the drums. When they started approaching their 30s, however, it was time to reevaluate.
“Brian and I talk about how unrealistic things were in a cover band. I really thought someone was going to sign me,” Drew says. “I spent my 20s waiting for the world to come to me and they didn’t get the memo. I spent my 30s trying to figure it out: ‘OK, it’s not coming to me, now what?’ ”
They started considering the audio production business and found they had complementary skills and styles they could bring to the table. They say Reidinger possesses the musical “nuts and bolts,” and Drew is the “road-map guy.”
When they were both ready to make the move, they launched In the Groove in Drew’s basement. “We didn’t really have a business plan,” he says. “We pretty much went by the seat of our pants. We didn’t have the big loan. We didn’t have Mom and Dad to say, ‘Here’s a hundred grand to start your little business.’ ” They built up the studio piece by piece.
Their first big break came in 1994 when they were hired to create the music for a TV spot for the Minnesota Twins. “This woman there took a leap of faith with us, because we didn’t really have much of a reel to speak of,” Drew says.
“And in hindsight, she didn’t have much of a budget,” Reidinger adds. “But at the time, we thought it was huge. You play in a band for a night and you get anywhere from $300 to $800 for four hours of work and you split it between four or five people. So here’s two guys in a basement and they want one 30-second piece, and they’re going to pay $4,000.”
That project got their foot in the door, and in 1995 they moved their studio downtown. They enjoyed steady work their first years — until the advertising slump in 2000. When economic times get tough, one of the first things companies often cut is their advertising budgets.
“In September 2000, the phone stopped ringing,” Reidinger says. “Literally, we sat here and said, ‘It’s been three weeks and we haven’t got a call.’ We ran up our credit line, and we were close to having to take other jobs. We hadn’t been faced with learning marketing because the business was very vibrant in the mid- and late 1990s for advertising and their vendors, so we rode that wave and built our business on it.”
Turning point
June 2002 was a turning point. “We got to the point where we said, ‘We have to get one job this month,” Reidinger says. “In the end, we looked at each other and said, ‘We can’t blame the economy. We can’t blame anybody but ourselves. What don’t we understand in terms of having a successful business?’ ”
In the course of their struggles, they met Cynthia Barber, president of Game Plan Consulting, a business development firm in Minneapolis. They hired her and discovered they had much to learn.
“Cynthia asked us, ‘Where’s your press kit?’ We were like, ‘What’s a press kit?’ ” Reidinger says. “It was like baptism by fire in the world of marketing and self-promotion. She’d say, ‘You guys own a business. Tell people about it.’ ”
Barber was impressed with the duo. “I was thrilled with their ambition and passion.” She describes them as edgy. “They’re always 10 steps ahead, and size or location of a client is irrelevant to them. If they want to land a project in Tokyo, they’ll go after it.”
What she found was that their company needed a business plan. “I don’t come in and take over,” she says. “I give them a kick in the butt. They needed to pursue their passion by capitalizing on what they’d already done. I wanted them to look at their current client base and see the connections and where it can lead them. They really hadn’t realized what they’d accomplished.”
Barber also wanted them to visualize the clients they wanted to pursue. “We put together a database, did e-mail campaigns and got people to their Web site. They got in front of different markets. It’s all about connecting.”
These steps helped define In the Groove. “It defined what we’re good at, what we want to be good at, clients we want, markets we want to invest in,” Reidinger says. Initially, he says they were all over the board. “It was like carpet bombing. Now it’s growing into, we see ourselves and our strengths in these areas, and we’re going to focus on those clients and agencies.”
Drew says marketing is a full-time job. “It’s client contact, maintaining relationships, looking for new relationships. It’s about standing out.”
Jack Steinmann, executive producer at Minneapolis-based advertising agency Carmichael Lynch, agrees. “What gets the phone to ring is if a company gets people to their Web site, and they can see a creative new piece of work or awards they’ve been winning. If someone’s work is creating a buzz, that’s important.”
Drew and Reidinger also recognized they could grow their business through freelancers. They now work with eight composers/musicians, from full orchestras to hip-hop.
The pair also has learned to deal with rejection. “At first, we were crushed,” Drew says. “Now it’s a business thing. It doesn’t mean it’s not good.” If a client rejects an idea or piece, they add it to their expansive catalog. “Now when a job comes up, we may have a few pieces right away that might be perfect.”
Another challenge is getting into the heads of their clients and figuring out what type of music they want for their commercial, program or event. “When they say ‘edgy,’ it’s our responsibility to figure out what that means,” Drew says. “I’m always asking for tangible words: ‘Can you tell me energy? Tempo?’ ”
In the Groove’s revenue in 2003 were $420,000, not including royalty or union income. Through June 2004, sales were about $260,000 and on pace to hit $450,000. The duo’s short-term goal is to break a half-million dollars by the end of 2005. Longer-term goals are to break a million. “To do that,” Reidinger says, “it’s going to involve marketing and establishing a broader-based creative identity where we can take a job that’s an orchestra job or abstract jazz job and hit a home run with it.”
[contact] Cynthia Barber, Game Plan Consulting: 612.486.5666; cbarber@gameplanconsulting.com. Darren Drew, In the Groove Music: 612.305.1229; darren@itgmusic.com. Brian Reidinger, In the Groove Music: 612.305.1229 brian@itgmusic.com. Jack Steinmann, Carmichael Lynch: 612.334.6000; jsteinmann@clynch.com.
