In my last blog about keeping it professional, I covered performers and gave some insight into how new performers should conduct themselves in the biz. This blog will cover the industry professionals who are mainly behind the scenes. In the world of adult you have quite a few types behind the scenes—agents, managers, lawyers, affiliates, social media experts, publicists…and the list goes on and on. I know the most about agents/agencies and PR firms/publicists, so I’m only going to deal with these people in this blog. To have a working understanding of the other groups of people is not enough to discuss them intelligently.
Agencies provide an important service—they get the girls work and when they get paid (and do well), they can hire people like me. Many production companies, studios and directors, go through agencies to book scenes because they know the girls they rep are reliable and will show up and do a good job…well, in most cases. There are a lot of agencies out there, but there are probably only maybe 5 top agencies, and they’re licensed and bonded. Licensed and bonded means the girls are covered no matter what, along with the agency. I had a client who was with an agency that wasn’t licensed and bonded and she got cheated and railroaded. Now, she’s with a great agency, but almost left the industry based on her prior experiences. The funny thing is that same agency changed their name and put the old name with the bad association on the current website. Even just changing your company’s name won’t help—with the informational age people can find out anything.
PR firms are a whole other ball of wax. New ones seem to crop up everyday—many of them don’t have contact information on their site, a professional- looking site or even the names of the owners and/or the people working for the company. There are other publicists who work with two firms with one under someone else’s name to try to corner the market and/or gain big name clients. All these things aren’t professional, and as we say in California…no bueno. If you look at our website, it’s neat and clean and the information is easy to access—there are no flashing images or things to overwhelm you, our contact information is easy to find, you can see the services we offer and even read our blogs which are informational, and at times, educational. Most of The Rub PR’s business comes from referrals from past or current clients. We list many of our clients and all the ones listed can be contacted for referrals. We produce results and are constantly worried about our clients’ reputations and how they are perceived—this is why I’m the Twitter Police and also watch how my clients conduct themselves at parties and other industry events. Many publicists forget how important reputation and perception are and don’t realize their clients are talking about things they shouldn’t be or posting photos on social media and/or being photographed at events drunk, naked or even worse.
So, the bottom line is not everyone who is a professional always acts professional. Do your homework. When choosing an agency/agent check out their site, find out what they reputation is with their talent, find out which studios and directors will or won’t work with them and if they are in fact getting work for their talent. With a publicist/PR firm, check out their site, their reputation, what they have done for clients, and if what they’re charging parallels their work, basically are you getting your money’s worth is another way to say this.