Street team
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A street team is a grass-roots organization that is called upon to advertise and promote an event.
Originally, street teams were used by punk and unsigned bands to help promote their upcoming shows or recordings. Usually unpaid, these teams are often comprised of teenagers who are rewarded with free band merchandise or show access in exchange for a variety of actions:
- bringing friends to the shows
- convincing friends to buy band merchandise
- phoning your local radio station to request their songs be played
- putting up posters
- posting to band forums or spamming bulletin boards online
- maintaining zines or websites dedicated to the band
In some cases, points are assigned to an individual for a particular action, and those points can be exchanged for tickets to shows, or for band merchandise. Some bands even produce special items just for street team members.
These days, street teams are formed and paid by record companies to promote upcoming albums to be released. The person in charge of these street team people are usually called the National director of Promotions. The Director is usually responsible for implementing campaign plans, finding, hiring, budgeting & maintaining street teams across the national, usually in the major markets like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago etc.
These street team positions can lead to independent projects from corporations trying to market to certain demographics using these grass roots tactics. A well known street team person can make a lot of money going the independent route. They can charge ten of thousands of dollars for a few months works.
Professional street team management firms like Warbux Street Team, M-80 and Streetcult have co-opted the street team concept in recent years. In exchange for promoting new major label music or movie studio dvd releases, team members are eligible to win prizes. Critics of this concept point to large corporations exploiting the unpaid labor of ardent fans.
Other grass-roots organizations such as PETA, Greenpeace, Young Republicans, etc. are working also with the street team concept.[citation needed]
