Q’s With BrandMark President Maureen Valker-Barlow: Sponsorship & Branding Division ‘Going To Be Great’

The newly formed BrandMark Agency will be run by President Maureen Valker-Barlow, who joined DWP just 18 months ago and was quickly named executive vice president. She now runs a division that has seen increasing importance throughout the industry in recent years, with talent agencies ramping up their own branding and sponsorships teams and festival promoters increasingly chasing those needed partnerships. 

Valker-Barlow has long standing relationships with major brands including Anheuser-Busch, BMG, Bushmills Irish Whiskey, Cantu Beauty, Jack Daniel’s, KAMP, Kona Brewing Co., Rockstar Energy Drink and many others, putting her and BrandMark in a prime position to make deals that make sense. While Valker-Barlow remains heavily involved in DWP’s core festivals such as Aftershock, Louder Than Life, Sonic Temple, Welcome To Rockville and others, BrandMark will work with separate talent agencies, management companies and even non-affiliated festivals and events. 

Just this morning, it was announced that the first signing for BrandMark is powerhouse agency AGI, led by Dennis Arfa and Marsha Vlasic representing major artists including Billy Joel, Metallica, Elvis Costello, Five Finger Death Punch and many others.

Maureen Valker-Barlow: The whole thing is great. BrandMark came out very organically, and kind of grew … into its own division. I’ve been doing event partnerships for a very long time. We would have a logo soup of brands at events, and managers and agents would come and say, wow, you guys have a lot of partners here, can you help us out?

 It was such a home run. Flogging Molly and 5B (Artist Management) were so incredible to work with. With the celebration on St. Paddy’s, it just checked all the boxes and was one of those dream partnerships. The brand was super happy. The brand has a really funny personality to them, so advertising was on point, too. Sometimes you feel like a square peg in a round hole but everything felt right. The brand also went out and helped us as promoters to really put the stream into all their bars and restaurants, opening it up and taking it upon themselves and their sales teams to bring this to their accounts, with the stream at all 17 Hard Rock Cafe’s, for instance. 

At BrandMark we’re doing a lot of talent representation. The first thing we do is talk to the talent and find out what’s important to them. What are they passionate and where do they want to be in the brand partnership space? My favorite question is if you could be a spokesperson for any company, who would it be? Let’s go try to have a meaningful conversation with that brand, because those are the partnerships brands want. We’re also in the process of signing a very large agency. It’s going to be great. 

We had to make a lot of really hard decisions, and went through a lot of change. But part of where we were able to shine is we were able to drive revenue for the company by sort of reinventing the work we did. DWP gave me and Tiffanie [Hauger], the one other person doing this, the ability to go out and get that revenue. We were able to prove we could and build upon that, and they gave us the freedom to prove the model works. DWP has a true appreciation for partnerships and the leadership understands how important brand partnerships are, always were, and still are to this day. 

Well, we [just] announced we’re going on a blind presale on Friday, if that gives you any indication of where our heads are (laughs). We’re 100% planning, hoping and praying these festivals are going to happen. Every day it feels a little better. We don’t want to count the chickens before they’re hatched, but it  feels like we’re just moving in the right direction. I think if we can get one show under our belts, we’ll feel like the year was a win, but doing all the shows would be a home run.

A lot of people are calling 2022 the start of a new “roaring twenties,” and  I think we’re seeing a lot of trends in ticket sales, events selling out very quickly. When we get back, there’s finally going to be a balance between the physical and digital presence. They’re going to have two bites of the apple. We’re going to be able to offer our partners a lot more than just an onsite presence.