We of­ten see the works of var­i­ous so­ca artistes buzzing around so­cial me­dia, on tele­vi­sion, in the news­pa­per and pret­ty much as many places as they can ap­pear, but, do you ever won­der about the great minds be­hind the artistes?

For a lit­tle over 10 years, Adan­na As­son has been an en­ter­tain­ment pub­li­cist work­ing be­hind the scenes of some of our favourite so­ca artistes such as Ker­win Du Bois, Patrice Roberts, Mar­vay, Voice, Farmer Nap­py, Ricky T and Adan­na Roberts.

With her role in­volv­ing the over­see­ing of the pub­lic im­age and all me­dia re­la­tions of the artiste, she has a huge amount of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty on her hands. You might be won­der­ing what ex­act­ly does Adan­na have that makes her so great in the job, right? Sim­ply put, she has the pas­sion, pa­tience and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills - the abil­i­ty to speak, un­der­stand and write. She is tech-savvy and has a great un­der­stand­ing of so­cial me­dia and how best it can be utilised. She tells us that as a child, she was al­ways opin­ion­at­ed, ex­pres­sive and chat­ty. Those qual­i­ties have paid off in her adult ca­reer, speak­ing and writ­ing to up­hold that which is im­por­tant to her clients and their pub­lic im­age.

“As I grew old­er I al­so re­alised that I had a knack for writ­ing. At some stage, my love for mu­sic and the arts de­vel­oped and I men­tioned to a friend one day that I want­ed to start a print mag­a­zine. That idea dis­ap­peared af­ter I re­alised that it would not have been pos­si­ble for me, fi­nan­cial­ly. While chat­ting with her, she asked me why I want­ed to start the mag­a­zine and I ex­plained that I had a de­sire to help artistes tell their sto­ries and help them gain trac­tion on a broad­er scale.”

Adan­na at­tests that it was that friend, Natasha An­drewa, who gave her the en­trance in­to the field through an in­tern­ship at her com­pa­ny. “My first pub­lished press re­lease was one that I wrote for one of her com­pa­ny’s projects and I still re­mem­ber how I felt. I al­so re­mem­ber the day that she told me to Google my­self and I found that I re­ceived place­ments in on­line pub­li­ca­tions. I was on top of the world.” Al­though Adan­na knew she isn’t quite sure what ex­act­ly got her so in­ter­est­ed in the field of PR, she knew that she want­ed to be great at what­ev­er she did and more im­por­tant­ly, she want­ed that ca­reer path to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of who she is as a per­son. “I want­ed to be pas­sion­ate about it and I want­ed to love every bit of it and here I am.”

Now Adan­na has her own com­pa­ny called Cre­ati­va Me­dia PR (CM­PR) that she de­scribes as be­ing both en­joy­able and chal­leng­ing. “I had CM­PR for quite some years but I was re­al­ly com­fort­able work­ing be­hind the scenes un­til I made the de­ci­sion to dive in ful­ly af­ter be­ing made re­dun­dant from my full-time job in De­cem­ber 2016. Af­ter some thought, I just de­cid­ed that a fair and hon­est at­tempt to do CM­PR se­ri­ous­ly should oc­cur and I moved with that at­ti­tude.”

In spite of the chal­lenges in find­ing her voice and be­ing per­fect­ly com­fort­able with non-con­for­mi­ty, she doesn’t de­ny the joy in be­ing able to see a project through and be­ing able to de­liv­er on any promis­es made to a client. “Once a client is hap­py, then so am I.”

When asked what’s her ca­reer high­light to date, Adan­na re­called two un­for­get­table in­ci­dents:

“I re­mem­ber sit­ting with my mom, Wendy As­son, and telling her that I was ab­solute­ly cer­tain I want­ed to take a chance on my­self and not go back in the world of 8 am to 4 pm work. She was ap­pre­hen­sive and like any good moth­er, she spoke to me about the pros and cons. Fast for­ward to a few weeks lat­er, I came back from Ja­maica af­ter go­ing on a gig with Patrice and I get to my room and there is an en­ve­lope with my name on my bed. I opened it and it was a post­card from my mom. It was ba­si­cal­ly an en­dorse­ment of my de­ci­sion and en­cour­age­ment to fol­low through along with some mon­ey which she placed in the card. Talk about tears, I cried so hard. At that mo­ment, any doubt that I had dis­ap­peared and all was well in my world. It was one of the most mem­o­rable ges­tures.

The sec­ond high­light would be the first time I re­ceived a pay­ment for my ser­vices. I re­mem­ber be­ing ex­treme­ly ner­vous to quote a price and when I got paid I felt like...my worth is my worth. It wasn’t about the mon­ey it was about re­spect for the work that I de­liv­ered.”

Al­though she is a woman in a male-dom­i­nat­ed in­dus­try, Adan­na be­lieves that in any job you have to prove your­self. While some peo­ple be­lieve en­ter­tain­ment PR is all glam­our she men­tions the count­less sleep­less nights, con­flict res­o­lu­tions and sac­ri­fices that are all very re­al. “Some­times peo­ple would see you at an event or work­ing with a pop­u­lar per­son­al­i­ty and as­sume that be­ing in close prox­im­i­ty to a celebri­ty is all that the job re­quires but it is more than that”

Adan­na con­tin­ues to work be­hind the scenes, pas­sion­ate­ly bring­ing the sto­ries and lives of many artistes to life for fans to see and love. Al­though the job isn’t easy she en­cour­ages young women who may be in­ter­est­ed in the field to “be au­then­tic and be you.” She said, “I be­lieve in equip­ping my­self with the ap­pro­pri­ate tools for the trade and I ad­vise the same. I have an AAS in jour­nal­ism & PR and a BA in me­dia and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, count­less cer­tifi­cates in So­cial me­dia man­age­ment and Busi­ness fun­da­men­tals. Learn your trade, it will get you far.”