Emily Tan Emily Tan Media Relations Emily Tan PR Company Emily Tan EDM PR Company TOOK $10K AND PRODUCED ZERO RESULTS! New York New York

I felt that it was very important to write an independent review of the service that we received from PR company Emily Tan Media Relations. The reason is because I haven’t found any reviews at the time when I was looking to hire a PR firm, so I made a decision to hire them based on the resume/Linkedin profile  and one phone call with the company.

 We found Emily Tan by a simple EDM PR company search on Google. Her LinkedIn Profile came up where she listed what artists she previously worked with. This list was very appealing with some highly coveted music artists. Besides her facebook page and a couple of her own interview articles, we could not find any independently published artist reviews of her work. When we asked her about that and if she had a website, she said her resume speaks for itself and that everything we need to know about her is on her LinkedIn page.  We also asked her to give us some sense of what we can expect, since this was a teenage artist upcoming with a few releases. She was firm in her position that she will not start evaluating or offer any feedback until she is sent the money first. Since, PR agencies that specialize in EDM and DJs are far in between, we decided to give it a try. The agreement was to do 6 months trial, cancel any time, with 3 months minimum. We also agreed to her rate, without any negotiations.

 With some initially resistance from her we agreed that she will report to us weekly on progress and work completed.  She starts her work and email communication in a very active passion with catchy phrases like “I have some early ideas brewing”, “email me artists assets“, “allow me a moment to ingest the assets you provided”, “Will email you the early press and promotional initiatives I want to present”, “I have a story idea that I want to pitch“, “Already have some great ideas percolating”, and all this the first week of our engagement. We were thrilled that we found someone that is going to get things going right away and with such force.

 The third week she started off with “I already have a number of digital initiatives underway”, “I can come back with an overall PR plan for the next 6 months”; also at this time she wanted to renegotiate our agreement about weekly email reports, to “I'll shoot off emails to clients (yourself included) as they come in, rather than wait for a weekly report”. We wanted to know that she indeed is involved continuously and pitching our artist story so we asked not to change the way we get updates (weekly). She wasn’t happy, but agreed (again). Week 3, we received exciting news that she is working on a possible feature story in DJ Times magazine. Same week we received an invoice to pay our second month. The rest of the month continued with “I currently have a ton of media requests flying around”, “I have a possible interview request with one of my known music & entertainment reporters”, “Will keep you posted about interest and other opps”….you get the drift.

The second month went by in going back and forth what she thought she can do with pitching various songs to the media. She requested social media links again. One thing that is important to mention here is that she sends her correspondence to the clients on Sundays. Even if you answer within minutes of receiving the email from her, she will not address your questions or concerns until next week Sunday. This started to set some frustration because we wanted to move faster and not wait a whole week to get a simple acknowledgment that she got the needed information. We started to suspect that she is actually not working daily as she was saying but only once a week for our artist.

She continued with promises like “This is one of the email interviews I am in the process of lining up”, and off course her 3rd invoice promptly arrived and she reminds you every time that it is due on the 1st of the month (or before). Before paying this invoice we wanted to get some more firm plan or close to solid commitments from her media contacts that our artist will get some of the things done in month 3. She never lined up the plan after the second month, like she said that she will do at the very the beginning. She easily deflected and refused to promise anything but firmly repeated “The due-date for the April 1st invoice still stands”. In the meantime, it is nearly impossible to get her on the phone due to being unavailable. Plus, if you do talk to her, she will be quick to tell you that, the time she is spending on the phone with you, is the time you are taking away from her and our own artist so she is unable to do her job! (we spoke on the phone only once in 5 months of service). Another frustrating things was that at the end of the second month, she started asking us to provide her information about our artist (photos, resume, social media, logos, songs, logos for the songs...), some of which were already provided at the very begning of our relationship. Nonetheless, we were confused why she didn't ask for everything upfront. In any case, we got our hopes up that something will finally happen.

Month 3, Emily emailed us that she was working with an editor of the leading blog on a feature story, plus the added bonus. An exclusive 1-hour guestmix! Then she circled back that she secured the story at DJ Times print and digital version! We thought, finally we will see some results. The next 10 days we went back and forth on her getting the rights photos and art work, the shape was wrong, the size, her computer, her moving offices etc. Than we lost time where she should point the artist links to. What song on youtube, Spotify, Soundcloud? Keep in mind, communication does not happen daily, it is only when she gets to it. Usually once per week. Soon enough, month 4 invoice was sent to us. Rest of the month was spent trying to get the ‘right” mix for the blog. She is sure to remind you that the invoice is due again by the 1st of the month. Than we noticed the pattern that she is “more” engaged in sending emails the last few days of the month giving us false hope that things are just about the happen: “I've successfully secured a full-length feature on the HOMEPAGE in leading blog”, “will be getting the interview questions together” etc.

 Month 4. Finally interview questions for a magazine arrived. We even got the month confirmed. 2 weeks we went back and forth making it “perfect”. She also continued to “inform” us about her agenda and where “my actions and my constant pitching” are. We also followed up with her regarding all previous work and in progress opportunities. The answers were that she is waiting on others. At this time, we started to feel that she had the interview questions but were holding them back until we paid our 5th month.

 Month 5. She would send us from time to time, things that she is working on for other artist and try to paint the picture how busy she is and how she is accomplishing big things for her other artists. And she will always say how she will pitch our artist story whenever she sees an opportunity. We were already very irritated with her constant pretend working mode and yet we have not seen a single article post on any blog, magazine, digital media, radio interview, ABSOLUTE ZERO results and $10,000 short (5 x $2000/mo). Mid-month 5 we received questions for THATDROP.com. She than needed more than a week to get back to us (again) that she will need a few days to re-edit. She than continued with more promises and assurance that she is closing on both EDMSAUCE and EDMTUNES for next feature!

 She than told us that DJ Times Magazine did  a full-page feature on our artist and that we can get 50 free copies of the magazines. Great – we gave her our UPS account to have them shipped. Like a clock, she sent her invoice on the 21st. Since no updates were given to us (after numerous attempts to get something from her on various projects she was "working on for us"), I kindly asked before end of the month, how is she feeling about her efforts and if she will finish everything she started in the last month of our 6 month agreement. Her answer was very short and dry “I still have written features in-progress right now for you so I want to finish through our agreed-upon 6-month term.” After I insisted on her giving me more details on progress and when these will be wrapped up, she was very short in her answer and made sure I knew that she is working with 11 full-time artist that are committed to her for a long-term!!! Also, she made sure to tell me that we are paying below market rate while she is trying to hustle and do the most she can. Really Emily? You gave us your rate and we accepted it without any negotiations. All of a sudden we are underpaying you.

Emily Tan is VERY smooth and slick in her email communication and will make you believe that she is moving mountains just for YOU! She uses buzz words that make you believe that there are big things coming up  and huge things are just about the happen!

 We decided not to proceed with month 6 due to not receiving anything from her and no results. It is very sad that we had spent this much time, effort and money to receive only promises. She accomplished nothing. And after we told her that we are not going to continue with the 6th month, she never ever responded again to us. Even for the "ongoing" projects, we wanted to find out when are those promised interviews going to come out, we never, ever heard back from her, like she didn't even exist. 

I followed up with her several times about getting the copies of the promised magazines to no avail. After checking online it appears that this article was never even published. So overall, after $10,000 spent on PR campaign and a lot of time spent sending information to her back and forth, we got ZERO results. Yes, ABSOLUTE zero. I would never recommend or work with this person again.

Later we found out that she does not even have a registered business as Emily Tan Media Relations but runs it as an individual/sole proprietor.

UPDATE: We found the digital copy of the article a few months later but no hard copies of this magazines were produced for that month (discontinued?).