Randy Whatley
Randy Whatley is a 36-year media veteran with diverse business experience. Whatley is president of Cypress Media Group, Inc., an advertising, public relations, political consulting, and training firm. He has extensive experience advising government officials, political candidates, public officials, and corporate executives.
Randy represents symphony orchestra musicians in Atlanta, Milwaukee, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Chicago, San Francisco and New York. He also a PR advisor to Save Our Symphony Minnesota and ICSOM.
Randy offers his clients practical, real-world media relations skills he has acquired and refined over three decades. His skills have been honed as a lobbyist and political consultant on over 200 political campaigns in five states. He has written two books, two syndicated newspaper columns, and numerous magazine and Internet articles. He has also hosted his own television and radio program and appeared often as a TV and radio program guest, including a CNN appearance.
Since the ICSOM conference last year, I was deeply involved in the following projects:
I helped save the Milwaukee Symphony by working with the musicians and management in a cooperative agreement to raise $5,000,000. This included raising 2.4 million from the community in small contributions. We also developed 1,400 new donors to the MSO.
I helped ICSOM increase its Twitter following 6-fold in 5 months. We went from 832 followers to over 5,000 followers and greatly increased the exposure of Bruce Ridge’s tweets from the ICSOM account.
I am currently involved daily representing the MET Opera Orchestra Musicians and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Musicians in their battles for new contracts.
As I mentioned that I would do at ICSOM last year, I have formed an international network of bloggers who are willing to write stories that cover symphony and opera musicians’ perspectives on issues that concern the musicians and their orchestras. I am working with those bloggers regularly on behalf of musicians.
I am willing to speak at your conference for free and would only expect travel reimbursement (airfare, hotel, and ground transportation to/from the airport to the convention hotel).
Please let me know if you have any questions or need more information. If you want me to speak, let’s talk about what you want me to speak about that would most benefit your conference attendees and their colleagues.