Jo Rae Di Menno – Hard Pressed Publicity

I’m a producer of both experiential educational events and those which explore the intersection of the arts, music, technology, science, and entertainment. Hard Pressed Publicity has worked with us on our events for almost ten years, including four SXSW official after events, a FutureMusic Summit, and more, and has consistently garnered us pre-​event publicity, on-​airs, TV site visits, including being twice featured in the New York Times GTT column, and the Texas Monthly, among other publications in Austin and around the region.
She’s spent years developing one-​on-​one relationships with members of the press, music and entertainment, and radio and television personalities, and knows how to work with them given her extensive journalistic and music industry background. She simply knows (and is well loved by) *everybody* in the Austin music industry and well beyond.
I recommend her highly and without reservation.

I’ve had the opportunity to work Hard Pressed Publicity many times and I’ve never been disappointed. Jo Rae has always worked tirelessly on each project we collaborated on and has a proven track record of getting results. In this day and age, anyone can find a phone number and email for a publication/​outlet on the internet. Review desks are filled with bands acting as labels anymore, but a package with the return label of Hard Pressed Publicity means the package actually gets opened in a timely manner. Jo Rae has established relationships with the contacts and that alone can get your CD not only to the top of the listening stack, but quickly into the review pending pile. Hard Press Publicity provides an invaluable service and she’s the first person I call whenever I have a project that I need to let the world know about.

No stars. This woman stole my money. She took advantage of me. She is supposed to be a PR woman in town and although she says that she is this woman DOES NOT have respect for her clients. She did nothing for me. She never even started my project. She represents other musicians in town and and has done this to other artists apparently. once I did my research on her I found out that she has not only lied to clients saying that she was sick because she hadn’t contacted them but also just not even send out their PR stuff their CDs and things like that. Part of payment is $ 280 so she can mail hi bs out to journalist, radio DJ etc. I hired her because she was recommended by a bandmate and apparently she had done a good job for their project .when I hired her for my project one of her clients had just died and it was also Christmas so she didn’t contact me for a month. Not a word. She took $ 1480 of mine $ 1200 as a down payment for her to start the job, and $ 280 for her to send out my CDs and what not for review. BUT she never sent out a single piece of PR for me… not once .she never mailed anything she never sent an email to anyone about me she did not do any of the job that was listed in the contract. I however did do my part I paid her on time and got nothing but lies from her .she was terrible !!
So release party was coming up last I heard from her was January maybe 15 or 16^th and my release was on February 26 I was so nervous about everything lining up that I canceled it and decided not to have a CD release after all. And it was mainly because of her! I decided to release a vinyl record and have her promote that. I thought maybe I shouldnt cancel my contract with her because she was so unprofessional but when she offered only give me $ 500 back I decided that I would keep her on hoping that she would be flexible and move the dates of her work to my new release date for my vinly record release which was in May. not so much.
I got an email from her in jan asking me for money and admitting that’s she didn’t do anything in December in that email was a list of 68 a contacts that she was supposed to get a hold of when I paid for 80 and that was it nothing else! she never did anything else for me she never sent out any of my stuff she never emailed a single person I am $ 2180 in the hole! she emailed my drummer saying that the reason she wasn’t going to continue working with me was because I was rude. Ha! wouldn’t you be rude to somebody allegedly stole $ 2180 from you and didn’t do any work? So then she offered to give me $ 500 back and I told her that I would like for her to give me %75 of my money. She said no. So the. I asked her to just be flexible and work with me on my new release date and she would not do that basically reason why is cause I’m rude that is not a good enough reason to not answer your clients phone calls. technically I was still her client when she stopped answering my calls or returning my emails and text, so now I am suing her. She will not communicate with me. She never gave me the $ 500 back. Won’t reply to text messages or emails etc… Won’t answer my calls. Nothing! she is incredibly unprofessional, totally unavailable and I’m putting this on Unilocal because it’s time that people know that you cannot trust her. AND I’m not the only one that she’s done this to! I reached out to the music community and so many people told me that she has done this to other musicians. DO NOT HIRE THIS WOMAN!
Now I am forced to sue her because the money I used to Pay her was a gift to me from a big supporter of my music and I just can’t let it go. My release is coming up and I don’t have the money to pay another firm. It’s really sad. And totally ruthless.
Trust me. Don’t hire her.