Team Talk is Music Ally’s interview series, where our marketing experts speak to music industry teams about their latest work, best practices, and smart strategies. You can find the archive here.
Jeremiah Gogo is head of data, A&R analytics and business development at Virgin Music UK. He was recently named as Alumnus of the Year by the University of Essex, partly in recognition of his creation of the Open Desk Programme. What’s that? Music Ally’s Patrick Ross caught up with him to find out.
Patrick Ross: Before we jump into talking about Open Desk Programme, what’s a brief background of yourself that you’d like to share with the Music Ally readership?
Jeremiah Gogo: I am from an area in South London, and have always had an interest in music: i played the trumpet growing up and also played the piano. But I was also pretty good at maths, and decided to study that. I made my way into the music industry via the numbers route.
My first role in the music industry was at Universal Music Group as an intern doing commercial analytics. I made my way through to do a few commercial analytics roles, then jumped over to Warner Music Group in the UK to do commercial analytics over there.
Then a field which we now call A&R analytics was rising, alongside the rise of data-driven A&R and TikTok in our industry, so I went to Atlantic to do the head of data and A&R analytics role, bringing up new methods to discover talent.
And now in my most recent role at Virgin Music Group, which is head of data for business development and A&R analytics, it encompasses all the things I’ve done in my career!
Patrick Ross: So what is the Open Desk Programme and what led you to set it up?
Jeremiah Gogo: It’s a program to help young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds gain entry and work experience in the music industry.
The reason that I set it up was because when I was younger, I was helped by a charity called the Social Mobility Foundation, and they helped to get me my first couple of work experiences in the summer before university. This charity focused on kids from schools where a large proportion of the students were from lower-income housing.
It was completely invaluable. I think we underestimate the value of these work experiences, because – and I always use this as an example when talking – things like going for a coffee with someone, shaking someone’s hand and introducing yourself properly… These are things that are perhaps soft skills that one might or might not learn in their household, might or might not learn at school, but in the workplace is something that is very important to sustain a career and to progress in your career.
I remember one young person coming in saying ‘Hey, I don’t drink coffee. What should I do?’ And actually, in a lot of cultures that are from western Africa, it’s more of a tea-drinking society! And it’s very odd having to explain: ‘Hey, you don’t need to drink coffee. Just have a glass of water, take your notepads and go for a meeting’.
It’s nuances like that which really for me hit home. When I started at Universal I saw the need for social mobility was just as prevalent as it was in some other industries. We are a great industry and I do love it here, but I had an assumption that we were perhaps more progressive than other industries. But in fact, the need for social mobility still existed.
Patrick Ross: What sort of impacts and results have you seen from the programme?
Jeremiah Gogo: When I joined Warner, I joined forces with Rosie Stone in the People team, and Tony Harlow the CEO was very supportive. He allowed budget from the DE&I [diversity, equity and inclusion] teams to be freed up to work the programme, and in the first year we had nine people come through who were able to experience the business. From finance to the labels, to supply-chain to even working with the studio in the building.
So for me the first result is seeing people in the building. These were young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds who benefit greatly just from the experience of being in the building. But the tangible things we saw were diversity of thought, diversity of opinions.
I go into meetings and there’ll be so many bright ideas coming, but just from life experiences we may not necessarily see these ideas as clearly as they do. And we market music to everyone, therefore we need the views and opinions of everyone in the room in order to be successful marketers.
Of those nine people, seven were offered permanent roles post-internship, and two went on to find employment elsewhere. So there was a 100% post-internship employment rate, which I think speaks to the talent we’re able to find using a programme like this.
Patrick Ross: How can this programme continue to develop now? How can it expand and what needs to happen for that?
Jeremiah Gogo: As part of the program, we set up a few stages. We set up an induction to make sure that the young people had a seamless transition into working in the music industry. They were able to tour the building.
We also set up a buddy system, which meant that they had another young professional who they could relate to on a non-line manager confidentiality basis, so they were able to be slightly more open about their experiences to this other young person, to help them out.
We also made sure we put on a CV clinic towards the end of the program, just to ensure that even if the role didn’t appear there, they were able to spread their wings and fly with a strong CV. And they presented to the CEO on their experience at the end of the programme. I think these steps are things that made sure the young person had a full experience.
What I’d hope is to expand just the numbers on the programme. I’d hope for some collaboration between the three majors to on the recorded side to ensure that we can transfer the learnings, so we can use those economies of scale to learn from how it works at one and make sure it’s implemented at another.
But actually, I think the success of the program speaks for itself in the the young people that came out of it are all flying high at the moment in employment, the vast majority of which are still in the music industry.
A diverse boardroom always performs better, and there is plenty of data to show it.
Patrick Ross: What is the bigger picture here? Where do you see progress being made across the industry in related areas to what you’ve been doing with the programme?
Jeremiah Gogo: One area where more work is needed is the distribution of roles. As I look towards our industry, particularly with a lot of kind of re-orgs happening over the course of the last year or two, a lot of the roles where we see strong diversity of thought, diversity in the people, seem to be very junior roles.
I think we do need to, as an industry, be better at progressing some of the young people from diverse backgrounds into more senior roles. The diversity of thought is not just needed at a junior marketing level: it is needed in the boardroom. A diverse boardroom always performs better, and there is plenty of data to show it.
So diversity in senior positions is the area where we need the most work to be done as an industry. And in order to do that, we need to create pathways. When we hire diversely at a more junior level, we need to create pathways, opportunities and internal progression systems to ensure that these young people are able to progress.
Patrick Ross: Are there any other initiatives or organisations out there doing good work who you would like to highlight?
Jeremiah Gogo: Some of the charities that I’ve worked with externally are really good. I really need to shout out Natalie [Wade] from Small Green Shoots, she founded the charity and has done an excellent job with developing young people outside the industry, to ready them for a career in the industry.
Inside the industry I feel we are slightly limited in the number of programmes that we have. However, I do know that there is focus from leadership based on the conversations that I’ve had both at Warner and Universal in my career. So there is focus to improve this.
It’s only going to be better for all our labels when we can go out to young people in areas where perhaps from a recruitment perspective we don’t have a presence. If our current recruitment tactics are via university recruitment fairs or standard procedures, there will be pockets of the UK and of the world that we’re not hitting, so we won’t have the most diverse way of bringing in new people.
Patrick Ross: Finally, congratulations on being named Alumnus of the Year by the University of Essex! How do you feel about the award and what it means?
Jeremiah Gogo: I spent so much time in the university, getting involved in so many things, and I look back on that period of time as very crucial to my formative years, to make me the person that I am in the office, in the music industry, and back in the world.
It’s a very progressive uni, and it did help to raise a level of critical thinking that allowed me to think of the world, and the people in the world, in a way that ultimately led me to set up the Open Desk Programme. Just by having the mindset of looking at equality, looking at progress, and trying to make the world a better place.
I’d love for this to be used as an opportunity for those in all fields, and all the graduates from the class of 2024, to take these things and run with it in in their respective fields, in their respective industries. Hopefully all industries can benefit as a result of having some really talented graduates with a view on the world that is also positive towards the people!
