A Living Room Success

Most people’s lives changed drastically when they had to begin remote work — but not for Beth Blenz-Clucas, a media coverage publicist who had been working from home for over 20 years. Now a successful public relations specialist who has worked with huge names, Blenz-Clucas began with very little public relations background or experience.

“It wasn’t actually until I had kids, that I thought about PR,” Blenz-Clucas said, “I was looking for something I could do from home.”

Blenz-Clucas specializes in children’s and family friendly media, but had no clue of her eventual career when she graduated college. A young graduate with a masters in English, she wanted to become a magazine writer. But before she got the chance to really begin her writing career, she had children and had to change directions.

This is when working from home became her main goal. She searched for job options that she could utilize her writing skills while working from home and having plenty of time for her children.

“I found that I could do promotion for educational media,” Blenz-Clucas said. Over time this evolved so that she was focusing on music directed toward young children such as her own.

“I used my writing skills and my interest in the arts,” Blenz-Clucas said of the transition. “I found that I could think journalistically… I had a good sense of what journalists wanted.” This skill helped her promote new albums to journalists and radio stations.

With only a tiny bit of journalistic experience from working on a student paper and a single email account (this being 2002), Blenz-Clucas was able to start her own public relations agency, Sugar Mountain PR. When artists were releasing a new album or wanted to promote an upcoming tour, they came to her for her expertise.

Children’s music is a quickly growing industry and Blenz-Clucas got in at the perfect time. According to Spotify, 44% of US parents say that lullabies are a big part of raising their children. Spotify also now has 300,000 tracks on their Spotify Kids feature. These numbers continue to rise, showing the increasing popularity in the genre.

Now, Sugar Mountain PR is 19 years old. Blenz-Clucas believes that her specialization in children’s music is what attracts new clients and keeps old clients coming back. Sugar Mountain PR is considered a boutique public relations agency because of Blenz-Clucas’s specialization in children’s music.

“This is a good genre that doesn’t get enough publicity. I think that’s why I do better at this than marketing a widget or something,” Blenz-Clucas said when asked why she decided to specialize in this particular genre.

“If you want to put new windows in your house, you could hire a general contractor, but wouldn’t it be better to hire a window guy?” Blenz-Clucas said of her decision to specialize instead of staying open to multiple genres.

So how did a mom with very little experience convince big time artists to trust her with their albums? One of the artists that she represents, Kelli Caldwell, believes Blenz-Clucas’s success is attributed to her genuinity.

“ I think it can be really off-putting to people if you’re not genuine, especially in this industry… with the kids music,” Caldwell said.

Blenz-Clucas has obviously made a good first impression on many people. This becomes obvious when you look at her clientele list and see household names such as Tracy Bonham, and Peter Yarrow (from Peter, Paul, and Mary). Arguably her most famous client, The Wiggles, have over 1 million monthly listeners according to Spotify, partly because of Blenz-Clucas’s work.

Blenz-Clucas didn’t know when she was mailing CDs from her living room that some day she’d be working with some of the biggest names in children’s music, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t still make time for the smaller artists. Being based in Portland, there is a growing music scene for her to pick from. Many of her clients are Portland locals such as Kelli Welli and Red Yarn. Some of her clients, Blenz-Clucas discovered just by going to local concerts and immediately wanting to represent them.

One such artist was Captain Bogg and Salty, “I saw them once and I said ‘I have to work with these people,” Blenz-Clucas said. Captain Bogg and Salty then went on to work with Disney and eventually wrote all the music for Jake and The Neverland Pirates.

These success stories are what made Sugar Mountain PR into a sought after agency and now Blenz-Clucas has achieved her dream.

“It was a long journey,” Blenz-Clucas said, “Just over time it evolved. I found that I love music … and I had little kids at the time, and it just kinda grew from there.”