Chris Ward: How I got students into Radiohead

Chris Ward saw the potential of students as a vast, under-exploited market for brands to win customers for life. So, he set up Beatwax.

Managing bands may be fun, but it wasn't making Chris Ward rich. By the age of 30, he had toured the world with bands, but still didn't have a penny to his name. Moreover, he had just met his future wife "it was time to make some money". Inspiration arrived in the unlikely guise of the former prime minister, John Major. When Major announced that his party was going to send more people to university, Ward realised that growing student numbers would swell the market for music.

Ward reckoned he could make money helping companies sell to students, and so he set up Beatwax marketing agency in 1992. He began with his old contacts from his days as a band manager and landed EMI as his first client. Radiohead, an unknown act at the time, had just brought out their first single; Ward was offered £400 to promote the band to students. "I focused on student newspapers and radio shows. They were cheap to get a presence in and had a big effect." He also persuaded student DJs to play the song and report back on the reception from the crowd. The record label was impressed, and quickly gave Beatwax more work. With business growing, Ward hired an assistant, Jamie Theakston, who later went on to find fame as a BBC radio presenter.

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James McKeigue

James graduated from Keele University with a BA (Hons) in English literature and history, and has a certificate in journalism from the NCTJ. James has worked as a freelance journalist in various Latin American countries.He also had a spell at ITV, as welll as wring for Television Business International and covering the European equity markets for the Forbes.com London bureau. James has travelled extensively in emerging markets, reporting for international energy magazines such as Oil and Gas Investor, and institutional publications such as the Commonwealth Business Environment Report. He is currently the managing editor of LatAm INVESTOR, the UK's only Latin American finance magazine.