Sometimes, numbers don’t tell the whole story. Take the twitter account of Circulate, a Dublin company that has tweeted just 189 times and boasts a paltry 414 followers. Yet despite its miserly social media presence, Circulate is at the forefront of digital marketing strategies and social campaigns for the international music industry.

From its industrial chic, brick fronted headquarters in Dublin’s Portobello, Circulate’s team of 12 staff collaborate with major labels such as Sony Music, Universal Music and EMI, helping build brand awareness for underground artists, DJs and music events.

Take the case of Faithless, the British electronica band that was looking to promote a new tour and album after a prolonged hiatus from the industry. Retained to create a social media and digital campaign by ATC Management and Sony Music UK, Circulate’s strategy generated 73 million impressions across the primary social channels, 10,889,416 plays on the Faithless Vevo Channel and 19,564,091 streams on Spotify.

The British electronica band Faithless

And, yet the company rarely tweets, and is largely unheard of in its native country. So just who is behind it, and how has it convinced some of the biggest names in underground music to let them manage their social media presence?

*****

Marcus O’Sullivan founded Circulate in 2014 with his business partner David Beatty, a DJ who plays under the alias David de Valera. They met when Beatty started to become more involved in the promotional side of the music industry.

The pair worked together for two years around Ireland, meeting and working with artists who were struggling to get a handle on the burgeoning digital side of music promotion.

“At the time, artists in particular were having a hard time adjusting to the digital landscape and as we grew the company further, we found that this applied to the music industry as a whole,” O’Sullivan told The Currency.

Beatty and O’Sullivan relied heavily on their own finances when setting up Circulate. The company was bootstrapped from conception as the business partners began the start-up almost completely off their own funds. To this day, the partners split the business 50/50 according to filed accounts.

“We either put our own money in or used our existing cash flow to grow the business. As we moved on, we had a small amount of financial support from our bank, AIB, but it was a slow process as initially they didn’t understand the nature of our business,” said O’Sullivan.

Five years on, the Dublin based company now has 12 members of staff and O’Sullivan stated that they are also in the top three creative agencies in their sector in Europe alongside WMA Studios and Mustard Media.

Their service includes digital channel strategy for their clients through the use of influencers, analytics, account management and market, quantitative and qualitative research. They also provide content production such as video, social campaigns and search engine optimisation.

Hitmaker: DJ Jonas Blue

Among the acts they work with DJ Jonas Blue, the British songwriter, remixer and DJ behind a string of hit collaborations. The Dublin firm handles social media channel management and digital marketing for Blue.

Aaron Ross, a member of Jonas’s Infinity Future management team, said they stumbled across Circulate through word of mouth.  “Circulate were recommended to us back in 2016 by our PR company Listen Up who we have great trust in, and we knew if Listen Up said they were good, they had to be,” Ross told The Currency.

The firm also works with Circoloco, an Ibiza event that is one of the most popular underground parties in the world.

“Interestingly, an Irish woman called Shauna Slevin was helping them [Circoloco owners Antonio and Andrea] with their international expansion at the time and we hit it off instantly with her,” said O’Sullivan.

“She understood the Circoloco brand intimately and helped us get to know the team and craft some exciting campaigns.”

Through Circoloco, O’Sullivan said they work with a lot of artists associated with the underground music brand. “We also work with The Black Madonna and Art Department, both of whom regularly play at Circoloco,” he says.

More than 90 per cent of their clients are international, which O’Sullivan attributed to the nature of the Irish music industry. “The structure just isn’t there for people who are interested in music” in Ireland, according to O’Sullivan.

Their service does not come cheap though, even if their rates do vary based on the project according to the co-founder.

“In the case of Irish artists, they don’t usually have a large promotional budget for their music releases. If they are just touring locally (in Ireland), their fees might just provide them with enough money to get by and invest in a little bit of PR from time to time however this doesn’t leave them with much to invest in digital marketing,” he said.

“There aren’t a huge amount of labels/management companies willing to invest in their artists by using services like ours,” said O’Sullivan.

The pair continue to become more recognised, especially after they were included in Shortys’ new Social Good Awards in 2016, for their ‘Turning Tables on Cancer’ project.