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Former Life Or Death staff unveil new PR firm Liberal Arts

By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 28 January 2016

Former staffers from US music PR agency Life Or Death PR have announced details of their new company, which will be known as Liberal Arts. A number of Life Or Death clients have already confirmed that they will be hiring the services of the new entity.

As previously reported, the operations of Life Or Death came to an abrupt halt last week after Amber Coffman of Dirty Projectors made allegations of sexual misconduct against the agency’s CEO and owner Heathcliff Berru, in relation to an event that took place a few years back. After Coffman had spoken, a number of other women with whom Berru had worked likewise came forward with similar allegations.

Although not responding to each specific allegation, Berru quickly announced he was stepping down as CEO of his company, adding that he was “deeply sorry for those who I have offended by my actions”, and that he was now seeking help for drug and alcohol addiction.

Initially it was stated that Life Or Death would continue under the direction of Nick Dierl, but a day later – with various clients announcing they would no longer work with the agency – Dierl and all other employees of the PR firm announced that they had quit and were planning on forming another company instead. The implication was that Life Or Death would be wound up.

In a new interview with Billboard, Dierl and Duncan Will, a senior publicist at Life Or Death, say that, while they knew their boss had addiction issues, which they had tried to take up with Berru in the past, they were unaware of the incidents that were revealed after Coffman’s initial tweets last week. Though the revelations did explain why a number of clients had previously dropped the agency’s services out of the blue, including Coffman’s label Domino.

Dierl says that he called Berru as soon as the allegations started to appear online, and asked “about the validity of the Amber story, and he told me that he was ‘blackout drunk’ that night. I couldn’t judge Heathcliff’s level of sincerity, either”. Will adds: “We believed all of those stories and chose to operate accordingly instead of contesting those statements. I applaud all of the women who came forward and brought these conversations to the public sphere. I hope that it’s a conversation that doesn’t end this week and continues to be talked about in the industry”.

Even though Berru quickly agreed to stand down – and, say Dierl and Will, he had been increasingly hands off at the agency anyway – the Life & Death staff felt issues would remain if their former boss was still the owner of the company, and therefore benefiting from the profits of each campaign. Hence the decision to start a new business.

Liberal Arts will be backed by Knitting Factory Entertainment – the live, label and management business – which also had an “investor profit share” in Life Or Death.

Its President, Ian Wheeler, told Billboard: “I will serve as Managing Director for the new entity, which will be 100% owned by Figure Eight Publicity, a subsidiary of Knitting Factory Entertainment. An equity position will also being carved out for the founders of the new entity in the coming months. Life Or Death PR has now been dissolved. Mr Berru is no longer a party to our organisation and will not take part in our new venture, nor own an equity position. All ties have been cut”.

You can read Billboard’s full interview with Dierl and Will here.