EMI's college promotions team is the latest victim of the restructure and downsize at the major record company. In house departments specialising in student press and promotions have come and gone at most major record companies over the years, but the EMI college department, which I think began as the Virgin Records college department, is the one that has been consistently there, run for as long as I can remember by Dolly Clew.
But the department is now no more, and Clew and her assistant Jon Kell will now leave the major. Personally, given that Terra Firma chief Guy Hands has been talking about the importance of centralising and honing in-house marketing expertise, axing the most experienced student marketing department in the industry, and EMI's only centralised publicity unit, seems a bit short sighted to me, but what do I know. No word on whether student PR will be taken on by another in-house team, or if it will be farmed out to agency.
Clew and Kell's departure comes amid reports of an increasing number of job cuts across EMI Music this week, in both the US and UK, as the deadline for Hands' third-of-the-workforce-to-be-axed restructure approaches.