Company History
Leslie Gilotti (Owner/Director) has over 10 years experience in the music industry. Prior to setting up as a freelance digital marketing and PR consultant in 2005, she was co-founder and director of Ampunited, a division of PlayLouder, where she worked on campaigns for the White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand, Sonic Youth, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Badly Drawn Boy and the Eden Sessions festival, to name a few. Prior to this she worked in marketing at Mute Records and served several years in TV production at MTV Europe. She DJs regularly, runs a monthly club night, and plays guitar in an all-girl rock band.
Lorraine Long (Head of Press) kick started her music career in 2005 with a short work experience stint at Protest Recordings. It was here that she met the man who would give her that all important first job in the music industry – Dan Walsh at Incubator. Starting off with merely a passion for music and sheer determination she spent two and a half years developing a broad range of PR skills and working on a very diverse campaigns; from working with mainstream releases like the Rolling Stones, Eddy Grant, Rod Stewart; major labels including Sony RCA and UMTV; to independent acts and niche labels such as Epitaph Records (Set Your Goals, Farewell, Sing It Loud) and Kartel (Fat Freddy’s Drop). She’s worked on everything from online specific campaigns to 360° campaigns that meant dealing with national, regional, student and online PR concurrently. Here experience has also covered music festivals, events, awards ceremonies and magazine PR including; O2 Wireless Festival, Wychwood Music Festival, Metal Hammer Golden Gods, Classic Rock Roll of Honour, Golden Joystick Awards Total Film Magazine and Total Film Red Carpet Preview Event. She adds several new strings to Charmfactory’s bow.
Cath Hurley (Campaign Manager) started her musical journey up in Sheffield, where she would put gigs on in venues all over the city. Off the back of this she got booked to DJ all over the country and would find interesting new bands on blogs to fill her set with. After deciding to pursue a career in music she left her beloved Sheffield with a heavy heart and set off to London. Interning at Domino provided her with a wonderful introduction to the music industry as she saw what was involved in the release of two amazing albums by Wild Beasts and The Arctic Monkeys. Shortly after this she took a role at One Little Indian and Fat Cat records as press assistant, mostly assisting Tilly with Online, which cemented her love of all things digital. This provided her with the experience to take on a more challenging role and was offered a position at Sainted PR as their online publicist , specialising in development artists and working with incredibly promising new talent. Cath came to Charm Factory in May 2011 and continues to work with brand new bands along with more established artists too. She enjoys many different types of music and lists Bright Eyes, Okkervil River, Arcade Fire and My Chemical Romance amongst her favourite bands. She also listens to a lot of girlie post-punk and is quite partial to a bit of dancey electronica..
Sarah Thompson (Owner/Director) has worked as a freelancer in the music industry for over 15 years, in just about every role imaginable across publishing, management, promotion and record labels. She set up web design company DC Creative in 1994 and quickly amassed an impressive client base that included the major labels and several indie labels – all in a time when the industry had yet to realise the profound effect the Internet would have on the music business. After selling DC Creative in 1997, Sarah set up as a digital marketing and PR consultant specialising in music.
Daniel Thompson (Campaign Manager/Sales) grew up in the music industry and has always known that his passion lay in music, particularly dance music. Although he is young, he has asserted himself in Charm Factory, and has proved his savvy in many sides of the business. Daniel’s domain is the sales and dance departments. Outside of work he is a constant on the London DJ scene and the festival circuit. No doubt that it will not stop here – you’ll hear plenty more from Daniel soon.
Tilly Kneale (Digital Marketing and PR Campaign Manager) began her career in the music industry as a digital intern at One Little Indian and FatCat Records. Here she learned all the tricks of the trade from creating Myspace Skins to the ins and out of metadata and digital aggregation. After a brief spot of work experience at Nile-On pr company, Tilly took a job as Online and Regional Publicist at One Little Indian and FatCat Records working under the legend that is Tones Sansom who taught her how to be a savvi pr girl. Cue favourite Tones quote: “I’ll turn you in to a Rock Pig yet..!”. Tilly worked on some fantastic bands such as Frightened Rabbit, Olof Arnalds, The Twilight Sad, Dan Sartain, Wild Palms and many many more. Tilly then joined Charmfactory in July 2010 and has become key member of the team, working hard on a number of amazing acts doing their publicity and marketing and learning more and more every day! She loves all kinds of music from Explosions In The Sky to Foals, but is an indie girl at heart.
