RUBIO
Blending pop, hip-hop, electronic, ambient, and traditional music, Rubio is the critically-acclaimed solo musical project of Chilean musician Francisca Straube. Debuting in 2015, Rubio worked with Raygun during the campaign for her 2020 album Mango Negro and has toured internationally, including festival performances at Primavera Sound, Nrmal, and III Points.
Challenges
Rubio, a talented experimental pop musician with a significant audience in her home country of Chile, was preparing to release a new album, Mango Negro, and wanted to use it as a vehicle to expand her following to other territories, especially the large United States music market, where she wanted to establish a greater presence.
Strategy:
Raygun initiated a ground-up marketing campaign for Mango Negro, starting with small and midsize publications in both English and Spanish that were considered leaders of opinion in the music industry. Once we had succeeded in seeding the Rubio name among music industry players and established them as legitimate in the eyes of the media, we proceeded to contact larger outlets and organize further promotional activities for the artist.
Results:
Raygun secured media placements, including but not limited to interviews, music reviews, and airplay, for Mango Negro in a variety of national and international music and Latin culture publications, including Billboard, KEXP, and others. Our campaign culminated in earning Rubio her U.S. live debut in Miami, one of the largest bilingual music markets in the country, at III Points Festival, where she headlined and played the Day 1 closing set at the Toyota Music Den stage.
“When Chilean artist Rubio set out to begin work on her latest album, she didn’t just want to create a fun collection of avant-pop songs. She wanted to give her fans something to think about.
“I think that humanity is very disconnected from its internal source,” Rubio tells Billboard. “Nowadays everything is consumerism, immediacy, a lot of fire power and not much consciousness. Nature is screaming to be listened to, and we are not listening. Humankind is very spiritually disconnected — and if I can offer my two cents writing songs that get to people’s hearts and make us think, that’s a beautiful thing for me.””