Team RMG
Reviews and Complaints

In the summer-autumn of 2014, our New England-based band hired Rhonda of Team RMG Artist Development/Rainmaker Public Relations to conduct a 6-month "Half Campaign" following the release of our first demo CD. We are decidedly dissatisfied with her services and feel that she did not follow through with many of the aspects of her campaign that she advertised to us. Though it would be a stretch to call it a scam, the "Rates and Services" listed on her website (http://www.goteamrmg.com/rates-services/) are hugely exaggerated and in reality, unprofessional and in many cases non-existent. Here's how it will play out: Rhonda will target a band she wants to work with. She will then collect individual phone numbers of each band member and make an extremely friendly personal phone call in which she expresses her admiration of your sound and mission. She will throw in a few gassed up phrases like "Here's a summary of what I do. You are a great artist, but right now you have nothing. I'm here to turn that nothing into something." She'll also pitch you the math on how much money per band member per month is required for the campaign, making it seem like less than it is. You'll then check out her website, which is loaded up with fluffy, nice reviews from 20+ no-namers and a list of past clients that includes Slightly Stoopid and a few other successful, known musicians. (side note: she seems to have abandoned her "Rainmaker Media Group" persona and now operates under "Team RMG Artist Development", and has essentially copied & pasted all the previous reference info). Needless to say, we were very impressed with the personal calls and decided to try her "half campaign" service. It is listed at $1800 + expenses, which is your first red flag, because when asked to clarify, she explained she might need to bill us up to another $200 in expenses, which she billed us for in full before even starting, so the real cost of the half campaign is $2000. We agreed and began our 6-month PR campaign, in which she promised interviews, album reviews, and pitches to various sync licensing houses and booking agents. We never heard from any sync licensing or booking agent contacts even though she promised that would be her focus for the last couple months of the campaign. It seems she has taken these avenues off of her rates and services page. The second red flag came when we received a draft of the press kit she'd been working on for us in the first month of the campaign. The draft included info from our bio and info about our record. It was a mess. Incorrect information, misspelled names and words, and poorly written sentences and paragraphs throughout. The amount of revision it took on our end just about equated to the time it would have taken us to write a much better press kit on ourselves of the same length. When asked about the poor quality she blamed her "LA-based writer" who was still new to the project. Once that was straightened out we were told the campaign was under way and we'd be hearing from her contacts soon. First the reviews, then the "get involved" opportunities. There isn't much more to say because after this early step our communication with Rhonda became scarce and uninformative. On the positive side, we received about 10 positive reviews featured on various indie web publications, including a few interviews with some very nice indie music journalists, with whom we have kept in touch. A few of these spots were followed by the affiliated website/magazine asking if we'd be interested in buying expensive ad space to accompany our review, which felt very "you scratch my back I'll scratch yours" of Rhonda and makes us question how she's connected to these people. We tried via email and phone to get in touch with Rhonda several times throughout the campaign to ask about how things were going, and received either one word answers or nothing at all. The last 4 months of the campaign was just a lot of us asking "Where's Rhonda at with things? When are we going to hear from her? When are these things going to take place?". The third red flag came when we received an email from Rhonda about 4 months in asking if we would write a reference about working with her for a prospective client who she said in the email was "spunky with lots of talent, but hesitant and unsure about the campaign service". We wrote back very politely with a reference saying that Rhonda had followed through on acquiring various press coverage and interviews with us on our album but that all those other things we were promised had yet to happen, and if they did, then we would be happy to reference them. Rhonda wrote back saying "Not what I was looking for but thanks." This was very off-putting and officially shifted our optimism about working with her toward regret...a regret weighing in at 2000 very real dollars. By month 6 the campaign felt so distant that we barely realized that it was over. We made a few polite and then a few terse attempts to reach her for follow-up via phone and email, again failing to connect with her. Perhaps we gave up too quickly, as post-traumatic research has shown that she's taken advantage of a lot of indie musicians this way. The sad conclusion to the story is that we got tricked into a pretty snake oily project as naive, PR campaign first-timers. Frankly, we were busy enough gigging during that time to not focus on making sure we got what we paid for, and neglected to pursue her for reparations or refunds. Had we dug around a little more than we did beforehand we would have found hugely informative reviews on ComplaintsBoard and otherwise that include some of the very specific and terribly unprofessional things she did to us and numerous other clients. Apparently she won't provide material to prove that she's actually doing any work, and can't show a log of her hourly activity: a fourth and final red flag. The point is: don't get lured in by the initial warmth. Rhonda is a great first impressionist but will take your money and lounge about with it while some unqualified grunts do her work poorly, if at all. Stay away. Rhonda's new website: http://www.goteamrmg.com/ Rhonda's Twitter: @GoTeamRMG

All individuals should be aware that RMG Artist Development was formerly Rainmaker Public Relations & Artist Development. Rhonda Kelly had to change the name of her company due to copyright infringement and the years of excessive complaints about Rainmaker.