TL;DR: From vow­ing nev­er to work at a media agency to run­ning my own, life has been an unex­pect­ed jour­ney fueled by music, cre­ativ­i­ty, and a relent­less pas­sion for mak­ing brands heard all around the world. Along the way, I’ve worked for (liv­ing) leg­ends, learned from the best, and built some­thing unique­ly my own: CTHULHU MEDIA. This is my sto­ry…

Hi! I’m Mar­co, and back in 2010, I made a promise to myself:

“…the last thing I’ll ever do is work at a %$”§&#@ media agency!”

This epiphany came while col­lab­o­rat­ing with an exter­nal cre­ative agency to over­haul my employer’s cor­po­rate iden­ti­ty and mar­ket­ing assets. The love­ly lady I worked with at that agency was bril­liant but always insane­ly busy, super stressed, and clear­ly danc­ing the dai­ly pol­ka on the fine line between san­i­ty and los­ing her shit for life. Expe­ri­enc­ing her work-work-bal­ance first hand, I vowed that a media agency would be the last place I’d ever work while try­ing to build a career in music. To me, it looked like hell on earth. No, thanks!

Fast for­ward four years, and there I was, grind­ing away at my music career, push­ing my gui­tar skills as hard as I could. Then, out of nowhere, an unex­pect­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty knocked at my door—a job at a “%$”§&#@ media agency!” The irony, right? Pro­fes­sion­al­ly, I was stuck and des­per­ate for a change, so I thought, “Why not give it a shot?”

Work­ing in cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions and mar­ket­ing for years in a field that didn’t spark even a flick­er of excite­ment had drained me. But this agency? It has ties to bands like Motör­head, Anni­hi­la­tor, Sax­on, and even the leg­endary Wack­en Open Air fes­ti­val. For the first time I felt an urge, a pro­fes­sion­al ‘call­ing.’ “Maybe I’ll even bump into Lem­my one day?” Lit­tle did I know, this job would be the start of the mar­ket­ing career I’m still pur­su­ing today.

Was I busy like that lady I men­tioned ear­li­er? Absolute­ly. Did I work long hours? Check. Stressed and over­worked? I’m grey now, so… Did I find myself stand­ing on the rain-soaked holy fields of Wack­en at 3 a.m., beer in hand, wind and rain thrash­ing my face, in a shout-down with my boss about chaot­ic fes­ti­val plan­ning, plead­ing for addi­tion­al life­lines to sur­vive the upcom­ing fes­ti­val week? Yes, that hap­pened. Mul­ti­ple times.

And the Pol­ka? I wouldn’t call myself a dance afi­ciona­do, but I’d say my moves were more of a chaot­ic blend of head­bang­ing and Cha-Cha-Cha, cau­tious­ly rock­ing on that very same thin line.

But did you like it?

Did I like it? I FREAKIN’ loved it!

I was sur­round­ed by bril­liant cre­ative minds on an inter­na­tion­al lev­el, met extra­or­di­nary people—including some of my musi­cal heroes—and dove into intense, adven­tur­ous projects. Along the way, I picked up new skills, made unfor­get­table mem­o­ries, and prob­a­bly gath­ered enough sto­ries to fill an auto­bi­og­ra­phy no one would ever will­ing­ly read. (Unless they were cru­el­ly forced to—haha!) For the first time, I’d found a pro­fes­sion­al pas­sion out­side of music but still deeply inter­twined with it.

That said, agency life wasn’t all par­ty and fly­ing high-fives. There were some aspects that didn’t sit right with me, so I packed up my ‘song­book’ of exper­tise, slung my music-busi­ness ‘gui­tar’ over my shoul­der, and decid­ed it was time to step onto the open stage—‘solo’.

Now, what do I play on this music-busi­ness gui­tar, all alone on that big open stage—all eyes on me?

No need to wonder—the audi­ence cheered me on, belt­ing out requests, and I had my song­book at the ready.

Work­ing in the bru­tal­ly fast-paced music indus­try for years nat­u­ral­ly fine-tunes your body and mar­ket­ing mind to stay ahead in the dig­i­tal land­scape. The com­pe­ti­tion is fierce, the plat­forms and strate­gies are wild­ly diverse, and mis­takes can be cat­a­stroph­ic. I’ve seen even tiny errors snow­ball into mas­sive set­backs. Dur­ing my first two years in the indus­try, I wit­nessed more than a few heads roll from sim­ple over­sights. In this busi­ness, there’s bare­ly room for error.

In between, there was a two-year hia­tus at EDEL’s ear­MU­SIC record label, where I was the ‘front­man’ of the Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing team and per­son­al­ly met leg­ends such as John­ny Depp, Ian Gillan, Alice Coop­er, and Nuno Bet­ten­court. I had the priv­i­lege of work­ing strate­gies for icon­ic acts like Deep Pur­ple, Alice Coop­er, and Extreme inter­na­tion­al­ly, apply­ing every­thing I’d learned through­out the years, all whilst dis­cov­er­ing even more about the music busi­ness and keep­ing up with the per­pet­u­al evo­lu­tion of inter­net tech and fads. It was an intense but reward­ing peri­od that fur­ther shaped my skills and pas­sion for cre­ative and mod­ern dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing.

Now, as the front­man of my own ven­ture, I’ve tak­en every­thing I’ve learned and applied it to projects across indus­tries. Whether clients need to (re)position them­selves, find their audi­ence, gen­er­ate leads, hire tal­ent, or grow their com­mu­ni­ties, I’ve got the tools and strate­gies to make it hap­pen.

(If you’re still read­ing, I salute you! Not long to go, I promise—check the green progress bar above.)

In the mean­while, I’m also per­form­ing with oth­ers! Hired guns—and damn good guns at that! This mod­u­lar ‘band’ doesn’t just play the part or only ‘cov­er the clas­sics;’ we bring the exper­tise to back it up, deliv­er­ing unique results that match the best in the busi­ness, today and tomor­row.

Now, about ‘CTHULHU MEDIA’. Where did that come from? Why such a nerdy, under­ground name that’s tough to pronounce—especially for Ger­mans? Well, my band at the time was called CRITICAL MESS, and I want­ed my busi­ness name to car­ry the same ini­tials: C and M. Media was a no-brain­er, and the first C‑word that came to mind was Cthul­hu.

At first, it felt a bit abstract, but my gut said oth­er­wise. A quick dive into the inter­nets to revis­it the sto­ry of this icon­ic fan­ta­sy-hor­ror fig­ure remind­ed me: the ‘Great Old One’ Cthul­hu awak­ens when the stars align, and his call is so over­whelm­ing that every­one hears it—driving them to mad­ness or worse. I decid­ed to take some cre­ative lib­er­ties and thought, “Lose the mad­ness part of the sto­ry and make it your own, Mar­co!”

So here’s my take: when we ‘wake Cthul­hu,’ every­one will know. That’s the mis­sion behind my brand­ing and my slogan—Make Your­self Heard. Plus, let’s be real—he looks cool and pow­er­ful, which def­i­nite­ly doesn’t hurt! I’ll be your ‘priest’ or ‘cultist,’ sum­mon­ing him before you have to wait thou­sands of years for the stars to (pos­si­bly) align for you.

But wait a minute…

Not only did you end up work­ing at a “%$”§&#@ media agency,” but now you run your own?

DOH!

“So what?!”—that was the ‘young and inex­pe­ri­enced me’ speak­ing. Now I’m here to help you save your ener­gy and resources, make some authen­tic ‘noise,’ stand out from the crowd, and get your mes­sage across to your audi­ence clear­ly and effec­tive­ly. If you’re ready to ‘wake Cthul­hu’ and make your­self heard, let’s make some noise togeth­er! The eas­i­est way to do so is via the CONTACT FORM.

Before I do that… Did you ever get to meet lem­my?

If I told you I was invit­ed to his 70th birth­day par­ty at the Rainbow—only to kind­ly decline due to press­ing per­son­al pri­or­i­ties that Christmas—I’d only be pry­ing open a gap­ing wound I worked so very hard to sup­press for a very long time. So, what­ev­er you do… “don’t men­tion the wa birth­day!”