Founder
Soft Serve
Years with Company: Less than one
Address:1320 Pico Boulevard, Apt. E, Santa Monica, CA 90405
Phone: 213-322-4656
Web: instagram.com/pepark
Email: [email protected]
Clients: Audrey Nuna
BACKGROUND
During her childhood in Brazil, Paula Park became entranced with the potential for music to inspire social justice. That fixation eventually led to a career helping entertainers explore hot button issues at organizations such as Scooter Braun’s SB Projects. Now, the Berklee College of Music graduate is branching out with her own company, Soft Serve. Her first client is singer, rapper and fellow Korean Audrey Nuna.
Sound of Change
Growing up, I had this lofty goal of changing my country and working to build a better future for the people of Brazil, so I went to economics school and wanted to work in politics. As I grew older, I realized that wasn’t the right fit for me. I always loved music and artists that are at that intersection of honoring their social responsibility and interweaving that with music. I decided to throw my whole life up in the air and pursue music.
Culture Barrier
I only worked [in Brazil’s music industry] for a year. Brazil is very protective of its culture. If you assess the top 100 artists in Brazil, it’s probably 80 percent Brazilian artists. They really protect what consumers listen to. It’s different from other countries where they’re very open to the import and export of music.
Brazilian artists can be very self-sufficient. They don’t have any need or interest in crossing over into international markets. American artists kind of depend on global reach. Even if you see Brazilian artists trying to come to America, they still lack in fluency of the language and all these things, because crossing over is not something that’s fostered in my country.
Finding Audrey Nuna
I discovered Audrey shortly before the pandemic through her feature with Jack Harlow. I was an obsessed fan. I’m Korean Brazilian and she’s Korean American. The representation she brought was fresh. It was different from what I had seen as far as Korean women artists. A lot of that landscape is saturated with K-pop and what you would expect an Asian female artist to look and sound like. Audrey grew up in New Jersey and has a lot of hip-hop and R&B influence, genres I am personally passionate about. So I felt myself represented in her.
Through the years, I got to know the folks around her. Anwar Sawyer started her career and is involved with everything she does. I became close friends with him. We have similar outlooks on life, the industry, and culture. When the time was right and Audrey was ready to take on new management, they reached out to me. That’s how I ended up managing her.
Starting Over
When I got out of college, I went back to Brazil. There aren’t a lot of people who have the opportunity to leave Brazil, get an American undergraduate degree, and come back. Typically, those people stay in the U.S. Because I did come back, I was offered an executive position at Universal Brazil, which was amazing but also a little overwhelming. I was very young, but it was a great experience.
When I came back to America, nobody knew me. To them, I was just a recent graduate. It was also during the Trump administration, so a lot of companies were wary of hiring immigrants, having to sponsor visas, and all that. I got this advice of starting at the bottom from a mentor. He was like, “You need to prove you have what it takes, so be an intern.” I went from being an executive to working for free again. It was a humbling moment, but it was the best decision ever because I got to work with amazing people at SB Projects and learn a lot.
And then they offered me a full-time position. From interning to my last role at SB Projects was a whirlwind. I went through the marketing department, promotion department, and then social impact and philanthropy. I was passionate about my role as social impact lead, because impacting society is what I’ve been passionate about since the beginning. It felt like a full-circle moment.
Fans Are Born IRL
It doesn’t matter how many viral videos you have. And it doesn’t matter how many digital campaigns you build. At the end of the day, conversion happens in real life and at concerts - people seeing you live, feeling your stage presence and star quality.
Industry Misconceptions
People have an idea of what a career in the industry is, but they’ve never done it. It’s this projection of what they think it is. Most of the time, they also didn’t go to school for it. They don’t know what it is, but they think they know so they want that. And they sometimes get married to this idea and prevent themselves from finding what they actually like. I see people investing five years [down one path] because they thought they wanted to be an A&R. They get a chance and they’re like, “I hate this.” So in the beginning of your career, shadow as many people as you can.
Believe In Something
Quavo was a client at SB Projects, and I led a lot of his philanthropy, especially after Takeoff’s passing. We established the Rocket Foundation. There are things we’ve done with VP Kamala Harris and her office for gun violence prevention.
Intangible Returns
Soft Serve is a company I started to tackle projects focused on artists that take into account responsibility for social and cultural change. Audrey [Nuna] is our first client. As with everything we do, the bottom line is not just revenue. It’s also the social change we insert into everything she does.
Looking for Socially-Conscious Artists
I’m looking for artists that are very mission-driven. I am passionate and can understand artists that are doing this for some reason beyond themselves and want to be cultural leaders even more than entertainers. That is a big prerequisite.
Aware Messaging
In a world saturated by talent, what ends up carrying that emotional bond between fan and artist is trust. One of the key ways of building that is showing their humanity and what an artist believes in. That allows for a more authentic bond than the ephemeral, ever-changing trends on social media or anything like that. One thing that’s a through line between all these household names is that these artists have strong character. Most of them are outspoken and you won’t get confused on which side of the line they stand on any given issue.
Know Thyself
Have a sense of self. That’s something the industry can’t give you and nobody can teach you. You have to know what that is so you’re not swayed every time someone next to you is doing something that’s not you and, by the time you get to yourself, you’ve spent 10 years chasing someone else.
