Nada Taha

Last year, when Nada Taha announced that she was leaving her five-year stint as an on-air personality and Digital and Branding Director for country radio giant The Bobby Bones Show, it left the show’s fans, and many in the Nashville music industry, wondering what she would do next.

Today, the 29-year-old has announced her Nashville-based creative services Blind Copy Creative, which works with artists to help capture and expand their brand across multiple platforms.

“The end game is if someone picks up the phone and hears you on a Spotify playlist and goes to find your website or your social media, I make sure the story and visuals and everything matches,” Taha tells MusicRow. “If they find you on social media first and then listen to your music, I want people to go, ‘That makes sense.’”

Prior to her work on The Bobby Bones Show, Taha spent a decade in radio as a music and digital director. She was Digital Director for five iHeartMedia stations and Music Director for a Top 40 station. Her career also includes time in journalism as a sports reporter covering the NBA. She says the storytelling skills required in journalism have been essential for her work with Blind Copy Creative.

“It’s about helping artists discover and properly tell their story,” Taha says. “At [The Bobby Bones Show] I started their Instagram. When they came to Nashville, they didn’t have one. It went from zero to more than 360,000 followers by the time I left. But to me brand is more than an Instagram account. What are the stories we are telling? That was a big part of the show. That’s what made us, and them still, so successful. Bobby is a great storyteller and they are so authentic. That had to be replicated in the brand and what we put out on social media.”

Today’s wave of artists are more often digital natives and well-versed in various social media platforms.

“It makes it so much easier. It’s funny, I have one artist now who is extremely not a social media person and one who is fantastic at it. When I was talking to the artist who is not big on social media, I said, ‘That’s ok. That’s your thing, then. We build the brand around that. I’m not going to force someone to stick a phone in their face and put Snapchat filters on.”

She cites new artists such as Devin Dawson, Midland and Caitlyn Smith as examples of newcomers with unique, powerful branding.

“These are all artists who know who they are at their core, and created a team around them makes it sustainable and cohesive throughout their launches. It’s knowing what the story is and knowing how to tell that story musically and visually.”

Though Taha’s role is to help artists promote themselves in the digital space, you may not find her promoting herself as thoroughly. “The whole vibe of my company is like a speakeasy. I don’t have a website, I’m not doing a lot of social media, none of that. If I’m doing my job right, you are not going to know that I’m doing it. I’m all about making certain the artists are promoted. I’m not trying to be a corporation. I like the boutique feel, and being hands-on and making people feel comfortable.”

Though launching a new company, Taha is still making time to mentor and help others in the music and digital industries. In March, she will take part in a mentoring session at the upcoming SXSW in Austin, Texas.

Taha can be reached at nada@blindcopycreative.com.