Judy Schaefer of PRS: “Music is all about community building. If we do better, everybody else does better”
Judy Schaefer describes her first role at PRS, in 2005, as “backup receptionist” – a temporary job she took while she figured out what to do with her English major. Twenty years later, she’s climbed from her entry-level position to become director of marketing. She’s overseen countless product launches as well as huge growth for PRS – all while navigating a rapidly shifting guitar industry, thanks to the explosion of the internet.
In-person experiences are the gold-standard
“I remember there was one year that, when Summer NAMM wasn’t quite doing what we wanted it to do, we started Experience PRS to actually get our business partners to come here to the factory. If you walk through our factory and watch our team building guitars, you will walk out having drunk the Kool Aid – you just get how much everybody on and off the production line cares.
“One of the things I really wished I would have done earlier is go into the factory and do one of our guitar-making courses. I’ve learned a lot from them. What I want to do is take those things that get us excited, and get them in front of other people.”
Image: Mikko Dumadag
It’s easier than ever for a manufacturer to connect with the public
“Social media means people feel entitled to more instantaneous information about their guitars, and I love that. We want you to see us. The year I joined is the year YouTube started, and we got in there early – we first started doing video around 2007. It’s funny to go back and watch videos from then. It was often a case of giving the art director a camera and seeing what Paul [Reed Smith] said if we put him in front of it.
“And now, from the influencer side of things, we’ve built some really great relationships in that regard. It’s a huge part of what we do these days. Because you need to ask – where are people getting this information from? YouTube is where the search is for guitars.”
“Social media means people feel entitled to more instantaneous information about their guitars, and I love that”
Information over hype
“Paul always says that PRS is not a ‘brand’, we’re guitar makers. He hates the word ‘brand’ because you can lose yourself in being just a hype-driven online presence. Making a ‘viral’ video isn’t a goal. Making a really good video? That’s a goal.
“It may seem we’re sometimes brash or controversial, but that often comes from us doing the boring thing, just conveying information! If you’re launching a guitar, you have to have a straight-ahead demo video. It’s a guitar, you need to hear it – then you can do something fun. But we focus on the information – the product copy on our website isn’t, ‘get onto the stage in your snakeskin suit and wail on this hot guitar!’ That’s not guitar-making, that’s being a ‘brand’.”
Image: Mikko Dumadag
Marketing is storytelling
“I still do a lot of our writing. But it goes beyond putting down sentences and paragraphs – it’s storytelling. If you’re launching one guitar and you know there’s another one coming in six months, you need to lay groundwork to build off of later. The human brain can latch on to stories in that way.
“It’s similar with signatures – you have this mythos pre-built into the instrument. You know lots without me having to say anything. The Silver Sky is different, as it’s not called the ‘John Mayer’ – so it’s not inherently associated with him. But, would it have done as well if the exact same guitar had come to market not being a John Mayer signature? Absolutely not.”
“You can lose yourself in being just a hype-driven online presence”
Good people do good work
“When we had an intern last summer who asked for advice, I just went straight back to the idea that everything you need to know, you learned in kindergarten. Be nice, share your toys, etc. We’re just all people, and we’re going to work together for a really long time. And the guitar industry is small! But no matter what industry you’re in – good people do good work.
“There’s nothing about music that isn’t community building, even if you’re a solo singer-songwriter. So if we do better, everybody else does better, and there’s better guitars in the world. But if we just run everybody else out of business or bash other people, that’s not community building.”
This interview with Judy Schaefer was published in the Guitar.com Magazine May/June 2025 issue
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