How 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' Inspired The Establishment Of The Annex: Mardi Caught

Mardi Caught learned about getting things done from an Adelaide girl called Denise Backhurst.

A co-founder of the SA Beatles fan club, when The Beatles missed out on Adelaide on their 1964 tour, Denise started a campaign (with a clothing store and two top radio DJs) with a petition that generated 80,000 signatures. Result: 350,000 turned out in the city with a population of 680,000.

Denise Backhurst was Mardi Caught’s mum. Caught went on to hold multiple senior executive positions within Warner, EMI and Sony in Australia and the UK. She also had a stint as VP of Talent and Music at MTV UK.

She established The Annex in 2018 and worked on campaigns for acts such as Lime Cordiale, Bluey, Genesis Owusu, Matt Corby, Porter Robinson, Tash Sultana, Alice Ivy, Royal Otis, and Hiatus Kaiyote.

Q: What were your first jobs in the music industry, and what did that entail?

MC: My very first job was a voluntary one for a street press magazine called Rip It Up. I was studying journalism at the time and was obsessed with music, and in Adelaide, that mag was my lifeblood.

So I offered to spell-check and sub it for free in return for interview ops. One of my first payments was interviewing Noel Gallagher.

I was interviewing a local band called The Dukes, and the Sony PR person saw me taking notes in shorthand and suggested I apply for the secretary job they had going. I started there a month later!

Q: What lessons did you develop while in those jobs?

MC: Both gigs were great as I learnt how to interact with artists and multitask within the cacophony of a small local office, where you had to do everything from invoicing to answering the phone and assisting everyone.

Having been at Uni, it was a very swift reality check of working alongside a team and trying to make their life easier while learning the operational side of the role.

Q: Why the need to set up The Annex?

MC: There was a point where I felt major labels were moving away from a proactive model to a reactive model. They’d wait and see what was developing and then chase it.

Development has always been the love of my career –  whether it be talent within the label in terms of staff or the talent within the artist world. To see that starting to wane as an option was sad, and I figured that process still had to happen at some point, so [I] decided it was the time to test my theory.

It was also slightly inspired by the final season of Buffy, where they all became slayers (IYKYK). I thought, rather than one group of artists having access to my developmental passion, what if everyone could? Probably not the best way to create a business model, but Buffy still slays.

Q: How significant was the name The Annex?

MC: It was a big choice, and it took a minute to get there. It came into being in the end because it served a dual purpose.

The initial idea was that the company could be a little addition or bolt on to any campaign, like when something is added to a home. I started with a thesaurus search of ‘Pool Room’, as I wanted people to be able to say, ‘Let’s take it straight to the Pool Room’ and pay respect to The Castle.

But I quickly realised the geo-locked nature of that joke. Given that one of the areas I wanted to address was actually export, the word’s duality served the perfect purpose as it covered off the notion that Australian music could annex the world.

Q: What do you count on as the company’s biggest success stories?

MC: This is a toughie because success comes in all different forms. Personally, one of our biggest successes has been the amazing team we’ve built.

I’m incredibly proud of who they are, what they stand for and how passionate they are in what they do. If you don’t know Tash, Elinor, Hannah, Elfira, Tara, Sarah and Will yet –  you soon will!

In terms of our artist family, it can hit differently for every one of them, and ultimately, watching them grow is what we deem success. To see Eves Karydas move from a label model to fully independent artist running her own campaign entirely has been a delight.

We get as much pleasure out of seeing Maanyung grow his audience and people discovering his music as we do seeing the incredible things Royel Otis have achieved this year. 

You have no idea how much joy we had in the office when Sabrina Carpenter commented on Jett Blyton’s TikTok post, seeing Teen Jesus [And The Jean Teasers] on a Spotify billboard in the UK - chef’s kiss! Watching Aleksiah run up picnics in the park and the love for them on her socials. For us, these are all big success stories.

Q: At your BIGSOUND keynote, you noted that failure was important in our journeys. What did you mean by that?

MC: In short, instant success never gets you anywhere – it’s a moment, not a learning. So everything we do is about taking steps, and sometimes you fall over, but it’s what you do after that fall that is going to make all the change.

If you don't make mistakes, you won’t ever learn. You won’t have the hubris to accept them and address them, which makes you a more honest person.

But you also won’t have the skillset to know how you get to that key moment if it’s thrust upon you rather than you earning it.

Furthermore, failing often forces you to walk a different path. If I hadn't felt that I was failing in some aspects of my career, I would never have had the thought to set up The Annex.

Hooly dooly, I still made mistakes during those first five years. But it has made the company stronger and I’ve learnt more because of it. I feel my brain is actually like Benjamin Button –  the older I get, the younger I become because I realise what I don’t know and what I have to still educate myself on.

Q: What projects are you working on at the moment?

MC: Well, there’s a lot – and I hate listing things as I know I’ll forget something! Right now, we’re in the midst of Shaboozey world. Tipsy [A Bar Song] has just gone to #1 on the ARIA Singles Chart.

We’ve started with some amazing new clients who’ve got new music coming out: Gypsy Lee, Will Clift, Lucy Parle, Rare Americans and Ripple Effect, to name a few.

Then we’re in the thick of it with album campaigns for Lime Cordiale, Full Flower Moon Band, Teenage Dads, Porter Robinson, Party Dozen, Kim Churchill, Dice, Alice Ivy … gosh, that is a lot.

There are a couple of things coming up in the pipeline as well, which we’ll be able to talk about very soon, too. But until then, we’ve got all the newbies plus ongoing campaigns for Royel Otis and The Rions. Maybe I just need to go alphabetical next time?

Mardi Caught will appear as a speaker at this year’s Indie-Con Australia event on Thursday, 1 and Friday, 2 August. You can find more details about her Indie-Con schedule here.