In December 2014, Nick Dierl went to see Turnstile in London. He wanted to work with them. That happened in spring 2021. Between the introduction and the assignment sat more than six years: an awkward length of time for a sales forecast, a perfectly plausible length of time for a musical obsession.
Dierl recalled the sequence in a February 2026 interview with ANOTHER ASPECT. By then, the band had become one of the recognizable names associated with Orienteer, the public relations company he co-founded with Duncan Will. The detail gives the company a useful introduction. Here was someone willing to remain interested long before there was an engagement to announce.
in London
of Glow On
Two dates from Dierl’s account. Plenty of listening in between.
The clients came along
Orienteer began in January 2017. In an earlier interview with This Generation, Dierl described a less orderly road to that beginning: uncertainty about continuing in PR after Life or Death, clients who wanted to keep working with the team, and an intervening business called Liberal Arts. The move to Orienteer involved a change in the business’s partners.
That sequence is revealing for anyone running a small service company. A name can change while the working relationship survives. The client’s confidence travels with the people who have been doing the work. Dierl’s account suggests that client demand helped settle the question of whether to carry on.
“Truly every campaign is different”
Nick Dierl, speaking to This Generation
He also described a preference for extended relationships, a team with many former interns, and senior colleagues helping shape campaigns. Read together, those details suggest an agency organized around accumulated knowledge: of the artist, of the media, and of one another.
A chef walks into the music portfolio
Open Orienteer’s website and the range becomes visible. Tyler, the Creator appears in T Magazine. Oklou gets a Pitchfork cover story. Matty Matheson appears in GQ. MIKE performs at NPR’s Tiny Desk. Dijon plays Saturday Night Live. The company’s selected work includes fashion pages, music criticism and live television.
That is a more useful description of its position than calling it a general marketing agency. Orienteer’s core is artist publicity, with room for creative personalities and brands. Its stated purpose is to tell the stories of people shaping popular culture. The portfolio gives that ambition a concrete form: different people, different editorial settings.
Consider the choice involved. A performance lets someone hear the work. A conversation can reveal a personality. A fashion feature can place an artist in a visual context. Treating all three as interchangeable “coverage” would miss much of what makes each one useful. This is an editorial reading of the portfolio, but it offers a practical way to examine any publicist’s work.
A live performance puts the work in front of the audience.
An interview gives a person room to explain an idea.
A visual feature places style and personality in the frame.
The unglamorous work behind the photograph
A public TOPS announcement offers a closer look at the mechanics. Orienteer’s email for Bury the Key names Ghostly International, gives the August 22, 2025 release date, lists the tracks and provides links to artist channels and high-resolution assets. Nick Dierl and Duncan Will appear as press contacts.
It is easy to skim past that infrastructure. Yet a journalist needs to know which record is arriving, when it is arriving, where the usable images live and whom to ask for more information. A clear announcement removes several small obstacles between interest and a finished piece. Every missing fact gives a busy person one more reason to postpone.
The package also clarifies what a prospective client can hire Orienteer to help with: organizing a release story and making it accessible to the people who might cover it. The email is a visible piece of that service. The eventual story still belongs to the editor, writer or producer who chooses to make it.
Other public credits show how the agency sits within a larger team. Blood Company lists Orienteer under worldwide publicity for Take A Daytrip, alongside separate management and publishing information. Ground Control Touring names Dierl as High Vis’s publicity contact while identifying the booking agent and record label separately. Those distinctions matter to a buyer. Booking a show, managing a career and handling press are different assignments.
A Warner Records announcement for IDK lists both a label publicist and Dierl. Outside publicity can therefore appear alongside a label’s own staff. A sensible brief should establish who handles which requests and who approves the materials before the inbox starts filling up.
The fee buys work. Define the work.
Orienteer operates as a client-services agency. An artist, manager or brand approaching it should arrive with something more precise than a desire to be talked about. Which release or project needs support? Which audience matters? Is the immediate challenge explaining unfamiliar work, reaching a different readership or coordinating an existing level of attention?
Those are useful buying questions because a recognizable roster cannot answer them for you. A prospective client should ask for the scope, staffing, fee, duration and reporting arrangements in the same conversation. The relevant number is the cost of the agreed work over the agreed period. A monthly figure by itself leaves too much room for two parties to imagine different jobs.
There are alternatives. Grandstand Media also works across music and cultural publicity; its client presentation includes events and brand work. Depending on the assignment, an artist may work with a label team or an individual publicist. Orienteer’s distinct appeal is the combination visible in its own record: a music-centered practice, sustained artist relationships and placements across several kinds of cultural media.
Fit still requires judgment. A team seeking one urgent announcement has a different problem from an artist developing a public identity over several releases. A patient relationship also asks something of the client: time for conversations, clear decisions and participation when an opportunity comes. The approach is harder to use when that attention is unavailable.
Borrow the brief, then choose the room
The transferable lesson is modest enough to use tomorrow. Before making a list of publications, write one sentence about what a reader should understand after encountering the project. Then choose a format that can convey it. A live demonstration, a detailed interview and a striking photograph each answer a different question.
MIKE’s Tiny Desk appearance makes a useful viewing exercise. The August 2025 performance includes songs from Showbiz!, among them “man in the mirror” and “Artist of the Century.” Watch how a performance gives the audience evidence to listen to. Then imagine trying to deliver the same introduction through an announcement alone.
Orienteer’s more recent portfolio includes FKA twigs in ELLE UK and Lola Young on Rolling Stone’s Future of Music cover. These are documented examples of the work the agency chooses to show. They also invite a better question than how many mentions a campaign collected: what did each appearance allow the artist to communicate?
That question can survive a short campaign or a long career. It leaves room for ambition without requiring every opportunity to happen immediately. Sometimes the useful introduction is to an editor. Sometimes it is to a listener. Sometimes, as Dierl’s Turnstile story reminds us, the introduction takes years to become a job.