Street Team: Marketing squad draws crowds to Wild Buffalo

The Wild Buffalo House of Music knows what it’s doing. For more than 20 years, the venue has held on to its unofficial status as the “premier music venue and dance club in Bellingham,” regularly packing out shows with hundreds of young patrons and generating a considerable buzz around upcoming performances, despite the challenge of consistently appealing to a demographic that — in a college town like Bellingham — is ever-changing.

To combat the transient nature of the city and avoid losing relatability with the community, Wild Buffalo marketing director Zack Fijal created the Street Team — a promotional marketing squad uniting a diverse range of individuals with varying tastes in music to lend insight to the venue on which artists and genres are particularly popular amid their peers.

For many members, the Street Team serves as a way to meet new people and engage with live music on the side while attending Western Washington University, resulting in a steady ebb and flow of teammates. But for others, like 23-year-old Zubeid Janif who joined the team in 2019, a spot on the Street Team was the beginning of a full-time career in the music industry.