These top Hollywood agents sign all the influencers

Addison Easterling, a 19-year-old TikTok star with over 30.6 million followers, had never shot an actor reel or auditioned for a big role. But after meeting a huge success on TikTok, which she joined last summer, the best talent agents in Los Angeles began to reach out.

In December, she moved from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Los Angeles. In January, she signed with William Morris Endeavor, a major Hollywood talent agency.

When WME said they wanted to sign me, I couldn’t wrap my head around it, she said. The opportunity to chat with one of these big agencies is a big problem.

It all came out of something I did for fun, she says. I was like, is this a real thing?

For those in the entertainment business, signing with an elite agency has long been a status symbol. But the fame landscape is changing and the big agencies have realigned their activities to focus on a new generation of talents: influencers.

The next wave of talent, all future waves of talent, will not come from traditional places, said Jad Dayeh, co-manager of digital at WME. The young generation creates, self-diffuses and shares with the world. They don’t wait to be auditioned and wait for someone to find out.

Previously, I want to become famous on YouTube or Vine, so I can have a career in traditional entertainment. Now it’s a career, said Greg Goodfried, co-manager of digital talent at United Talent Agency.

Because they have grown their audience organically, many Gen Z stars don’t need agents to help them get concerts. But, as Parker Pannell, a 16-year-old TikToker, said: It’s a major flex to tell your friends that you’re with CAA, WME or UTA.

The New Money Makers

The digital talent departments of many large agencies are not new, but the money poured into space has exploded in recent years. The influencer marketing industry is expected to exceed $ 15 billion by 2022, up from nearly $ 8 billion in 2019, according to a 2019 Business Insider Intelligence research report using data from Mediakix. Of course, that could change with the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Yet these numbers don’t even capture most of the influential products and successful companies, including makeup and clothing lines.

At that time, when Bret Weinstein of UTA launched the digital arm of the agency in 2006, originally called UTA Online, he was searching YouTube and other web platforms for obscure talent. Today it is the UTA innovation director.

Other large talent houses also had digital media divisions in the beginning. But at the time, most agencies focused on bringing traditional Hollywood celebrities to new platforms like Twitter, rather than building businesses around the ever-growing number of native Internet stars.

There wasn’t a lot of money going around, it was very early, said Alec Shankman, co-management partner at A3 Artists Agency, formerly known as Abrams. Now, the dozens of TikTokers the agency has signed, said Shankman, have become a very important part of our business.

This is partly because influencers often succeed in generating what agencies care most about: money. Frankly, they were in a very lucrative business, said Andrew Graham, an agent in the digital department of Creative Artists Agencys. So when the brands started calling and saying, hey, do you have an influencer for this campaign? the agency’s ears straightened.

Pioneer as you go

To get deals for their customers, digital agents need to stay up to date on technological changes and constantly evolving ways of structuring business. These include drops of merch that never see a retail store; business decisions approved by Instagram followers; meet and greet via FaceTime; and an infinite number of new digital platforms.

It’s the Wild West, said Alison Berman, co-manager of digital talent at UTA. There are models for some of our offers, but our field of activity is certainly not based on models.

The literary and film departments have unions that set rates and there are certain agreements divided into certain payment schedules, she said. They are plug and play, while ours are entrepreneurial and have been pioneers over time.

In practice, this means that large agencies have to keep up with the hectic pace of their young clients and woo them in new ways too.

Cosette Rinab, a 20-year-old TikToker, said that seeing UTA sign a big TikTok star like Charli DAmelio (who signed with the rest of her family) gave him respect for the agency. ((Other members of Maison Hype, a collective of TikTok stars, have signed with WME and Artists agency A3.)

In my view, this has given UTA a little more relevance, said Rinab. It gave me a feeling of, oh, UTA really follows that.