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December 12, 2024 109 mins

Jesse Kirshbaum heads up the NUE Agency, which specializes in sponsorship. He reveals the details of these deals and more!

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the mob Webset podcast. My
guest today is mister Sponsorship Jesse Kerschbaum of the New Agency. Jesse,
what is the New Agency?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
New Agency lives in the intersection of music, technology and
brand partnerships. We are a boutique agency that really is
connecting brands to their consumers by leveraging the power of music.

(00:44):
We create pop culture moments and we help brands tell
their story through this emotional and beautiful industry called the
music business.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
Okay, let's start with a couple of projects you've worked
on recently.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, well, yesterday obviously we had to shift the recording
because we popped up at Walmart and at seven to
eleven for a DJ Khalid nest Quick Chocolate milk that
we launched, and that was, you know, at this point,
a six month ordeal where we started helping Nestley try

(01:24):
to figure out how to work in music. They had
never worked in music. With nest Quick, they were trying
to figure out what artists or what they should do.
So we sourced a bunch of artists. We vetted them.
Should it be Cardi B, Should it be Chance the rapper.
We landed on DJ Khalid. It tested very well, family friendly,

(01:45):
big songs, international, multicultural, and we started with just a
television commercial which was him and the bunny and kind
of interaction and it did really, really well, and it
was at gas stations and it was being played on
different channels and it got some pretty good traction. And

(02:09):
at that point Neslei said, should we think about launching
a flavor? And so I'm sitting with Dj Khaled in
Miami at his house and we're tasting different samples and
he's explaining to me, I want the cinnamon to be
the star. I want this to be a cinnamon forward drink,
and he's like, I want to call it cinnabun and

(02:31):
we couldn't clear cinnabuon. Neslee pretty quickly hit me on
the side and said we could clear cinnamon Bun, and
collectively we thought it would be a lot more creative
to call it another Bun, and so we launched Another
Bun in October. And the power of working with a
brand like Nesle is you've got massive distribution. We're in Target,

(02:56):
We're in obviously now Walmart in seven to eleven, uh
Kroger's and Publics and Amazon, and you know yesterday we
you know, did this kind of pop up experience last
minute to shooting some content. Nobody knew it was happening.
Kind of created a frenzy in the stores, but very

(03:16):
well controlled, and we opened up four hundred more stores
through this type of partnership with walmartin with seven to
eleven and just put this product even more on the map.
And it's a it's a really exciting case study that
we're working on. We have three projects in market right
now and it.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Well wait, well, let's just drill down a little bit
more on the Nest quick. How did you establish a
connection with Nest quick?

Speaker 2 (03:46):
These are long relationships. So the executive at Nesley worked
with us when she was at red Bull, and red
Bull was like the Ivy League of Culture marketing, and
we were very close to the Red Bull team when
we were just starting the company and built this relationship

(04:06):
with this senior executive there and stayed in touch over
the years and supported her with different initiatives. And then
as time went on and conversations kept going, she eventually said,
I got something here at Nesley that might make sense.
We've got a brand that wants to do something in
music and I thought of you guys. So that led

(04:30):
to a brief and then a pretty quick process of
doing this talent search and.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Okay, wait, wait, okay, let's go a little bit more
into detail. So you have a long relationship with this woman.
Just one day you're sitting in front of your computer,
you get an email or you get a call. That
was it out of the blue.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Well, my brother is my business partner, and we can
get more into the infrastructure of new agency. But my
brother is a very persistent salesperson and he is really
good at staying in touch and getting on people's calendars
and getting people to listen to what we've got going on.

(05:12):
So he really kind of is a bit of a
fierce follow upper. And it took months of her saying
I think I might have something for you until finally
he got her on the phone and got her excited.
So it was a relationship that we both had. You know,

(05:32):
a lot of the conversations we have come from things
that I might have done, or artists I might have represented,
or my newsletter beats and bites. But we're full on
partners and he really doesn't mind following up, and he's
really good at it, and to be honest, a lot

(05:53):
of these executives, especially on the brand side, where there's
a million people emailing them every single day asking them
for stuff, they don't mind you following up with them.
They don't mind hearing from you, especially from us with
the right you know, conversation starters or updates or invites

(06:13):
to events. It's a long, long, long game sometimes to
put these projects together. Sometimes they just happen overnight. But
for the most part, you want to work with, especially
an agency like Nestlie or a company, a massive corporation
like Nestley with a not doing much in this space.

(06:35):
It's an international corporation. They really want to work with
trusted experts, and after many years of a relationship, lots
of conversations follow up, the right opportunity presented itself and
we were down to sprint to get this over the phone.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
Oh okay, okay, you have any idea the frequency of
your brother's contact with this woman, I would.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
Think, I mean, look again, we knew each other for
eight years, ten years.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
I mean, is he relentless? Is he bugging or is
it once a day, once a month, once ya.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
Definitely not bugging. If nobody is coming back to him
and saying, hey, cut it out, you're hitting me too much.
It's more that's not the right time. Sorry, I've been
so busy. I missed your email. I've been on PTO,
so I don't think.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
Okay, So let's assume your brother is pitching. Is he
pitching with an idea, is there a hook? Or is
he just saying we should work together. I can make
something else.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
We have a very core competency suite of services when
we sell music strategy, so he's definitely got our core
business at mind. But we're so entrepreneurial. We're definitely not
your grandpa's agency and his approaches new frontiers, new trends
and idea that might make sense. Just staying in touch

(08:03):
and invite to something. It could be anything across the line,
and then that person Usually then it sparked something. It
could be multiple touch points. They might have read something
in my newsletter. They might have met a friend that
spoke about us. It could have been word of mouth. Eventually,
the right opportunity came to mind, and Alex capped her,
and she gave him a kind of a hook, so

(08:25):
to speak. She said, I think I got something for you.
Stay close and that's enough for I guess three more
months of tracking something like this to then finally us
it being revealed that this is the obscure idea.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
Oh okay, Ultimately, what did you delivered to you to
run with?

Speaker 2 (08:53):
She delivered the concept that ness Quick, a brand in
the Nestley portfolio, wanted to do something in me music
and wasn't sure what that should be.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
Okay, so she says that you come back with.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
What here are multiple artists that you should work with, right,
let's start there. Sometimes it is you know, I think
our secret sauce or our winning formula these days has
been artist idea and then ten pole moment. It's content,
it's a live event, it's a live stream, it's a

(09:29):
product drop. But usually we wrapped the whole package together.
This was a situation where we started with the artist,
then we figured out the passion points of these artists.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
Okay, well just a little bit slower, sure, she said,
nest Quick, the first thing you thought was let me
get the right artist.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
That's all. It came down to the start.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
Okay, So how did you zero in on the artist?
And you do you only approach artists have a pre
existing relationship.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
With absolutely not. We are completely agnostic. We have a
very good understanding of the landscape of the business. We
work with the major labels, the indie labels, the talent agencies,
the DSPs. We're reading hundreds thousands of articles a week,
so we're seeing so much. We really know the landscape,

(10:25):
and then we have personal relationships at this point with
every artist management. There's four or five different ways to
get to the artists, and what we're really considering is
what that brand wants. That's who our clients are. At
this stage in my career, we work on behalf of
the brands, so we're going to help them try to
find the best artist with the best path to get

(10:48):
to that artist at and be able to utilize what's
authentic to that artist, what's important to that artist, so
that we can create something that is going to resonate
with both the artists fan base, the brands folks, and
receive all sorts of earned media press and you know,

(11:10):
ultimately hopefully hijack the airwaves and become a really big
pop culture moment.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
Okay, you got the green light from Nestley via nest
Quick you start looking at acts. What do you then
do and how do you end up with DJ Collin.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
We sourced a bunch of different acts. We start to
deep dive into nest quick we start to figure out
what this is going to be used for. We don't
even know if it's a television commercial, if it's going
to be a digital at the time, we you know,
it's a step by step process with this particular one,
and we just stayed very nimble and flexible as we do,

(11:48):
and started to source options who would be big. We
know it needed to be a big artist, and we
know it needed to have a certain family friendly, multi genre,
multi demo reach, and we knew that it needed to
be you know, not the biggest in the world, but
at a certain level where we could shift culture with

(12:10):
this artist and really impact but also you know, not
totally destroy the bank. Right We're not booking Rihanna, Beyonce,
jay Z, but we're getting the opening act for that
tour or that circuit, and we're getting somebody that really

(12:31):
understands how to move products. So we then ended up
you know, pulling demos on different artists. Again, there was
five artists or so that we present. We kind of
come with our top three.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Wait wait, wait, before you approach Nesli, how do you
decide on those five artists.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
It's a combination of data POV, which is the most important,
and insider information knowing this artist has a project coming out,
this artist is going to have an affinity to this product,
this artist is looking to do certain projects in this

(13:10):
certain genre or certain sphere. You know. I think our
kind of curation process really comes down to those three
things and.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
Find just POV normally means point of view, What do
you is that we're talking here?

Speaker 2 (13:24):
That's the most important component that we all have right
now in twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five, it's POV.
What is are unique in a world where there's no
intermediaries and anybody can put a record, anybody can record
a video, and now the algorithms have changed where it's

(13:45):
the best content wins. It's really about what you say
and how you got to what you're saying. So POV
is you know, twenty plus years of being in the trenches,
in the street, in the suites of the music business,
really understanding it, plus all the other characteristics that I have,

(14:07):
the other things I've read, the places I've studied, the
things I've gone through, the traveling the shows, The touring
all of the different experiences forms my POV and then
my team's POV collectively really informs how this decision is
made with the data and the insider information.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
Okay, you go to Nestle with five acts, have you
approached those five acts and such that they say we're
on the right terms, we're interested, or are you going
to go back to them after Nestle decides.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
We might have soft sounded some of the artists. We
might have had a casual conversation like, hey, thinking about
this if we didn't know these are artists that we
know what they're looking for, we know what they take.
We run into them at a concert, we run into
them in an event. We're you know, rubbing shoulders with

(15:10):
them in our world on a pretty regular basis. So
it's not that we need to overanalyze this. It might
be in certain situations, certain clients definitely want you to
really know availability interest. You know, there's different things, but
usually we want to have a confirmation of intent from

(15:33):
a brand before we start going too deep onto this
brand is interested. Potentially, it just kind of stirs up
a lot of feelings and also it's a waste of time.
So we want a commitment from the brand to say, yes,
this is a direction that we'd be comfortable and going.
Here's some parameters around budget, here's some use case needs.

(15:55):
Then you can go to an artist and say, hey,
this is what it's looking like before I send you
a formal offer. But we would want that before we're
talking to a artist, just because you know, it's like,
do you want to do this thing? Well? What is
this thing? Right? It's too amorphous without more parameters, so
we would kind of boil down what the parameters are.

(16:17):
It puts the ball back in Nesley's court, where it's okay,
let's figure out what we want to do.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Heyway before we get there. Okay, you go back to Nasville,
you get five acts. What happens right after that?

Speaker 2 (16:31):
We talked through them, We present them, we talk through them.
It's a you know, pretty quick conversation. We show the research,
we give our POV again.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
Well I'm just interested, sure what research are you talking about?
What numbers and where do you get these numbers?

Speaker 2 (16:47):
Social cloud articles, brand affinities. There's like fifteen twenty different
data put inputs that we could look at that could
kind of solidify why this artist would be a good
candidate for this, and then we would kind of highlight
our top three. You know, we probably have the last

(17:10):
slide with the last two like these two could be considered.
You know, you don't want to rule anything out, but
we want to make this as thoughtful as possible when
we're presenting it and then a POV. Right, this artist
we think will work with this in this budget during
this time period. Here's the reasons why let us know

(17:31):
in this situation because it was our first time in
particular working with Nesley, they did a whole background check
on these artists as well. It was another series of vetting.
We do the vetting. We make sure that there's no
complicated things, there's no conflicts of interest there. You know,
there could be things that come up, right then there
are always so you always have to kind of know,

(17:53):
all right, this is a minefield, this is a clause
that we have to be careful of. And in this situation,
there were those situations that we had to kind of
sidestep and iron out and work through. But after everything
was said and done, their vetting and our vetting process,
it allowed them to say it tests well, we want

(18:16):
to give this a shot. We're not going all the
way to start, but we want the options to unrail,
to take this to television, to potentially release a flavor,
you know, and and continue to extend on from there.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Okay, you mentioned test. Nestley actually does a test.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah, they do surveys. There's great survey companies out there
that can tell you how this is going to perform
with your brand and this artist and this type of content.
So yeah, they'll they'll do the data.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Okay, So Nestlee Nestley does it work. It comes back
to you when it comes back to you, does it
have one specific artist or two or three?

Speaker 2 (18:58):
Let's start with one? Right? In this situation, it was
we've got we've got one that we want to start with.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
Right.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
You can't be married put all your eggs in one
artist's basket. It's not behooving to the brand to do
that because then they're just like shooting their shot and
that's all they got. It should be about a diversified
of opportunities.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
Okay, So before you approach the artists, how much concept
is established in terms of cash, exhibition product, how much
is formulated or even up for discussion before you approach
the artist that's been decided upon, all.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Of that will be mapped out, right. You got to
have the understanding of what the cash is going to be,
of what the the product is going to be, what
the terms and conditions are going to be needed. You
need to understand that when you're coming to the artist,
how many posts? What is this going to be used for?
Linear like, how is the glam gonna work? Like? Is this?

(19:59):
How how many service days is this? All of those
are going to be factors when an artist and their
team decides on if the project is right.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
Okay, so let's just stay between new and in this
case NESTLEI, how do you agree on those numbers? Or
does Neslie tell you?

Speaker 2 (20:21):
We can coach Nestli on what we think it will
take and Nestli will tell us what their parameters are.
So it's a conversation. It's a level of trust, and
NESTLEI might say, or the brand in general might say,
this is what we've got. Can we make it work?

(20:42):
And then it's up to us to try to figure
out how to make that work right. There's so many
levers on the board. Do we do less posts, do
we do less service days? Do we do shorter terms.
Do we do less regions, do we not license music?
Do we license music? Do we tack on an event?
Do we take the event off? Like all of those

(21:05):
components will then help us to kind of formulate what
the idea is and how it's going to work. We've
got a long history with rock Nation with DJ Khaled,
you know, there's years and years of successes together and
wins and trust, so they will understand that this is

(21:28):
going to be done right, this is going to be cool,
This is going to have elements that they're looking for them.
They're dealing with somebody that used to represent artists, that
understands the artist's lens, that was with them on this
and been in the trenches with their artists from their
side of the table, so they know that they're getting

(21:50):
that level of appreciative I guess understanding. And then they're
looking at this and saying wow, like this has potential
to be in hundreds of stores, like we're going to
be in all of these amazing places, Like this is
going to be on television potentially, like it's one day

(22:13):
shoot and and he's gonna be able to be associated
with such a classic brand that is like we all
grew up on it's iconic, and they're gonna remix the
brand and allow the DJ Khaled, this producer extraordinaire empresario,

(22:35):
to be able to put his stamp on what the
bunny looks like, that's pretty amazing, and what the bunny
does and sounds like that's a big opportunity. I you know,
smart managers realize that the co sign of a brand
is so valuable. Like Oreo is bigger than any artists

(22:56):
in the world. They have way more distribution. They are
way more well known than Bruce Springsteen. So if an
Oreo has infinite options of who they want to work
with it they could pick anybody they If not this artist,
it could be this artist, and the idea could switch around.
So you got to have an artist or a team

(23:19):
that understands that these brand partnerships are in many ways
a gift from a creative source.

Speaker 1 (23:26):
Okay, a traditional advertising agencies. He takes a percentage. How
does new get paid?

Speaker 2 (23:31):
We're usually you know, it's every time, it's case by case.
The gone is the row where you're you know, aore
on retainer for imperpetuity, you know, until there's an agency reshuffle.
So we always have to come up with our structure.
We're always trying to figure out what is our role

(23:55):
in this partnership. Are we strategy? That's one level. We
really start with strategy. That's where is the best place
for a brand to think about things. Spend a month
and a half figure out where you belong. Get the
right artists, get the right venues, get the right festival partnerships,
get the kind of where you belong in the landscape.

(24:16):
If you're a new brand to this, then from there
ideally will execute the strategy. And that's what's been happening
more and more is once we write the strategy, we're
in the unique position to make that strategy come to life.
And then that would be unlocking a different budget, and
then from that budget we could be charging hourly, we
could be charging project based, we could be charging a royalty.

(24:40):
In this scenario, you know, we're in a position where
Nesley pays us a fee to on each layer of
the campaign.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Okay, how many people work for new and does it
fluctuate based on what project you are working? Fun?

Speaker 2 (25:01):
Yeah, we're a consortium of consultants and permal ancers. We're
constantly scaling up and down based on what the job
is at hand. We're super nimble in that regard. So
we've got a core team of all stars that look

(25:27):
in the range of seven to ten people on an
everyday basis, and that's a family shop. That's me and
my brother, everybody we work together, we love, we've known well.
I mean, now we're hiring some more people, but we're
constantly keeping the core really really tight. And then when

(25:48):
we land the project or we need to put different
components of it around it in order to service. Because
a brand expects really really good service, then we just
bring in the team to do that, and we know
who they are and we tap them on a regular basis,
and it allows us to keep the agency lights on

(26:12):
on a regular basis. Because you know, when these deals
they yacht, they don't allow you to scale as well
as making money while you sleep. It's a different business model.
That's why we've kind of started investing in companies and
doing more out of the box thinking, because we want

(26:35):
to have equity beyond just the agency in projects so
that we can make money while we sleep and not
just be tied to the model of the agency where
you win accounts, you hire people to service, the accounts,
you bring more people in to win more accounts your service,

(26:57):
and it's just it's great and it's exciting and it's fun,
but it can feel a little exhausting the agency side
of things, so we've mixed it up. But yeah, I
mean the team that we work with on an everyday basis,
on an everyday call, it feels like a family restaurant.
It's really awesome, and we service amazing brands and work

(27:23):
with people that we love that are all extremely passionate
about music. It's my brother who again has been with
me on this journey for since we were representing artists,
and it's just a really gifted salesperson and creative and
passionate about the elements of the New Frontiers. He's the

(27:43):
guy that will go chase down a deal for China
or you know, work in blockchain or in all sorts
of New frontiers esports and gambling and cannabis like and
tying that all to the music side of things, because
that's our business. Where there's like our chief strategy officer, Nikki,

(28:03):
who remembers you when you came in. She was in
the flom Era and she's just so bright and so wise,
and she remembers you when you used to fact your
newsletter and you came in during the Flom era when
she was working for Jason Flammer and are in the
record side of things, and you did a whole speech
and a whole conversation to help them. They hired you

(28:23):
to figure out how the digital landscape worked. And I
just loved that story, Like, so, it's just folks on
our team. We've got I taught a class last year
at American University. I speak at a lot of colleges,
a lot of the thesis of New Agency when we
first started, it was to focus on the college market,
to find artists, to break artists. Just felt like a

(28:45):
competitive edge that the bigger agencies weren't thinking about at
the time. And so I taught a class last year
at American University's business school, the co God School of Business,
And through that I get amazing interns and really bright folks,
fright kids coming in that we end up hiring or
bringing in US interns. And so we just hired this
assistant from American University who's just fantastic, and you know

(29:10):
she's she's here in Miami with me. We've got Sam
who's our GM. She started like as a friend of
her father's and she has been now with us for
over a decade and she's climbed the ranks from interning
at different companies that I helped her get internships at
to really being the clue of the operation. Our GM
are like our partner and.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
Okay, okay, let's go back to college. Let's go back
to nes quick. So you deal with Nestlie. You come
up with a formula, you pitch Collin. Tell me about
that experience and how you decide on what Collein is
actually going to do.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Well, we helped Neslie, Right, We coach them on what
this needs to look like, and then they also tell us, hey,
we need this. We're going to need that. It's going
to need to look like this. There's going to be
no wavering on different components of the So they lay
out what they need in an offer form. Right, we
try to get it on their letterhead. We try to

(30:07):
get it really spelled out. It might just be as
an email, but essentially what they do is commit to
a budget, some parameters, some constraints, and we have a
soft sound conversation. Right, we'll call up Kallu's longtime manager
Lenny s he's you know, jay Z's A and R.

(30:27):
He's tried and true, full on industry legend and have
a long standing relationship with him, a lot of trust
and we'll talk to him about this, and he knows.
He knows when things sound good, and he knows when
things sound decent, and he knows when they're coming from
people he wants to work with versus not. So he's

(30:50):
pretty selective on how things get through the filter, and
most people are in this business. And ultimately he was
excited by this and passed it along to Kalid's internal team,
which is a whole crew of really interesting, smart, bright

(31:10):
folks from the kind of we the best side of
things that we've now known for a long time and
also had a lot of hits with. And so collectively
we're talking about the offer legal is looped in. We're
pushing it through back and forth with their legal with
Nestley's Legal until it gets to a place where we're

(31:31):
so close it's just about there. Everybody in theories confirmed
we've got to shoot this in a couple of days.
And at that point we put everybody on the phone
right like, let's there's three things that you need to
talk about because we can't keep going back and forth.
It's time to just you know, commence the deal or

(31:54):
and so we'll we'll kind of bring everybody on a
call and in this situation. And at that point it
was magic, right, Like all of the tough stances of
the different sides and the hard lines, everybody came together.
You could see this was something everybody wanted to do.
And that was just the It was a long weekend, right,

(32:18):
This was one of those deals where we're all all
working through the weekend. Because you put a parameter, you
got to have the creator all creation and creativity needs
those kind of constraints to really happen. And so there's
a shoot date, and there's a drop dead date, and
there's a move on date. And Nesley doesn't need to
do a commercial with the music artists, right, like as

(32:40):
quick as fine, their business is going to be booming
no matter what, and like they know that there's just
a great touch point and they can age in a
different way and they can be in conversations that they
would never be in like when would Ness Quick be
in Rolling Stone or in hype Beasts during People Magazine,

(33:01):
Like that's the power of doing a smart partnership and
telling a really good story with it. So the whole
thing kind of ultimately comes together with.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
Oh, okay, so let's just say hypothetical, you have a brand,
you have an idea, they have an artist. As you say,
the brand doesn't really need any artists. Do the artists
have any negotiating power here other than yes and no. Absolutely,
they can choose not to do it, or do they
say yes but I want two X.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah they do. I mean, I think everybody has to
play ball, and I think that's the beauty of having
somebody that really can speak both sides, that has represented
brands for ten years, has represented artists for ten years
and just knows where the line is and where the
line isn't. If everybody wants to do the deal, then

(33:57):
let's figure out how to do the deal. And I'm
a pretty positive person. I see the power and I
see the opportunity, and I think people know that if
I'm bringing them something, it's gonna be cool, it's gonna
have a certain level of vanesse to it. It's gonna
have a really good sensibility of how they should be positioned.
It's going to lead to more opportunities. Right, Having me

(34:19):
in your orbit, who works with one hundred brands on
a pretty regular basis or at least has their ear,
I can see more dots to connect.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
Okay, so let's win. Collin ultimately was approached by ness Lee.
What was on the table? A commercial in store social?
What did they want in the initial ask?

Speaker 2 (34:51):
A television commercial, social media components and a ability to
option for a flavor if we get there, And it
wasn't even officially a television commercial, right, we had to
circle back because once you say television and you say linear,

(35:14):
it's sagged. It's all sorts of different components to making that.
So it was originally we're not sure we want to
shoot something on a global scale with content, and then
we snapped into linear and kind of had to double
back a little bit to figure out how to cover

(35:34):
all those fees.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Okay, tell me about that transition briefly, how you go
from concept to pushing the button that it is going
to be on TV.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
That's kind of behind the curtain, right, That's a brand
that's doing what they do and they're figuring this out
in their corporate bureaucracy with their different layers. This might
be right. Our contact who was doing the culture side
of things said it might, it might not to a
certain point. So we always knew that it could be

(36:06):
on the table. We always hoped he would be on
the table, even though it's more complicated, it's more impact,
it's a bigger moment. So they ended up essentially saying,
let's do that. We want to do that. It's working,
it's tracking that way, And you know, it was always
kind of presented to Kalid in that vein of this

(36:28):
is going to potentially be a television company.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
Oh okay, so now it is a TV commercial. How
much commitment did they demand of college, how did you
decide when you were going to shoot it? And how
much money does it cost to make one of these?

Speaker 2 (36:44):
He's got a very very good team. He's if you
look at the like the numbers, the charts, he is
one of the most brand savvy artists in the world.
It's why these partnerships work for him. It's because he
just is so inspiring. You can turn it on like
nobody else and you just don't. You just love the

(37:07):
fact that he's such a great positive salesperson, and so
he works really well with brands. He's almost his own
kind of super format like snoop where you can bring
him into different scenarios and it works because we get it.
We know that the shtick can be moved to different

(37:28):
platforms pretty easily. And you know, he's a very positive person.
He's a very uplifting person. He's very family oriented, and
his team is very tough, right, they get it. And
he's a very shrewd business guy too, and he's not
going to do anything that's not in his best interest
at all. And he totally understands his brand and he's
calling the shots himself in real time. And you know,

(37:51):
this is not an artist that's not present with every
component of this deal. So he wants it to be
a television commercial, but also wants to not be overextended
when it comes to service days when it comes to
so we kept it the one day, one day in
and out.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
Okay, so this is one day. You have any idea
what the budget to shoot the commercial was?

Speaker 2 (38:13):
No? No, I mean it's okay. The shot in Miami,
I know that get this commercial.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Okay, Today you can shoot something for nothing on an iPhone.
You could easily spend a million dollars generally speaking on
something like this. The reason it's interesting is it's relative
to music video, music video in the pre Internet era,
but just for hundreds of thousands of dollars spend in
a matter of days. Is this Traditionally these brands spend

(38:43):
a huge amount of money. But in today's marketplace where
you can do it down and dirty, are they still
spending that kind of money brands? I mean, I think
I'm talking about purely production. Purely production, they show up,
you know, are they spending four hundred thousand dollars in
a day or twenty five thousands?

Speaker 2 (39:04):
Yeah, it's so case by case, right, you could pull
together a really good content piece that resonates it and
it doesn't have to be that expensive. Or you can
bring in a high level production team and you know,
put it in the taj Mahal if you want to. Like,
it's really depending on what it is and what the
objectives are. I think the majority of the money gets

(39:26):
spent on in this situation the talent, right like, and
the storytelling and the being able to I don't think
that they They brought in a great director and it
was you know, we shot at in Miami to make
it easy for Kalid, which you know, was able to
save on some costs and for them, and that made sense.

(39:49):
But for the most part, I you know, again, we'll
do these campaigns for one hundred thousand, We'll do these
campaigns for you know, infinite numbers. It's it's really about
the brand, what the brand's trying to sell or market.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
Oh, okay, okay. In this particular case, Nessley says yes
to a TV commercial, how much is Collin involved in
the creative of the actual commercial.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
Involved, approving, choosing outfits, making sure looking at the cuts,
seeing you know, having his photographer and videographer there, kind
of mimicking it so that he can see that this
looks good. He's looking at images. You know, this is
an artist that's also an executive, that's also a CEO,
that's also signed, really successful artist that works under the

(40:37):
biggest and best artist that works with the biggest and
best management companies in the business. He's got a really
good eye for his brand and what he's doing. So
he's the hands on But again, like his team, they
know what they want. He knows what he wants. They're
going to see storyboards, everything's scripted out, everything's you know,
mapped to the t and then he's going to get

(40:59):
there and he's gonna call shot, says the You know,
the tape is rolling because that's the right way to
do it. You want to be free flowing. It's it
feels almost like a Larry David's Curb your Enthusiasm, Like
everything's tight and then you show up and you do
what you need to do and you have the images
you want, but you want to bottle the magic if

(41:20):
there could be a chance for that serendipity.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
Okay, so that's the TV commercial. What is the commitment
on social uh?

Speaker 2 (41:30):
You know with the guy? Like again, everything is case
by case, right. You shoot a commercial for a brand,
a lifestyle brand, and they're doing it a whole campaign
and we're just doing it just for Instagram and TikTok
and that's a different thing, right. It's each one is different,
Each artist is different, each person's great is different, each

(41:51):
platform is different. It's really case by case. But with Kalid,
the beauty of him is he is a promotion machine.
It all works well for his brand. He understands his
brand so well, knows that these type of fan love
moments help usher in more excitement around what he's doing.

(42:13):
It's like a brand in some ways, is like a
feature on his latest hit. So he will post about
it with the brand's permission. He'll post about it. Behind
the scenes, he'll post his own take on it. He'll
tell the story in real time. He'll allow the brand
to tell the story, and then he'll come back over it.

(42:33):
So like a great partnership, Like most great partnerships, you
want to have the guardrails. You want to have the
parameters of this is what you need to post. But
you don't want to be managing this to the letter
of the law. Like that's not the spirit of a
successful partnership where everybody is winning. You want this to

(42:53):
be something that all sides are excited about, that is
a mutual win, has good legs to go on. Is
a feeling like this is actually good for me to
post this and to share this.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
Okay, But you know these things get written down on
paper or on a computer. Will these contracts say like
I want ten Instagram posts, five TikTok clips, other locations
on social media. Will that literally be irrelevant of what
Colin does. Will those parameters be locked into a piece

(43:28):
of paper?

Speaker 2 (43:29):
I mean ten would be egregious. But yeah, there'll be
a number, and then they'll also be certain hashtags and
certain deliverables in those posts. Right, Like, it's not just
they don't want just a post. They want to post
with you know that's FCC compliant, that's got the different
hashtags in it, that's driving to the right places. So
these are things that, yeah, they'll be approved content and

(43:52):
messaging that will need to go up. And then in
certain instances it will be completely controlled. Like the first
shooting the commercial, there was no ability to post. Everything
was behind the scenes, everything was dark. The brand's going
to lead the story. When the brand leads the story,
that's when everything starts to unfold. So that would be

(44:14):
normally how this would work. But now that things have
gotten a little free flowing, Kala just understands that if
ness Quick, the CEO of Nesley is doing a sampling
at their office and they tag him in it because
his bottle's in it, it becomes exciting and he just
knows how to make these moments in his voice, in

(44:37):
his pov Okay.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
So, but generally speaking, in the contract, in terms of
social media, what will be the minimums.

Speaker 2 (44:45):
Required really depends. I mean, these influencer deals right now
have made this market very different. There was a world
where you could do these endorsements. It could just be
one post, it could be one story, it could be
one static image, it could be a TikTok beyond your
platform of your choice, it could be you know, it's

(45:05):
really case by case like, there's so many nuances to
this world, which is it's great that the brand partnership
space has exploded. I want to thank hip hop for that.
I want to thank Covid for that. I want to
thank so many reasons why this paradigm has shifted a lot.
Because the influencer market has just made it so much

(45:26):
easier to do. But brand partnerships have become a very
good source of marketing attention for artists, and I just
think that it's been very, very helpful and it doesn't
have to.

Speaker 1 (45:42):
Be Okay, wait, wait, that's good. I sign a deal.
I'm doing a television and commercial. What is my commitment
with Instagram in TikTok forget content whatever? How many times
am I going to have.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
To post which company which deal? Like are we talking about.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
Let's say, let's talk nasty.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
I would think it's you know, in the you know,
ballpark three posts right like around ten pole moments, the
announce highlight, the commercial right like, it's not it's it's
pretty straightforward, right it's not.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Okay okay, But what you're saying is a good act
will actually over the liver.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
That's the nature of doing good business in general, especially
when it's a gift that could keep on giving. Now
we've got an original flavor. Now this flavor is doing
you know, now we're in walmartn Okay, okay, okay, okay.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
You referenced the change in the influencer market in the
last couple of years. Tell me about that change.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
Look, the history of music and brands, it's not that deep.
It's kind of started the jingles were going on in
the radio era. But brand marketing has been going on
for thousands of thousands years. But like, really the first
music in brand partnerships were the Rolling Stones and Rice Crispies.
It was a television commercial and Rolling Stones were a

(47:06):
laughing stock. Like it just was for so many years
not in vogue to do these brand partnerships. It was sellout.
And now we're twenty twenty four. Could you believe that
Bob Dylan's launching a whiskey and Bruce Springsteen's and multiple
Super Bowl commercials like this didn't exist five years ago,
eight years ago. How we got here is a series

(47:28):
of steps. Partly it's because of the digital transformation and
record labels not being able to give tour support and
not being able to support artists, the artists looking for
new revenue streams. Then it was really about the entrepreneurial
spirit of hip hop, and you know the big run
DMC Adidas moment, and then so many artists being able
to talk the brand language and be able to get

(47:49):
the attention of brands. And then it was about artists
launching their own brands, which is I think the biggest
story in music from twenty ten to twenty twenty, which
is Beats, Andre Rihanna and Empty Dare I Say, Kanye
and Yeasy like these are billion dollar stories which were
way bigger than these big artists music. But now what's
happened is through COVID. I look at it as like

(48:10):
a different error, right, it's pre COVID, in post COVID.
After COVID, when the music business stopped and you could
no longer tour, how were you getting paid? These brand partnerships,
made a lot of sets, and there is a marketplace.
There is a very frothy marketplace for influencers, for creators,
for people with vice eyelashes that go out and we'll
post about brands and talk about them for paid promotion.

(48:34):
Now that is not what musicians are. Musicians are the
ultimate influencers. They're creating product. They can put them in
so many different rooms and like their art is just
so much bigger than what an influencers are. And now
that there's a marketplace and there's a status quo and
it's easier to do these deals and there's every brand
is now comfortable working with celebrities, influencers, artists, the marketplace

(49:00):
is a lot easier and really like it helps an artist,
especially if you tie it into a big promotional moment,
like that's the cosign, that's the lift. Like it's almost
like having a Diplo remix your song is having Nestley
put out your your products, your flavor.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
Okay, compensation, cash compensation, which as you stated, is not
the only compensation here. What kind of numbers are we
talking about?

Speaker 2 (49:40):
It's all case by case, right, it could be you know,
I think there's a world where every brand should have
a music strategy. You could be an e merging brand.
You could be a mom and pop store you just don't.
You could be a small lifestyle brand, like there are
one hundred million dollar brands that should be doing music
that just don't know how. And in that world, you're

(50:00):
not spending a million dollars. You're not spending Oh okay,
that's all.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
I'm a Spotify top fifty act. Yeah, I make a
brand deal. How much money floats to my bottom line?

Speaker 2 (50:17):
What's the brand? What's the marketing?

Speaker 1 (50:19):
Brand? Is a Fortune five hundred brand?

Speaker 2 (50:22):
And is it like aligned? Is it something that like
who needs who more?

Speaker 1 (50:28):
Right?

Speaker 2 (50:28):
Like what layer in the cycle of that artist?

Speaker 1 (50:32):
I'm only I'm not looking for a raw number. I'm
looking for range. I do this? Can I make multiple
seven figures? Is that possible?

Speaker 2 (50:43):
Definitely?

Speaker 1 (50:45):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (50:46):
I mean you bob less, that's I think the brand
deals out there?

Speaker 1 (50:49):
Okay, But I'm asking for a musician, so I can
make one of these deals and multiple seven figures can
float to my bottom line.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
Sure, especially if you're involved and the royalty side. You know,
if you're just doing a television commercial, show up, you know,
hold the cookie and leave. You're not set up to
really capture the line.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
So what is that worth? One hundred?

Speaker 2 (51:12):
No? I mean it depends on the artists. But like
if you're a big fortune you know, Spotify Top one
hundred artists, top ten artists, and you're you know, you're
going to be prominently featured. Is it just for linear?
Is it for digital? Is it like is it television?
Is it global?

Speaker 1 (51:28):
What kind of give me a range? It's for television
and other things they want to do the commercial. I'm
a Spotify Top fifty artist. It's all I'm delivering. What's
that worth?

Speaker 2 (51:42):
I mean, does the artist just what all they're doing
is standing in a commercial? Are they licensing their music?

Speaker 1 (51:47):
All they're doing is standing in their commercial.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
Standing in the commercial? Are they speaking yes okay? And
are they saying like, Hi.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
I'm something positive about the product?

Speaker 2 (52:01):
Okay? You know, I think it's again, why would we
do that deal?

Speaker 1 (52:08):
It? Just listen, people have no idea. You know, every
deal is unique, Every payday is unique. Okay. But if
I'm going down this road and I'm willing to give
what the company wants and the company wants me at
the end of the day, and I'm a Spotify top
fifty act. Am I talking about netting five hundred k,

(52:31):
two hundred k, two million? What kind of numbers are here?

Speaker 2 (52:37):
It really depends on brand it yes, well, yes, and
all of the above, Like are they doing social posts?
Are they release the original product?

Speaker 1 (52:45):
They're doing everything. If I'm doing everything, I'm on a
Spotify top fifty act and it's a fortune five hundred company,
we assume it's multiple seven figures.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Again, depends it would be an excess.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
It would be it would be a seven figure deal.
Would we agree on that?

Speaker 2 (53:05):
I think you're you're you know. It depends again if
that artist wants it or what they the artist reasons.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
Everybody's in, I'm in. You're a major food company, I'm in.
I'm gonna go a million dollars? Is gonna go straight
to my bottom line? Yes?

Speaker 2 (53:21):
No, I think why not? But again, like look at Barbie.
Look at Barbie. Like that was a situation where they
released a movie in such a brilliant way that it
was a pretty good movie, but they did so many
brand partnerships that some were you know what, Airbnb They
got zero dollars on that licensing, but it was a
big moment, and it created all sorts of experience, and

(53:44):
then they sold dollars, and then they sold tickets, and
then they sold lipstick, like and some of those deals
yielded a lot. I think you can't look at it
as a one off plan. I think you got to
look at it strategically, as a holistic situation. How does
this fit? If you're just trying to get as much
money as possible, you're probably not going to get the deal.

(54:04):
I just want to be honest, Like, if you how
much ten million? Right? Like, you know, you'll email some
of these managers. You know what it is. You talk
to them and it's just like I don't edge the
photo list. It's two million dollars, Okay, so now we
know what the bottom line is. I don't think that's
the right way to think about it, because I wouldn't
be bringing you something just for the money. Look at
the opportunity, hear it, consider it and if it might

(54:27):
be worth more than the two million dollars in other
opportunities or other exposure or fill category that you don't
you need, or open up doors that you want. But
I think probably in that range, like starting place a
million dollars is probably what you want to think about
if you're like wanting to do a television commercial with
multiple social posts in a big service day and all
these different asks for an artist in the fortune you

(54:49):
know in the bottom half of the Spotify fifty. Again,
it's not about that number. It's okay, I got that,
I guess.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Okay, let's I am the act, I am making a deal.
Any negative possibility to me, my brand, my career from
doing this deal.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
It depends on the authenticity. In this era more than ever,
people are looking for successes. So if this partnership is
not a success for the brand, for you, for your
fan base, for the customer, then it is bad for
your brand. It is bad for you as a person
as an artist. So that is like one thing. Also authenticity,

(55:41):
Like if you're out here talking about a brand that
doesn't really align with your interests or how you're known,
or there's no story or connectivity to it, it's context
is so important right now, and just doing a brand
partnership if it's not a success or if it doesn't connect,
is bad for your brand as an artist. Even if

(56:04):
you got paid, like I guess, you got to weigh
the option and how long you want to be around,
and how you want to treat your fans, and how
much money you want to squeeze out of brands. But
if you're thinking about this the right way, which you know,
in the right conversation I think most people would, then
you shouldn't hurt your brand. It should help. But you
should also be thinking about doing the right partnerships at

(56:25):
the right times, with the right partners, with the right
conduits in between, to make these things come to life,
because otherwise it'll fail and that'll be.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
Not Stay with Collin, I don't think of music whatsoever
when I think of nest Quick is college such a
marketing machine that as long as you have a household
named brand, nothing can hurt him.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
He fit this vibe. I would be willing to bet
he turns down more deals than he gets off. He
is somebody that is family friendly, has two young sons.
His young sons were involved in the sampling of the tasting.
They're very prevalent in his personal brand. He rented the

(57:15):
you know heats in Miami Heat basketball Stadium and he
turns it into a big event for his son's birthday party.
Like he's very intertwined with family, with multicultural, with a
global reach, with being a big pop superstar with understanding brands,
with being very like you know, like probably looks like

(57:35):
he could you know, eat drink, nest quick protein shakes.
You know. It's just it's it fit for him in
a way that the exposure was good exposure.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
Okay, let let's flip the story over. How do you
sell the corporation that tying up with music is good
for them?

Speaker 2 (58:00):
First of all, music is the number one passion point
of consumers, so that is just a huge place. People
might not like sports, people might not like fashion, people
might not like food, be footies, but everybody connects with music.
So our thesis is that every brand will be able
to create emotional connections through leveraging the power of music.

(58:23):
It might be a concert, it might be an event.
It might be an artist partnership. It might be a
content series. It might be a licensing of a song,
it might be creating an original song. There's so many
ways for a brand to work in music. It might
be sampling at a festival, it might be product placement
in a music video. There's just so many ways to

(58:46):
play that game right now for a brand. So our
thinking is what's the brand, What are they trying to achieve?
What kind of budgets are they looking at with their consumers?
How do we create a program for them that is
going to essentially hijack the airwaves and put them in
a place where it's a lot more interesting than seeing
it as a Facebook ad or seeing it as an

(59:08):
Instagram ad, or you know, flipping through it in a
magazine like or whatever. However they're marketing their brand right
now in this really data focused world of blandivity like
it's changed and now you want new ways to cut
through the noise, and music is a great way to

(59:28):
create a connection with a consumer. It sells products, it
might not sell politics, like we saw that.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
Okay, so you talk about Joe vaon they've perfume with
the Rolling Stones, We've found other things. Brands got really involved,
and then brands pulled back. They didn't think they were
getting what they were paying for. A lot of this
was aligned to live shows. There became issues of signage,

(59:56):
et cetera, et cetera. What has changed is the music
business changed, or the fact that it's an online marketplace.
Why are acts you mean, why are companies more interested
in brand partnerships today, assuming they are.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
The world's changed. We're in this thing called the creator economy.
We're in an era like ten years ago. We saw
this boom with the gig economy, and that's when Uber
and Venmo and Airbnb and all of these companies. Pinterest
launched in two thousand and nine, right after the Dokop crash.

(01:00:41):
It became this gig economy mixed with the technology of
this mobile world that just launched a whole new era
of companies. And my thinking is that we're in this
similar thing Host covid, everybody came out of it, and
this creator economy just exploded. And also you mix that

(01:01:04):
with the AI boom and all of these new technologies
coming in, and all of a sudden, there's all of
these opportunities for creators to connect with brands. And really
what fuels the creator economy in which why I love
where we sit right now, is that brand partnerships are

(01:01:25):
so important for all of these different elements. So brands
know that they can harder with creators in unorthodox ways
orthodox ways and get massive lift and credibility. And artists
are looking at the creator economy and saying, if all
these other people are doing this. Let's find the right

(01:01:48):
fits for us. We've got we love certain kinds of brands.
We can tell, storytell, and so it just when I
look at the influencer pay for Playworld, or I look
at it as like, this is a big opportunity for
musicians because they're gonna wipe the floor with the influencers
in terms of authenticity, in terms of creativity, in terms

(01:02:09):
of reach, in terms of viability, in terms of earned media,
in terms of getting pressed. So it just it's a
world where more and more artists want to do brand partnerships,
and more and more brands want to work with creators,
and I just think it's going to continue to grow
as if as long as these are done right.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
The music business has changed in the last twenty five years.
You're working in this space. To what degree is the
ACTS label involved at this point? Very little? And after
effect driving the truck in the trunk, where's the label
in this story?

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
It's an exciting place to be at these labels right now.
The music business all across the board is really exciting.
It's just I mean, I was in this when I
started in the napster era, right when I got out
of college like this was placed was decimated and the
record labels were just not sure what to do. Record
labels are doing fantastic. I still think some of the

(01:03:11):
older school mentalities of these record labels are they don't
value brand partnerships. They put them in a very small
component of how it works. You know, I think a
lot of these older school music executives are you still
looking for the hit and and really pure to that
side of things. And that's great. That was a business

(01:03:33):
that really worked back in the day when hits were
the only thing that mattered. But I think that the
labels still hold a really solid seat at the table.
There's really good brand marketers. There's a lot of these
deals come from labels, but the labels hold one important
thing when it comes to these brand partnerships, and that's
why they're invaluable. If you want the music and you

(01:03:53):
want to work with a major artist, you have to
involve the label for the clearances. So the labels have
a seat at every table. Of these partnerships. I wouldn't
think that a lot of them originate. Some probably do,
but you know, the labels are not direct with the artists,
so it's complicated.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
Let me paint a scenario. The label really used to
be in control of the act's career, so they would
say yes and no to a number of things. They
would do one award show, they might not do another
award show. They would time publicity to the release of
a single. They were driving it when they are at

(01:04:32):
the table. Now they're a part of it because they
own the music. But it's really the act and you
driving it now as opposed to the label.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
Look, we could do a deal with management. We could
do a deal with the agencies, which have very good
brand partnerships. Teams are very hungry brand partnership teams. We
could do a deal with the labels. We could do
a deal with the artist's friend. We could do there's
so many patents.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
Let me let me make my question here. It used
to be a pyramid where the label was on pop.
One could even say that the act were slaves working
for the label. Tour was an advertisement for the album.
That is totally flipped. Now the album's an advertisement for
the tour. There's a lot of low hanging fruit that

(01:05:21):
the artist can make money independent of the label. So
in your world, I'm trying to get your viewpoint I'll
talk my world. Okay, the labels will buy almost no
tickets for the show. They'll call you when they say

(01:05:41):
you want to go. I said, yeah, well they have
a buye we bought eight tickets. Doesn't make any difference
to me. I can get it from the promoter. Where
it used to be, they would have an unlimited budget
for this. Okay. So in your world, has the artist
in management become so powerful that it is driven by
them and the label is more in the back seat.

(01:06:02):
What does it look like?

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
I think the labels have the big bank still. I
think that the labels, maybe they're not buying the tickets
because they're run by smarter people, but they they're doing
better than ever. They're taking pieces of companies like Spotify
that are no.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
No, no, no, no no. I don't want to I don't
want to discuss the major I don't want to discuss
the major labels. I want to discuss the major labels
when it comes to brand partnerships. They come with the music.
But will they throw a spin or in the works.
Will they say I don't want this doesn't fit with
our plan, or do they defer to the act.

Speaker 2 (01:06:41):
It really defers to the act. You know that all
the decisions now are made by the act and the manager,
but the labels can have creative ideas, and then the
labels control the music. So the labels do if you
want to license the music, which you do. It's really hard.
I think that's actually one of the parts of this
business that makes it very complicated, because you got to

(01:07:01):
get all the writers and all the publishing, and it's
just not set up in a way that it's still
super archaic, like when I look at the blue sky.
In this business, there's so much opportunity, like somebody could
disrupt how clearing songs works. I mean, now Meta and TikTok.
You can do a blanket deal, but you can't really
use the music the right way, and brands don't know

(01:07:22):
how to do that. It's complicated. But if you want
to clear music, you need the label, and you need
the publisher, and you need the artists and you need
the songwriter. And that's the bottom line. So the labels
have a seat at every table that involves original music
being used in a commercial. And the labels have teams,
although I don't think they give those teams enough respect,

(01:07:43):
but they have teams that are actively pitching that are
in the inner circle of an album rollout that know, Okay,
I have the control of this product. The album is
still very much in control of the artist. It's just
like you said, album is such a superfluous part of
what makes that artist big right now. It's a spokes

(01:08:07):
it's a multiple streams of income, multiple streams of attention economy.
So the album is important and it's a big marketing moment,
and it can make a lot of money and can
bring a lot of open a lot of doors. But
the label is just really focused on selling albums, like
whereas the manager and really the artist. But the artists

(01:08:27):
know what's right for them, and then the managers are
guiding that and in a lot of ways can open
up doors and see things. But it's going to come
down to an artist's decision. And every time I bring
it off for I say, what did the artists say?

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
I understand where you're at and with the label. If
you bring that to the label, just walk back with
me for a second. The label that has to call
the manager or if it's for a live event, the
agent and then the manager and then it's got to
go to the artist. There's like multiple block so to
get an answer, and the label's relationship with the artists

(01:09:04):
might be complicated. Sometimes the label's just going to drive it.
But like, I don't think that's the path of least
resistance when it comes to getting a deal, especially knowing
that a lot of these people running these record labels
have very little understanding or respect or appreciation for the
brand partnerships or creating products with artists world. It's just

(01:09:25):
not their business. They were selling records and they were
selling them by the you know, CDs, and now they're
in a different business. They're banks, and they're investors, and
they're you know, IP holders, and they're brilliant marketers. But
I just don't think they understand the brand partnership space
as well as they could. And so I would probably
say if I had an opportunity for an artist, again

(01:09:49):
it's case by case, and I do have friends at
labels that would bring me thoughts and I would jump
at them, But probably the decisions are going to be
made with the artists, so you want to be as
close to the artists as possible.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Okay, let's talk about the tour. For a long time,
brand partnerships were based on tour sponsorship. We certainly still
have bank tour sponsorships, MX, etc. To what degree is
that still a thing with brands sponsoring tours?

Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
Massive? I mean, look at Live Nation. Look how amazing
their company and their stock is. It's an all time sponsorship.

Speaker 1 (01:10:38):
I want to drill down very specifically. You make an
excellent point about Live Nation and sponsorship being a huge
part of their business. I'm a band. I go out
every other year, I play arenas. Okay, costs are higher
than ever to be on the road. Is there a
brand that I can go into business with that will

(01:11:00):
undercut my costs coming directly from Jesse, not for the
Live Nation advertising in the building, et cetera. Are there
opportunities you can bring to me to bring down my costs?

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):
Absolutely? Because I understand the nuances of the business. I
know where the different corners you can cut, so working
with me, you can figure out the best path of
least resistance. Plus I understand the strategy. I'm not just
going to sell you into a four wall theater. I'm

(01:11:34):
going to tell you how you make the moment in
that theater, and worry why you want to be in
that theater. It's just so much more.

Speaker 1 (01:11:40):
No, I want to be very specific. Can you bring
a brand to me that's going to cut my nut.

Speaker 2 (01:11:49):
That's gonna like, Am I going to make you more
money or less money?

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
Are you going to have a brand pay me when
I'm on the road in exchange for something? Signage sampling?
Who the hell knows? Can you sell me a deal
like that?

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
Why not? Of course? No?

Speaker 1 (01:12:08):
I mean no, I mean have you done that? Is
that going on?

Speaker 2 (01:12:11):
Yeah? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
Give me, give me to give me two examples.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
All right. So we've got an artist that we're working
with a brand called Klotopaxi. They're outdoor gear brand. Their
whole philosophy is gear for Good. There, you know, a
small brand, not Fortune five hundred, but they've got a
reputation and they're just a cool outdoor lifestyle you know,

(01:12:37):
hiking and gear backpack brand, and they hired us this year.
We built a strategy for them called Music for Good,
where we supported artists missions that were making the world
a better place that were on the road, and with
certain artists we did certain partnerships. So with Tierra Wack,

(01:12:58):
who is an artist that is on Interscope. She's really
creative and colorful and amazing rapper and just a force
of nature in terms of her creativity, and she gravitated
towards the brand and really is a think uh think local,

(01:13:18):
but you know, think big but act local type of person.
So she was really passionate about Philadelphia and the Philadelphia
school system. And we helped her to create a merch item,
a pack that she is gonna tour with while a
while doing chows and selling on her merch booths and

(01:13:41):
selling at her her on her website as well, and
the brand is going to create it. It's going to
be way higher end than anybody else. This brand is
going to make in terms of a pack. It's sustainable,
it's triple bottom line, it's got a brand push, there's
an endorsement component. We've already done something together where we

(01:14:02):
told her story and we elevated her voice through the
original partnership, and it's just a natural progression. As she tour,
she's going to make more money selling more of these
packs and have something really cool for her audience. So yeah,
I mean, there's ways that brands could integrate into the
artist's show. It could be just we want to be
in your green room, right Like sometimes when we do

(01:14:23):
a deal with an artist. We launched the agency when
we rebranded the company from representing artists to representing brands.
Our first project was this thing called the Patch House,
and sour Patch was our client, and we had all
of these different We took over these different houses and
we outfitted them with all this different style and panache,

(01:14:44):
and it was this place where artists would stay while
they were touring. Instead of in a white wall hotel
where after their band is sleeping on couches, they could
all stay in this beautiful brownstone in Brooklyn, and in exchange,
they would create content and eventually we would be put
on artists, writers, and we would be supporting artists. Hey,
I want to do a Papa, I want to do

(01:15:05):
a meet and greet experience at the show, and we
would do a sour Patch Kids support in that regard,
or we would you know, give away sour Patch Kids,
or we would help the all sorts of different ways.
So like if you're a touring artist, there's infinitment ways
that brands can be involved. Now, if you're smart, you

(01:15:25):
know that the five hundred, ten thousand people in the
room are cool, But what really could matter is the
ten million people online that could see this or the
even more if you target these posts once they're done right,
you can retarget it to even more people. So it's
I think sponsoring an artist on the road would be

(01:15:47):
a small component of the way that an artist and
a brand should work together.

Speaker 1 (01:15:54):
Okay, you're in this sphere. How many Jesse kirschbombs are
in this sphere.

Speaker 2 (01:16:00):
I think that there's a bunch of people that understand
brands and have are into artists and do artists partnerships.
I think that there's you know, there's always you just
had John con on the show. He's kind of an
og legend in this space. I have a lot of
respect for what he did with Cornerstone Agency, and you know,

(01:16:20):
Marcy Allen and was it was another one that just
did it so well. And Steve Stout's at the top
of his game doing these type of partnerships. So there
are companies that are doing this really well. And then
there's a lot of brand partnership agencies, and then there's
a lot of brand partnerships divisions, and then there's a
lot of brand partnerships folks. So I think that there's

(01:16:41):
a lot of people that do this. I mean and
then I don't know if they do it the same
way I do it. I have my own unique way
of doing things, and that our company does it its
own way. Like we're new agency, we want to do
things different. We've always tried to focus on what's next,
and you know, we're really driven by creativity and opportunity

(01:17:02):
and entrepreneurial spirit, and we just look at it our way.
We have our own format to what works and what doesn't.
And really what the difference between us, I think in
most is that we're really into the trends we eat like.
That's something that I love about you. I remember all
the times I would, you know, bring you to Internet

(01:17:23):
Week or bring you to sound control events, or have
you at music gaming content. It was because I just
couldn't understand how you were so on the pulse of culture.
It was so inspiring, and you still are. Your opinion
pieces just rock my world. And so I am now
a avid understander of the trends. I you know, my

(01:17:47):
newsletter I read. I scan a thousand articles every week,
I read one hundred I select ten. It's a love
letter to the music business. You know. I really try
to share my insights and what I think is going
to be valuable.

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
Okay, okay, how many people receive that newsletter? And what
is the benefit of the newsletter?

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):
Well, the benefit of the newsletter is that it's first
of all, for me, it's like going to the trends
gym every week. I am on the pulse. Now after
ten eight years of doing this, I really am seeing
everything happening in the music and brand space and it
just allows me to really understand and beyond the pulse
of this all. And then it just allows me to
start connecting dots and seeing the landscape. So much of

(01:18:30):
this is not in the real world anymore. So much
of this is what's going on online and how you're
able to disseminate information and formulate POV. And then it's
a serendipity bomb. Every week it goes out to thousands,
tens of thousands of people in the music business, and
you never know who's it's coming back to. It's music business,
it's brand marketers, it's music aficionados, it's passionate fans, it's

(01:18:54):
become it's people that I know from all walks of
my life. It's it's a whole marketing bomb. Plus it
keeps me top of mind every single week. It's my
gift to everybody. You want to know what's going on
in music, it's this is what I'm seeing. And then
on top of it, it's because of LinkedIn, it's become
the biggest music newsletter and music and brand newsletter on LinkedIn.

(01:19:16):
So that's a whole other audience that's got all sorts
of other scalability potential. But it's just also allows me
to kind of be able to put forecasts together, to
build trend reports for clients, to build our own trend
reports that we think is happening. It's just it's it's
a great exercise. It's a lot of work, it's a
lot of fun. And all of a sudden, the culture

(01:19:38):
has changed. It's become a newsletter world. Like the folks
that are doing these newsletters are all of a sudden,
in some ways more powerful than the publications. Like you
know this firsthand. You greatly benefited from being one of
the most influential voices in music as a newsletter and

(01:19:59):
bucking the system and doing it on your terms, in
your way. And now all of a sudden, everybody's in
this substack culture. And I don't even think they understand
how to read the trends. I don't even understand they
understand some.

Speaker 1 (01:20:11):
Of the data.

Speaker 2 (01:20:11):
Some are really talented. Substat's paying them to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:20:14):
Great.

Speaker 2 (01:20:15):
It's creating this whole new world disinformated, disintermediated media. It's
own media versus earned media. And I think having a
platform is so important. So every week I speak on
my megaphone about things that I've met, important to me
for my clients, or what I think the industry or
my audience would appreciate. And it's just been a very

(01:20:37):
very valuable lead generation for us, opportunity to connect with people,
and also just on a personal level. It's really honed
my craft.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
Okay, your brother is trolling for business, you know in
direct marketing, one percent is a good to argue how
wide is his net? How much is he working on that?
And how many projects do you work in a year?

Speaker 2 (01:21:08):
Yeah? I mean how big can we make our voice? Right? Like,
I get a lot of now, the calls, a lot
of the all of the projects that are coming in
are mostly in bound. Right. Somebody sees something in a
newsletter and it makes them think, Okay, let me ask
you a question about this, or let's have a conversation
or where should we thinking of? Which we should we be

(01:21:29):
thinking about, and so that's a lot of it is
coming into us just based on our conversation. And then
Alex's hand to hand combat and he's also a relationships person.
My brother's a lot more fun than I am. You know,
he's the he's the life of the party, and he's

(01:21:50):
just a really solid guy. Like he's just one of
these people that prides himself on his word is what
he's going to do, and that's how he operates. And
so I think people like working with them, and I
think people like like taking his call. So I might
meet somebody and then he'll know what to do with it.
Or he might meet somebody and we'll both have a
conversation and then he'll stay in touch. And so a

(01:22:13):
lot of my thinking at this point is the news
is scaling is like I can't you know, I'm more
trying to attract versus go after one by one. If
I'm working on like I'm trying to work my to
do list and not my inbox, and I'm really focused
on what i want to achieve as the CEO of

(01:22:34):
the company. It's about vision, it's about recruiting, but he's
a very good salesperson. I mean, how many of these
clients can we handle? We still, you know, we're servicing
big fortune one hundred brand clients and conglomerates, so these
take a lot of effort, They take a lot of bandwidth.
We're not like, you know, trying to over subscribe us. Like,

(01:23:00):
we want to work with great clients that want to
do great things, and we want to do great business
for them. And you know, I think the dream would be,
now we've been independent for a long time and we've
really built a good, good system, would be it would
be nice to have a bigger stage. It would you know,

(01:23:20):
obviously there's some downside with that, but it would be
nice to have more impact, to have more clients, to
have the ability to grow this company alongside of somebody
that really knows how to grow a company like this,
because our strength is in making these pop culture moments
and storytelling and creating these opportunities and really being on

(01:23:42):
the pust of the trends and seeing where things are going.
Like that's what gets me excited, right, like talking about
the blue sky of like you know, people think that
this doom and gloom I'm like, do you know what
this music business looks like right now? This is an
amazing place. Like everything is, there's just so much opportunity.

Speaker 1 (01:24:04):
Okay, Okay, you made a left turn a couple of
years ago to dream Stage. Tell us why you did that,
what the experience was, and how it ended.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
I'm a believer that you've got to be constantly reinventing
yourself and trying things and so like. At first, I
started my career signing and developing artists. Right My first
start was throwing parties. I was a promoter, you know,
throwing my high school keg parties. And then I was
the president of my high school, and I was always
including music because I knew music was this great amplifier.

(01:24:37):
And then when I got to college, you know, I
was like, oh wow, I could be in a business.
I could study business and actually be in the business
of music. So I ended up pivoting to being in
the business school at my college and then learning learning
music on the side, doing internships and climbing those ranks.
I started representing artists and that was was a totally

(01:25:00):
different bag. As an indie agency, finding and developing talent
and had a lot of success in that. After I
stopped that business model about seven years in, I started
to look at what I thought was next, which was
there was a big opportunity with brands, and so we
went deep into the brand marketing space and we ended
up working with more and more brands, and ultimately it

(01:25:23):
led to a really solid run until the pandemic happened.
And then I looked at what was going on and
I realized, we're no longer in an office. I can
no longer go shake hands, I can no longer go
see people at conferences. Everything is on clubhouse. The world
was changing and we needed to be savvy. We needed

(01:25:45):
to be smart about what was going on. And I
was just looking for something fresh, a new experience, something
that wasn't running a small boutique agency every week trying
to keep the lights on. So I saw the NFT world,
I saw the live streaming space, I saw the brand
partnerships world, and I started to say, Okay, there's a

(01:26:05):
big opportunity. A headhunter called me Cia had hunting right,
because when I sit now, I work with all the agencies,
I work with all the labels. When I was an agent,
I didn't sleep well at night let's just say I
looked a lot older at thirty five than I do
at forty five. Everybody was out to get me because
it was such a doggy dog world. This is a
very creative, collaborative world. So CIA started calling me, bringing

(01:26:30):
me opportunities. Hey, would you want to look at you know,
one job was the chief entertainment officer at Barclay Center.
They just were considering new ownership. They wanted to be
really innovative. They knew I was tech forward. I'd always
be friend of the tech industry. I really believe tech
was the savior of the music business. Smart bet it's
worked out. But then my dream Stage called, and dream

(01:26:53):
Stage just received this funding and they had these really
seasoned artists and see, and they were looking for somebody
that could immediately come in and be the CMO. And
I'm in a world of cmos. Those are my clients,
those are my peers, those are my people. It's nice
to be on the brand side, right, Like I'm now

(01:27:15):
cutting checks at dream Stage, right we have two million
dollars to spend on artists and shows, Like, let's go
figure out what artists we should book. Let's be innovative
on our process, let's try to sell tickets to people online. Ultimately,
the live streaming world wasn't that great for these indie

(01:27:37):
live streaming companies, and I think a lot of them
took it on the chin. I was the larger shareholder
of the company besides the founders. But like they sold,
they sold, they merged, and they sold, and you know,
a year and a half in like their investors stopped
paying and it just became a really hard situation during

(01:27:58):
the pandemic to to be at a agent at a
a live stream company that you know, has no staff
and it can it's having a hard time pulling off
these events. So they ended up selling to Drift, which
really creative team that we'd been partnering with and doing
these amazing shows. Like you know, sixty thousand people were

(01:28:20):
coming to some of these shows, but less and less
people after the pandemic stopped, a lot of people stopped
wanting to go to the live stream show. Who wants
to go to a show right when you're coming out
of the pandemic, you want to be outside. Everybody was outside,
So it was a hard sell. We did a couple
of brand deals, We did a couple of artist deals,
but ultimately I ended up calling my brother and saying,

(01:28:44):
I need you to put me back on health insurance
because I'm coming home. And that's the beauty of you know,
still owning a company and having your brother operate it.
And uh, I was able to make a pretty seamless
transition when they sold and you know, shut down the
doors and ended up using the dream stage technology to
to fall into drift into Deezer. The thesis worked out right,

(01:29:09):
the plan was there. Just unfortunately live streaming the bed
on these smaller companies. Just they couldn't compete with Amazon,
they couldn't compete with YouTube, they couldn't compete with Apple.
I still believe in in live streaming, and I thought
it was fun to be the CMO of this company.
I learned a lot, It was a good challenge and
I was there for a year. But ultimately, you know,

(01:29:33):
I kept a foot in the door and had a
carve out with New Agency. I was still writing my
newsletter and pretty quickly I was able to transition back
into New Agency, and and you know, it's a new
world with the pandemic over and you know, live streaming
being less interesting and Web three falling apart, and like

(01:29:55):
you know, all that kind of hype of COVID, it's
just like this little cottage industry. As we head into
what feels like again a whole new era. I feel
like my thesis now is all changing again, right, Like
I feel like what happens with the election now all
of a sudden's created a whole new dynamic in the universe,

(01:30:16):
and it's really hard to understand, like the exact clear
vision of what we're going into. And I know a
lot of people are having a hard time with it,
and you know, believe me, I it was a kick
in the in the in the stomach, but like you know,
you kind of have to look for the opportunities here

(01:30:36):
to do what you do and find new lanes. So
it's a fun time again because I feel like as
much of a crazy world or we're in, it's also
I think going to be a new world order where
you know, who knows what's going to happen.

Speaker 1 (01:31:02):
Okay, so you moved to Miami. Why did you move
to Miami? And tell us about being in Miami.

Speaker 2 (01:31:12):
I moved to Miami for love. So during the pandemic,
me and my girlfriend at the time, we were living
in Brooklyn. We moved in together and then we became
pandemic nomads and we traveled and then eventually she said,
I want to move to Miami. I you know, there's
a lot of good things to be in Miami, and

(01:31:35):
so I she said, would you come with me and
to be with her? I said, yes, there are a
lot of perks to being in Miami. It's not it's
obviously great weather, and it's a it's a really fun
hospitality scene, and there are some great brands here you
know that I've been able to connect with and you know,

(01:31:57):
as of late, be able to do some shoots with.
It's not New York. It's where as it sounds. It's
a lot smaller a pond. You can definitely wrap your
arms around it. But it is a city that feels
like it's being built for the future. You go to
New York, which I love and I'm from. You go
to Paris, you feel like these are classic cities that
were built for an era. You come to Miami is

(01:32:21):
just always moving and grooving. There's just so much new
things popping up. Like I live in between the Design
District and Wynwood. It is just so nice. Everything's walkable,
the beach is fourteen minutes away, and there are really
good people here. Like if you're in Miami, you know,
you're probably evading taxes or you don't have to go
to an office. So it's a very high quality community

(01:32:45):
of friends that I've made here. But I will say
three years in that a lot of the people that
came here have now left. It was a COVID haven
in a lot of ways. And it's changing. Uh so
you know, thank goodness for Art Basel and the winter
I think is going to be fantastic, and it's a

(01:33:05):
great place to visit. And it's definitely not the Miami
of old. It's definitely a new Miami that's happened here
and and that's exciting. Uh It's just, you know, at
one point, I was hoping this was going to be
this like tech have in in this like it's just
not that. It's uh it's a it's a it's a

(01:33:26):
great hospitality place and and it's a great place to
live and to recharge. But I feel like I gotta
get on a plane every three to five days at
this point to really be Do.

Speaker 1 (01:33:38):
You get on a plane every three to five days?

Speaker 2 (01:33:43):
It feels like it these days. Yeah, I mean if
you're between the conference circuit and the events that are
happening and meetings that need to go down. Yeah, I were.
I'm constantly on a move. It's a great place to recharge.
It's a place where I can go. You know, the
airport's fifteen everything's fifteen minutes away, and it's just a

(01:34:05):
really easy, good quality of life. But the bigger opportunities
if you're not in your office, which I love just
working from here with my team strapped in and just
kind of firing away, if you want to touch hands
and see people and put people put things together. In

(01:34:29):
that capacity, I think it's important to be. It's a
it's a constant traveler.

Speaker 1 (01:34:34):
Okay. You mentioned at the top you have two other
projects you're working on. Tell me about those.

Speaker 2 (01:34:41):
Well. We talked a little about the Codo Paxy, which
is the outdoor gear brand. Music for Good, which is
a program we launched this year and that just came
out in September with Danny Ocean, who is a Venezuelan
artist that came over from Venezuela just a backpack and
a microphone, and we told his stories. Very passionate about

(01:35:02):
the Venezuelan migrant movement, and so we highlighted him that
really aligned with the brand, which is really supportive of refugees.
And then you know Quotapox. He was a concept before
it was even a product, and now it's starting to
pick up more and more traction. We had a great
debut in Billboard for this campaign. It was in complex

(01:35:24):
and so we partnered with Danny, We parted with Tierra,
We did some stuff with Global Citizen. We isolated a
couple opportunities, and now it's you know, become this music
for good. Is this innovative way to support artists instead
of sponsoring the artists again. At one time, I was
working with Pharrell on a project and it was with Oreo,

(01:35:45):
and he said to me, Jesse, I don't want to
hold the cookie. I don't think that's cool. Like I
want to work with this brand. I want to do
something super innovative, Like I want to see where they
make the Oreos. I want to turn every manhole in
New York into an Oreo. I want to like do
something epic. I want to design the uniforms for the workers.

(01:36:05):
But I don't want to hold the cookie. That's not
cool and for I just it's stuck with me, like,
that's an artist that's got a vision and that's the
way a brand can support an artist in a way
that's way more innovative. So with Koto Boxy, they get
it and they're supporting artists missions like how do we
help artists make the world a better place? And let's

(01:36:29):
tell their story and help them with that. And so
that's been a campaign that we launched and recently we
shot that in August and Miami and Philadelphia. And then
we also we worked with Craig Doctor Pepper and so
we did a coffee for their their Matcafe, their McDonald's

(01:36:51):
collaboration that really was speaking to the young Latin audience.
And we did a partnership with an artist named mun
I is a reggaetome superstar, and we launched this kind
of campaign to talk about the product. And then what
we did is we did something fun. We kind of
we wanted to create an IRL experience, right, we got

(01:37:13):
the artist, we got the content, and then we want
to create this kind of hook, this moment, and so
we had him playing where he was playing on tour,
he was playing live and we did a sound check
this elevated sound check experience for his fans where they
could come to the soundcheck, watch him soundcheck, and have

(01:37:35):
a cafecito with Lunai. And so we styled it out.
We put his image, you know, all the bells and whistles,
his images in the currig. Doctor Pat Curry got mecafe
coffee cup, and we had these one hundred fans and
press right, you know, we had Page six, we had
People Magazine, we had oh La, we had Telemundo there

(01:38:01):
and he's doing interviews, he's making sure that the show
is going to be right. A couple lucky fans got
to go to the show that night. And then also
he is in the you know, giving these fans this
intimate experience like being able to go see a sound
check in this really nice way for an artist, and
being able to connect with the artists in that way.

(01:38:22):
Like it was just a really different spin on an
artist's kind of partnership and collapse. And obviously there's social
posts and all those different components to it, and it's
you know, second year partnership, and it was it was fun.
We shot that also in Miami and we then did
the you know, Club Live Dave Grutman Club partnership also

(01:38:45):
to do the sound check all in Miami. So these
were just like interesting Miami experiences. And then you know
what I'm really excited about right now is Art Puzzle.
So Art Possel kind of transformed Miami the same way
that's south By Southwest transfer formed Austin, and it's become
this monster pop culture moment. And you know that's spun

(01:39:07):
all these other different brands. But Art Puzzle Proper has
now been purchased by James Murdock and has brought a
whole new team of rock star executives in and they
are kind of transforming what this brand could be because
it's just so much bigger than the you know, bear
itself now in terms of impact, and so we are

(01:39:29):
working with them on brand partnerships, on strategy, on pop
culture moments, and so this was it's gonna be this
massive moment. We got our arms wrapped around all these
different events. There's all sorts of different brands sponsoring different things,
and so working with Art Puzzle, working with the different
brands coming into my home city, it's just going to

(01:39:50):
be like a big end of the year extravaganza to
kind of Close Out twenty twenty four in music and
art in lifestyle, and so that should be exciting. And then,
like you know, just recently, someone like Lin Manuel Miranda's
team reached out to us, who he just released this

(01:40:11):
Warriors project. It's awesome. It's reimagining the movie Warriors, which
he was the total love of. He was this total
kind of nerd growing up watching Warriors. When he was four.
He and his friend Lisa reimagined the lyrics to celebrate
the forty fifth anniversary of Warriors into a rap album.

(01:40:32):
But all the cast is female and it's just such
a cool project. So he put it out a couple
of weeks ago, and now we're gonna be working with
him to kind of do this experience where we're going
to introduce him to a lot of brands and kind
of create partnerships around this project and help him to

(01:40:53):
make this album a real pop culture moment wherever it goes,
if it ends up on Broadway, if it ends up,
you know, winning Kleos, if it ends up at the
Grammys next year. It helps him tell the story by
amplifying it with some great partners that wouldn't necessarily have
access to Lin Manuel Monster playwright and super talent to

(01:41:16):
be able to work with them in this kind of
cool capacity on a passion project that's got a lot
of legs. So that's coming up in the next couple
of weeks. We've got a lot of these kind of
fun things coming to finish out the year.

Speaker 1 (01:41:28):
Okay. In terms of exposure in music, we had radio,
we had MTV. Today you can get a review in
a newspaper. Is the audience even reading the newspaper? What
works for a brand and a musical act in terms
of exposure, What is the best way to reach people?

Speaker 2 (01:41:52):
My opinion is that we see the shift, and the
shift has happened, and where there's a lot of lessons
that are going to come out of this this marketing
cycle around the election, and one of them is that
people aren't reading. A lot of these newspapers are losing
their their I would say credibility and clout. It's you know,

(01:42:16):
I'm an avid New York Times reader. I love the
New York Times. Time. I almost at this point I
feel like unsubscribing except on Sunday and the hard copy,
just because it's just not necessarily giving you the most
relevant information. Some of the reporters are, so I think, actually,
like an article in the newspaper, people aren't going to

(01:42:37):
read it. Sure it looks good and people share it,
but the best way to reach people is really on
social media through citizen journalists, and the best best way
to do it is through the podcasts. Podcasts are so personal,
they're so intimate, you're in somebody's ear. You really feel
like you have a relationship with these these people, these

(01:43:03):
these thought leaders, these these people that are questioning or
this discourse. So I feel like podcasts and newsletters are
really the best place to get information, and I think
the rest of it is in a lot of ways
clickbait and biased and through corporations kind of with agendas.

(01:43:29):
So if I was going to put a message out,
if I was going to release an artist, it seems
pretty clear that what worked in the past is not
what's going to work in the current. And I think
there's a big opportunity to reinvent artists, rollouts, brand rollouts, storytelling,

(01:43:52):
utilizing folks like yourself and myself that are just consistently
create original ideas. Because what resonates more than anything right
now is authenticity. There is a strong move back to
what is real, Like I feel like I know you.

(01:44:12):
I've been reading your stuff for fifteen years. I, like
so many of us, You're a treasure in this space.
How much you've given to all of us of yourself.
And I look up to you because of that. And
you've been doing it. Before it was necessarily a hip
and now like you're the you know, the granddaddy of

(01:44:36):
doing this. And I just think that this is the
trend that more and more people want, they want authenticity
and it works. Like I just to give an example,
like I just did something with Read Hastings, founder of Netflix,
and he, you know, he came and spoken at an
event that and I brought him out for it. I

(01:44:56):
knew the landscape and thought this would be a good
person to have speak. He's launching Powder Mountain. He's got
his next invention, his next platform. He's he's taken this
the Summit Mountain and he's turning it where I actually
saw you there. I've got a great fireside. But he's
now tricking this over and he's reinventing it for what
he thinks is going to be one of the great

(01:45:17):
ski experiences. But he needs to get the word out
there so New York Times did an amazing piece. He's
got a Terrell and art fair or art festival, like
a live art exhibits in the ski track its or
just skiing. He's got all of that and that's fine.
New York Times cool. What moved the needle for him
and what really got him the results was a Tim

(01:45:39):
Ferriss podcast, And I've thought about that when his publicist
mentioned that to me, and I said, you know what,
that's why I reached out to you, because I heard
him on Tim Ferriss. The New York Times was fine,
but that didn't move the culture. So having people on
platforms like podcasts, I think are way more powerful. Article

(01:46:00):
and Rolling Stone that's behind a pay wall and it's
got a political slant and it's just surrounded by ads.
It just doesn't feel the same as directly talking to
consumers with real intention.

Speaker 1 (01:46:16):
Jesse, you've been in the game for a while. Before
we leave this, what's your greatest hit?

Speaker 2 (01:46:26):
I am so about the next right If you ask
me what music I'm listening to. I love what New
Music Friday serves up. I love what YouTube's trending. New
music releases are like in a world where there's one
hundred and twenty thousand songs coming out a day on
these platforms. It's really hard to keep up with it all.

(01:46:48):
And it's just what's most exciting to me is I
think the opportunity to keep going and to keep building.
Like I've discovered that the key to life in my
mind is compounding, and that's compounding in all forms, compounding
in relationships, compounding and wisdom, compounding in experience, in everything.

(01:47:14):
So when you think about in love, like compounding is
the great power and the only way to stop compounding
is to give up. So I want to do this forever,
like you said it on a podcast recently, like you
want to do this. You're going to do this to
the day that you croak, And like I look at you,
I look at Rupert Murdoch, I look at people in

(01:47:34):
their eighties and just still in the game, and you know,
warm Buffett, like these are people that are seeing the
fruits of all of their work. So to me, it's
not about a one hit wonder or greatest hit. It's
about consistently showing up every day and giving it your

(01:47:55):
best and taking the lumps and just trying to do
a little bit better. Across the board in every way,
and to me, I feel like the sky, just like
tomorrow should be better than today, and that's what keeps
my energy so up.

Speaker 1 (01:48:11):
You're definitely be Jesse. I'm sure you've informed a lot
of people. You're deep in the space. People are fascinated
by it. I want to thank you so much for
taking this time with my audience, Bob.

Speaker 2 (01:48:24):
I really really appreciate it. Thank you for the time,
Thank you for the platform. These moments mean so much
to me. We've got some great photos and images over
the years. I wish we were doing this on Zoom.
I've got so many ideas and thoughts for you. I'm
rooting for you completely, and I just hope you know,
keep doing what you're doing for all of us, because

(01:48:46):
you know, even if we disagree, it makes us think.
And that's what this is about. Right now, critical thinking
is in an all time high.

Speaker 1 (01:48:56):
Well. Definitely, the words you've had today have made people think.
I want to thank you. I want to thank the
audience till next time. This is Bob Loff said
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Host

Bob Lefsetz

Bob Lefsetz

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