What's better than summering in Puglia?
J.Crew fronting the bill. š
Good morning everyone.
I am looking forward to following the Instagram content coming out of J. Crewās brand trip to Puglia this week. Iāve been hearing about the event for a few weeks from friends, and it sounds like they have a great roster of creators, stylists, and newsletter writers. This morning, I read that the global influencer marketing industry is projected to grow 36% between 2024 and 2025 to reach $33B. As recently as five years ago, advertising budgets were divided between Facebook and Instagram ads, print ads, TV slots, and OOH marketing. But consumer businesses are seeing that what moves the needle the most on brand adoption is the co-sign of an influencer.
Per that Bloomberg story, the owner of Dove soap and Hellmannās mayonnaise plans to dedicate as much as 50% of its ad budget to social media, up from 30% before. This is a relatively new channel, but talent agents are now gatekeepers for huge amounts of media spend.
If the agents get their 20% rake, they could take 20% of 50% of Hellmanās ad budgetāthatās beach house money. Extend it to the whole condiment economy, and itās ski house money too. Extend it to all consumer goods, and weāre talking last names on university libraries. But I know if Hellmanās keeps their foot on the gas, weāll keep seeing ātwistsā on the tuna sandwich, not just from viral soft boy TikTok chefs but also from Tribeca influencers who usually post about beauty tutorials and workout classes.
The aspect of this industry that Iām particularly interested in is the influencer agency, or the influencer manager ā the people who help to develop emerging talent, and build the roadmap of who their advertising partners will be. Last month, Max Stein of Brigade Talent (which works with people like
and Chris Black) posted on LinkedIn about a new client ā . As brands start to see the immense value in Substack as a platform, Iām excited to see how influencer and talent agencies begin to sign writers who emerge from this platform.A harder to story to report on, but one Iām even more curious about, is how those agents negotiate the rates for their talent. How much money gets added on top of a free trip? As some influencers have observed, you canāt pay rent with free pasta.
Todayās letter includes: Josh Kushnerās birthday party at Katzās Deli, The New York Times Cooking team is getting into the documentary film game, a former The RealReal employeeās newsletter on hacking the resale siteās system, the east coast women getting botulism from their pre-summer Botox, and I think the product developers at Rhode have a great sense of humor.
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Josh Kushnerās 40th birthday party was at Katzās Deli. Between that and New York Nicoās wedding, that place is making a killing on parties.
The New York Times Cooking team is doubling down on documentary production. They hired McGraw Wolfman, who spent almost eight years producing videos for Eater at Vox, to be their new supervising producer for NYT Cooking video, but Iām curious if heāll also be working on new audio projects. Wolfman is a five-time Emmy award winner. He also has a name that sounds like it was built in a lab for a NASCAR driver. Or a country singer. Or a war hero. I know itās probably illegal to hire based on a name, but he sounds destined for greatness.