What's better than summering in Puglia?
J.Crew fronting the bill. đ
Good morning everyone.
I am looking forward to following the Instagram content coming out of J. Crewâs brand trip to Puglia this week. Iâve 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 Hellmannâs 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 Hellmanâs ad budgetâthatâs beach house money. Extend it to the whole condiment economy, and itâs ski house money too. Extend it to all consumer goods, and weâre talking last names on university libraries. But I know if Hellmanâs keeps their foot on the gas, weâll keep seeing âtwistsâ 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 Iâm particularly interested in is the influencer agency, or the influencer manager â 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 â . As brands start to see the immense value in Substack as a platform, Iâm 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 Iâm 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 canât pay rent with free pasta.
Todayâs letter includes: Josh Kushnerâs birthday party at Katzâs Deli, The New York Times Cooking team is getting into the documentary film game, a former The RealReal employeeâs newsletter on hacking the resale siteâs 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 Kushnerâs 40th birthday party was at Katzâs Deli. Between that and New York Nicoâs 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 Iâm curious if heâll 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 itâs probably illegal to hire based on a name, but he sounds destined for greatness.