The company also works with an ad-tech vendor called Bre.ad that
can show a full-page ad to users upon entering or exiting a site,
or from links posted to social-media accounts. (Bre.ad shares ad
revenue with its celebrity and publisher clients; its CEO Alan Chan
says that some clients are making as much as $20,000 a month.)
Mr. Picarazzi -- a former assistant to Nicole Kidman whose
agency also works with movie studios and counts "The Hunger Games"
among its biggest clients -- talked to Ad Age about how celebrities
are turning their vast social followings into real businesses.
Ad Age: What are celebrities looking to do in
social these days?
Luigi Picarazzi: Every client is different for
us. Some come with the goal of helping to promote their projects,
some come to launch a brand, some come with a charitable goal
… Oftentimes our clients come to us and say, "Hey, I see how
digital is starting to be of importance in my traditional deals,
and I'm wondering if there are also opportunities that exist online
in terms of creating a business." And so we've partnered with our
clients to discover what those opportunities are. From banner
advertisements to sponsored content to digital-only product
opportunities, we've really tried to make sure we're aware of all
that's possible.
Ad Age: Do celebrities generally see social as
a business or as a way to speak to their fans or promote TV and
film?
Mr. Picarazzi: I don't think [revenue is] their
primary goal because I do believe that they've learned the value of
[social] in all aspects of their life. What we try to teach clients
is to use it for themselves. We don't try to be them ... They've
also seen how in their careers – from endorsement deals to
securing magazine covers – it's helped. So I don't
necessarily think monetization is the ultimate or primary goal.
Maybe it is for some, but I think there's a value beyond that.
Ad Age: How do you approach content
integrations with brands?
Mr. Picarazzi: We've built out web properties
for them that are sometimes focused on them and sometimes they're
the editor for. For example, Kate Walsh is a client and we have a
website with her, katewalsh.com, and we use that for various
objectives, but then with someone like a Felicity Huffman, we've
created a site for moms called WhatTheFlicka.com. And with each of
those types of sites that we build and create with our clients, we
come up with an ad sales strategy ... For most of our clients it's
content-based ... What we've found has been most successful is when
we pair a brand with one of our talent and we create content with
them. Whether that's a video a sponsored blog post or even
sometimes an entire section of a site that's partnered with a
brand.
Ad Age: Do the brands you partner with for
content integrations tend to already be working with clients on
other campaigns?
Mr. Picarazzi: They're usually new brand
relationships. We've helped service some of those (existing) deal
points, but a lot of the stuff we've participated in we've created
ourselves. We've created an entity called the Women's
Influencer Network, which is basically a network of all of
our female-focused sites together. One of the big reasons we
created that entity was to represent our talent and their traffic
out in the ad marketplace … By joining forces in this
network, we've been able to create an audience of over 3 million
uniques each month and including social, over 40 million.