GoKawiilWe’ve got another special episode of Decoder today, recorded at the Cannes Lions advertising festival in the South of France. I’m talking with Ali Berman and Raina Penchansky, who run the Creators division at United Talent Agency.
UTA is an enormous talent agency. Half the people you’ve ever heard speak or perform or who show up anywhere have UTA agents representing them. For full disclosure, that includes me! UTA handled the sale of the forthcoming Decoder book. Which means I paid them money, making this a reverse conflict of interest. Now you know.
Anyhow, that has nothing to do with Ali and Raina, whose Creators division represents some of the biggest creators and influencers in the world — stars as diverse as Charli D’Amelio and Markiplier, Kai Cenat and Emma Chamberlain. Alex Cooper and Alix Earle.
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So I really wanted to know how Raina and Ali identify up-and-coming talent, how they work with that talent to build durable business, and what the machinations of being a top creator actually look like — after all, all of these folks are running multimillion-dollar businesses with several different revenue lines. You’ll hear Ali and Raina talk directly about what it takes to build those businesses, what kinds of deals they strike, and how it’s all very different than the traditional Hollywood model, where your agent just takes a cut.
Here, UTA is helping creators literally launch products — and it’s fascinating that the stars of today are going from making media to making products of their own. Not all of them can do it, so I wanted to know how Raina and Ali help their clients make the jump and what makes them successful at it.
Of course, we also talked about AI, and platforms, both of which seem like destabilizing forces for the entire creator ecosystem. I think you’ll find Ali and Raina to be refreshingly chill about it all — even though they represent some VTubers of their own.
There’s a lot going on here; I think you’re going to like it.
Okay: Ali Berman and Raina Penchansky. Here we go.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
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