Fascinating interview with Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell, co-CEOs of the talent agency, William Morris Endeavor which shows the continuing power of creative talent and content even as digital media takes many twists and turns.
"All this disruption to distribution is good for us, because content matters more, and therefore as agents we have more power.
We define content very broadly. Representing chefs, designers, makeup artists--it's all important. How do you think about their business in multiple distribution platforms? Do you need Vogue? Could you have a makeup artist and a fashion person and a thing that's taking care of the technology to create opportunity for clients in a different way? That's the kind of thing we think about all day.
You're defining Hollywood as the movie business! We sit in the entertainment business, and that goes from Chill and Uber all the way up to the movies.
When everyone has Internet-connected televisions, it's gonna be the Wild, Wild West. Is there going to be a Coke app then? Is Coke gonna then have some of its own original stuff? Will they buy that stuff? Music? Will Coke come to us? Will they do it themselves? Will there be a Rihanna channel, like there is right now? That's why we've created the Audience [a social media management firm]. How is all of this going to be discovered? Platforms like Path, which we're an investor in, and Facebook, Google+, and Tumblr enable discovery through social. But we are not going to pick a horse right now. We want to see how it evolves. The great thing is that the "dying" business, this traditional business that we're all in? It's pretty fxxxin' good"
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