You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. So our next guest Julia Heart. She is co owner and CEO of the talent representation company Elite World Group. They repped some fifty talent globally. The clients include Tiffany Chanelle, Product Burbery, a lot more of names that you would know. She, by the way, is also the subject of a Netflix series is called My Unorthodox Life, which premiered this past summer.
We are delighted to have her on the phone in New York City. Julia, great to have you here with Tim and myself. How are you. It's great to have you here with us. Tell us a little bit about for those who might not be familiar with your company. That was fun kind of reading in for you because I remember Elite Models very well known in the model modeling industry, but you are a bunch of companies. Tell us about your company, the transformation that you've been going through.
So when the only reason I took over the company is because I realized, with the advent of social media, we are at the forefront of changing the way that people communicate and how people advertise, because if you think about its social media advertising by definition has to be more honest. Right, Julia Hart, who's by the tall and can barely lift her handbag, is not going to be doing an ad for a workout session with weights. You might in the metaverse though, but we can talk about
that later. So what I understood is that if I utilize that, if you think of the talent instead of thinking of them as athletes or actors or models, to me, those are all platforms. Whether it's a runway, a tennis court, a football stadium, a movie, a movie side, it doesn't matter.
Reutilize that and put the power in their hands. It's this massive shift in the power dynamic and this vast and opporutization of fashion because for the first time, it's not the talent having to run and the hope that someone should chooses them, that a creative director likes that, that a photographer videographer takes them under their wings, that some editor of a fancy magazine wants to have a
photogo of them, their careers in their hands. And so what we're doing is we're helping them create themselves into brands and businesses. We utilize the time that they're in the public eye to build them into brands, so that far past the time they're on whatever platform they started through, whether it's a tennis court or a runway or a football stadium, their audience has become so accustomed to coming to that they will continue. They are the media, they have,
the audience are aggregated. Viewership has now reached two points to filion. Hey, hey, Julia, help help us understand the connection to technology here, because you use terms like platform and audience and I think you know influencer, right, I think Instagram, I think YouTube? Um, how does how is that married into this? Well? Again, social media the way that I looked at it when I took over, because to me, the modeling industry was not interesting at all.
It felt like the flip side of the world that I came from. The only reason I took it over is because I realized that I have the possibility to make an army of financially independent women by utilizing their social media channels as actual networks. But but, but how, but what I'm wondering. What I'm wondering too, And I look at how my daughter eighteen, you know, how she's she shops, you know, what she looks at. It's all through a lot of Instagram. It's all social media. It's
very different from how I shopped. But I do wonder not everybody is going to be We did a story earlier about Jessica Simpson, you know um and kind of built an incredible brand, got away from her and she's trying to She just got it back and she's trying to rebuild it. But not everybody we'll have success. Are you saying that everybody will have success on social media? Great question. Of course everyone will not have success. So what there's two what I would say to ingredients, what
we provide and what the talent provides. So when I thought of talent as media, and I realized that if I literally treat them as media, they have the power. They're not waiting for the casting agents and the creative directors. They are now being chased by the casting agents and creative directors because they bring the audience right. So when you can communicate, I always tell every talent, find your angel product. And it doesn't actually mean it has to
be a physical thing. It means something that you are truthfully passionate about the people know when they come on your website, on your Instagram page or your TikTok or whatever, they're going to learn more about X. If you love the environment, talk about the environment, show all of the different environmental you know, places that you belong with and
what you're doing. Let people understand who you are. And that's the first time in history that tendis players and models and you know, athletes can say who they are and it's not just about what they do. Tell us a little bit about though. We want to talk about the metaverse. What do you see because I think Julia is safe to say, you know, we've all been obsessed
with what Facebook are formerly known as Facebook. You know it meta is up to uh and how this will fit into our world more broadly, how do you see it in terms of talent and branding? Because Tim and I recently caught up with our Pursuits team and Chris Rouser and we talked about the high end fashion houses that you work with that are selling fashion and f t s for thousands of dollars. So our world is evolving.
Indeed it is, and honestly to me, the metaverse and avatars way before you know Facebook called itself meta Right in two thousand and I started building my team of avatar creators and metaverse experts. I started literally building the whole concept of metaverse and avatars a month and a half after I took over a CEO. Because to me, it was an evolution of what's going on in the digital space. And by that, I mean, think about what
is the most watched show on net NBC. Right, the most watch show on NBC gets around three four million viewers. My talent gets fifty million viewers. While they're moaning their law. They have the audience. So the first thing was to give them longevity. And by getting them longevity, I mean turning them into brands. And we did that by bringing in house what networks have, writers, producers, directors, filmographers to help our talent craft their story. It's not casual. I mean,
that's the one thing that I think is interesting. Tim and I talked about it. Even with our social media. It's it can be casual and it can catch on, but it's a lot of work. It's very it's a lot of war, intentional, the real it has to be true to you. And so that enabled me to give my talent longevity. But The goal has been to give them eternity and immortality, and that's what these avatars do. So just you know, I mean, we've been working on this for the past two years, two and a half years.
We have created the most hyper realistic avatars that exist today. If you take a look at ours and you measure them against anyone, Facebook, Google, all these companies that people are talking about with such excitement, ours are incomparable. Where where can we sealistic? Where can we see some of the stuff that you guys are doing so we can send you the we did a Jasmine video because we've
done two things so far. Right, We've got the Steve Madden Uh campaign that we did, but that wasn't a hyper realistic because they wanted to reinvent um their old campaign with the bubble head, so that needed to do that, you know. Plus and and the most incredible thing I have to tell you, and it's never seen this you
guys probably know better than I do. Have you ever heard of the earnings report that attributes their massive growth in earnings to a sales campaign within their quarter earning reports? Because that's what Steve Madden did in their third quarter earning report openly. They attributed the connectivity with a younger audience and an increase in sales and web traffic to our campaign, twenty increamed on launch day and the highest earnings the company has ever had in its entire history.
We concepted task directed producers a campaign, and we've got avatars who can show you product. But the avatars so so, the avatars though they're not necessarily experienced. They're not they're not experienced by consumers in what is own as the metaverse, right, the Steve Madden verse. Right, these avatars are are still are still viewed in a traditional way. You know, Carol
just sent me a YouTube videos, right, Platum. But but but there isn't there aren't the people yet in those platforms to actually make it worthwhile, right, No, we we built them. In fact, I can't say the names of the companies that we're currently doing projects for because of course we were going to announce them when the project is complete. But we've got a major fashion brand that we're building an entire virtual shopping experience where you will
have an aftar who is a salesperson. Um. We've been working with this incredible company that has a literal no brainer, uh scanning technology, So all you have to do, it's literally so simple. You scan your body. It puts you into the metaverse and you can try on clothing, handbacks, you can create your own you can choose things, and
it's all virtual. So the metaverse is here now. Our like, for example, Jazz and Saunders, we put her in a metaverse and the beauty of what we're doing as opposed to traditional right, but think about video game they could
only exist within the framework of that video game. Our avatars can exist in every imaginable way, whether it's a shopping experience where we create an entire interactive e commerce UM metaverse website where people can literally put themselves in there and try things on and see what they look like. Communication so they could sing karaoke with your um you know singer. So eventually it's an endless amount of opportunity.
But what's happening right now, right, But so this is how people can actually then buy product, right because I know some of the stuff we do with pursuits and the n F t idea was you know, you're not necessarily going to own an actual physical object, but you just are kind of playing in this virtual world. Um, and you can have your own avatar and you can put on the n f T or whatever that you buy. Both both are great for me. I mean, I'll do
it all. You know, whether it's you want to keep it in the realm of the metaverse, fantastic, You wanted to help create a purchase, wonderful. You tell me what your goal is as a company, Well, we'll ensure you that we will get it down. So we've only got about twenty five seconds left here, I know. With with Steve Mann though, when you guys did this, you actually
they saw popping sales. Is that correct? Just quickly yes, as I mentioned, and they mentioned us in their third quarter earnings report and they attributed there it's the highest earnings of the company has ever had in your history with our campaign and increase on launch day, which was really really exciting. And then of course we've got a partnership with Tommy Hildberger. UM so to be doing this incredible interactive virtual Got It fashion show, It's going to
be amazing. Julia, thank you so much. Julia heart is co owner CEO of Elite World Group, joining us on the phone in New York,