Hello again, Strictly Business listeners. I'm Cynthia Littleton, co editor in chief of Variety and host of this podcast. I told you in my last episode that we were incredibly busy at the can Lyon Festival of Creativity earlier this month. We had so many deep conversations about the future of media and entertainment. So here is a bonus Strictly Business Live from can Lyon episode featuring newly appointed UTA CEO
David Kramer. We recorded this in a conference room in the enormous two story installation that UTA and its Media Link Advertising Consulting arm erect every year on the beach for can Lyon. The hugeness of the place makes it a buzzy hub of activity and a natural meeting spot. Kramer is new to the top job, but he's been with UTA for more than thirty years. He's a proverbial
mailroom success story. In our conversation, Kramer shares his perspective on how the ten percentary business is changing, and he talks about what all the activity at can Lion means for the talent that UTA represents. That's all coming up after this break, and we're back with a conversation with UTA CEO David Kramer. David Kramer, CEO of UTA, thank
you so much for having me here. We are literally on the beach in can at can Lion and UTA and Media Link have the two story installation erected here on the beach to all to facilitate conversations about marketing and advertising big businesses.
That you all are invested in. I know you have us army here of about one hundred and twenty people. What is the focus for you this year at Canline.
Thank you so much for being here and having me.
You know, what we have realized over the past several years that we got into the brand business when we started our entertainment, culture and marketing team and then with the acquisition of Media Link back in twenty twenty one, is that the brands want to get closer to all the different various parts of the business clients that we that we represent, that we touch and whether that's film and television, whether that's comedy, music creators, athletes, musicians, et cetera.
The brands want to get closer to all those things that we have built out over the past thirty years of being an agency, and so we've made a big investment in being the bridge between brands that we represent and don't represent, and of course all the different clients and the different business lines that we have on our platform.
It's kind of I mean, it's just canline brings together people that cross so many different roads these days, from social media creators to brand deals. We all know how important that is to that space and social media creators. Everybody here is talking about social media creators and AI and I know the creators representing that kind of new breed of auteur has been a real focus for you. Are there like significant conversations happening here this week that will impact clients down the road.
Absolutely. You know, we invested in starting the creator space. We don't even call it creator space. We called it the digital space eighteen nineteen years ago when we started our division.
And then on top of that.
We were the first agency to start an audio space, the podcast space. And so what we've seen at cam Lyon in general is the makeup of who is here, not just the many brands that are here, but the kinds of people clients that we work with, and whether it be creators, whether it be athletes, whether it be musicians. We have fifteen different musical acts here performing this week. So the brands wanting to get closer into to all those different people we've seen only grow exponentially over the
past several years. They really want to get close to those creators who have such a direct relationship to their audience, to their consumers, if you will. And so we have a number of our biggest creators here in town meeting with all these different brands. Some they already have partnerships with and some who we will create new relationships with.
It's being here, it's just it's such an expression of the power of brands and marketing and advertising. And it's not just entertainment, which is what gives it such scale. Is it's sports. It's you know, the biggest corporate bands, brands showing up in a big way, and there are a lot of perks and a lot of great performances. Congratulations are in order. You were recently promoted to CEO, but you are certainly no stranger to Enterprise, having rose
through the ranks since nineteen ninety two. Media Link the advertising business that you t acquired a couple of years ago. How has Media Link in the activity that you're involved with? Media Link. How has that changed the complexion for UTA or opened up opportunities for UTA clients.
Well, the thesis behind the acquisition of media Liink holds true today than even when we thought about it back in.
Those many years ago, four years.
Ago, Yes, exactly, And as we see the brands wanting to get closer, getting more support from a company like media Link that specializes in brand advisory work, brand consulting work, media reviews, relationship building, et cetera. That coupled with the marketing division that we already had in our ECM team and being able to utilize the rest of the platform in terms of all the different businesses that were in the different people we represent.
What you were just saying, everybody wants to get closer to the.
Talent exactly, That's exactly right. And so having Media Link, having our ECM team come together as brand representatives, brand liaisons and then marry that with the rest of the UTA platform, we couldn't be more excited about our brand advisory work, which which is growing and you see it when you walk around here, you know, just on the first day of can Lion, to see the integration between our teams, the integration between our clients and those those
brands that are scattered across Media Link Beach.
Today it's I mean, you can hear listeners, the noise behind us, that this place is humming with activity. And as you walk around, the media Link offers space for some of the brands you represent, seeing you know, seeing grocery store brands and that that to me really strikes me, is that that is a real big expansion of your business. David, you came up the ranks through the literary department through
motion pictures, yes, writers and directors. Now that you are CEO of the whole enterprise, what would you say your background coming up through the mail room and now up through the literary business, working with writers and directors, how did that prepare you for the role you have now? Well?
I think when I started at ut in nineteen ninety two, the company was only one year, one years old. We had about eighteen agents, fifty total employees. I met everybody. I met everyone at the company by the end of the first week. It's very different today. As I like to say, we did three things back then, we do fifty three things now. We represented writers and directors and
actors from movies intelligence. That's really the extent of it. However, because we were a new company and we were a small company, we had to be in the discovery business. We had to be in the development business, We had to be in the collaboration business with one another other
to compete with other agencies at that time. As we've diversified the business, the great thing is that discovery, that development, that collaboration, that client centric approach has been imbued across the DNA of all the different areas that we've either built out ourselves or the businesses we've acquired, and making sure that that philosophy holds to this day as we whether we've moved into music, comedy, touring, orts has been a big one, Clutch sports has been a big one
for sure. And so what's what's I think what's exciting about what we're doing today is that it is so vastly different from from where we started, but so many of the tenants that made UTA uta hold true. And I'm but I think that the playground has expanded in
so many different ways. That allows our people who work at UTA to try different things, be challenged in a different way, be ready for these crazy shifts we've seen in our business, and more importantly, allows our clients, who are more ambitious and more excited about trying different things than ever before, to work with a group of agents who who are excited by all those opportunities and ambitions as well.
Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with more from UTA CEO David Kramer, And we're back with more from our conversation with UTA chief David Kramer.
Another new thing for UTA, for the agency in the last decade or so has been the arrival of new investors, some private equity, some people taking strategic stakes. How would you say you've navigated that and what would you say has been the impact that you've seen so far?
Yeah, we got the We had the benefit of seeing what other companies did with their private equity partnerships.
So when we.
Approached or were approached by private equity back you know, several years ago, we were really thoughtful and delivered about who would be the right partner for us, because the last thing we wanted was to get into business with a company that was going to disrupt how how we did our business, because we hold very sacred the style and the philosophy about representation and about how we do it and we think we do it in a very unique way. So going through that process, going through that
dating process of private private equity. We found a very good partner back in twenty eighteen, and there were challenges. It was when the WGAATA dispute was happening and then we went right into a pandemic.
Yet they were great partners.
They provided us with the financial firepower to diversify our business. Also remind me which this was IVC and PSP, and they were in for four years through the ups and downs of what was going on in the business, but they still exited the business happily.
They tripled their money. It was good for them.
It also allowed us to get some liquidity for our partners and the rest of the people who worked at UTA.
With a calling card. If in four years tripled their money.
It was it was a calling absolutely, the fact that we were able to still build the business to that extent given some of the challenges of that moment.
From twenty eighteen to twenty twenty two, it's.
Shutting down of all entertainment as we knew, yes exactly.
And then we brought in EQT and we went through the same deliberate process about whether or not they would be the right partners for us. One of the things I remember them saying is they were hands on, not hands in. That always stuck with me because we wanted the benefit of their expertise being big investors in lots of different industries, and we've gotten that and in less than a year of them being in business with us, back in twenty two we had the double stripe. Once again,
they understood that was out of our control. They were wildly supportive. We continue to invest regardless of what was going on with the strike and diversify and acquire more companies. And they've been with us, they're coming up on about three years. So it's our experience of private equity has been nothing but positive. And I know not every company can claim the same thing, but that's been our experience.
As you said, you were able to watch, you know, sort of watch how others navigated. Let me ask you from a leadership perspective, because obviously you've been a senior leader before you were CEO, when you first started in that area. Every you know, every agent, every every person
thinks private equity comes in. An accountant is going to tell me how, you know, what deal to make for my client that somebody is going to How did you, as a leader make people comfortable with the idea that UTA, which had been very part you know, a totally privately held company before that. How did you make people comfortable with the idea that this was not going to radically change and in effect enhance in the way.
You see oftentimes with change, people don't think, oh, great, how is this good for me? They think about how this is bad for them? And so we kind of knew that going in, and like you said, some of the questions around what is private ec what are you going to do to our experience, our everyday experience, and are they going to start looking at what to cut? And so one it was important to us to find
the right partner who wasn't going to do that. And two it was incumbent upon leadership to get the messaging out, the real accurate messaging about why we were taking on a partner, what it was going to do for the business, and to have patience to see how that unfolded. And as you saw it unfolded our company, it's only been beneficial to all the people who work there, and people's lives haven't changed. We haven't expected them to do things differently.
You know, we want to make sure we can provide the service not to the clients we represent, but to the talented agents who represent them. And I think as time went by, people got more and more comfortable with these new partners being.
Having a stake in the business.
But at the same time, I don't know if there's right way to put it, but it was invisible to them in terms of their daily life.
The proof was in the the proof was in the exit.
We had to show Nutshell, yeah, absolutely.
Let me ask you, how have you adjusted? How has it been to deal with the end of packaging as we knew it? You know that the literary Agent's home run for decades, right how you know that was a significant source, although a source that that was also changing and because of the nature of the especially in the television series area, I don't have to tell you that, but just how has it been since the end of that revenue stream.
Yeah, the end of packaging came at an interesting time when the value of packaging was also starting to diminish. So one of the things we've seen is the diversification of our business started to insulate us from some of the revenue that was created from packaging. You've also seen a lot of actors who never would venture into television.
Those walls have come down, and you've seen movie stars go into television, television stars go into movies, and so I think that's created a lot of financial opportunities for them and for the for the agencies that, in conjunction with the diversification into music, comedy, touring, creators, sports, news, speakers, publishing,
et cetera, has been super additive to the agency. And although hey, it would be nice to have those great big packages of yesteryear, that's that's over and and so we figured out ways to build out the foundation of the company and the and the revenue of the company with some of the versification.
And you know, like the UTA and other major agencies and companies are literally rebuilding the entertainment model in real time. But I know, another big move for UTA recently was the acquisition of Curtis Brown. It's a big agency in the UK. Tell me what motivated that and what you hope that is going to do for the company.
Yeah, Curtis Brown's been a great acquisition for us. We were looking at different ways to expand internationally, the UK being you know, one of the most important markets there is in the entertainment media space. So what we looked at was how could UTA be in the UK, but be there in an authentic way, be there in a way where we would have a right to win. So we looked at Curtis Brown Agency. It's the biggest and oldest,
it's one hundred and twenty five year old company. They have a pristine brand and so we started talking to them. We made that acquisition and in the summer of twenty twenty two, which last week was our three year anniversary. It's been you know, it's given us this amazing foothold in a very important market. One of the significant pieces of their business and how the company started one hundred and twenty five years ago was on the publishing side.
It's about twenty five to thirty percent of their business. We had our own publishing initiative. So their publishing group, you know, working with our publishing group, has created i think the biggest publishing division of any of the agencies at this point. And we've started to see ways where we can be additive to them with some of the pieces that we have that they they don't have. We're learning a lot from them because of their their UK history.
So much going on, I mean all roads right now in production seem to lead through.
There's sore at least. Yeah, there's so much going on.
And at the same time, they're operating in a way where if we if it doesn't make sense for us to stick, you know, our nose to it, we don't. And we have an incredible partnership. Johnny Geller's the CEO of that company, has been for many years, and he's like me, he's been at that company for thirty thirty years, started at the beginning. So there's a certain kinship you certainly understand. And the intention is to keep the Curtis
Brown name. You will keep that extant. The Curtis Brown name has tremendous brand value, not just in the UK, but you know, around all of Europe.
I have to admit I did not appreciate how large an agency and how kind of full service they are.
Yeah, it's about a two hundred and fifty person company, and so we've gotten tremendous value out of that.
Let me button us up here today, David. You grew up in Tallahassee. You went to the Uga. Let me ask you, how did a boy from Tallahassee who went to school in Georgia, how did you get to Hollywood.
So I grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, but I always had a love of the movie and television business, not knowing at all that what that really meant.
But I was a movie lover. I got a credit my mother for that. She was a movie lover and Ted Turner.
Ted Turner who had the superstation TBS, and he would play all the old movies.
I think the.
Story was he was kind of, you know, frugal, and so he would just license all these old movies. My movie education came from Ted Turner and my mother watching movies on the weekend, non NonStop.
I went to university.
I went to the University of Georgia, and that was a great experience for me. I got to work on a movie between my junior and senior year. It was the only movie, a TV movie shooting in Atlanta that year. So it just shows you how things have changed so much, and then.
It shows you that you found it.
That's right there you go.
So and then I applied and somehow shockingly got into USC Film school, and so that got me out to California.
I went to the Peter Stark Motion Picture Producing program and then, by by nothing but a stroke luck, ended up in the mailroom at what to use your term, a startup boutique literary agency UTA, and for me, I have been so fortunate to be there, to be part of its growth, to watch it go from only representing writers and directors and actors and movies and television to representing talent that spans all the different pieces of the entertainment media, sports business in a way that none of
us could have predicted. So I feel so lucky to have grown up with it, and I'm excited about the future.
All that hustling in the mailroom paid off. All right, Thank you so much, David. This has been fun.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thanks for listening.
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