Mike Shields (5:14)

Yeah, well, so many different things I want to ask you about there. But you described it well, because it's funny you're talking about 2010. We weren't saying, weren't using the word creator, but a lot of the big agencies had these divisions. They'd have a guy or a few guys that are dealing with digital talent. What's been the evolution like in recent years where the pro, like you've talked, I think I read for your LinkedIn post. It's like a power shift, like what has gone on with the way that the community is kind of handling digital talent. The prominence, creators.

David Freeman (5:45)

Yeah. I mean the truth is in 2010 we, we were kind of the redheaded stepchildren in the agency. It's like, great, we've got a digital department. But the truth is legacy was killing it and did right up.

Mike Shields (5:54)

I'm sure people were like, what are you doing? Why do you want to even.

David Freeman (5:56)

Or what is it? Why do you care? You know, but, but the truth is the Internet represented the democratization of distribution. Right? And slowly but surely as tech came in to dominate Hollywood. And now I'll go as far to say that tech is Hollywood. I mean, there's, you know, there's four or five companies, maybe six companies that really have aggregated most of the audience that's out there. And the ability for talent to be discovered and the ability, ability for IP to be discovered no longer is just dependent on the legacy infrastructures of I need a studio, I need a network. If I'm a talent, I have to go through a casting director. All of that has been upended completely. When I joined in 2010, the theory was, wow, what a great opportunity to bring our traditional talent, movie stars, celebrities, producers, directors, production companies, athletes, musicians, into digital. I did not know that I would sit down at breakfast with Robert Kinsel in 2011 to talk about the way YouTube was going to really change everything. And I also did not know when I started the job that a year in I'd be representing influencers. Now, I don't love that word, but the exciting thing for Me was the fandom and the audiences and seeing a loyalty that I had never ever seen in my entire time in sports and entertainment. So, you know, CAA and the other agencies knew there was something bubbly here. The money was real. There was real money. I always wish that we looked at how much money was in the so called Creator economy between 2010 and 2020 versus I don't know what it's at. 37 billion are tracking 37 billion for 2027 or 2026, something like that. But there was a lot of money that was being spent. It's just, you know, legacy was in its golden age period. F. Right.

Mike Shields (7:45)

So it was easier to ignore back then now. And it's on a totally different tradition.

David Freeman (7:49)

Right. But so many of the rules were being written back then. Right. And YouTube, which was seen as a UGC platform in the beginning, we both know where it is now. It's just undeniable. It is what it is. The numbers are what they are. And while YouTube is the number one TV platform in the world, we're still in the early innings. Not so much for some of the endemic creators who have built, which were a lot of my clients at caa, you know, creators like Dude Perfect or Emilia de Moldenberg or, you know, Adam Waheed or Lele Pon, some of the OG people. But it's early as it relates to legacy, really now having to use YouTube not as a promotional vehicle, but as an infrastructure.

Mike Shields (8:35)

Right. YouTube's been big for a long time, but. But people are still grappling with this past couple years, the TV number just hitting them in the face like, oh my God, that's. I think I still find like Madison Avenue in Hollywood struggles with reckoning that they're grappling, wrapping their heads around that.

David Freeman (8:50)

I think, well, Madison Avenue has, you know, and between YouTube and Facebook, let's be honest, from a scale and reach perspective, there's nothing better. Right? But that's one of the problems with marketing right now. Scale and reach don't necessarily bring you down the funnel to a certain degree. And I think that's what you're gonna see is new infrastructure, new technology, new tools. You've seen it in a lot of the agencies that have had some interesting exits of how do you go deeper with partnership. Right. Because brands need to be storytellers too. Brands need to evolve their marketing mentalities. Right. And I had this whole theory around trust. Where does trust set? You know, and trust to me sits upstream of distribution to a certain degree. And that's what's going to shift here in terms of brands because I, I, brands are spending on YouTube and brands are spending with creators. But the idea, if you have brands on one side who have to become storytellers and what the hell do I mean by that? I'm talking about the difference between renting an audience and owning an audience through storytelling. There's different, different tactics. Not easy completely because we're also now moving into a stage which is when I left because don't forget it, this is only a few weeks ago. Creators are making at least the top tier who we represent and it doesn't mean that the mid tier doesn't matter because that's the long tails that plays a big role in all this. But they make really great livings off brand partnerships, adsense, monetization and distribution. But for the real serious ones, I think they're sitting back saying how long can I do this? How long can I be in front of the camera? And I will tell you that private equity and the money that's sitting on the sidelines has a real concern about key man risk. A real concern. And I think just to finish my point, creators now know they have to create ip. They have to create IP or they have to create brands that are bigger than the individual that will outlive them.

Mike Shields (10:45)

Being the young funny guy on YouTube or whatever. They do that, that, that's not, might not be doable forever.

David Freeman (10:51)

Look at dude. Perfect. That's a brand now, right? And those guys are doing a flywheel and they've got live, they experiential, they've got a podcast, you know, a fantastic client of ours and recently we signed Mythical Entertainment, right? Like those are brands, those are businesses that aren't just reliant on those people in front of the camera. They stand for something, they mean something. Right? And there's a trust that's been developed between that fandom, right and, and that talent and, and, and, and that's some of the unique things that are happening right now.

Mike Shields (11:24)

A bunch of other questions I want to, that related to what you just said, but what do you mean? You know, recently it's, it's interesting. Netflix was sort of dismissive of YouTube and then they started going after some of the talent. They're doing more there. I, I don't know. I, it's not going to be easy to in my view to bring up, just get a bunch of YouTube talent and put them somewhere else, I guess. How, what are you thinking about when you, when you talk to the other streamers about trying to Recreate, recognize with. Because it's not, it's. It's both a different form of entertainment, but also interface, fandom, comments, sharing. It's very different than what they're, what they do.

David Freeman (12:01)

It's been interesting. And also Ted Sarandos, one of the greatest entertainment executives of our time, if you kind of look at his, his statements over the last three, four years, they've been a little bit inconsistent. Yeah, right. And you saw the big announcement, I think it was last week about their Alex Earl new show. I'm sure you saw that, right? So it's interesting because back in like 2015, Mike, like one of the things we thought was the golden treasure, the, you know, the biggest win was oh my God, can we get one of these creators to be on cable broadcast?

Mike Shields (12:34)

It's a gradual streamer.

David Freeman (12:35)

We thought that was the win, right. We're like, oh my God, that'll really crack through. And I gotta tell you now we should talk about what it means when a creator does lend its IP or lend its likeness to a streaming platform. But it's the first time that I've ever seen and I experienced this hands on where we would turn down Netflix deals and Amazon deals to launch the same IP on YouTube. Why.

Mike Shields (12:59)

Which would be unthinkable, you know, in the old days, right. Like how could you do that? You're not going to be able to do it.

David Freeman (13:03)

One, you've got brands who are spending real money there, right. And so you look at like one of my ex clients was I show Speed, right. And I don't know if you saw a show that he launched in partnership with OBB called Speed Goes Pro. We decided to launch that on his channel, period. End. Right. And not bring it to a, a streamer. And if you were to watch that show, that show could be on espn, that show could be on HBO Max.

Mike Shields (13:32)

In terms of look, production, value, quality.

David Freeman (13:34)

It has massive, you know, athlete stars from, from Tom Brady and others alike. But here's the thing, he owns it. No one gets to tell him about season two. Right. Did it in partnership with Dick's Sporting Goods, who now is creating real IP and has actually started a studio. Right. Which is another trend. That's why.

Mike Shields (13:55)

Yeah.

David Freeman (13:55)

Which is what I used to speak about back in 2000 when I was inside of OMD. And then eventually before that or after OMD and Omnicom run, I was inside of Edelman running a company that I started called Matter, which was the whole theory of brands, you know, going Back to the 40s, 50s, 60s of brands underwriting content, but bringing it back to speed. You know, he now can, can get 24 episodes and then he can maybe sit back down with Netflix and say.

Mike Shields (14:25)

Hey, look what I got.

David Freeman (14:26)

This content license it. Right, right. So I do think like, like I do think that creators are starting to think about these other platforms not so much as a place to make money, but to extend their audiences. Like, why did Mr. Beast want to go? And, and that was a bidding war between Netflix and Amazon. Amazon ultimately won. I wasn't involved in it at all, but from what I heard, it was about creative control which Amazon gave to him and ownership. But for Beast in that team, it's all about the halo of further building out the Beast brand globally. And now he's got one of the biggest, if not the biggest right now, you know, non scripted, you know, game shows that I guarantee will head into a third and fourth season.

Mike Shields (15:18)

Yeah, I mean he's, he's partnering with Survivor. Like they're, they're, they need his help as much as anything. Like as much as he might have thought the other way around.

David Freeman (15:25)

Exactly. So I think you'll see more of those big temple shows, Alex being one of them. But let's be honest, I think Netflix has to start to think a bit more like YouTube than YouTube has to think like Netflix. I mean, you saw their big announcements around podcasts in short form and you know, you've seen all the hype about vertical dramas, micro dramas, which was also something that we covered in my group, you know, before I left and the creator digital team is still covering now. I think you're gonna see Netflix move into that space more aggressively. I think you're gonna see Amazon move into that space more aggressively because that's just where the social behavior and the media consumption for all of us is happening.

Mike Shields (16:07)

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David Freeman (16:54)

They are, you know, a lot of people don't know that from a marketing perspective. Amazon is already making a push. We did a show when I was at CA called Celebrity Substitute. Really basic idea. Celebrity comes into a school and it's your substitute teacher for a day. Right. Amazon funded that and it wasn't launched on prime, it was launched inside YouTube. And they're doing more and more of those and you'll see more of those in 26. Right. So they understand that they have to not only build prime, which, let's be honest, is really a marketing vehicle for the bigger products and services you can get on Amazon, but it's the old saying of, you know, fish where the fish swim and launch IP from a marketing perspective to drive people back from YouTube into the Amazon ecosystem. Right. And so they're doubling down on that. And so they're already quietly investing. There's other teams inside there who are having really amazing conversations with creators about how do you. That whole space of content and commerce, which is really going to explode this year. And I think they're gonna be the leaders there. Cause let's be honest, like Amazon versus Netflix. Amazon's about shopping, Amazon's about transacting. Right. And so they're gonna use content as a way to increase that on the platform.

Mike Shields (18:14)

Yeah, That's a massive advantage. I wanna ask you, you've been at this for a while and when you've seen the evolutions between brands, not sure what to do with creators, to the MCN era, to the more recent thing where there's a rush now, brands that wanna spend more than they ever have. But it's still. You talked about this recently as part of your work with the iab. It's not easy. What needs to happen? Are you bullish on some of these infrastructure companies that are trying to help make it easier to deploy a lot of money with creators fast or what's.

David Freeman (18:46)

Going on 100%, I mean, in the IEB efforts. And what a fantastic organization. David Cohen, Zoe soon and others. Jamie Gutfriend, who they're using as in a. As an advisor. She's fantastic. Is to really bring an aggregate of people who have been playing in this space for a significant amount of times on all sides of it. Right. Because you got agencies, agencies meeting media agencies, the holding companies, you've got the talent agencies, you've got the influencer agencies. How do we create some uniformity here from a metric perspective? From a buying perspective at scale, there is none. And so the IAB is really making a strong push to be a leader in that space. And there's a lot of great work being done interviewing beyond just that incredible kind of advisory board that they've created with every stakeholder in the system. Right. Because this is no longer a tactic, you know, and I always wonder, as I've had many conversations in 25 with CMOs who have quietly admitted that 20 to 30% of their media spend, they don't really know where it's going. Right, right. If we can really crack measurement with creators, a uniformity no different than what Nielsen's done for TV and other of these, you know, amazing kind of data institutions, then we've got a whole different. Whole different, you know, set of opportunity to which this, this business can scale and mature. Because I think we've. I think we've crossed the moment that CMOS know that creator has to be part of the strategy, not the end of the, you know, you've established a campaign. You know, what you're. Are you gonna do paid media?

Mike Shields (20:30)

Yeah, let's. Let's add it on.

David Freeman (20:32)

Let's get some creators to amplify here versus starting at the top. Right. Because the other, you know, the smart ones, meaning the smart CMOs, are also bringing creators in from the beginning. Because if you think as a brand that you understand what that creator should be putting out on their channel, you're dead in the water.

Mike Shields (20:50)

You're in trouble. Yeah. What I was like, what role did you. When you were at CAA or Newcomer? Do you want to be the broker of these kind of things? Like, because you described a lot of parties that can potentially be involved.

David Freeman (21:04)

Yeah.

Mike Shields (21:05)

Would it be better if there was a, you know, a centralized ad tech kind of play? Is it better when the platforms get involved? Is it always going to be sort of all over the place? Like, what do you. What do you. How do you think these rules should work?

David Freeman (21:15)

Yeah, I don't know if I have the answer to that. You know, I think that's one of the reasons why I stepped out, you know, and again, more will be revealed soon. Like, now that everyone's accepted the facts and the reality of what's happening. There's going to be so much. And you and I haven't even gotten to AI, and I realized we could spend a lot of time, but there is so much. I like to say it's the most dynamic time in media in the history.

Mike Shields (21:43)

Yeah, I thought it was a couple years ago, but now it is now.

David Freeman (21:46)

Now it is, right? Because back in 20 and I are having this discussion. But pre Covid, it's, it's streaming galore. I mean CAA and the other agencies, they, they, they couldn't miss. I mean they were probably batting 5, 600. Right now they're batting maybe 150. And that's good, right? You know, 200, if you want to use a baseball analogy for you baseball fans that are out there and watching. So all this infrastructure is going to mature and there's a little bit of a race right now for some of us who have been in it and know how to play. It's, you know, it's easy for me to sit here and say, and I posted this on LinkedIn recently, that every, every, every consumer facing company has to be on YouTube. But there's art there and there's science there, right? I mean, good for folks in legacy that are coming in or celebrities that are coming in or athletes coming in. That, that there are people who really understand how to move audiences and you know, use optimization, use tagging, use metadata to really grow net new channels. Because it's hard. It is hard, but it, but it must be. I fundamentally believe that if you are a consumer facing company, you've got to invest and investment doesn't mean you can't half asset. Right? You can't half asset. And it's, it's gotta be over time. And it's not like legacy media where hey, let's go have a hit, let's fund some stuff and have a hit. No, you are trying to build a trust and a programming behavior with an audience.

Mike Shields (23:15)

Different, different approach, different tactics, different mentality completely. Do you think you're going to see, you mentioned AI. Like those platforms are already getting flooded with AI content. For better or worse, creators are harnessing it some. Do you think you're going to see a lot of brands try and do it, produce, become creators really quickly because of that and maybe stumble.

David Freeman (23:37)

We're in that phase of a lot of AI hype, right? No different than, you know, a few years back during NFT and everybody paused and said, okay, let's, let's go all in here, right? But not to go off on a tangent there, but like blockchain and crypto are not dead, right? But, but we, you can look at, you know, history, history completely repeats itself. 2000, 2001, you had the Internet, all these companies that were overvalued back down.

Mike Shields (24:05)

The ground, pets.com fell, but there's still Internet. Like it wasn't like, you know, crazy.

David Freeman (24:09)

And I think the same thing's going to happen with, with blockchain and crypto, right? A lot, a lot of hype companies failed. Now they're going to come back with more discipline, more rigor, AI, the same thing. There's so much out there, right? Everyone doesn't exactly know what their strategy. Everyone doesn't know how to use it. Everyone doesn't know how to tackle it. You know, from my perspective, one of the big concerns being a TAA because we headed up a lot of this, you know, front lines is, well, if you're, if you're a director or producer, what does it mean? Are you taking away jobs, right? Or are you producing jobs? Now, I could lawyer either side of that equation that AI is going to help to create more IP opportunity. Opportunity. But there's a lot of people who feel differently right now. So we have to get through that. We've got to. And you're going to see a lot. And that's one of the things I certainly want to take advantage of in the, in the new company is AI is a tool. And the other thing that I find funny, Mike, is we always refer to AI like it's this big monster that we don't control out there. AI's being revved up and controlled by humans, right? And that's not going to stop. You cannot stop the advancement of technology. So we're in this stage of everyone starting to accept that it is here to stay. It is going to be used by brands. To get back to your question, there was a lot of pushback when Coke did a lot of their AI advertising, right? And they're a leader and they were early at the same time, you know, it's going to be utilized, right? And you might as well start learning, right? All the big agencies have to figure it out. Because don't forget, those agencies are based on name, image and likeness, right? And you've seen some announcements with Matthew McConaughey recently about their likeness. CA built something called the CA Vault so that we could start to scan people not just for defense, but for offense too. Like, imagine a world in the future where we can send Meryl Streep back to set at 40 years old, right?

Mike Shields (26:03)

This isn't just covering your ass, but this is actually opening up new opportunities, right?

David Freeman (26:08)

So there's both sides of it, right? And so there's going to be a lot of things that I think are going to be amazing that come out of it. I'm seeing some AI prompters right now. That are doing things that are as good as Pixar, you know, and that it can cut down the development. The other dream I have is the idea, especially with animation, where you can sense like a creator could send a piece of animation out to the community. Maybe it's five minutes, maybe it's 10 minutes, maybe it was created, you know, it took them two weeks or something with the help of an AI prompter and let the community give back. Do you like this? Do you not look unlike this? You like this character? Like this storyline? Let everyone come back and then the next episode's released literally two, three weeks later because there's zero cost here outside of the, you know, outside of the time. Right. So that's a, that's something that I think is going to be interesting to see. And there will always be the haters.

Mike Shields (26:55)

They'll be there. Yeah. Or the, you know, the people that are driven by fear, which is understandable. I want to come back to you. You mentioned Dude, Perfect and Rhett and Link or. And there's a few of them like Dharma, who are becoming either their mini studios, their boutiques, their media companies are. But it's very top of the funnel, I guess. Are we going to see a hundred of those? Is there a cap? Like how many creators can become these media moguls or mini medium moguls that can actually legitimately have brand up fronts and things like that?

David Freeman (27:30)

Yeah, I mean in Dar. Dar's a great, great human being, great entrepreneur. It was a client to Alan Chicken Chow, another one who is studio and enterprise minded. I think you are going to see a lot of it. I think the question is who will be successful and who won't. Right. And again, a lot of these creators have fandom, but they don't have a lot of infrastructure built around them. Right.

Mike Shields (27:57)

Yeah.

David Freeman (27:59)

And you'll start to see some real operators come into these businesses. Right. You have to, if you want to have an exit, you have to be willing to give up some of that equity inside your company and you have to be willing to, to build teams.

Mike Shields (28:12)

Not everybody's a born CEO just because you're a creator.

David Freeman (28:14)

Right? I mean, that's exactly right. And I look at someone like Jesser, who was one of our clients, unbelievable talent, arguably the biggest, you know, basketball sports creator on the planet. And he understood that, hey, I need to bring in a team. Right. And, and, and they are building a media company over there. And he brought in a guy by the name of Zack Miller, who's fantastic, who can really bring efficiency to the production. Who can think about applying a real flywheel and they've got a merch business and they're thinking about podcasts and they're thinking about live events. Right. And really building again real IP and real assets. So you will see more. I've also seen this go the other direction. You bring in the wrong people. Right. Like you and I both know the best business plan in the world that's capitalized the right way with the wrong management team, same outcome. Right. So good operators are good operators. I do think you will see more of it and I think there'll be a handful that will win. We haven't seen. And CAA did do a hell of a job with Dude Perfect getting them a big exit. A hundred million dollar investment. We haven't seen a tremendous amount of that yet. We're seeing it in bits and spots because I still think we're in the building phase. I still think those creators who might be making 7 to 12 million dollars, which is a lot of money in a given year, are sitting back saying, wait a second, I've got to build and I got to figure out how to get to that exit moment or even in a position where I can have a discussion with a media company or private equity company to exit.

Mike Shields (29:49)

Do you think that was. This is actually going to be my last question. You set it up perfectly. Do you think we'll see, I don't know, 10 years ago or so you saw like the big media companies saying, we're going to, we got to get in this. So we're going to buy Maker and Machinima and all those companies. It didn't work out perfectly. Are we going to see a bunch of the Paramounts of the world buy a Dude Perfect. I'm making this up. Like, are we going to see a bunch of those kind of exits or is this going to be totally different?

David Freeman (30:13)

I'm starting to see that legacy has to figure out a way to be in the. When I say creator, I don't just mean partner with creators in the creator mindset space.

Mike Shields (30:23)

Yeah.

David Freeman (30:24)

Period. And they have to do it. Right. Disney's got to do it. Paramount's got to do it. Paramount, Skydance, you know, we talked about Amazon, Apple, Apple, Warner Brothers, wherever they end up. Well, but then you have Fox who started a creator studio. Yeah, right. Like, so do I think that some of these folks no different than the way cable got bought and consolidated and flipped 10 different times? Yeah, it's going to happen here. Do I think that you're going to see Channels being aggregated. Yes. There's going to be a little bit of that old cable inside of YouTube of aggregating like minded channels. I think there's going to be a rebirth of networks. Anyone who has an aggregation of YouTube channels or anyone who even has an aggregation of fandom through talent, talent is distribution, has an opportunity to create a network. One of my dreams at caa. And you know, and they'll do it because there's an amazing team that's still there. Why shouldn't CAA have an upfront? Right. I mean, yeah, I like it. You know, if CA has got, you know, 100 different channels that they're working with their clients on, that's tremendous access media and there's integration and then you can add in social from other platforms. You've got a huge leg up because don't forget what we're talking about here. This is where culture exists. This is where culture is being born. Right, Right. And I think that's the opportunity that you're going to start to see because we'd have some high level tops. Where are we in 10 years? Where's a talent agency in 10 years or a management company in 10 years? Right. They've got to be able to not only service their clients, but also be principals next to their clients and invest to build.

Mike Shields (31:56)

Yeah, I think that's a really different dynamic, but super interesting.

David Freeman (31:59)

Yeah.

Mike Shields (32:00)

David, we could talk about this forever. Awesome stuff. Thank you so much for your time here. Good connect again and let's do this down the road again.

David Freeman (32:05)

I would love to, brother. I really appreciate honor to be here and exciting to see you and looking forward to 26.

Mike Shields (32:11)

Thanks to my guest this week, David Freeman of Kinetic and my partners at Intent iq. If you like this week's episode, please take a moment to rate and leave a review. We have lots more to bring you, so please hit that subscribe button and we'll see you next time for more on what's next in media. Thanks for listening.