Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. So our
Speaker 1: next guest Julia Heart. She is co owner and CEO
Speaker 1: of the talent representation company Elite World Group. They repped
Speaker 1: some fifty talent globally. The clients include Tiffany Chanelle, Product Burbery,
Speaker 1: a lot more of names that you would know. She,
Speaker 1: by the way, is also the subject of a Netflix
Speaker 1: series is called My Unorthodox Life, which premiered this past summer.
Speaker 1: We are delighted to have her on the phone in
Speaker 1: New York City. Julia, great to have you here with
Speaker 1: Tim and myself. How are you. It's great to have
Speaker 1: you here with us. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: for those who might not be familiar with your company.
Speaker 1: That was fun kind of reading in for you because
Speaker 1: I remember Elite Models very well known in the model
Speaker 1: modeling industry, but you are a bunch of companies. Tell
Speaker 1: us about your company, the transformation that you've been going through.
Speaker 1: So when the only reason I took over the company
Speaker 1: is because I realized, with the advent of social media,
Speaker 1: we are at the forefront of changing the way that
Speaker 1: people communicate and how people advertise, because if you think
Speaker 1: about its social media advertising by definition has to be
Speaker 1: more honest. Right, Julia Hart, who's by the tall and
Speaker 1: can barely lift her handbag, is not going to be
Speaker 1: doing an ad for a workout session with weights. You
Speaker 1: might in the metaverse though, but we can talk about
Speaker 1: that later. So what I understood is that if I
Speaker 1: utilize that, if you think of the talent instead of
Speaker 1: thinking of them as athletes or actors or models, to me,
Speaker 1: those are all platforms. Whether it's a runway, a tennis court,
Speaker 1: a football stadium, a movie, a movie side, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Reutilize that and put the power in their hands. It's
Speaker 1: this massive shift in the power dynamic and this vast
Speaker 1: and opporutization of fashion because for the first time, it's
Speaker 1: not the talent having to run and the hope that
Speaker 1: someone should chooses them, that a creative director likes that,
Speaker 1: that a photographer videographer takes them under their wings, that
Speaker 1: some editor of a fancy magazine wants to have a
Speaker 1: photogo of them, their careers in their hands. And so
Speaker 1: what we're doing is we're helping them create themselves into
Speaker 1: brands and businesses. We utilize the time that they're in
Speaker 1: the public eye to build them into brands, so that
Speaker 1: far past the time they're on whatever platform they started through,
Speaker 1: whether it's a tennis court or a runway or a
Speaker 1: football stadium, their audience has become so accustomed to coming
Speaker 1: to that they will continue. They are the media, they have,
Speaker 1: the audience are aggregated. Viewership has now reached two points
Speaker 1: to filion. Hey, hey, Julia, help help us understand the
Speaker 1: connection to technology here, because you use terms like platform
Speaker 1: and audience and I think you know influencer, right, I
Speaker 1: think Instagram, I think YouTube? Um, how does how is
Speaker 1: that married into this? Well? Again, social media the way
Speaker 1: that I looked at it when I took over, because
Speaker 1: to me, the modeling industry was not interesting at all.
Speaker 1: It felt like the flip side of the world that
Speaker 1: I came from. The only reason I took it over
Speaker 1: is because I realized that I have the possibility to
Speaker 1: make an army of financially independent women by utilizing their
Speaker 1: social media channels as actual networks. But but, but how,
Speaker 1: but what I'm wondering. What I'm wondering too, And I
Speaker 1: look at how my daughter eighteen, you know, how she's
Speaker 1: she shops, you know, what she looks at. It's all
Speaker 1: through a lot of Instagram. It's all social media. It's
Speaker 1: very different from how I shopped. But I do wonder
Speaker 1: not everybody is going to be We did a story
Speaker 1: earlier about Jessica Simpson, you know um and kind of
Speaker 1: built an incredible brand, got away from her and she's
Speaker 1: trying to She just got it back and she's trying
Speaker 1: to rebuild it. But not everybody we'll have success. Are
Speaker 1: you saying that everybody will have success on social media?
Speaker 1: Great question. Of course everyone will not have success. So
Speaker 1: what there's two what I would say to ingredients, what
Speaker 1: we provide and what the talent provides. So when I
Speaker 1: thought of talent as media, and I realized that if
Speaker 1: I literally treat them as media, they have the power.
Speaker 1: They're not waiting for the casting agents and the creative directors.
Speaker 1: They are now being chased by the casting agents and
Speaker 1: creative directors because they bring the audience right. So when
Speaker 1: you can communicate, I always tell every talent, find your
Speaker 1: angel product. And it doesn't actually mean it has to
Speaker 1: be a physical thing. It means something that you are
Speaker 1: truthfully passionate about the people know when they come on
Speaker 1: your website, on your Instagram page or your TikTok or whatever,
Speaker 1: they're going to learn more about X. If you love
Speaker 1: the environment, talk about the environment, show all of the
Speaker 1: different environmental you know, places that you belong with and
Speaker 1: what you're doing. Let people understand who you are. And
Speaker 1: that's the first time in history that tendis players and
Speaker 1: models and you know, athletes can say who they are
Speaker 1: and it's not just about what they do. Tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about though. We want to talk about
Speaker 1: the metaverse. What do you see because I think Julia
Speaker 1: is safe to say, you know, we've all been obsessed
Speaker 1: with what Facebook are formerly known as Facebook. You know
Speaker 1: it meta is up to uh and how this will
Speaker 1: fit into our world more broadly, how do you see
Speaker 1: it in terms of talent and branding? Because Tim and
Speaker 1: I recently caught up with our Pursuits team and Chris
Speaker 1: Rouser and we talked about the high end fashion houses
Speaker 1: that you work with that are selling fashion and f
Speaker 1: t s for thousands of dollars. So our world is evolving.
Speaker 1: Indeed it is, and honestly to me, the metaverse and
Speaker 1: avatars way before you know Facebook called itself meta Right
Speaker 1: in two thousand and I started building my team of
Speaker 1: avatar creators and metaverse experts. I started literally building the
Speaker 1: whole concept of metaverse and avatars a month and a
Speaker 1: half after I took over a CEO. Because to me,
Speaker 1: it was an evolution of what's going on in the
Speaker 1: digital space. And by that, I mean, think about what
Speaker 1: is the most watched show on net NBC. Right, the
Speaker 1: most watch show on NBC gets around three four million viewers.
Speaker 1: My talent gets fifty million viewers. While they're moaning their law.
Speaker 1: They have the audience. So the first thing was to
Speaker 1: give them longevity. And by getting them longevity, I mean
Speaker 1: turning them into brands. And we did that by bringing
Speaker 1: in house what networks have, writers, producers, directors, filmographers to
Speaker 1: help our talent craft their story. It's not casual. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the one thing that I think is interesting. Tim
Speaker 1: and I talked about it. Even with our social media.
Speaker 1: It's it can be casual and it can catch on,
Speaker 1: but it's a lot of work. It's very it's a
Speaker 1: lot of war, intentional, the real it has to be
Speaker 1: true to you. And so that enabled me to give
Speaker 1: my talent longevity. But The goal has been to give
Speaker 1: them eternity and immortality, and that's what these avatars do.
Speaker 1: So just you know, I mean, we've been working on
Speaker 1: this for the past two years, two and a half years.
Speaker 1: We have created the most hyper realistic avatars that exist today.
Speaker 1: If you take a look at ours and you measure
Speaker 1: them against anyone, Facebook, Google, all these companies that people
Speaker 1: are talking about with such excitement, ours are incomparable. Where
Speaker 1: where can we sealistic? Where can we see some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that you guys are doing so we can
Speaker 1: send you the we did a Jasmine video because we've
Speaker 1: done two things so far. Right, We've got the Steve
Speaker 1: Madden Uh campaign that we did, but that wasn't a
Speaker 1: hyper realistic because they wanted to reinvent um their old
Speaker 1: campaign with the bubble head, so that needed to do that,
Speaker 1: you know. Plus and and the most incredible thing I
Speaker 1: have to tell you, and it's never seen this you
Speaker 1: guys probably know better than I do. Have you ever
Speaker 1: heard of the earnings report that attributes their massive growth
Speaker 1: in earnings to a sales campaign within their quarter earning reports?
Speaker 1: Because that's what Steve Madden did in their third quarter
Speaker 1: earning report openly. They attributed the connectivity with a younger
Speaker 1: audience and an increase in sales and web traffic to
Speaker 1: our campaign, twenty increamed on launch day and the highest
Speaker 1: earnings the company has ever had in its entire history.
Speaker 1: We concepted task directed producers a campaign, and we've got
Speaker 1: avatars who can show you product. But the avatars so so,
Speaker 1: the avatars though they're not necessarily experienced. They're not they're
Speaker 1: not experienced by consumers in what is own as the metaverse, right,
Speaker 1: the Steve Madden verse. Right, these avatars are are still
Speaker 1: are still viewed in a traditional way. You know, Carol
Speaker 1: just sent me a YouTube videos, right, Platum. But but
Speaker 1: but there isn't there aren't the people yet in those
Speaker 1: platforms to actually make it worthwhile, right, No, we we
Speaker 1: built them. In fact, I can't say the names of
Speaker 1: the companies that we're currently doing projects for because of
Speaker 1: course we were going to announce them when the project
Speaker 1: is complete. But we've got a major fashion brand that
Speaker 1: we're building an entire virtual shopping experience where you will
Speaker 1: have an aftar who is a salesperson. Um. We've been
Speaker 1: working with this incredible company that has a literal no brainer,
Speaker 1: uh scanning technology, So all you have to do, it's
Speaker 1: literally so simple. You scan your body. It puts you
Speaker 1: into the metaverse and you can try on clothing, handbacks,
Speaker 1: you can create your own you can choose things, and
Speaker 1: it's all virtual. So the metaverse is here now. Our like,
Speaker 1: for example, Jazz and Saunders, we put her in a
Speaker 1: metaverse and the beauty of what we're doing as opposed
Speaker 1: to traditional right, but think about video game they could
Speaker 1: only exist within the framework of that video game. Our
Speaker 1: avatars can exist in every imaginable way, whether it's a
Speaker 1: shopping experience where we create an entire interactive e commerce
Speaker 1: UM metaverse website where people can literally put themselves in
Speaker 1: there and try things on and see what they look like.
Speaker 1: Communication so they could sing karaoke with your um you
Speaker 1: know singer. So eventually it's an endless amount of opportunity.
Speaker 1: But what's happening right now, right, But so this is
Speaker 1: how people can actually then buy product, right because I
Speaker 1: know some of the stuff we do with pursuits and
Speaker 1: the n F t idea was you know, you're not
Speaker 1: necessarily going to own an actual physical object, but you
Speaker 1: just are kind of playing in this virtual world. Um,
Speaker 1: and you can have your own avatar and you can
Speaker 1: put on the n f T or whatever that you buy.
Speaker 1: Both both are great for me. I mean, I'll do
Speaker 1: it all. You know, whether it's you want to keep
Speaker 1: it in the realm of the metaverse, fantastic, You wanted
Speaker 1: to help create a purchase, wonderful. You tell me what
Speaker 1: your goal is as a company, Well, we'll ensure you
Speaker 1: that we will get it down. So we've only got
Speaker 1: about twenty five seconds left here, I know. With with
Speaker 1: Steve Mann though, when you guys did this, you actually
Speaker 1: they saw popping sales. Is that correct? Just quickly yes,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, and they mentioned us in their third
Speaker 1: quarter earnings report and they attributed there it's the highest
Speaker 1: earnings of the company has ever had in your history
Speaker 1: with our campaign and increase on launch day, which was
Speaker 1: really really exciting. And then of course we've got a
Speaker 1: partnership with Tommy Hildberger. UM so to be doing this
Speaker 1: incredible interactive virtual Got It fashion show, It's going to
Speaker 1: be amazing. Julia, thank you so much. Julia heart is
Speaker 1: co owner CEO of Elite World Group, joining us on
Speaker 1: the phone in New York,