Nền kinh tế sáng tạo: Những đại lý tài năng đang thay đổi ngành

We’ve got another special episode of Decoder today, recorded at the Cannes Lions advertising festival in the South of France. I’m talking with Ali Berman and Raina Penchansky, who run the Creators division at United Talent Agency. UTA is an enormous talent agency. Half the people you’ve ever heard speak or perform or who show up anywhere have UTA agents representing them. For full disclosure, that includes me! UTA handled the sale of the forthcoming Decoder book. Which means I paid them money, making this a reverse conflict of interest. Now you know. Anyhow, that has nothing to do with Ali and Raina, whose Creators division represents some of the biggest creators and influencers in the world — stars as diverse as Charli D’Amelio and Markiplier, Kai Cenat and Emma Chamberlain. Alex Cooper and Alix Earle. Verge subscribers, don’t forget you get exclusive access to ad-free Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. Head here . Not a subscriber? You can sign up here . So I really wanted to know how Raina and Ali identify up-and-coming talent, how they work with that talent to build durable business, and what the machinations of being a top creator actually look like — after all, all of these folks are running multimillion-dollar businesses with several different revenue lines. You’ll hear Ali and Raina talk directly about what it takes to build those businesses, what kinds of deals they strike, and how it’s all very different than the traditional Hollywood model, where your agent just takes a cut. Here, UTA is helping creators literally launch products — and it’s fascinating that the stars of today are going from making media to making products of their own. Not all of them can do it, so I wanted to know how Raina and Ali help their clients make the jump and what makes them successful at it. Of course, we also talked about AI, and platforms, both of which seem like destabilizing forces for the entire creator ecosystem. I think you’ll find Ali and Raina to be refreshingly chill about it all — even though they represent some VTubers of their own. There’s a lot going on here; I think you’re going to like it. Okay: Ali Berman and Raina Penchansky. Here we go. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.  Raina Penchansky, Ali Berman. You are the co-heads of the Creators division at United Talent Agency. Welcome to Decoder . Ali Berman: Thank you. Raina Penchansky: Thanks for having us. I am really excited to talk to both of you. I need to disclose right away: I’m a UTA client. This is a reverse conflict of interest. I think I pay UTA money, but that’s fine. So it’s a good conflict. I’m hoping it causes a journalism scandal and this gets shared widely. I’m very curious about how the Creators division works. You guys have been in the game forever. One of our ideas here on Decoder is that the structure of organizations tells you a lot, and Creators has been reorganized. You guys are the new heads. It started in 2024.  We’re here at Cannes. It’s creators everywhere here. They are the future of advertising. There’s so much money floating around this festival and in advertising. Tell me how UTA works with creators, how this division is structured, your backgrounds, how we got here. AB: I’m going into my 16th year at UTA. I’ve only ever worked at a talent agency, for better or for worse. I started my career at another agency, then after a few years, moved over to UTA in a very Jerry McGuire meets Entourage -esque moment and worked on the more traditional literary side of the business. But I was in love with the internet and what the internet was at the time, which was very blog-centric. Self-discovery was really up to you. You didn’t have algorithms feeding you. It was obviously a very different era. At the time, UTA had a burgeoningdigital department that was really a catchall for anything that was nontraditional film or TV. I went into that…