🎧 The New Showbiz: Hollywood, Creators & Brands

The 'win-win' as talent and brands reset the terms of engagement for the next phase of entertainment

ON BRAND From left, producer Dan Cogan of Story Syndicate, Adobe’s Heather Freeland, creator Jordan Howlett, UTA’s Julian Jacobs and Ankler Media’s Natalie Jarvey, author of Like & Subscribe, at UTA House in Park City, Utah on Jan. 25. (Nomadic Creations)

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PayPal financed 2023’s The Barber of Little Rock, a short film from John Hoffman and Christine Turner about a community bank serving a poor neighborhood where residents were often declined services. But the company’s logo doesn’t appear anywhere in the Oscar-nominated film.

“We’re seeing that more and more with brands,” says Dan Cogan, an Oscar winner for the documentary Icarus, who executive produced The Barber of Little Rock through his company, Story Syndicate. It’s not about, ‘We want to slap our name on something’ or ‘You need to place us X number of times in X number of frames.’ And that creates all kinds of opportunities for storytellers.”

Cogan was part of a live taping in snowy Park City of The Ankler podcast, sponsored by The Watford Group, that also featured massive TikTok creator Jordan Howlett (aka Jordan the Stallion), Adobe chief brand officer Heather Freeland and UTA Entertainment Marketing co-head Julian Jacobs, held before a jam-packed room at UTA House during the opening weekend of the Sundance Film Festival.

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Hollywood historically turns its nose up at branded storytelling, but in recent years has begun embracing its possibilities (and revenue). Credit the shift in large part to the rise of social media and content creators, who work with brands without alienating fans.

“Everybody loves a good story,” said Howlett, who has nearly 14 million followers on TikTok. “My management and I talk about this a lot. I don’t want to work with just anybody. I want to work with people that I genuinely feel that we have that respect or connection with each other, because it makes the content that much better.”

Brands likewise have bent their strategy toward aligning with creators’ independence. “I need to make sure the feedback I deliver is going to make [the content] better but also make sure it’s hitting my strategy and the goals,” said Adobe’s Freeland, “which is of course the reason we’re working with the creators.”

BOOTS ON THE GROUND A packed audience was SRO at the UTA House to hear “The New Showbiz.” (Nomadic Creations)

Hollywood belt-tightening is likely to spur even more collaboration. “In this moment of chaos and disruption, the opportunity has never been more ripe,” added UTA’s Jacobs. “The rule book is being unwritten and written as we speak.”

Just look at Emilia Pérez. The trippy polyglot musical drama was co-produced by Saint Laurent Productions, a subsidiary of French luxury fashion powerhouse YSL, as Cogan noted, adding that his own first paycheck in entertainment came from working on the Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival more than 20 years ago.

“What they did was choose five short filmmakers, and they gave them each a very small amount of money to make a short that had a Chrysler car in it, and the winner got $1 million to make their first film,” Cogan recalled. “The winner of that was Derek Cianfrance, who went on to make Blue Valentine. You can find the win-win.”

THAT’S SNOWBIZ From left, Howlett, Ankler Media CEO Janice Min, The Watford Group’s Harshal Dave, Jacobs, Cogan, Freeland and Jarvey. (Nomadic Creations)