Digital industry veteran Jonathan Chanti describes his new business, Reign Maker Group, as a “constellation” of subsidiary companies that have diverse specializations, but share one core goal: connecting brands with both digital and traditional talent.
“Based off what we’ve seen in the business of marketing and creators and talent, there’s a big opportunity, and that big opportunity is canvassing two sides of the business at once,” Chanti tells Tubefilter. “That’s what Reign Maker Group is doing.”
Reign Maker Group, which former Viral Nation Talent President Chanti got off the ground in July with co-founder Brad Morris, currently comprises four arms:
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- The Now Agency: An “expert-led influencer marketing firm and social media agency helping organizations adapt, engage, and thrive in the new media landscape,” per Reign Maker Group.
- Reign Maker Talent: “Holds, manages, and provides strategic direction, shared capabilities, and infrastructure to its operating agency brands. A strategic offering for managers to build their business while leveraging the benefits of a scaled network of qualified managers and industry leaders.”
- Regatta Brand Partners: “In service of brands and agencies who are navigating the complexities of working with celebrity talent, creators with influence and brand collaboration to streamline the execution process for culturally relevant and mutually-beneficial partnerships.”
- and last but not least, the Creator Rep Institute: The “educational and professional development arm of Reign Maker Group, the Creator Rep Institute is our premier three-month training program for the next generation of creator managers.”
It also just secured a partnership with the Beverly Hills-based Paradigm Talent Agency that will play a key role in helping it build digital creators’ careers offline, and traditional celebrities’ careers online.
All of Reign Maker Group’s subsidiaries combine so the holding company can offer services on both the “buy” and “sell” side of creator-first and social media marketing, Chanti explains.
“On the buy side, we look at influencer strategy and execution, and we also look at traditional talent, entertainment, and marketing as being crucial for the future of brands having a place where they can get resources to do it effectively,” he says.
As for the sell side, “We truly look at talent as a pyramid,” he says. “At the top, you have your traditional A-listers, you have your chefs, your athletes, people who are household names with meaningful IP. And that’s where Paradigm comes into play, in the sense that in the middle and below [A-list], you have this entire world of massive opportunity, with creators who are looking to move up the ranks and into traditional services.”
An example, he says, is “a new food creator who has the ability to become the next Bobby Flay.” In that case, “We want to partner with Paradigm on the TV show, the book deal, the venture opportunity.”
On the other hand, “When Paradigm has a celebrity that’s a well-known name with a high social following but doesn’t have quality [digital] content, we want to partner with them to turn those people into digital creators the way we know how to do it, so they can start tapping into the digital ecosystem they’re not currently getting access to.”
This ability to build both digital and traditional celebrities extends to building brands, too, Chanti says. This is Regatta Brand Partners’ forte.
“Talent as a strategy is its own beast in its own world,” he explains. “Brands are now realizing that influencer is more of a media vessel and and a tactic, and brands are looking for people who are experts in helping them navigate the talent landscape to understand what makes sense for talent ambassadorship and why.”
Picking the right creators “can truly shape the entire narrative of what a campaign looks like and how a brand enters the market,” he adds. That’s why a core component of Reign Maker Group’s strategy is getting creators involved at the early stages of campaign planning and having them act almost as creative leads–a contrast to the current model, where brands conceptualize a campaign, then tap talent to participate.
Managers also aren’t left out: Reign Maker Talent is “introducing a real estate model to the world of representation,” Chanti says, where it will “underwrite” a manager’s initial stab at going solo.
“If you’re afraid to leave an agency or another group that’s representing talent, and you’re afraid of the entrepreneurial risks that come with starting your own business, not having money in the first few months of getting things off the ground, we will underwrite you to start your own business here, and we’ll partner with you,” he says. “Now we have a destination for those amazing managers at big agencies who are at the point in their career where they’re like, ‘Hey, I’ve built it, I’ve done it, but do I really want to be on the hamster wheel at this place for the rest of my life, making everyone else around me rich?'”
Ultimately, Chanti thinks Reign Maker Group could be “a new chapter” for creator marketing.
“Things are changing. We are here, and we’re here to come after what we believe is our opportunity in this space. We should be taken very seriously, and so should what we’re bringing to the space, because we’re already doing phenomenal business,” he says. “We’ve been very fortunate to gather the relationships we have and the partners we have at a very early age, and I think that’s a testament to the team here. We’ve done a really good job of assembling the Avengers of the industry across a lot of different verticals, and the reason they’re here is because they know that this needs to happen in order to truly drive the impact brands and talent need for the long run.”
