As more clients own their content, talent agency WME is introducing new tools to help them build out their own media businesses.
WME is unveiling Creator Labs, an in-house digital operations team that helps creators build and scale their businesses on YouTube and elsewhere. Situated within WME’s Digital Division, the team helps clients, from podcasters to creators and more, with channel management, content syndication and more.
Additionally, WME has made a strategic investment in video strategy and operations company Astra Media, which has already been used to power projects from clients including Khloe Kardashian and Kevin Hart, and expanded its creators sales team, led by Doreen Dinour, to attain further brand sponsorships and advertisements for client content.
The idea for Creator Labs, and the build out of other services, came as the many clients looked to become more entrepreneurial and retain ownership of their own content. Creator Labs is led by Joanne Lee, who joined WME in 2024 and previously held leadership roles at Meta, YouTube and Sony Pictures.
“We’ve been investing in it and building this out slowly over the past couple years and testing and iterating around it and have found traction born out of how do we evolve our services for this new day and age? Our clients now own their distribution, so how does the role of an agent change,” said Ben Davis, co-head of WME’s digital group.
“This was largely a reaction to the state of the entertainment industry and the marketplace where we find ourselves, where YouTube has in many ways deconstructed all the different pieces that you have in what historically was a network or distribution operation and put that in the hands of the creator,” said Jad Dayeh, co-head of the digital group.
He added that the idea is to help clients early on, in the ideation phase, and then move into the build-out, including posting, scheduling and distribution of content in order to build a subscriber base, without having to take on the overhead personnel of creating their own production company.
Early adopters of Creator Labs services have included World Cup breakout Erling Haaland, who worked with the team on the create his YouTube channel and attain sponsorships, as well as Julian Shapiro-Barnum, creator of Recess Therapy and Celebrity Substitute, who worked with WME to get multiple sponsorships for the launch of his own late night show on YouTube.
WME has hired 11 people to support Creator Labs and Creator Sales, with 50 full-time employees and contractors also working as part of the team at Astra Media. The agency plans to expand the group in the future.
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