How UTA helps manufacturers write the script in leisure’s subsequent act

Now heading up UTA’s leisure advertising and marketing observe – an 80-strong crew spanning LA, New York, London and Atlanta – Jacobs sits on the epicenter of a swiftly evolving ecosystem the place advertisers, skill, tech and content material all collide. “We’ve doubled the size of the team in two years. Our client base has nearly tripled,” he advised The Drum at Possible in Miami. “That’s a signal of where this is all going.”

Beyond product placement

Forget the cliches about shoving a comfortable drink into a film scene. The actual sport now’s perception and get entry to. Jacobs says UTA’s worth lies in its privileged view of what’s coming subsequent – throughout streaming, movie, song, game, even social-first codecs. “We know what every streamer, financier, and studio is working on from the earliest stages,” he stated. “That data used to help actors find jobs. Now it helps brands see around corners.”

Sometimes that results in product placement. Other occasions it shapes broader technique. Take General Motors and Netflix. “It took two years, but it was the first time a platform partnered with a brand not around a single title, but its entire universe,” Jacobs defined. The end result? EVs featured in each Netflix unique – and a 7% bump in GM’s inventory worth the next day to come, following the announcement of the partnership.”

Cultural capital is the brand new foreign money

CMOs are more and more waking as much as the truth that consideration doesn’t are living in advert breaks. It lives in tradition. And that suggests taking part in an extended sport. “If you want to do this properly, you’ve got to be in it for the long haul,” stated Jacobs.

UTA’s paintings with Eli Lilly gives a telling instance. “We helped them commission research with the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which showed how conditions like Alzheimer’s and obesity were either misrepresented or invisible on screen,” he defined. That ended in a wave of storytelling tasks – pairing the pharma large with manufacturing homes like Imagine Entertainment – to reshape how audiences see sickness.

It’s an international clear of a media purchase. But for manufacturers fascinated about long-term resonance, it’s tough stuff.

The TikTokification of TV

One fast-moving development Jacobs highlighted is the upward push of top rate, long-form storytelling constructed in particular for social platforms. “There’s white space here,” he stated. “You’re seeing brands and creators skip the tag-and-post stuff and make proper shows. Social-first. 30-minute episodes. We represent a studio called Gymnasium, founded by Adam Faze, that’s doing exactly that.”

Jacobs believes this might be the following evolution of influencer advertising and marketing. “The platforms like YouTube Red and TikTok’s creator fund came and went. Now, brands are the ones funding these stories.”

UTA doesn’t simply constitute manufacturers – it represents skill, studios and creators too. Isn’t that a bit of… conflicted?

Jacobs didn’t dodge it. “We have rigorous Chinese walls in place. If a brand wants a talent partnership, our job is to find the best idea, regardless of whether they’re repped by UTA,” he stated. “We’ve been transparent about that. Some of our competitors are less so.”

Tech, AI and digital cameos

The bespoke nature of this paintings makes it arduous to systemize – however no longer unimaginable. Jacobs issues to digital product placement as one house seeing speedy enlargement. “We’ve worked with TripleLift, which uses AI to insert brands into films post-production,” he stated. “It’s not just future content – it’s stuff already in the library, still being streamed.”

That mix of creativity and scale is usually a holy grail for CMOs. “You can start to look at some of this like a CPM,” he stated. “But a lot of it still comes down to finding the right idea. And then making it happen.”