“Fame Is Not a Business Model”: Celebrity Brands Exposed

28:13And then women control most of the spending, right? 70 % of spending or whatever. So I think that's probably both those things adding into it. Because I'm looking at a list. Ariana Grande has a great one. Hailey Bieber obviously had had a massive success. There's some male YouTubers. I mean, we talked about Mr. Beast and the Paul brothers all have something. Jonathan Van Ness has a haircare line that went bankrupt. And he's like a beauty youtuber so yeah uh it also seems to be beauty heavy like selena gomez's brand um they kill it right rare crushes it yeah i think katie you're hitting on the thing it's it's like the ones that seem to work it's hard to like describe it but it does seem that there's like an authenticity and like an influence thing that that i'm particular celebrity has on the category and that it's like well yeah like the the kim thing i mean you gotta your hat has to come off Like you got to give the Kardashians their credit, man.

29:12Like they know their freaking audience so well and the consumer culture so well. So like clearly that one is just real. Like even Gordon with Hexclad, like it's obvious. Like it just works. But it's such great product market fit. Just like Kim. Like she's known. A product celebrity fit. Yeah. Kim's known for her body, right? So making body shapewear that helps people look like Kim just connects with people. If Kim was selling products for blondes, people would be like, why? That's why Hexclad and Gordon are so perfect for each other. Yeah. And also the ability for Skims to stay in relevancy for so long, like doing the Nike collab, doing the thing where it makes you look like your nipples are pierced.

30:00Like they are so good at getting attention and like leaning into their customer base. So I think the point was we're trying to uncover why some of them work or why some of them don't work. And I think an obvious takeaway is product, right? If you have a bad product, it's never going to work. The next one is it's like, do you have a business model where the fame is additive or is the fame everything? And like in alcohol, the fame is everything, right? for CPG products I think the fame ends up being like all of it like Feastable's massive success I think 500 million in revenue this year that brand doesn't exist without Mr.

30:38Beast it's like the fame is everything attached to it where a skims really if Kim went away the brand might be just as big because but that's isn't that the ultimate risk like if a celebrity whatever brand they create ultimately they need to be able to step away from it and it still succeed. Yeah. And I don't know if we have any examples of that working. Maybe the row. I think road could. Yeah. Well, I think Hayley Bieber is going to step away. Yeah. But I was, I was thinking, I don't know if you could say this is a celebrity brand, but the row is Ashley and Mary Kate Olson. I wouldn't even call that a celebrity brand.

31:13Cause like, I don't even know what do they do? It's a like high end, like I would say like, like a new luxury brand right sean like yeah like a younger luxury brand by the olsen sisters incredibly high end we're talking stuff is like five grand and it like wins awards they've been doing it for like 15 years um and yeah but they're not the face like that's the crazy thing katie is like the ash the the olsen girls don't actually like get in front of it and promote it they're building it the way that luxury brands are built, which is like slowly. And like, it just, you think that's a bad thing. I kind of think it's a good thing.

31:50No, I think it's a great thing. I just wouldn't call them like a classic, like celebrity face first brand. Um, but they are behind like to your, what you were asking, like Sean, it's a good example. Like they're totally behind the scenes. I'm sure their names on it, got it going. Um, but they stayed behind it and got funding, right? I'm sure easier. Well, I think they had the money, right? Yeah. Um, yeah, I guess I think the other one, Sean, like, why do they not work? It sounds like some of them just have bad operating partners. Like, let's be honest that the, uh, they're the celebrities themselves aren't the ones like running these companies.

32:27It's unlikely. Like if there's, if you line up a hundred celebrity brands, one of them might actually be the CEO of their own brand. Yeah. And if they are the CEO of their own brand and they're actually going to the office every day, then it's less and less likely to be a celebrity brand because it's like the Olsen twins. Like they haven't been in a movie in 25 years or whatever. Well, they don't need to be if they're crushing it with their brand, right? Yeah, totally. I think they do like 200 to 300, 400 million a year. Wow. Something like that. Yeah, yeah. It's real. It's like, it's real. Dude, you might love some of their pieces.

32:59People love their shoe line. Sean, what about how the deals are actually structured? We've talked on the show about CapTable. Forget celebrity brands, but CapTable can sink a company if it's just poorly structured. Have you seen or heard about how these deals happen? How much of these companies do the celebrity wind up owning relative to the operators? And is part of the problem just like a really bad incentive structure for everybody involved? Like how much of their comp is like genuinely tied to equity value increasing? How many of them are doing it simply because they just want cash? I wonder if that's an element here.

33:43Right. And this is a big distinction point that really probably separates it is like what makes a celebrity brand and what makes a brand with a celebrity attached? It's like, you know, George Clooney started Casamigos. So he's like, this is a thing I want to do. I'm going to own 55 % of it. I'm going to have partners. I'm going to put money into it. And that, I think, guarantees a higher level of success versus I'm going to make a makeup brand. Oh, I'm going to go add a celebrity to it and give them 3 % to 5 % or whatever. I think that's what happened with Addison Rae's makeup brand. And we know somebody in our lives who did a brand with a former A-list celebrity, probably a B-tier celebrity now.

34:23they did a big launch on Amazon and it went horrible. And it's because that, that brand was a brand that already existed. And they were like, Oh, we're going to rebrand it as this person's line. And it didn't go anywhere. And like Amazon takeover front page. And like, they literally did 75 sales that day and 15 were from the post. Uh, you know, uh, I, I do feel like the operating partner matters here, Sean, like Roman is like, I love Roman, but Roman shouldn't be making a judgment call on like a female uh brand like a celebrity like honestly like i my wife could have told you that vanessa hudgens can't sell it like she's got no actual influence she's famous yes but she has no influence so i think that there's like there's a big distinction between those two things like you can have a massive amount of fame and be absolutely like not influential who was was it one of you guys that sent a list in one of our groups and it was like a whole bunch of celebrities and we had to like say oh that was me oh yeah yeah yeah because sean was shopping yeah right so sean was like out shopping for for celebrities and he had like the price list for everybody but it made me think of what you just said matt and basically it was like a list of like just famous people but but do they really like i don't know like was it for your rings or your wallet i can't remember sean yeah so okay i'm we're gonna recenter the conversation, I want Matt to ask and I'll answer this question.

35:49So Matt asked, how do you actually structure these deals? And yes, I got a list from CAA or UTA or one of the agencies, and this was for celebrities to just be in a commercial, right? So like classic thing in DTC accessory brands or legacy accessory brands, they just add a celebrity to their commercials. You see beauty brands do it and perfume brands do it, whatever. So I'm like, oh, I should add a celebrity to it. And so I have a list of all the celebrities and the random prices attached to them. Right. And you can kind of go through and you can try to choose like your look and your fit and how much you're willing to spend.

36:26And then you can put those things together and you can have a commercial. So we're going to do that. We will have a ad with a celebrity in it in the next 12 months. I'll let you guys know when we pick. Is it the one I picked or is it the one Matt picked? It's probably the one I picked. So we're still in negotiations, right? Because you got to figure out who the right person is. But we have a big campaign this year and we're like, we want, we want to put extra juice in it. And it's worth the$300 ,000 that it will cost to get the celebrity in it for a day. But do you think it's because the celebrities, you said it's for commercials only, right?

36:55So is it YouTube and streaming and linear, like that kind of stuff? Yeah. I'm going to put it on TV basically. Right. Just. So is it more just so that they recognize the celebrity or is it the celebrity actually selling the product? It's just to get an extra hook out of it. Like an extra reason to pay attention a little more extra, like just make it a little more visually exciting. This goes back to the launch thing, Sean, like for the launch or for a big campaign, there's a likeness that celebrities have that gives you an instant like marketing. It's credibility. It's scroll stop. Yeah. Right.

37:26It's like, I see somebody I know I'm going to pay attention at least for a little bit. So like, you know, we put a lot of money into finding hooks. It's kind of the same, same thinking. I like it for a hook. Yeah. But I don't know about like, do you then like, what if this celebrity comes back at you, Sean is like, Oh, I want to buy in, you know, does that increase your brand value? No, no. And so I think, yeah, so there's, there's probably three types of deals to do. One is you found a company with a celebrity, right? And then it's like, that person is in the business. They have double digit equity chunks, and they're going to be there as a partner operating.

38:00That's the Kim Kardashian's, the Cosamigos. I think that's the highest chance of success. Then there is, you know, you have a business and you bring a celebrity partner on that's what ridge did with marquez but i think a lot of these deals have failed are because they did that and then the third one is i'm going to pay you money to be in a commercial right and that's like a you know we work with travis barker all the time or um i'm sure all of us have put celebrities in ads before so the third one is what i'm going to do at some point in 2026 you will see an ad with a vin diesel or somebody like that talking about how cool Ridge is as a brand.

38:33And that is just from a commercial output standpoint. It's like the way I'm measuring that is, does my Facebook CPMs go down when there's a famous person in them? I'll let you guys know if that works. The first one, I would love to do that. If I'm launching a new brand, I'm going to find a celebrity and I'm going to become their best friend and we're going to launch this thing together. We're going to hustle together on it. I think that's a very high chance of success. But what I just described is very difficult. It's like, okay, go be friends with a celebrity and then launch a brand with them.

39:03Who am I going to do that with? Connor? I don't know. Sean here to tell you about Saris Analytics and Saris Pulse. Ridge is profitable every single day, and we've taken that super seriously since we've built this business. We track contribution margin by day. We look at the SKUs we sell every single day. And we have to do this manually up until Saris Analytics came out. We take all of our SKU level data. We build it into the data warehouse. Everything that goes into making a true P &L, I get on a day-to-day basis. Sarah's Pulse gives you clarity so your CLO and your CFO and your CMO start speaking the same language.

39:38Contribution margin shifts teams away from hoping profits survive the season to managing them in real time. Book a walkthrough with the Sarah's Pulse team today. Click the link in the description and thank you, Sarah, for bringing you this show. You probably know this. What's the percentage of celebrity brands actually get off the ground and go? Like, is it higher than just a regular old person starting a brand? Oh, that's a good question. Like, how does, how does the, I mean, it's so hard to know this, but like, what's, what's the comp set? You know, if you look at, if you lined up like a hundred celebrity, celebrity like involved, so like their partners in the business and you lined up like a hundred regular, you know, us.

40:17And it's just direct to consumer. Yeah. Like what's the success rate of these things? I bet it's a double, but the success rate is still very low. Yeah, it's still better, but it's not great. I think one in a hundred brands actually make it. Yeah. And if you're listening to this, like, congrats, you made it. And I think like two out of a hundred celebrity brands make it. I think it doubles your odds, but the odds still suck. But I think it still is the same reasons why it makes it, whether you're a celebrity or not. Right? Oh, yeah, for sure. It just gives you a little more juice. But like, it's still, you have to have a good product.

40:50You have to have good market fit. Like going back to, you know, Skims, they had perfect product market fit. You bring up like, you know, Kim's famous for, for, you know, being attractive. Just say it, her butt. Like it's her butt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's famous. She's famous for this stuff. And she makes a product that is so in line with the culture. She crushed it. Totally. So yeah, the product market fit, huge. It's also, I think it also helps. It must help that in the, in Kim's case, in the Kardashians case, they are all very socially savvy. And a lot of celebrities are not. Yeah. Like, I don't know.

41:25I like sometimes stumble on somebody's like a celebrity's Instagram page. I'm like, oh, you're bad at this. Like you're so obviously bad at this compared to like a creator who's built up their audience. Like, and I think that that, I think for founders, that's the thing to watch for. You can see an actual like movie star with 40 million followers who's posted six times on Instagram in the last year. Like that is not the person you probably want to do the deal with. No, because it has to go back to being authentic. Like that's what it's all about. like I think about this is totally off the topic but like when I first started Caden Lane Sean it was all about celebrities like we had a lot of celebrity placements but that was when you were in magazines and people didn't know that if you saw a celebrity carrying your whatever or using your product in people magazine they thought it was real they didn't realize we had to have publicists and like go through all these jump through hoops and get it into their hands and it was free.

42:20They never paid for it. I think influencers today have completely like pulled the curtain back on celebrities and what they use. And so that's why them being authentic and actually like, I, I believe that Kim wears her products. Right. But I don't know that like, I believe that some random celebrity maybe is carrying your wallet unless you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, I think that that's actually like, okay, so the integration of the celebrity into the brand, right? Like if you look at, uh, like, let's just use Jason and Gordon. Gordon is everywhere in that brand before, before Hexclad even existed.

43:02He owned that, that category. And he's like everywhere. Like when you look at every interaction you have with the hex clad brand it is likely you see gordon's face from ad to site to like everything and he's making a ton of content with them and i think the the celebrity brands that fail it's like you do one shoot a year yeah you know you get a handful of assets and then that person is just kind of gone and they're not really integrated which is why i think that the like how socially savvy and like if you're going to do a deal with a, with an A-lister or like even a B-list, like a really well-known face, they got to be talking about it all the damn time.

43:43Otherwise, like you might get a little pop, but then it's, you're just, there's nothing else there, right? Like there's no residual value. Or using it like Sean is just as a hook. Like why is that person holding his wallet? Yeah. But then you're not like, that's not an equity deal. That's not a partnership with a celebrity. Sean's just going to pay this guy cash and just say like, it's worth the extra cash to like stick come in a video well hell then you can test it that way sean totally right like that's what everyone should do is just test it first and then as long as it's not a complete flop and and if they are you're just like peace out you should date before you get married for sure like uh you know you brought up could i see like is there going to be product brand fit with uh with the celebrity of your choice and it's like yeah guy fieri probably already uses a ridge wallet i could probably get guy in the ridge wallet but do people think he's cool enough we're going to find that out when the ad comes up.

44:33You just told us who it is now? No, no. But his name we've thrown around. Guy Fieri was - Yeah, I've seen him on the list. Sean, how would you structure a deal? So let's say there's somebody listening to this and they actually do have a friend of a friend, whatever. They've got a great celebrity. That celebrity does want to be involved in the brand. how would you structure the deal like cash equity uh like their level of involvement like what would you expect from them i'm curious if either of you have an opinion on this but i know sean you did a deal with marquez we gotta call him a celebrity that guy's got a massive audience um how did you guys think about you don't need to give us specifics of the deal but like structure wise what would you advise people to do?

45:23Yeah. So I see a lot of young brands get very excited when they get an email from somebody being like, Hey, I love your brand. I want to be involved. And I saw this happen. There was a guy, he had a very cool, uh, CrossFit brand. And he's like, the CrossFit games, like wants me to be the, the official backpack of the CrossFit games. How cool is this? All right. I know a guy with a faith-based apparel company and he's like, Tim Tebow team emailed us and they want to be involved. And I just temper those expectations so low, push those expectations all the way down because I've only ever seen money go one way and it's brand to celebrity.

46:04Now I hear sometimes celebrities put money into stuff. I've never seen it happen on a deal. I know Jay-Z has a venture fund. I know - He's invested in us. I got Jay-Z on my cap table, right? But he doesn't do for me. yeah i know shack has uh an investor fund but you have to think that there's and i've i've we've been close to some of these celebrities this is not marquez but other other actual you know like on tv celebrities and they are surrounded by people and those people's job is just to pay for themselves and make them a little extra money not doing the core thing so like we were talking to a tv star and he's on a show he's like how do i make money that isn't me acting he's like i would love to be the face of your brand because then I can make money from not acting, right?

46:49They're all looking for ways to come in, like different revenue streams. Just like how I sell wallets, I sell rings, they're trying to sell something else that isn't their main skill. So that Tim Tebow example, I was talking to the brand founder and I'm like, just make sure you clearly lay out what the expectations are. Because I think what's happening is Tim Tebow's team is doing cold outreach to you to get you to give Tim Tebow money. And you think Tim Tebow is trying to give you money and you're going to show up there and you're both going to have your hand out and no one's going to have any money to give each other.

47:21So that is so often when these deals get done. Anyway, so temporary expectations. Now we chose to do a deal with a YouTuber, with Marquez, I think the best tech YouTuber. And that's because it's just who native to who our brand is, right? Like we have sponsored YouTubers for a long time. We've worked with Marquez for a long time. He liked the product. He used the product. And it just made sense with where our brand was going to bring him into the fold. So with that deal, we're in a bunch of videos. So look up Black Friday, Marquez's video. We have that ad spot. Then the week after, we have that ad spot.

47:55So we are in a bunch of his videos. Collectively got like 100 million views on those videos in 2025. And that pairs up with us getting into tech products. So this is the second or third year of the deal, and we've launched power banks and phone cases and this stuff. So it's helpful to have the number one tech influencer talk about that stuff as a co-owner of the business. And then the third piece, when you go to a Verizon or a Best Buy and you say, hey, we're going to put our tech products here, and then Marquez is going to say you can buy them here, it's like a double win for them, right? They get these great products and they get built-in foot traffic.

48:27He'll talk about it. Do you worry, though, that it's risky? Like what if Marquez like pisses off somebody, right? And so he's not just a nobody upsetting somebody, but like what if he like really says something that just completely alienates his whole audience? Then is it too connected to Ridge? Like do you really think you sold all your techie stuff because of him or was he just a value add? Right, and you should never treat one of these celebrity deals as the Hail Mary to save your brand because it won't save your brand. We originally offered it to Colin and Samir. they're they're these two youtubers and you know they've had a hard year both their houses burned down the palisades fire and we're like the original deal was they were going to come in and be like the behind the scenes make a documentary about like doing like a brand like ridge and like tell the whole story that would have been really cool and it ended up not working out with them we ended up going with marquez but like what they liked about the deal is they're like we're so glad that we don't have to save your brand it's like like the brand's already successful.

49:28This is just icing on top. And that's how the celebrity deal should be looked at. I think you're exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. Like we didn't sell our tech stuff because of Marquez. It just helped. It's like we get to run ads with them. It just helps. Yeah. Now, what do like, is there brand risk both ways? Like imagine if Ridge Wallet started, I don't know, scamming people or whatever, right? Like that'd be very bad for Marquez. And one of Marquez's sponsors did tweet a bunch of it and marquez had to be like i'm not working with this brand until they apologize and the brand isn't apologizing um so the brand risk does go both ways there but yeah dude marquez launched an app uh panels and people hated it on the internet oh i remember that yeah that was bad yeah and he got what was it about why did they hate it just it was it was a premium wallpaper app so like you would pay money for wallpapers it came out last year and people just thought it was tone deaf for whatever reason.

50:23Anyway, when you're famous, people look for reasons to shit on you. And then he got caught speeding and people freaked out about him speeding. The guy owns Porsche 911s. Of course, he drives fast. But anyway, people on the internet look for reasons to be mad. I'll tell you that we never got any blowback from those comments. That's good. I think both those are very minor things. I didn't care at all about the app or the speeding, but uh i think maybe if you have if yes there are situations where it could hurt your brand if this like if you sponsor somebody who does something really really bad that's all i'm gonna say

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51:39This means more conversions, higher AOV, less lost demand. So you are driving more revenue and doing it more efficiently. Check out Shopper from Postscript. We use it at Pilo, which is why I am telling you to check it out. If you, when you're looking at it, and I'm just thinking of like how to do a deal like this. Like, let's say I get somebody, I'm like, we have a celebrity, we want to do something or a YouTuber. How much are you trying to get like an equity deal done with the person versus how much cash? Like, what's the mix? You know, like, why wouldn't you just pay Marquez for all the placements and all the whatever?

52:15why have him come in as a as an owner in ridge yeah so there's different asks and the different ask go to different buckets so if i would if i just wanted ad space i could pay for the ad space if i just wanted the ad rights to the content i could pay for that but then there's a lot of other stuff he does that like it just it's hard to put a dollar value on like we do weekly calls where we talk about the brand and project is coming up and try to align those things we talk about he's like a co-developer of some of the products. He's on our board. So when you get to those things, it just makes sense to, to, to sort of have the equity in the conversation.

52:51He probably has a lot of value add on that actually with product development, right? Because he's so tuned into all the other kinds of products outside of yours. Yeah. He's a product expert, right? And we want that feedback coming across, like what colors to choose, like what features are important. And it's, it's hard to compensate that on a dollar basis. Also, it's good to just say he's a co-owner in the business, right? Like if things ever go bad, knock on wood, everybody, uh, things ever go bad. It'd be good to be like, Oh, you, you're a co-owner in this. You, you're supposed to have our back more than just a check.

53:21Right. So do you also pay him cash every year as part of all this stuff? Like, was that part of the deal or was it a pure equity deal? So yeah, it was, it, it's a combo of both, but it's, it's structured in a very circular way where like, we're giving him money. He's using the money to buy the equity. So it's like a, it's like a big circle. yeah did you just have to figure this out sean or did somebody help you structure it i used hex clads uh structure so what i mean this is a you got it jason is is where being a lawyer is actually super helpful like his deal is really smart yeah and what we found is i mean marquez doesn't have an agent so we get to work directly with him right like he's in the slack we talked to him.

54:07But that was really helpful when negotiating the deal. So it's like, I can just be like, hey, this is what we're thinking. This is what we're thinking. And it's just an LOI with a Google doc written up of what the deal is, what the deliverables are. We both agree on it. This is where going through an agent, probably better for both sides, but you're going to pay way more and it's going to be very painful. You're going to fight about like... Shit. Yeah. Part of our deal with Marquez is I think we get four production days a year and they'll be like, well, what counts as a production day? They'll be like, just travel kind of production day like that's something an agent would do where Marquez is just like yeah man come to the office we'll shoot whatever you want to shoot that's the way the deal usually works I feel like yours is a bit of a unicorn though because it's truly like he's got the reach and the trust factor for your audience specifically and that's hard to find but I guess Katie is that not that I that cons so I agree it's such a perfect fit yeah for Ridge but is that a unicorn?

55:04Cause like, it does seem like there's enough of these celebrity brand, like product market fit examples out there that it's not that rare. I mean, can you think of one that would be a good fit for us? Because Kristen has gone down this map before with me and she like names. We've not found one either, by the way. Like I'm with you. Like we haven't, but it does seem more common. I think it's common. I think people like to think about it, but like, I would challenge you to really, like we've really thought about it. And I'm like, I can't think of one. And then if I think of one, she's only relevant to a certain group.

55:38Right. Right. Cause ours would be a mother obviously. Right. So I don't know. I just think, um, they also expire. Like, I think that that's the tricky part with the mother part is like, their kids are only young for so long and they're only relevant to mothers for so long. Yeah. Kids grow up and it's like, I, then the new generation of moms, like the shelf life of moms as an influencer is actually pretty short. Yeah. It's their expired. You're saying that I've already expired out of my brand. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Katie. You passed expiry. Great. What I was going to say is, yes, the unique thing about Marquez is he comes with reach and he comes with trust, both those things together.

56:19So you're looking for a new media celebrity, right? You're looking for somebody who actually can control their socials and actually be good at that, like a Kim Kardashian. Dude, my first, my mind goes to Hilary Duff. I think Hilary Duff would be great for your brand, right? Literally, she's come up, yes. And we've talked, but her kids are a little bit older too. And to Matt's point, like, right? Can we sell into like zero to three? Yeah, I mean, no, bigger than that. We're going the whole way, but still, I don't know. And then what's the difference between celebrities and influencers? And I don't know, like, I just - I think it's all the same now, right?

56:53I do too. Yeah. And I think actually in media part is the smart part that Sean said, it's like this new media version. It's exactly what you just said. Like if a celebrity doesn't know how to utilize their reach on social, what value are they to us except for a familiar face on TV? But if they're terrible at making content, right, or they're never on their social or they have some huge audience, but they're never posting and then they finally post and their engagement is at 1%, like where was their value add, you know? Yeah. And that's why we went for YouTubers because they're just so much – they're good storytellers and they're commanding attention at 20, 30-minute chunks at a time.

57:36So maybe you find your celebrity the opposite way. Go to the channel you really want growth on. find out who's only on that channel that specializes in whatever product or thing that you're doing. But I bet you there's more influencers that could maybe have just as big of an impact. When you say celebrity, I think if they're in a movie, right? TV movie. TV movie. That's what we wanted to do this year is that Marquez is incredibly famous to a certain subset of people on the internet. And it's men who spend a lot of time on YouTube, right? And so we do want to try, what is the true old school TV celebrity?

58:12The list I sent you guys, what I asked for was people who were famous from TV shows in the 2000s and 2010s. I know, and I think half of them, some people didn't even know who they were, right? No, because they're too young in the group. Because they were too young and they're like, who's so-and-so? And I'm like, oh my God. Like the guy from Full House. What was the guy from Full House? talking about yep yeah yeah black hair guy yeah the handsome guy from full house yeah yeah not mario that's nine that was 90210 but yeah like different guy we're talking about like those other people it's like okay if we put them in tv ads like are they actually better right but like if you want to grow digital channels i think a new media celebrity you know is great and i and i think it's to your audience too like when you guys just saying that out loud i'm like oh we're just all dating like our self.

59:03I don't think my kids would even know half of the people on that list that you sent, Sean. Like, right. They want to see YouTube stars and they want to see people that maybe aren't in movies as much. Oh, totally. What we're trying to do is make a commercial that 35 year olds think is awesome. Right. Yeah. So 35 and up, that's what we're trying to make. I'll let you guys know if it works. If you're scaling an e-commerce brand today, ads alone aren't enough. After Sell focuses on the one moment that every brand already owns after checkout and turns the post-purchase moment into more profit. Monetize every order with post-purchase offers and thank you page experiences without disrupting checkout or hurting conversion.

59:44Enterprise-grade tech used by Gap, Ticketmaster, Macy's, and Target now driving results for brands like True Classic, Hexclad, Ridge, and Jones Road. I would know. This is the reason I ended up buying three pans from HexCloud instead of two. Aftersell has already generated over$1 billion in additional revenue for e-commerce brands, revenue that doesn't require more traffic or higher CAC. So check out Aftersell and tell them that the operator sent you. Sean, do you think the Marques effect is a part of why you were able to scale up YouTube this year? For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Putting Marques in ads made the ads way better.

1:00:23It's like, that's undeniable. Is that like, you know, we have a list of winner ads. So every week, like, you know, we test hundreds of ads and the winners get pulled into this Figma board and we go through them. And specifically in Q4 of this year, like Marques selling wallet ads just crushed for us. And that's like probably a big part of our success. So it makes the deal worth it when you can actually, he's driving value in and of itself. He's posting on social. and then we put the creative into YouTube and scale that up and sell more wallets. Yeah, he's adding value in a lot of places. And I think that's actually a takeaway for people listening to this is if you're going to look at doing a deal like this, there's got to be like multiple touch points of value if that influencer celebrity is going to be much more involved, like particularly cap table.

1:01:08I think you're going to do anything with cap table. That has to be true. Yeah, multiple ways to win, right? So like you're looking for multiple avenues of actual success. And yeah, so I think we found that in Marquez. Did you test him first or did you just go straight into the deal? Like, did, did he actually post about you guys organically and you saw a huge lift or whatever and, or no, you just, no, we, we, we paid him, we paid him the post. So we, we've, we sponsored two YouTube videos in 2021. Um, and they, they performed fantastic. So we're like, okay, we should go back and look into this.

1:01:45but we had a list of you know 500 youtubers that we were looking at i posted on twitter i went very viral being like who wants this deal and we went through a big list of them and you know i ended up doing a cold outreach to marquez and closing it with him but like i only have five twitter people can i give you a big list and you post it for me and for sure okay my reach is your reach katie um but anyway i think i think that's that's the up for today guys so we talked about the pros and cons. What makes a successful celebrity brand? What makes a failing celebrity brand? We talked about the journey of actually getting them on the cap table, the weird dance of if they're going to give you money and they're probably not, you're probably going to have to pay them for it, when to bring them on as an equity partner.

1:02:28And I promise you guys in a year, we will revisit this and I'll let you guys know if a Guy Fieri TV spot was worth it or not. I think it will be. Love it. I totally think it will be. Matt, Katie, you guys are fantastic operators. If you would be more like them, you're going to want to sign up for the newsletter, the operator's newsletter. It is free. We hired Aaron to run it. He does it because he loves it. We have events coming up. We have sponsor stuff we're always going to be doing. Join EcomFuel. Thank you guys so much. Talk to you later. Goodbye.