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 Star Talent Negotiation: A Primer for Clients By, Ted Bird “I want a celebrity for my project, but I don’t have a lot of money for this.” How often have you heard that? Then you get a list of twelve names and a request to find out if they will do a commercial…and just a “ball park” figure on how much they would want. Oh, and of course, they need to know all of this before a meeting tomorrow. There is a better way: If you don’t have at least $250,000 or more for your celebrity, you should reconsider the creative idea. In today’s talent market, you are not going to find anyone of note who will work for less. In collaboration with your creative team, create a “short list” of no more than three names. With long lists, you may be dealing with the same commercial agent for several celebrities. [See below] Ask these questions of your creative team: • Is there any relevance between your commercial project and the celebrity? It might be all right for an athlete to do a Ben Gay commercial, but you’re not going to get a fashion model to do it. • Does the commercial require an endorsement (real or implied) of the product? • Does the celebrity bring any notoriety (good or bad) to the project? • What will the celebrity bring to the campaign beyond their celebrity? • Ask your negotiator what price range these people are in. If, at this point, your short list of names is outside your budget, make that decision now…before your negotiator starts a dialogue with the agents. And remember, the sooner you need the answers the more it will probably cost. You should be aware of some of the practical problems facing your negotiator. One of them is that there are only five large talent agencies that deal with non-sports celebrities – ICM, William Morris, Gersh, Abrams, and Kazarian Spencer. (There are more agencies, of course, but these five represent the bulk of currently popular celebrities.) Within those agencies each celebrity has a primary agent, but commercial negotiations are generally routed to a commercial specialist who handles all of the commercial requests for that agency’s celebrities. Because of this you may find that your negotiator has to negotiate with the same talent agency contact for two or more names on your list. Not a good negotiating position. The negotiating process can take what may seem like a lot of time. Remember, your negotiator has to talk with the commercial agent handling the celebrity; then the commercial agent has to talk with the celebrity’s primary agent; the primary agent has to talk with the celebrity’s business manager; and one or more of them has to talk with the celebrity – who may be in another part of the world at the moment. Since many of the talent agencies are on the west coast, the time differential for a negotiator or client on the east coast almost always adds several days to the process. So you need at least three things before commencing the project: • Relevance of the personality to your product or service. Make sure your celebrity brings some great relevant value to your project. If it’s a sports figure make sure that they can act. Many of them cannot! • Time. You must allow adequate time for the convoluted negotiating process. • Money. If you’ve seen your celebrity on television more than twice in the last two weeks, you’re probably talking about more than $500K. If both you and your children have seen the celebrity more than twice in the last two weeks, then you’re talking about even more. Good luck. Call us if we can be of help. |
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 Bird Bonette Stauderman Inc. 49 Riverside Avenue Westport, CT 06880 T 203.454.8781 F 203.454.947 BBS Europe Rua Ten. Gomes Ribeiro, 57/116 Sao Paulo, SP 04038-040 Brazil T 55.11.5083.1838 F 55.11.5083.4402 BBS Australasia Pty Ltd. 1804, 70# of Mei Lin Street Mayland Garden,Yuan Cun Si Heng Road Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province, P.R.C. 510655 T 86.13.632356168 |
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