Ryan Schinman
speaker
94 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Ryan Schinman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Thanks, Dan. Thanks for having me. And yes, the $8.72 that you paid me to be here today is definitely worth it.
That's all it took to get me on the mic. At the end of the day, though, my bio is pretty simple. I started off as a sports agent. I loved it. At 19, I was... probably the youngest guy in history to be a sports agent. I did that for a little while. Then I was the CMO of the first publicly traded sports marketing company when I turned 26.
And what I realized, what I really enjoyed was working on the brand side versus working on the talent side. Working on the talent side, you're pitching talent all the time. You're kind of selling. My vision was, how do I become a buyer? And in 98, I started a company called Platinum Rye Entertainment.
And our entire vision was if corporations would buy talent, music, and celebrity and athletes, the way they bought media through one vertical, you get cost savings, cost avoidance, and value add. So what does that mean? Essentially, it's collective buying. Why does someone like Pepsi use OMD to buy media instead of hiring three smart people to buy their media?
OMD is buying on behalf of 40, 50, 60 companies. So when they're calling Condé Nast or Van Wagner Outdoor, they're calling NBC, they get cost savings, cost avoidance, and value added. And that was kind of the vision behind Platinum Rye, which I sold in 2004 to Omnicom. We sold the International 2007 to them.
Stayed a long time, started a lot of other businesses, digital marketing businesses, a nightlife business, an event marketing businesses, which have all been sold. And today I'm the CEO of Mayflower Entertainment, which is essentially Platinum Rye 4.0, where we buy hundreds of millions of dollars worth of talent, music, celebrity, and music licensing on behalf of brands.
And again, Dan, we represent the brands, the ad agencies, the corporations, not the talent.
I mean, it wasn't fun, especially because I wasn't managing Tom Brady or Rihanna. So at the end of the day, when you have third, fourth, and fifth round draft choices or a second round basketball player that you're begging to get a local car deal with or doing just a trading car deal at the time, much better being on the branding side. But look, a lot of babysitting too, Dan.
CMOs, CEOs, heads of corporate communications can even be sometimes more challenging than the talent themselves. Right.
It's a great question. I think here's the real reality. I think today with technology, with information, anybody can call and get in touch and figure out somebody's agent, someone's manager, someone PR agent, someone's lawyer. It's not that hard to get to the talent. The secret sauce is A, knowing the right talent and what they'll do and what they won't do for the budget.
Two, knowing if there's conflict. So if it's a beverage brand, Do they already have a beverage complex so you don't look like an idiot when you call and say, I'd like to have you for X, Y, and Z beverage? Knowing the price points, knowing the attributes, knowing the analytics behind it, but more importantly, it's having that leverage that I was talking about of spending and the buying power.
So if someone's going to be a half a million dollars to do something, I better be getting it for 375 or 400 grand. If someone only wants to do two posts, I better be getting four or five. Someone wants to fly private, I sure as hell hope they're going to fly commercial for me. And that doesn't mean they're best friends with me.
That doesn't mean they love me or we're really brilliant negotiators at Mayflower Entertainment. It's pure and simple. It's called leverage. And that's it. So we're CAA's biggest commercial buyer, WME's biggest commercial buyer, UTA, all the record labels, all the publishers' biggest buyers.
So not only do we have that inside knowledge of inside baseball, of really what's going on, but we have the leverage and we also know what they've gotten for other endorsement deals. So I think anybody, like I said, can get to somebody. It's another thing to know their worth, know what they'll do or not do, and negotiate a great deal on behalf of the brand.
I think it's pretty interesting because back when I started, essentially 30 years ago, You'd have to win five Grammys to be relevant. You'd have to be on a TV show that lasted 10 years on CBS. You'd have to have four or five big blockbuster movies. I think the problem now for talent is we live in a world of instant celebrity, which you would know more than I do.
Someone we've never heard of today, legitimately in 30 days could have 50 million people following them on YouTube. They become hot for the moment. So what happens with that is We have, as someone who represents brands and companies, we have so many more people to choose from. It used to be very Casablanca-esque, line up the usual suspects.
And it'd be the same 10 girls, 10 guys, 10 athletes that everyone cared about. Now, how quickly can we get on board that train that when someone has a quick hit that goes viral and all of a sudden they're number one, we can't wait six months to do a spot. We got to do something now. Both of our good friend Gary really talks about that all the time at VaynerMedia, which is, What are you doing?
We got to pounce on this idea now. We got to pounce on the moment now. How do we create a piece of content that pairs with what's going on to stay relevant? But I think, you know, it's very hard if your talent, like I said, you know, Brad Pitt's not going anywhere, but he's really not on social media. So he's great to be the face of Brioni. Right.
But is he great to be the face of a new drink that needs people to, you know, post constantly and be out there constantly? Right. But even if you look at what happened a year ago, two years ago, Lizzo was hot. And she kind of faded and then Ice Spice was hot. And she kind of faded and now Dochi's hot.
So very few people are Lady Gaga who, yes, she has ebbs and flows, but she's relevant for the past 15, 20 years. You know? But a lot of those people now, whether it's TV, film, sports, who have kind of ebb and flows, but kind of have been in that pop cultural zeitgeist, are starting their own brands. They want equity. They don't want even $5 million to be in a Super Bowl ad.
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