Celebrity Manager and Strategist

Since this is a new role, I’d like to start with a disclaimer: We have mapped out what we need down below. But leave some wiggle room because the role will likely evolve over a very short period of time. On the plus side, you’ll be the first person in this role, so you’ll get a chance to kind of shape it up so it’s most effective. We would be looking to you and your infinitely vast expertise to help us there.

Also, we are totally open to starting this role out in a contract position. It could even remain a contract position for the long-term with someone assigned to you to handle leg-work. We’re really pretty flexible with what this role winds up looking like.

Let’s Start with a Backstory (who doesn’t love a good story?)

One of our long-term clients approached us a few months ago about arranging a celebrity partnership for them. They wanted a wholesome mom celeb to create a few posts around their back-to-school push. We were already running a back-to-school push for them (like we do every year) but this year, they wanted the celebrity to essentially be the hero of the post.

We began outreach in our normal way (because we’ve worked with lots of seriously large mega influencers in the past) and we know the ropes of working with agents and setting up very large collaborations. But, we were hit with a few things that were outside of our comfort zone.

• Unlike the agents of mega influencers, celeb agents would not provide us with pricing. They requested that we come to them with pricing.
• Many agents sent over their rosters, and what was super odd… was we had some of the same celebs being presented to us by agents who worked in completely separate agencies…
• AND, to really add a nice additional level of frustration, the prices that these different agents sent over for the same celebrity influencer varied wildly. Some would say that a single post would cost $300k. While others were telling us they could get multiple posts for that same rate. (Who actually reps these celebrities? Do they have multiple agents? Do these agents just reach out to the real agent and then bake in a hefty $100k fee on top… wtf is going on?)
• It didn’t sound like the agents were actually communicating our asks to the celebrities either. Some of the campaigns we proposed involved more than just one post. Before selling any celeb to our client, we want to make sure that they’re actually ok with doing our proposed collab, right?

This particular client got busy with something else and didn’t bring this up again. We were happy that they let this drop because we were a tiny bit unclear on how to make this happen in a flawless way for them.

What This Backstory Taught Us About Celeb Influencers

1. Celebrities aren’t mega influencers… Mega influencers basically play by the rules that normal influencers do (albeit while being a decent bit more high-maintenance). Celebrities are sort of off in their own playing field. Actually, scratch that – we’re not sure if it’s even a field. Or a sphere. Or a dimension or multiverse or whatever.
2. To play with celebrities, you need to name your price.
3. But… celebrity pricing is not based at all on their social media follower count. Or their actual deliverables. And that’s another thing, agents don’t want to promise any deliverables.
4. It’s anyone’s guess who actually reps these celebs. You might be paying 10 different finder’s fees on top of their cost.
5. It would be super beneficial to have real relationships with these agents before working with them for the first time.
6. The strategies behind negotiating (and determining what a fair price is) will most likely be different from our normal process.

What This Backstory Taught Us About Presenting These Celeb Influencers to Clients

1. The way that we price this out will need to be different from our normal pricing structure.
2. We will need to most likely find the influencers first… and finalize what their involvement would look like with the brand, before presenting anything to the client. (This is different from our current structure of finding the influencers after sign-off.)
3. We might be dealing with different departments within the organization… which might require our pitch structure and style to change.
4. KPIs would also be different.

If You Know All About the Above, We Will Probably Love You…

The above realizations came about after a couple of forays into the world of celebs. (My backstory was simplified a bit for the purpose of this post. There have been others…) We have a lot of interest from many of our current clients, and this is an offering that we want to start presenting regularly during our proposals.

We need you to be our go-to person to help us navigate this wild west of celebrity partnerships. Think the Andy to Miranda Priestly (except we defiantly are not Devilish) or the Pennyworth to Batman. Basically, you get us through the chaos and end with the win!

🧠 First and foremost, you’ll be using your industry knowledge and know-how to evolve this role over time.

🕵🏽‍♀️ You will be the go-to person for all things related to celebrity-level influencers. So basically, liaising (not schmoozing… or schmoozing if you want to do that too) with all of the other teams when stuff comes up.

🚨 You’ll be heavily involved with the strategy team. Whenever the right client comes along for a celeb option, you will be formulating your ideas into a formal proposal.

🏆 And the ideas need to be award-winning. Not just Kimkay holding up a box of diet tea.

🌏 You’ll need to have a large network of agency contacts for schmoozing (not liaising) so that you’re able to source just about anyone.

💰 You should be totally comfy with handling negotiations.

👨🏻‍⚖️ You should be well versed enough in handling contracts to be able to work with our lawyer when dealing with redlines.

💨 And then, once things are all-systems-go… you’ll be the one seeing the campaign through to its perfect and error-free completion. No pressure.

Here is a fun visual breakdown of the qualities and characteristics (related to this role) that we find important when hiring. (There are more qualities listed below that we feel are more global… these are specific to the Celeb Manager and Strategy role.)

• We provide the usual benefits: 👩🏽‍⚕️ Medical, 🦷 Dental, and 👁 Vision. (The medical insurance is through Aetna, which is really pretty good.)
• We just started doing 401K’s (with a pretty sweet match, too)! Yay!
• We are all remote now, thanks to COVID-19… so that might be a perk if you hate commuting.
• If we ever decide to have an office again, you can be darn sure it’ll be super cool-looking and dog-friendly! 🐶
• We’re a small company without the typical corporate hoops… People who perform well end up advancing quickly.

• We’re a team of 50.
• We’re growing.
• We’re about as scattered as a team can be… East Coast, West Coast, the middle of the country… a bunch of us are in Canada, 1 in England, 1 in India, 1 in Ukraine, 1 in Russia… we like to keep our options open in terms of company retreat locations.
• About half of us are really funny.
• We’re currently working with some pretty amazing brands: Famous Footwear, Zenni Optical, KISS, Lenox, a big chain of malls (I don’t think I’m allowed to say who), a big toilet brand (again… I don’t think I’m allowed to say who, but you probably sit on this brand every morning), Honest Co., Hershey, Yelp… just to name a few.

We’re a pretty down-to-earth bunch, so if you’re interested in applying, in lieu of an elaborate cover letter, you can email me at lauren@theshelf.com, and include bullet points with the info requested in the next section…

• The job you are applying for.
• A link to your Linkedin profile.
• What job site sent you our way.
• Your location.
• Your phone number.
• A quick summary of your experience working with celebrities and why you feel like you’d be good for this role (keeping in mind all of our above points).
• Please let me know what sort of salary structure you have in mind.

Tips on how to get your application noticed (assuming that’s what you’re shooting for):

• Applications that are submitted using a job site (instead of being emailed to the above email address) will not be considered.
• Please don’t have typos.
• It would be great if you could try to sound cool. We write in a colloquial, one-with-the-people-while-still-being-basically-grammatically-correct style. Definitely not a requirement, but it is more fun.

Generally speaking, a lot of you will probably find this job post in line with your skill set, and I bet a lot of you probably have the skills necessary to perform the requirements of this role. But… the characteristics that define what it’s like to actually work with you are also very important to us. Think of these requirements more in terms of culture-fit requirements:

🕺 Our company has a very fast-paced environment. It might feel disorganized from time to time because we’re also a small company. We need each employee to be the type of person who can go with the flow. Who can adjust quickly. Who is able to embrace chaos with open arms when it decides to waltz through the door.

🏎 Due to the aforementioned fast-paced environment, you should be the type of person who is able to execute quickly… within time constraints. WHILE still maintaining quality. We don’t ask for the impossible. But what we don’t want to see are projects that are slapped together and riddled with issues when we’re in a time crunch. Instead, we’d like to see people make adjustments and figure out how to make it work. We’re looking for resourceful people who approach projects with that there’s-more-than-one-way-to-skin-a-cat attitude.

📈 I’ve never interviewed anyone who has said that they have bad work ethic… but there’s a big difference between people who show up and do what gets assigned to them, and those who take initiative… Those people who take pride in their projects and who go above and beyond because they have that drive for personal achievement and growth. We don’t want to micro-manage. We want to work with self-motivated people who are neurotic about quality.

✅ People who don’t proofread drive me nuts!

👿 While I feel like I shouldn’t have to mention this, we’ve worked with people in the past who ran around like a bunch of crazed loose cannons… yelling at coworkers, constantly complaining, deploying the cold-shoulder on a regular basis… passive aggressive. So if you’re not a nice person… that won’t really work for us. We really need everyone to exude positivity.

👂 You need to be receptive to feedback. This is a quality that we find candidates have trouble self-assessing. But try hard, because we give feedback when needed. We’re too small of a company to just let people do whatever they want to do. (Side-note… no one loves feedback. That’s fine. I don’t either really. But will you take it nicely? Will you incorporate it? Are you going to be passive aggressive while doing it? Have you ever been told not to “cut off your nose to spite your face”? These are questions you should ask yourself).

😺 Influencer marketing is constantly changing, so we’re looking for people who are curious and eager to learn. Let’s say, for example, a client mentions in passing how they’re doing whitelisting on Instagram (and we’ll assume you don’t know what that means). Are you going to just nod your head and say you understand it when you don’t? Or, are you going to jot down a note, do some research, and become a whitelisting expert for the next client conversation? Because we need the latter.

👩🏽‍💻 If you’re working remotely, you need to actually be working. No one likes a freeloader.

👆🏾 Are you ambitious? It’s not a requirement, but if you are… there’s lots of room for career growth. Plus, we like to hire our managers from within the team, so there is a very clear path to the next level (if that’s of interest to you).

Here at The Shelf, we truly believe it’s our differences that have allowed us to come together and form such a cohesive and all-encompassing whole. Our mission as a company is to help our clients stand out amongst the crowd… to be different and impactful. And since we’re a team made up of diverse people with all different backgrounds and experiences, we’re able to do this naturally. 🙋🏽‍♂️🙋🙋🏾‍♀️🙋🏼‍♂️🙋🏼‍♀️🙋🏾‍♂️🙋🏽‍♀️🙋🏾

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, status as a veteran, and basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class.

I could honestly go on and on (because I’m long-winded, in case you couldn’t tell that by now), but I’m going to stop here. The point is, you gotta have the chops AND play well with others. And if you’re giddy already, feeling like this job description is just so dead-on-b*lls accurate for you, perfect! We can’t wait to hear from you.

If you’re lacking a skill or two but still feel pumped, feel free to mention it in your cover letter. We’re a small company who’s big into personal growth and supporting up-and-coming go-getters!

It’s also worth noting right here that we have our hands full running campaigns, guys. So, we will only contact those candidates who are most likely to be a good fit for the role. We’ll respond quickly when that’s the case. But if you don’t hear from us, please don’t feel slighted. Rally on – there’s a role out there that’s probably a better fit for your awesome skillset.

Oh, and one last thing… Please add the word Toggle to your subject line when applying so that I know you read this entire post.