EXCLUSIVE: Julian Jacobs rides the subway. What’s more, the UTA executive can give directions. “The other day, I casually told my wife when she was heading to an appointment, ‘Take the Queens-bound E and transfer to the uptown 6,’” he says with a laugh. “She sort of looked at me for a moment, taking it in.”
The 37-year-old’s fluency with inter-borough transportation is noteworthy because he was born and raised in Los Angeles, crossing the country just eight months ago to take his current post as head of the company’s burgeoning New York operation. He oversees about 400 employees in departments including the traditional pillars of film and TV but also TV news, theater, digital, book publishing, advertising, sports and music. When the changing of the guard was announced last January (with Allen Haldeman returning to LA), Jacobs remained Co-Head of UTA Marketing and took the additional title of Partner and Head of New York.
A visit with Jacobs in the tony-but-warm UTA offices across Seventh Avenue from Carnegie Hall does not conjure images of the icy-veined strivers of agency lore. He smiles easily and makes steady eye contact, only looking away to consult notes or reflect in silence for a moment of thought. (Who even reflects anymore??)
Watch on Deadline
While many aspects of New York life are new to Jacobs, the inherently polyglot nature of the office is not. Representing corporate brands over the years, with its requisite inter-departmental work, “has allowed me to become a little bit of an expert in UTA and a little bit of a student of UTA and tap into, really, the heart, the spirit, and the expertise that we have here,” he said. Despite having had only fleeting exposure to Broadway shows or credible slices of pizza in his life, Jacobs has aimed to fully commit to the experience.
Jacobs says his upbringing helped shape his career approach. His father, a native of Cape Town, South Africa, came to the U.S. in 1979 around the time he moved with Jacobs’ Detroit-raised mother to L.A. While Jacobs felt immersed in the industry by osmosis, choosing USC for college after sparking to show business, his parents were unaffiliated. His father ran a printing business, which eventually started to encounter the challenges of the digital age as Jacobs was weighing professional options. A series of cold calls and hustle as an intern landed him a spot in the UTA mailroom.
An hour-long conversation with Jacobs covered a range of topics, including the evolution of New York since UTA set up shop there in 2011; shepherding TV news talent in an election year; the state of MediaLink after the rancorous exit of founder Michael Kassan; and more. The interview has been condensed for clarity and length.
DEADLINE: I guess the natural place to start is, how is the new gig going?
JULIAN JACOBS: Honestly, it’s unbelievable. It really is. I’m having an incredible time, and it’s also an incredible time for UTA in New York, and so, it’s been unbelievable to be here during this moment. Just to take a step back and give you a little bit of my background, I was born and raised in Los Angeles. Always grew up around the entertainment industry, being an Angeleno, but my parents were not in the business, and so after college, I had a series of internships in and around entertainment. I came to the company thinking I wanted to be a motion picture lit agent. I had an internship at a different place that sort of made me think that that’s really what I wanted to do. So, I came to UTA to join the mailroom and do that, and at the time, we were about 350 people. The office was above Nike Town on Wilshire Boulevard.
DEADLINE: What came after the mailroom?
JACOBS: The motion picture lit department. Absolutely loved it. Found my way after a year and a half working for one of the agencies’ founders, Jeremy Zimmer, during a time in which he had taken on the CEO role, during a time in which the agency was really starting to rapidly evolve beyond just the core talent representation business. It was also a time when I started to realize that I loved movies, but I didn’t love the medium as much as I saw my colleagues loved the medium and who were good at it, but I love the business, and I love the platform of UTA.
And I became a student of Jeremy Zimmer, and saw how he agented and really how he used UTA, and so, I took a bit of a left turn in my career and built what became the entertainment marketing practice at the agency, which, today, is the group that represents brands in the entertainment and culture marketing space, and I had been doing that work in Los Angeles, where I’m from, and up until March of this year, I’ve been located, most of my life, and you know, we’ve grown that business significantly to become what it is today.
DEADLINE: I imagine you were out here a lot given your marketing work?
JACOBS: Working in my business, a lot of what we’re doing is making those connections on behalf of the brands with creative partners, who are largely in LA. As the business here has started to build up, I found myself working more closely with colleagues here, too.
So, when this opportunity sort of presented itself last year, I jumped to it, because I was also witness to what was happening in New York for UTA. The combination of my own business and the Entertainment Marketing Group at the agency and the work that I was doing there, and having more and more clients based here, and New York started to be more of the center of gravity for me in a lot of ways, I also was watching what was happening with this office, which today is almost 400 executives and agents.
We have the top publishing business, theatre business, news business. A huge part of our brand business is based here. A big part of our music business is based here. There has been such a cross-pollination of clients and talent that we represent across the agency that are intermixing with New York businesses that it was exciting. I was really excited to kind of have a new chapter and meet and build relationships with a set of new people, and you know, out of this office, within those divisions that I referenced, are some of the most talented agents in those fields. I was watching how the New York office had become so much of a cultural epicenter for the company, for our clients, and for the work that I was doing.
DEADLINE: Have you mostly been adjusting and acclimating to New York or have you had time to think about longer-term strategic plans?
JACOBS: I came up inside of the organization, I’ve been at the company for a long time, and in my job, working with brands, a big part of how I do and what I do is using the agency and working with colleagues across departments in the film group and working with colleagues in the talent department and working with colleagues in all these different spaces that we have.
So, a big part of what I’m trying to do here in New York and what leadership is trying to do more of here, also, in this office, is provide that education of how to use the company to newer colleagues and to colleagues who are based here. You know, of the 400-ish people that we have working in the Greater New York Area, a lot of them have come in through acquisitions. Even in the last year and a half alone, we’ve had three. So, you know, helping bring my expertise of UTA into the office and arming other colleagues with that knowledge. Being a resource to unlock the rest of the global ecosystem that we have at the company is something I’m very much focused on and something that I’m going to continue to do, not just myself, but along with other colleagues and partners of the organization. Because the New York office is no longer just a satellite office for UTA.
DEADLINE: Can you expand on that a bit, about the fit with L.A.?
JACOBS: When the talent agencies were just talent agencies, New York was a satellite shop to house the theatre department, and to help actors who wanted to be in theater get those jobs. As the talent agencies have become entertainment platforms and media businesses, New York has become equally important to the overall platform as L.A. and even the offices and the expansion that we also have going on in Europe. And so, making people in this office, colleagues around the world and our clients know of the size, the scale of the operation that we have in the city, the resources that we can provide to them in the city, and the way in which we, as an agency, want to help represent those people, but also show up in the city on our own is also a big-picture big focus for me and for the company.
I mean, every week in New York there’s live entertainment. You’ve got comedy. I mean, we represent, like, half the cast of SNL. Our clients are out in the city activating, and we’re helping them do that, and so, it’s important to get that message out there that New York is also an equal part of the heart of the entertainment business, the live business, the business of the talent agency.
DEADLINE: Sounds like a lot to keep track of.
JACOBS: Absolutely. Just in the last couple of weeks, we had the Broadway opening of Cole Escola’s Oh, Mary! We had sold-out concerts and performances at Madison Square Garden for [podcast] Kill Tony. We have clients like Timbaland, Busta Rhymes performing. I have Rashida Jones here. We have Sheng Wang coming. We have Sebastian Maniscalco for five sold-out nights at MSG. We have St. Vincent performing at Brooklyn Mirage; Seth Meyers at the Beacon Theatre; Cynthia Erivo at Lincoln Center. There’s so much going on here. It’s crazy, and also, when you think about sort of the cultural moments that matter within the entertainment and culture business that we’re in today, Fashion Week, Climate Week, Ad Week, and so much more are things that are happening here and where we as an agency are showing up.
DEADLINE: The worlds of entertainment and brands are also continuing to come together. Chick Fil-A even has its own streaming service.
JACOBS: Brands have always been a part of telling stories on the big screen. Some have been a bit more obvious than others, where they are brands made up of a house of IP. Mattel, Lego, these kinds of organizations. Brands over the last two years who have raised their hands with the ambition to co-create with established filmmakers and producers and go try to sell those stories to the big streamers or find distribution for those brand-backed stories is a hot topic. Seeing Chick Fil-A do what they did is exciting. I think a lot of people have questions about it.
DEADLINE: It’s a commitment, at least.
JACOBS: It’s a commitment, and you know, in a time when the streaming ecosystem in Hollywood is still reeling from the strike and the chaos going on right now, it’s another partner for creatives to tell stories with, and it’s another financier of content and a distributor of those stories. So, you know, in the midst of chaos and the tightening, I think that we’re seeing more streamers be open to co-creating with brands than ever before because of the budgets and because if the brand can come in and help.
DEADLINE: We are in an election year, and you represent a large swath of the TV news business after acquiring N.S. Bienstock in 2014. How do you approach guiding clients in this space, given factors like social media? And how do you collaborate with UTA Vice Chairman Jay Sures, who has spearheaded a lot of this push into news and politics?
JACOBS: First of all, Jay’s amazing and spent a significant amount of time in New York as well. Ryan Hayden and Marc Paskin, who are new co-heads of the News & Broadcast business, are incredible. But to answer your question a little bit more directly, it’s definitely not just making those contracts with CNN and walking away and picking up the phone three years later to renegotiate. I think the role of the agent in news has become much more closely akin to being a thought partner, almost so much so to the role of almost a manager, and we sort of blended that universe. The intensity of the work has required us to find ways to make sure that our clients feel supported and to be a resource, and I think that that doesn’t just come with phone calls and therapy sessions, but also, you know, really helping them think about the decisions they’re going to make and even the pockets to sometimes explore. I will also say that, outside of some of the big names on CNN or 60 Minutes that we’re known for as an agency, we’re also doing some incredible things on the front lines of where maybe some next generation news voices are coming from. Social media has completely changed the way that the next generation of consumers consume news, and so, you know, we today represent many of these incredible pocket journalists or individual creators who have become news broadcasters themselves on platforms. We help them navigate partnerships with brands, where to go in their career post-social, live appearances, tours, you know, these are things that the role of an agent in news has rapidly evolved and changed.
DEADLINE: We obviously can’t overlook theater when we talk about New York. UTA had a strong Tony season and you just promoted Patrick Herold and Rachel Viola co-head the department.
JACOBS: For an L.A. guy who didn’t spend a lot of time in the theater, I’ve been so excited about what’s going on in that space for us. So many of our biggest talent clients, actors care about the performing arts and come out here. The more traditional talent in film and television have a passion for theater, and many of them grew up in the theater and have great ideas for shows, and so, having the ability to cross-pollinate traditional talent into the world of theatre and then vice-versa. If we look at an example like Oh, Mary! and Cole. With what he has coming from the more traditional side of the business as a result of the success that he’s had in theater, I’ve been reminded of how theatre sort of sits at this unique crossroads at the merging of the traditional and the performing arts.
DEADLINE: Wicked should be another example of that this November.
JACOBS: We have Cynthia Erivo in that, and our client Jon Chu is directing it. I’m continuing to be reminded that Broadway is an epicenter of not just talent and cross-pollination, but also of great ideas for the big screen.
DEADLINE: As a privately held company, you don’t report financials, but what would you say the percentage of revenue is for UTA beyond the traditional representation business?
JACOBS: Talent representation is what people think of when they think of UTA, but what we are trying to also remind people of today is that we are so much more than just a talent representation firm. What’s been exciting about the New York office is it’s really become, I think, the hallmark for the example of that. The biggest portion of people that work with brands at the company are based in New York. I think we have almost 100 executives working out of the New York area who are working with brands.
DEADLINE: The economics of that business are quite a bit different than representation.
JACOBS: When you think about the entertainment marketing team, we have our advisory businesses, and those businesses are fee-based businesses. Entertainment marketing, MediaLink, and we have a few others, but then, when you also marry those with our businesses that sell talent to brands, we have a distinct practice that does that in our music business. Toni Wallace, who runs that practice, is based here in New York, and she’s representing the biggest musicians in the world in their partnerships with brands. I mean, she’s from Bad Bunny to Karol G to Guns N’ Roses, you know, some of the biggest music artists in the world that we represent and in their partnerships with brands. Then we have our more traditional celebrity endorsements department, which is based in Los Angeles, but we have a team member in this office.
So, the combination of our advisory business, combined with our talent, brand partnerships business, which is music, celebrity endorsements, creators. We have a huge presence in that business based in New York. Of the nearly 400 people that work out of the New York office, I think almost 100 of those people are in the partnerships brand representation business. And let’s not forget our publishing business, right? I mean, that’s not the traditional talent agency business. Now, there’s a piece of it that is in service of our actors and helping them publish books, but what we’ve built in publishing is a standalone, world-class publishing agency that is global. Sam Kirby in music, right, I mean, look, she’s in the music talent representation business, but we didn’t have a music representation business when this company first started and when we had an office, when we first opened an office in New York, and now UTA is one of the hottest music agencies in the world.
DEADLINE: You mentioned MediaLink. UTA had a messy parting with Michael Kassan, who founded it and came to run it when you acquired it in 2021. Have the lawsuits you have filed against each other slowed the momentum, created any second thoughts about the acquisition, about the potential? What’s the state of MediaLink as we sit here today?
JACOBS: Here’s what I can say. MediaLink remains a key part of the agency’s platform and a key part of the agency’s business, and I and others across the company have always worked very closely with the team at MediaLink, and continue to work very closely with the team at MediaLink. We have seen no disruption, and the business is doing incredibly well, and I couldn’t be more proud of Chris and Donna and Andrea and Marc and what’s going on at MediaLink. It’s really unbelievable. We are just as committed to the vision of why we acquired MediaLink then as we are today and supporting the great people there.
DEADLINE: You have mentioned some of the M&A deals that UTA has done. Do you feel that more will be necessary in order for you to compete with WME and CAA? Will you need to raise more money? What do you think the choices are going to be on the strategic front?
JACOBS: Trying to think about my answer here. UTA, as an organization, has always been very vocal about its focus on artist representation. I think that has been a fantastic business, and when, as you said earlier, you looked at Endeavor and the challenges that they’ve had, a lot of those challenges have been mixed up in other businesses outside of artist representation. When you look at where they are and trying to now get out of those things again, you know, we’ve made certain choices to focus on the things that we think matter, that are more specifically tied to the full-service platform that we’re trying to build for artists and brands.
The post UTA’s NY Head Julian Jacobs Reflects On His Rise From Mailroom And How “Cross-Pollination” Makes East Coast “No Longer Just A Satellite Office” appeared first on Deadline.
