Before Mike Heller created Talent Resources — a global strategic marketing firm based in New York— he was an entertainment lawyer who also briefly acted as Lindsay Lohan's manager.
With Lohan, Heller used his law degree and connections from past event planning to help the then-20-year-old actress plan a Malibu birthday bash and later score deals to be the face of brands such as Jil Stuart and Louis Vuitton.
That was 2006.
Fast forward to today and Heller is no longer tied to the actress (although his attorney father did bail her out of her most recent stint in jail) and Heller is running Talent Resources, a company that is pairing celebrities with brands and brands with events.
Heller and his team work with brands such as Dove, Sean John, Playboy, Vibe magazine, Kia and Chapstick.
But Heller tells Business Insider "It's not just about pairing brands with a celebrity anymore, it's pairing them with what lifestyle they're looking for, what demographic they are trying to hit."
For example, when Kia wanted to promote their summer car, Talent Resources rented out a house on the beach in Malibu and threw a party that celebrities such as Lauren Conrad showed up to, and then organically tweeted pictures from the event.
Tour the office space frequented by celebs >
As for how Talent Resources profits from the event, Heller explains, "On the Kia deal, it's not to get a percentage, we're there paying to buy a title sponsorship. And that could be in the six figures."
"But it wasn't about pairing with a specific celebrity," Heller says of promoting the brands he works with. "It was about pairing it with a specific integration and activation that we were working on. For Sundance, we do a big gifting suite every year and so Dove is doing a wet station, so women are going to be able to come and use the Dove product and be able to experience it. Sean John is coming back. They have the best snow jackets."
In addition to the Sundance Film Festival, Talent Resources also coordinates big events at the Super Bowl, Fashion Week, the Kentucky Derby, among others.
"For Superbowl, we took over the biggest space in the French quarter on the Mississippi River called Jack's Brewery. And then what I'm doing there is now I'm a producer like I am at Sundance," explains Heller. "I'm putting the money up front before I have any content whatsoever. And then putting a deck together and going out to different sponsors that are in my wheelhouse, in my network, saying this is an opportunity you can buy into."
One brand that bought in is Playboy.
"So Playboy comes in and they say 'I want to do a Playboy party Friday night' and we'll put that whole thing together in our space that I own for the three nights. They now can choose to use our company or not use our company to find them celebrities, to find them a performance, to do the PR, to do the social media, to do the digital."
Digital can be an aspect all its own, as Talent Resources was in charge of just the digital for this year's big Lacoste party during Coachella.
"We usually augment other things that are going on, or you can buy into our overall program," explains Heller. "So the mentality no more is looked at us an agency that's brokering a deal between a celebrity and a brand. That's the small part and that's the catalyst, but they're coming to us for expertise in consulting of what direction the brand should go in, what their budget should be allocated towards (PR, lifestyle, marketing, and celebrity), should they just attach themselves to one celebrity or should they attach themselves to a bunch of events that make sense."
"Basically we take the risk that a brand has doing its own activations and say 'listen, you don't have to take a risk anymore. We'll do everything for you.' It's a turn-key situation," explains Heller. "We have the space, we have the event PR, celebrities, celebrity hosts."
And other than small offices in Los Angeles and Brazil, the 21-person Talent Resources team does all of their wheeling and dealing from a four-story townhouse in Manhattan.
Rumor has it that celebrities like Avril Lavigne, Rachel Hunter, Lindsay Lohan, Kris Humphries and Stephen Dorff have all visited or stayed at Heller's home-turned-office space.
Talent Resources, a lifestyle marketing company matching brands and events with celebrities, was started by Mike Heller and he currently runs the company alongside his friend David Spencer.
The two are childhood friends from New York and have the photographic evidence to prove it.
The Talent Resources office is located at 36th Street and Park Avenue. The townhouse was originally Heller's home before he turned it into his office.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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