Interview with

BACK TO CONTENTS interview with Mylen Yamamoto Tansingco

Mylen launched talent management company Clique-Now a decade ago on her foresight that digital and diverse talent is the future of the entertainment industry.

Back in 2009, traditional talent managers were not only turning a blind eye to digital and social media creators, but mainstream media were only scratching the surface of highlighting Asian and diverse talent. Mylen, at the time a University professor, identified a gap in the market and as her relationships with YouTubers began to grow so too did her burgeoning career.

Her company, Clique-Now, has arranged hundreds of brand deals and live events connecting the digital talent pool with brands and agencies. Clients include Google, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Toyota.

Among the talent she reps is Steven Lim: Creator of Buzzfeed’s Worth It series which has generated 740 million views; the Fung Bros, who have over 2.17 million YouTube subscribers; and Jason Y. Lee, whose series Middle Ground, Spectrum and Odd Man Out have garnered a combined one billion views.

MAKERS

What were you teaching a decade ago at University?

MYLEN YAMAMOTO TANSINGCO Comms and entrepreneurship, and all set to achieve my lifelong goal of being a PhD.

How did you make the leap from teaching to YouTube talent?

In 2009 seeing information being disseminated on YouTube was a relatively new concept. I was a huge fan of these digital creators and invited some to speak to my class. We remained friends and they began asking me for help with their careers. One of them, Kevin Wu, aka Kevjumba, wanted me to help him make a movie, Hang Loose, in Hawaii. I did so and it was the catalyst to leapfrog my career.

Who was your most successful early collaboration?

With musician David Choi. Back in 2013 a million YouTube subs was huge. I wanted him to do a concert in Hawaii and cold called The Face Shop, a Korean skin care company. This was before anyone knew what influencer marketing was. They gave us USD20,000 and with that we organised a sell-out concert, a music video, and a meet & greet. David is still huge, that video is still online and The Face Shop are still getting brand publicity.

A quarter of Gen Z in the USA aspire to be social media influencers as a career –does that surprise you?

Not any more. I still teach and I ask my Gen Z students how many are interested in being a digital content creator. At least a third raise their hands. For many of them, it’s what they grew up with. For me it was Nickelodeon, Disney, Selena Gomez. For Gen Z, it’s celebrities on YouTube and TikTok.

Why do social influencers need a manager?

So they can see the full landscape of the industry. We can match different categories – fashion, tech, photography – with demographics or location that a brand’s audience are targeting. That dictates a lot of rates. Just because you have 10,000-20,000 followers doesn’t mean you can’t get a USD20,000 brand deal. Some influencers are more brand friendly than others and could easily get USD50,000 for a single post.

Most content creators average USD50,000 in a year, though, right?

Yes, that sounds about right.

Would you encourage creators to seek renumeration in NFTs or cryptocurrency?

We are definitely observing rather than participating at this stage. There are some really lucrative NFT and Web3 deals being offered but many creators are reluctant to take a risk while this technology is still formulating. That said, some of our creators are part of the metaverse programme run by Meta. It’s in beta and a chance for this group to learn about the metaverse.

Is Clique-Now solely focused on the US market?

No, we have creators based in Canada, Singapore and the UK (The Jolly Guy) among other places. But we want to work with talent that is interested in bridging into the US market. That’s where a lot of our networks are. We do work with European ad agencies and they want to reach out to US based content creators, so it works both ways.

How have the opportunities for Asian and diverse talent changed?

In many ways. First, there are more opportunities for diverse creators to use their platform as a gateway into Hollywood. We help our talent partner with the main Hollywood agencies whereas 10 years ago they weren’t interested in digital creators.

Second, it’s a lot more lucrative now. One of our first brand deals for which we did a music video publicised in the Wall Street Journal was paid in gift cards. To do the same today we would try to negotiate a six figure deal. There’s also more proportionality in how brands divvy up their dollars. Whereas white creators had a bigger portion of the budget, we’re starting to see that more evenly distributed.

What do you feel about Vtubers in which creators live stream as animated characters?

We’re trying to wrap our heads around it. Every creator has their unique artistic style to be out in the world and if it’s authentic and connects with people then more power to them.