Uta CEO David Kramer over the urge to diversification of the desk

David Kramer has taken the reins of United Talent Agency in a loaded time of consolidation and contraction for Hollywood’s core activities of film and TV.

It is no coincidence that the first major public event of the office after his promotion to Chief Executive this month was the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. The presence of the agency at the event via the Medialink Advertising Consulting Arm is considerable and it shows lively how UTA is diversified in surf, marketing, consulting and the maker -economy.

Kramer should know. He joined what a young boutique literary agency was in 1992, directly from the Peter Stark production program of USC. In a ‘strict business live’ interview by Cannes Lions, Kramer pointed to the Scrappy Startup roots of the desk as a guide for the growth of the company in areas outside TV and film.

“We had to be in the discovery company, we had to be in the development company, we had to be with each other in the cooperation industry to compete with other agencies,” Kramer said. “The great thing is that discovery, that development, that collaboration, which is a customer -oriented approach to the DNA of all the different areas that we have built ourselves or the companies we have acquired, and make sure that philosophy has been moved to this day, as we or we have moved to music, comedy, touring, sport.”

The compelling goal with acquisitions or expansion initiatives is to create more business opportunities for the core customers of UTA who work in creative industry.

“The playground has been expanded in so many different ways. With that, our people who work at Uta can be challenged in a different way, are ready for these crazy shifts that we have seen in our company,” Kramer said. “What is even more important, it suggests our customers, who are more ambitious and more enthusiastic about trying different things than ever before, to work with a group of agents who are also enthusiastic about all those opportunities and ambitions.”

One of the biggest changes that have come during the tumultuous past five years was the end of packaging income – historically a huge source of income for major talent agencies. But that decades of old business paradigm was crushed in 2020 by a successful reform campaign by the Writers Guild of America, and claimed that the entire system was full of conflicts of interest. Kramer acknowledges that the sunset of possibilities for packaging costs has been an adjustment, which is another reason why the agency had a diversification push.

“The end of the package came at an interesting moment when the value of the package also started to reduce,” said Kramer. “The diversification of our company began to isolate us from a part of the income made from the package. You have also seen many actors who would never venture to television. Those walls have come down. And you have seen film stars go into television stars in films. That has created many financial opportunities for them and for the Diverschap, speaking, that in combination, Super additive.

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(Shown Top: David Kramer greets the crowd on 17 June at the Medialink party in the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Antibes during Lions Cannes)