A Day in the Life of... Anne Batz

I’m the Founder of Talent Republic, a consultancy which advises agencies and brands when they want to work with a famous name. This covers A-list talent from film, TV, fashion, music, sport and, increasingly, ‘influencers’.

Our role is to identify and secure the best possible talent for the brand and campaign, at any given moment in time. Being involved at an early stage is the ideal scenario, although we’re often approached when a deal has fallen apart at the last minute, or when a Producer is being stone-walled by agents.

 

Once we receive a brief, we start to put together a range of names. Key elements we consider are; which territories will the campaign be shown, the time the campaign will launch, what is the tone of the creative, who is the target audience, will the talent need to engage in any direct PR, does the talent need to have a big social footprint (and be prepared to use it), who is the brand and what are it’s values, and finally what is the budget for talent.

When you’re considering very famous names it can be fairly subjective as to why people like or dislike someone. Our job is to think more strategically.

It’s incredibly important to have an in-depth knowledge of talent across the board, and then be able to quickly engage in a meaningful dialogue with the agent or manager. As I had a film company prior to setting-up Talent Republic, I’ve know some theatrical agents for over 20 years, and all the key commercial agents for at least 10 years.

Once the agency and client have agreed their first choice, I start the transition from conversation to deal and negotiate all the key contractual terms. From signature of the long-form contract, we focus on the practicalities of working with the Artist – often these legal and logistical processes happen in tandem. We attend any activity the talent is directly engaged with, to ensure obligations on both sides are being met.

We continue to work between the agency and talent across the approval process and stay on-call until the artist is out of contract. If a campaign’s been successful, the client might want to extend their usage or agree more social media activity. Our involvement in a campaign can therefore easily span two years from the very first conversation. 

I definitely didn’t set-out to do this specific job, but I always had a passion for high-quality TV drama and initially thought I’d like to work in theatre stage management. As I didn’t know the world, I got a job as a Dresser at the RSC when I was 17. During my time there, so many amazing actors were in the company - Alan Rickman, Kenneth Brannagh, Gary Oldman, Jonathan Pryce.  Although it was exciting, I soon decided I wanted to follow my original passion for TV.

I worked my way up - first as a Production Secretary, Assistant, Co-ordinator, then Manager, before ending-up as a line-producer in BBC Youth & Entertainment and subsequently MTV Europe.

It was at this time that I teamed up with a Director I’d worked with at the BBC and we decided to set-up our own independent film company, Hero Films. It was a pretty huge risk, but we were extremely fortunately to quickly fall under the Renaissance Films umbrella, one of the most prolific film production companies in the UK at that time.

When Stephen Evans (who ran Renaissance) didn’t have time to oversee casting as a Producer, he would often ask me to step in.  Over two years I worked with some of the best casting directors in the country; Mary Selway, Celestia Fox, Leo Davis, Karen Lindsay-Stewart. 

As well as developing film projects for Hero, I acted as a film consultant to Frank Budgen and Chris Palmer at Gorgeous. In 2003 I raised £2.4m and produced an independent feature – One Last Chance, with first time Scottish writer/director, Steward Svaasand. The film premiered at the London Film Festival later that year and was released theatrically in the UK in 2004.  

At the end of it all I was exhausted and decided to take a sabbatical, moving to Sydney for a year. While there I got a call from someone working on a Max Factor campaign for Leo Burnett, and they were looking for an up-and-coming actress. They wanted an actress who hadn’t done anything brand-wise but who, when the campaign launched, was going to have exposure. As I was in Australia I thought of Rose Byrne.  Troy was being released around the time of the Max Factor launch, and as Rose played the love-interest of Brad Pitt, I knew she would get some heat. They immediately felt she was perfect, so I introduced them to her agent and didn’t think anymore of it.

When I eventually arrived back in London six months later, the campaign was everywhere. I realised I had been pivotal to it happening with Rose, and Talent Republic was borne of that insight.

 

If I’m in the middle of a deal I check my emails around 6.30-7am to see what’s come in from the States overnight. I’ll then quickly update the Producers I’m working with.  After that, I’ll wake my son and spend time with him before he goes to school, before heading to our office in Old Street. My assistant, Anna, and I spend a couple of hours catching up on each campaign. If we’re in the creative stage, we’ll be researching new talent, putting together presentations and sounding-out agents. If a talent has been secured we’ll be either finalizing the contract or helping sort out logistics around the shoot.

Aside from current campaigns my focus is to spend time catching-up with my network – this encompasses commercial talent agents, brand partnership teams at the major record labels and Producers or agency Heads of Film & TV. I don’t do a lot of working lunches, I prefer to use the time to read industry press and see how talent is being integrated in other brand campaigns globally.

If there’s a shoot, I’ll always go. Most of the time, I act as a liaison between the talent and the production team. There are always last minute things that come up, usually to do with behind the scenes content or PR. It’s a fine balance between ensuring the artist doesn’t feel pressured into anything they’re uncomfortable with, and making sure the agency and client achieve what they need. With every job my goal is for each party to walk away feeling they’ve been fairly treated and the overall experience has been a positive one.   

The hardest part of the job is when you believe a certain talent would be right for a campaign but the agency or the creative team don’t buy into them. There’s particular resistance to using names that are on the cusp of becoming mainstream, but the timing could be perfect if everyone had faith.

A big part of the job is managing expectations on both sides as to what’s fair and realistic.

There’s often still a naïve view that an endorsement deal is a simple transaction. Maybe the word ‘deal’ is slightly misleading, as it implies a more swift and transitory relationship. With A-list names it’s not so much a deal, but a ‘partnership’. Talent are increasingly savvy about building their own brand profile via their social media channels. It’s not always simply about waving a fat cheque around. I’m essentially pitching the campaign to the agents – we talk about the brand and it’s values, their past advertising and any other famous people who are associated with the brand, how much creative involvement the Artist will have, who the Director is, and so on. 

Negotiating social media is also becoming harder. Understandably, brands often want to capitalise on this element with names who have a big social media footprint. However, this talent may not want to use these channels for overt commercial purposes, so I mediate to find a balance.

I’m really fortunate to work with some of the biggest and best agencies in the UK; AMV, Adam&EveDDB, BBH and Lucky Generals to name but a few. With this comes great creative teams such as Anthony Nelson & Mike Sutherland, who I worked with on Currys PC World with Jeff Goldblum, and Richard Peretti & Gary Lathwell on nearly all the new BT campaigns. Richard and Gary are passionate about film, so always push as hard as they can for the best possible person, which although challenging, I admire.

A real pleasure is also to work with some brilliant Producers. Yvonne Chalkley at AMV is probably the most unflappable person I’ve ever met, and the term ‘multi-tasker’ would be an understatement. However, through it all, she maintains a great sense of equanimity, so no matter what the situation, we get through in the least stressful manner and sometimes manage to even have some fun!

Brilliant agencies, creative and producers usually result in great talent.  In the past 18 months alone we’ve had an incredible time working with; Ewan McGregor, Rebel Wilson, Ryan Reynolds, Alec Baldwin, Jeff Goldblum, Mads Mikkelsen, Ruth Jones, Ben Miller, James Blunt, Paloma Faith and Matt Berry.

Matt Berry featured in a Bells Whisky campaign as his character, Steven Toast.  It took almost six months to get to a place with Matt’s agent, where we agreed to formally move forward. So it was very satisfying when the campaign finally launched, to see how all the elements came together so well.

It’s also very gratifying to get feedback from the agents that their talent had a great time on the shoot and love the end result.  Ryan Reynolds was filming in the UK shortly after the BT campaign broke, and apparently received so many positive comments about his campaign. That was nice to hear!