Tag Blog

Talent Soup: Atlanta Firm Offers Software to Manage Large Casting Calls

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

http://www.techviewatlanta.com/archive_026.html
Tech View Atlanta

More and more, advertisers seek real people to help them sell a variety of products, from soap to nuts. So, back in 2006, Rad Harrell began developing Talent Soup within his six and a half year old media production company, Stir, as a Web marketplace and matching engine to help ad agencies, photographers, and producers find the exact faces they want.

“Advertisers have known for 75 years that faces sell products,” says Harrell. “We sell the faces advertisers want to sell products,” Harrell says.
Harrell, president and founder of Talent Soup, spun out the company from Stir in January and it is one of three firms in the Georgia Research Alliance/Technology Association of Georgia (GRA/TAG) launch competition this year. “This contest woke me up to what a rich technology environment we have in Atlanta,” Harrell says. “I’ve already seen the fruits of the process regardless of the outcome.”

Harrell funded the company with revenue from Stir. Since creating its software matching engine to help production people match faces to their projects, Talent Soup has generated $240,000 in revenue and already has Fortune 500 clients, Harrell says.

Harrell says the company may seek an institutional round of funding in the future, but he sees “multiple ways to build the business,” adding, “You have to crawl before you can run.”

The company has one fulltime employee and seven contract people. “We may be hiring shortly,” Harrell says. “We’re looking to build a team, so management is on the radar.”

Harrell says he created the company as a separate entity because of the increasing shift toward using real people and ad budgets to support acquiring them in the industry. “There has been a shift toward using non-models in major ad campaigns. I just turned 40, I’m balding, wear glasses and I’m not pretty and I’ve been in an ad,” he says. “For me to be in an ad says a lot about the power of using regular people.”

Also, he notes, “There is a lot of media being produced in Atlanta. There are a lot of Fortune 100 to Fortune 500 companies here and they’re shooting more here.”

Talent Soup clients include marquee names such as Delta Airlines, Home Depot, UPS, and more.

Talent Soup’s searchable, city-based matching engine includes both professional models and real people. “It’s a mix of match.com and Amazon,” says Harrell. “It has all the transactional benefits of an online marketplace with a great depth and breadth of talent.”

As new media channels emerge, Harrell says, “We’re moving into a visual economy. In social networking, mobile media, video and interactive channels, there is going to be a great need for new images, new faces, and new people.”

At present the company primarily provides faces for print ads but has also helped Turner Broadcasting find talent.

Talent Soup has about 7,000 people in its system now, with something like 2,900 within 150 miles of Atlanta. “All our growth until now has been viral,” says Harrell. “We planted it here and word spread in Atlanta and from there. We’ve only done some low budget search and Facebook ads.”

Talent Soup has had mixed results with those, but “Driving talent to our community is not difficult,” Harrell says. “We treat people differently than is standard in the industry. We’re very transparent and we don’t take any money from the talent. We try to treat people the way they want to be treated.”

That results in a large selection that users love, while the talent loves the opportunity to be picked for projects, Harrell says.

One thing that helps is that the state of Georgia has done a good job of bringing in more high level film productions, Harrell notes. “More and more, producers in LA and elsewhere see Atlanta as a four season place to shoot. It has good support and good infrastructure and you can shoot here year round. If you’re doing a spring ad, you can’t do that in December in New York. So we’re seeing a lot of new business coming out of New York and LA.”

He points out that while everyone thinks the south is hot, “In August, New York is hot.”

Talent Soup typically interfaces directly with a creator, such as a photographer or producer. “When they’re assembling talent, we get a call to submit folks,” Harrell says. “We have a good deal of return customers. On the client side, we’ve grown virally as well.”

Talent Soup plans a larger ad campaign later this year and is currently building its next generation platform, which will be in beta by the end of June. “Right now we’re focused on the self-service for the talent side. Talent can sign up, fill out forms and upload images, but filling galleries for a project requires a human administrator,” Harrell says.

“The new system allows for a great deal of self-service on the clients side. That includes features that will allow marketing, ad firm execs, photographers and producers to collaborate inside online project folders to review and rank talent, do the booking and everything else within the system.”

The secret sauce of the system is to “Use the power of the technology to streamline the process and create efficiencies and cut out the middlemen,” says Harrell.

The company has lots of room to grow, he adds. “We haven’t even really touched broadcast yet and we can step out to completely different verticals. Locations and crews are ripe for this sort of thing.”