Hollywood, Los Angeles a place where actors in movies blow up and made others wonder how they too some day could become a star. Today younger individuals are headed to L.A to become one of the next social media stars. In the early days of social media, influencers would either manage themselves or had somebody qualified to steer them in the right direction. Encountering an experienced high result organization was far from many. In this era, influencers are starting to become looked as a traditional star with the same representation by their team. A variety of other large talent agencies, like WME and ICM, use agents to only represent their influencers. Moreover, there are other companies providing magnificent results simply focused on completely backing their influencers and creators. XO Promotions is one of the largest in this space and they are on track to be doing so much more.
Officially launched in February 2020, XO Promotions already represents more than 80 top creators. Some of these examples are including: Savanna Rey, Alex and Kelz, Ana Nello, Kelly Kay, and Youtuber @Physics with 2 million subscribers. An agency ran by fellow creator, Leonardo McManus, who also shows a tremendous following on Youtube, Tiktok, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms. Leo McManus for short, is XO’s President who plays in the roll of content creation and widely took credit for producing a very successful Youtube channel for VitalyzdTV. The channel was driven to 10 million subscribers with a social media following of 15 million and more than 1 billion views using the same strategy incremented in XO.
At XO Promotions they have creators be a part of their management team, this main reason is why it separates them from many other agencies. Other important founders also include Lance Kachi, who is the co-founder of the whole business development side. Kachi has an extensive experience in business which makes him the perfect partner for the company. Their management team is rounded out with some of the talented executives in the social media game. The executive team of creators, combined with their industry executives, is the reason for XO Promotions grand success.
One of their first projects ever worked on, was putting together the XO LA House; a mansion located in Los Angeles. This Hollywood Hills home was used as the company’s content house for many of the largest social media creators shooting there. Examples of those being: Faze Clan, Faze Banks, Alissa Violet, Justin Bieber, French Montana and many more! Leo McManus said, “There are all these social media creators who have gained a lot of exposure in the last 12 months but they don’t have the direction when it comes to how to monetize, either merch or tours. Then there are music and TV opportunities as well.” XO Promotions launched their Instagram page @xo.promotions in January this year and has already gained over 1 million genuine followers, which is a big reason why advertisers are dying to work with them!
However it didn’t start out this way, only with dedication and persistence the dream came to life. Leo McManus had also stated, “It takes a long time with these big brands to go from CEO setting the budget, down to the person making the decisions accountable.” One reason a lot of brands stay hesitant to invest in social media marketing over traditional marketing like TV commercials, billboards, and celebrity endorsements is because companies are still catching up to the new movement with marketing and realizing the old fashioned way to put viral content isn’t the same as it was. Brand partnerships can always be lucrative for creators. Some of the most followed creators are earning $20,000 per post, but they don’t just take every deal that comes by. Lance Kachi says, “Social media influencers are extremely savvy. They know exactly what will resonate with the audience so they almost guarantee a certain level of engagement. They’ll process information so quickly, makes it insane. With volume and of course the right system, there is a way to make serious money on the Instagram platform. The goal is to take these large followings they already have on social media and spread it to other verticals. Currently, we have eight revenue streams that we are working on now, ad revenue, merch, tours, Only Fans and much more.” XO Promotions is constantly adapting to the ever-changing social media industry.