A TikTok influencer group is renting Bella Thorne's mansion to live in and film. Here's the exact 9-page media kit it's using to pitch brands for sponsorships of the collab house.
- Girls in the Valley, a new TikTok content house based in Los Angeles, is launching its brand at a time when in-person socializing is mostly off limits due to the coronavirus outbreak.
- The 7-person house was set up by the talent management firm Influences, which held a launch event for the creator collective in mid-March.
- For now, only some of the collective's members are living at the house. Several of its creators have decided to shelter-in-place at their families' homes.
- In the future, when all members move in, the company hopes to sell brand activations in the house's closet, bathroom, and home theater.
- See below the 9-page pitch deck that Influences prepared to sell Girls in the Valley to brands.
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The TikTok "collab house" trend has come to a halt in recent weeks as cities around the world - including creator hubs like Los Angeles - practice social distancing to help curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Previously, these houses gave influencers the opportunity to cross-promote each other's accounts and create videos with other digital stars passing through.
While existing TikTok mansions like the Hype House and Sway LA (which opened in December and January, respectively) continue to promote merchandise and create videos to meet growing demand for social-media content, new houses that planned launches in recent weeks have been stifled or delayed.
TikTok star Josh Sadowski originally intended to rent a $15,000-a-month house in Los Angeles for his 7-person creator collective beginning this month. Instead, he's currently sheltering in place at his family's home in Missouri.
"If things calm down, the idea is to have everyone who is moving into the house actually be in a two-week quarantine," he told Business Insider.
Another TikTok house has been caught in a state of limbo.
On March 12, the talent management agency Influences held a splashy launch party for its upstart TikTok collab house, "Girls in the Valley." It recruited the clothing brand Boohoo as a party sponsor and invited the musical artist Doja Cat as a guest.
A week later, California's governor issued an order for all residents of the state to "stay at home" amid the coronavirus outbreak, prompting several of the creator collective's members to move back in with their families.
Girls in the Valley is the brainchild of Ariadna Jacob, Influences' founder and CEO, and was designed to be a content house for her firm's top female talent. Jacob said she cast the seven members of Girls in the Valley by scouting the "For You" page on TikTok, a landing page that highlights popular content on the app.
"I'm older, but I also grew up and lived in social media, so I ended up being able to get the top girls that I wanted for it," Jacob said. "Everybody's just very different. They each have their own individual brand. I wanted to make the Spice Girls. All different, but all part of the same group."
The seven members of Girls in the Valley are represented in all areas of business by Jacob's firm. They're expected to pay rent each month to live in the house, but will receive an equity stake in the Girls in the Valley brand for each year that they live in the house. This means that any brand deals, merchandise, and TV spin-offs associated with the brand could yield a return for its founding TikTokkers.
"For every year that they are a part of the brand, they can earn one point of equity - one percentage of equity," Jacob said. "It's a vesting schedule, up to three years, and it caps out at three and a half percent."
Because Jacob is renting the Girls in the Valley house from one of her other clients, former Disney star Bella Thorne, she said its residents will have free rein to paint rooms in the house (a feature that may draw in brand sponsors who can have their logo displayed in rooms in the house).
"The best thing about Bella's house is literally we can do anything we want to it, from paint to anything, and typically you wouldn't be able to do that in a house that you're renting," Jacob said.
The company recently released a pitch deck explaining the house's value proposition to marketers, including offering bathroom and closet brand "takeovers."