What is one celebrity business venture that you think you could use your entrepreneurial chops to improve? Explain how you would improve it.
The following answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.
1. At First Sight
Chris Harrison’s video dating app, At First Sight, is an interesting idea but has not been marketed properly. No one has heard of it, and it’s evident in the user base on the site. I would focus on using Chris to generate PR and set up marketing campaigns.
– Josh Weiss, Bluegala
2. Skinnygirl
Skinnygirl would would seem offensive to me if I were not a thin woman. I imagine seeing these bottles in the grocery store and there being some hesitation to put them in the cart. Why limit yourself to a limited market when nearly half the population is overweight? You already cut the market in half when you called it Skinnygirl. Why not Skinnyguy, or even better, Fatguy?
– Jason Kulpa, Underground Elephant
3. Any Celebrity-Directed Indie Film
I recently had the chance to work with a celebrity on the release of an indie film. We helped get the movie to the first page of iTunes in the first week of its release and organized a nationwide campaign that put fans to work to get the film into theaters. Essentially, any celebrity thinking about producing a work of art — such as a movie — should immediately work on involving his community and fan base from the outset. Kickstarter has its fair share of celeb success stories, and it’s one platform we didn’t take advantage of during our release because the movie was already made. Involving a celeb’s community at the beginning makes things much bigger (and more profitable) in the end.
– Brett Farmiloe, Digital Marketing Company
4. Typo
Ryan Seacrest recently got into the tech biz with the launch of Typo, a company that sells a keyboard case for iPhones. His company could use an improved social media presence, and the website design could be improved also.
– Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
5. The Bachelor/Bachelorette
The Bachelor and The Bachelorette have millions and millions of retweets and likes on every post. If they posted thousands of updates and pictures, they’d get a lot more engagement online. They’d also rank for a million more terms. This would mean more people are paying attention to them online. Anything they share is gold; they just need better ways to show their gold and take advantage monetarily of the millions of people wanting to share their information.
– John Rampton, Adogy
6. Celebrity Fragrances
When celebrities launch fragrances, they use a variety of promotional channels including social media and sampling. I could help determine who loves a given celebrity and who wears fragrance so those consumers can be smart-targeted. Improving the targeting of celebrity fragrance launches is a win for the brand as well as the fan.
– Doreen Bloch, Poshly Inc.
7. Revolt TV
Revolt TV is a new music cable network from Sean Combs (a.k.a. Diddy, P. Diddy and Puff Daddy) focused on figuring out how to make the all-music formula work on TV. To attract Millennials and to interact with them, I wouldn’t focus on a channel that covers all music. There are plenty of places for us to get music news and enjoy music. I would focus on creating a mobile-first platform that can deliver on a tech- and social-driven network to give us a place to discuss our experiences around music through a video-based Q&A about why we love an artist, which songs mean the most to us, etc. Let us be the voice versus leaning back and listening to artists.
– Ryan Stoner, ryanstoner.com
8. Myspace
Justin Timberlake stated, “There’s a need for a place where fans can go to interact with their favorite entertainers, listen to music, watch videos, share and discover cool stuff and just connect. Myspace has the potential to be that place.” The problem is that Myspace became a spinoff of Spotify and Facebook. Justin could get Myspace back on track with his original goal by creating exclusive content that is only available to Myspace users, such as video chats with your favorite artists, pre-releasing music on Myspace, giving its users free digital downloads and leveraging existing social network infrastructure to reduce user acquisition and retention friction.
– Adam Root, Hiplogiq