Alexandra Lasky, a fashion, beauty and nightlife executive formerly at SHADOW, is launching a new celebrity marketing and branding firm called “The Influence,” TheWrap has learned.
The new venture will get under way publicly after the Thanksgiving break with events at the upcoming Art Basel in Miami Beach during the first week of December. Chad Weinman, an operator of e-commerce properties, is a partner in the joint venture.
After nine years at SHADOW, a bicoastal marketing and communications agency rising to VP status, Lasky announced her departure in an email to colleagues on Friday. She had woven spirit clients into the Hollywood event scene while also launching hotspots like 1Oak and Beacher’s Madhouse Las Vegas.
Lasky’s new endeavor is another sign of the ongoing shift in the celebrity industrial complex: the business is moving away from traditional PR and towards influencer based activations built around social media.
Recent moves like AT&T ‘s “Hello Lab” partnership with Fullscreen (which features Grace Helbig) and companies like Ryan Detert’s “Influential” platform (which harnesses swaths of social media personalities to achieve mass reach) exemplify the trend.
Impressively, Lasky and Weinman have landed the domain “TheInfluence.com” for their company, a site that was initially snatched up in 1999.