Welcome to the Scoop: a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week. This will be a way for the Replica Handbag Store Business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.
This week’s guest is Mary Bekhait. Mary is the global CEO of YMU, a talent management agency that lists Simon Cowell, TV presenter Graham Norton, and Chicken Shop Date’s Amelia Dimoldenberg among its clients.
During her time at the helm, YMU has transformed from a small UK-focused company (formerly known as the James Grant Group) into a global, social-first enterprise. Mary has also been instrumental in embracing gender parity at both the business and client levels. That last bit has to do with today’s scoop.
Hi Mary, what’s the scoop?
YMU is going to launch a female soccer division. We will capitalize on all the infrastructure that we have at YMU — and already put around male footballers — and apply that to female footballers, to really give them the accelerant that they deserve in their careers.
What brought on this decision?
I feel the timing is quite undeniable. Women’s soccer has always been seen as an add-on to men’s, but I think that’s now being contested. Obviously, we had a big moment with the Lionesses [England’s women’s soccer team], who won the hearts and minds of the UK, but beyond that, we feel there’s been a cultural shift and the commercial world has caught up with audiences, too. Women’s soccer is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world — the WSL is seeing record viewership and attendance.
What kind of people are you hiring for this new division?
We are looking for people who have the true interest of women’s soccer at heart, and who have a lot of commercial prowess — people who can do on-pitch deals and off-pitch deals, because we see a huge opportunity to create enormous ecosystems around these women. We want to build audiences around each player, and help them tell stories across platforms so people get to know them as human beings. That, for us, is incredibly exciting, and it taps into what we have at YMU, which is a much broader IP architecture.
I suppose that answers my next question, but how are you planning to partner with brands?
We’re not going to do it any differently than we do for any other client, which is to try to fundamentally understand what the North Star is for each client. So whatever this individual wants to achieve in five, 10, 15 years’ time — how do we help them get there? And how do we find the right brands that will be long-term creative partners rather than short-term transactional ones?
We have longstanding relationships with so many of the brands that operate in beauty, fashion, wellness, or lifestyle, so we can put a lot of these footballers sort of right in the center of that Venn diagram.
I’ve been thinking a lot myself about the conversation surrounding women at work. The world operates so differently from how it did 10 years ago.
It’s confusing because the expectations keep getting higher for women, while we are still operating in structures that were not built for us. The amount of societal pressure combined with the complete lack of support is stunning. Even with female footballers, few companies will take into account female anatomy, female hormones, all of the stuff that actually matters around how women show up on the field. We’re operating in frameworks that were never built for us, and refuse to change to accommodate us.
The whole system needs to be challenged. YMU is a female-led business: I’m the CEO, and our chair is female. It’s important that we take this seriously and actually walk the walk. So I’m very excited for this new division.
We published our Size Inclusivity report for the third year in a row this week. The numbers are bad. How do you read this regression?
I feel like the fashion industry goes with aesthetics over accountability. Looking at the shows this season, it felt like we’d swung right back into skinny being very desirable. I think it’s slightly at odds with where culture actually is. And I wonder whether some of these fashion houses have lost sight of who the consumer is. Social media has decentralized the concept of desirability, and people have access to a much broader range of influencers or fashion models and they don’t all look the same. It’s a shame that inclusivity is moving backward — was all the progress just tokenistic?
Are you seeing the same changing attitudes to women’s bodies on the entertainment front?
It’s not as bad on the entertainment front, because people vote in real time. With fashion, you put a collectsion out, and people see it in stores many months later and vote with their wallets. With entertainment, you’re constantly talking to your audience. If you’re a content creator, you’re getting that feedback almost instantaneously. It’s a broad church of people who resonate with audiences, and they do so in ways that go beyond their looks. It’s rather about how they present in culture and what they can offer their community.
We also just published our Who Won Fashion Month and Who Won Awards Season on Social Media reports. Is EMV something you track at YMU?
We do measure EMV, but it’s not central to our strategy. It’s a useful temperature test, but we’re more interested in the actual engagement that goes alongside it. Volume is important, but what’s the value?
Does EMV even translate into sales?
I think it gives you a sense of where the market is going, and that helps inform strategy, which then, if executed well, gives you sales.
How do you choose the people you represent?
It’s a mix of art and science. We use data tools to see which people are growing quickly on different platforms. There’s also word of mouth — existing clients who suggest we look at X or Y. Sometimes, it’s acqui-hires, meaning acquisitions of other agencies where we bring their lists into the business. And sometimes, it’s just instinct. You see somebody, and you think that person is a star. I can’t quantify that part, but so many of our roster have that special quality.
You can catch up with last week’s Scoop with Helgi Oskarsson here.
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