Written by Vanessa Cole

November 10, 2025

As a 25+ year veteran to the talent industry, our cofounder, Chad Cole began his career around 1998, during the super-era of fashion and talent. It was a booming time of pop princesses, major brand deals, cable commercials, mega malls, high-spend catalog work, magazine spreads, and fashion shows—fueling an economic sector that powered a multi-billion-dollar commerce ecosystem and enriched both the economy and the cultural fabric of society. Evaluating Chad’s career across the dramatic evolution from that era to today offers insight into where current industry challenges lie, what shifts and partnerships are needed to restore vitality, and what values must be upheld to preserve the talent sector and its essential tether to many others. The central question in today's era has become: Will we honor uniquely human contributions—and will this compel us to act with urgency now, to protect the vitality of the creative, talent, performing, visual, and athletic arts and their respective industries to continue to enrich quality of life for all of society?

Over the last decade, we have witnessed extraordinary shifts reshaping this workforce. The rise of AI, the explosion of the creator economy, rapid-fire social media cycles that disregard the natural pace of the creative process, and the overlapping roles of celebrity, influencer, entrepreneur, model, and athlete have created immense pressures throughout the value chain. Without thoughtful attention, these pressures have eroded the “middle-class” talent professional and destabilized the broader ecosystem that once sustained individual and family livelihoods through seasonally paced fashion schedules, agency-protected margins, reliable compensation standards, and scarcity-driven demand. Today, that landscape is increasingly uncertain, inundated by new technologies, unsustainable churn and market fragmentation.

The modern talent environment lacks standards, guardrails, and infrastructure. Rapid change—fueled by technological disruption and the largely unregulated growth of the creator and NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) economies—has collapsed the scarcity model that once protected professional opportunity. This shift has opened the floodgates to an onslaught of new and often untrained “talent professionals,” all vying to represent brands across a confusing, ever-shifting field that resembles the Wild West. Many uncertified and inexperienced representatives now lead influencers and athletes into content, barter, and usage deals that encroach on other professional genres, feed unsustainable churn, and devalue long-standing norms—while digitalization and AI quietly consume future workforce opportunity across the value chain. Without updated standards and guardrails, professional talent remains vulnerable. The foundational relationship between agent and talent grows increasingly compromised through gig scarcity, and the risk of losing entire creative, fashion, and talent pipelines becomes real. This threat extends beyond a single sector—endangering multiple interconnected industries that rely on these creative forces. As over-saturation increases and AI absorbs usage opportunities through outdated contract language and expanding automation, the relatively new creator and NIL sectors and their pipelines must be thoughtfully evaluated to ensure sustainable coexistence with the traditional fashion and professional talent industry. As a society that values human creativity, we all have a stake in the health of these industries and their contributions to the broader economy.

To understand the stakes, we can examine the model and talent ecosystem through its natural tiers. Historically, this sector has provided high-quality professional talent and reliable management infrastructure that corporations and clients have depended on to tell the stories of their brands--- capitalizing on the unique value of this model's ability to deliver artistic excellence without the political risks often associated with celebrity endorsements--- another valuable contribution that has been disrupted within the same ecosystem. Professional models and their agencies have long supplied top-tier creative talent—often equal to or exceeding the quality found in celebrity campaigns-- by maintaining artistic integrity rooted in aesthetics, symmetry, and design that the human eye instinctively values.

Yet, in recent years, strategic partnerships have shifted market incentives that appear to have diminished this value and long-reliable compensation standards as part of ushering in the creator and NIL economies. The result has been widespread instability: professional agents are struggling to uphold their value, professional talent is struggling to understand the new value chain so their contracts can protect usage, compensation, rates & likeness regeneration, while influencers—often guided by inexperienced, and now even campus-based agents & managers— are accepting inadequate rates, contracts & barter deals that exploit, drive low quality churn and carry over to the professional landscapes now struggling to find their footing. These destabilizing deals facilitated when college administrators invite brands right on to college campus'-- something formerly safeguarded by policy. All of these contribute to a now fragile ecosystem where the scarcity model has been undermined and once-viable talent professionals have been pressured to either adopt influencer practices or face obsolescence.

The shift from high-value, seasonally paced catalog and editorial work to continuous digital content production—without corresponding updates in compensation standards or corporate partner & client releases—is driving talent exploitation through improperly valued usage & ai regeneration of likeness--- two key compensation valuations in today's talent negotiation landscape--- also creating division between models and their representatives and an overall weakening of the structural integrity of the entire field. At the same time, a largely unregulated athletic NIL landscape has flooded the market with athletes & college greek system influencers who contribute to over saturation and churn content that seeks to redefine beauty away from natural, aesthetically resonant and professional standards, further destabilizing demand and the creative process, while amplifying influencer culture in ways that can harm society and youth.

As AI and content-driven metrics reshaped the marketplace over the last years, top-tier models, actors, and creatives have been forced to expand beyond their honed attributes & crafts, becoming make-shift storytellers, content producers, creative directors, set designers, casting teams, photographers, entrepreneurs, and more. Many felt compelled to share increasing portions of their private lives to remain competitive in follower-based economies. Through this culture shift, followers—not professional skill, talent or unique attributes—became the new currency of value and brands followed suit in hiring influencers with the most followers. A misstep we see through today's low quality churn levels and hemmoraging economic impacts, proving the approach was not sustainable, and instead served to pillage away the scarcity model & seasonally paced schedules that long maintained economic, artistic & cultural value that drove reliable compensation standards.  Ironically, the fast-drive to evolve created the very engine that now threatens the industry: an insatiable content cycle that undermines the artistic process and devalues human contribution--- everything these genres were built on and around. Luxury brands now struggle for cultural relevance, while professional models, actors, agents, photographers, designers, makeup artists, and production teams all face unprecedented career scarcity—not the scarcity that once fueled demand, but scarcity driven by over-saturation and technological displacement.

In order to preserve professional creative & talented careers and the multi-billion-dollar economic value chains tethered to them, industry leaders must evaluate the factors that led to this decline and put urgent action toward relevant industry standards and guardrails that delineate between NIL/Creator/Influencer vs. professional model/talent vs. celebrity roles, while also evaluating value chains and the pipelines feeding into each genre in order to curb over-saturation and drive market scarcity. This is the baseline action that will open space for each sector to recognize its own nuanced needs and connect within the larger economic ecosystem to instill & renew opportunities that will support each to thrive. With careful economic stewardship, the professional fashion, performing and talent sectors, the creator economy, and the athletic NIL landscape can evolve into three thriving, interdependent economies capable of providing stable career pathways and long-term economic sustainability for their respective workforces.

The path forward will require reinforcing the pipelines that support creative talent and setting guardrails that honor the artistic process, protect values for human-workforce, and sustain long-term economic prosperity. With thoughtful collaboration across agencies, brands, companies, talent professionals, celebrities & models, creators, and athletes, these industry sectors can realign around shared interests—and ensure the longevity of an ecosystem that has shaped culture, commerce, and livelihoods for generations.

These values are core to the mission of the AddyPres Organization today, as we work to connect leaders & stakeholders to ensure economic opportunity & long term prosperity for professionals-- preserving the vitality of the creative & talent commerce ecosystem & its value chain as a contribution to society.