Instead, she found a way to actually see the fruits of her labor while using her skills in an inventive way. “I was very, very early in the idea of celebrity alignment with brands. And I realized very, very quickly how working with talent can really accelerate a business,” she explains. “I started an agency when I was 24 years old and I had clients all over the world and that was my job. My job was really to partner them with talent, and so, I really saw firsthand the power of celebrity influence.”
While that work was a clear precursor to the world of influencer marketing we know today, it was also a logistical building block in her path toward the Kardashians. “When you worked in my businesses,” she says, “it was your business to know all the managers and the agents and the publicists in Hollywood.” When it came to Kris, though, their meeting spot was in Paris. “She would be at fashion week with one of her daughters,” Grede explains. “I would meet and tell her what my clients were looking for, and we would have a business meeting.”
So, when it was time for Emma to pitch an idea of her own for one of Kris’ clients, it was business as usual. “It didn’t feel like a scary thing,” she recalls. “It was, like, this is a person that is always open to opportunities that might be good for her clients-slash-daughters and so, it wasn’t something that I felt particularly fearful about pitching to Kris in the beginning.”
As Emma says of the famed momager, “She’s such an amazing woman and she’s really so smart, so I thought, ‘Of course she’s going to love this idea. It’s a brilliant idea.'”