@jeromejarre
Age: 23
Vine followers: 5.3M
Robert Downey Jr., the highest-paid actor in the world, took home $50 million for The Avengers, earning about $5,827 per second of the film. Nash Grier, a Vine star, earns $4,166 per second when he makes a branded video for companies like Virgin Mobile or MTV—$25,000 for a full six seconds. Companies find Nash through an agency called Grapestory, which helps stars create branded content for companies to post on their own Vine accounts. (Its lowest-paid talent makes $4,000 a video.)
Grapestory is the brainchild of Jerome Jarre, a 23-year-old French business-school dropout who had gained a massive following on Vine for his funny accent and teasing brand of comedy. Jarre founded the agency in 2013 with tech entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, whom he met at a conference. What Jarre brought to the table were connections to the Vine stars. The men spoke the same language: Jarre had taught himself English by listening to an audio version of Vaynerchuk’s self-help book Crush It!, which encourages readers to harness the internet to build their personal brands.
One of Jarre’s first campaigns was for GE, which sent him and another Vine star on a zero-gravity flight. It was the first time a brand reached the No. 1 slot on Vine’s “popular” page, with more than 250,000 likes for five GE videos. Even by digital standards, Vine is still a deal: A promotional video featuring a popular vlogger on YouTube can easily cost in the six figures.