ATLANTA — They’ve got the moves. They’ve got jokes. And they can influence everything.
“We’re the new superstars,” Robert Dean said.
Meet the stars of the Collab Crib, some of Atlanta’s hottest content creators on TikTok and social media.
The group’s videos can last under a minute, but their impact in this $15 billion industry? That’s going to last for a lot longer.
“We influence the generation, our generation,” Kaychelle Dabney said.
The Collab Crib all live together inside of a Fayette County mansion. They are sponsored by brands and businesses to market their things to their millions of young followers.
Every day, there are new videos to make across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
“People think it’s so easy, but at the same time, it’s kind of hard. It’s not for the weak,” Dabney said.
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“Kachelle D” was in Baltimore and out of a job because of COVID-19 last year and decided to move to Atlanta to be a star.
She flooded her TikTok with videos, picked up over a million followers and became one of the stars of the Collab Crib.
“My personality just shines through, and people love my personality. They can relate to my story,” she said.
Everything runs under the management of Keith Dorsey. The 33-year-old said influencer houses are common in Los Angeles but not as much in metro Atlanta.
“We went to LA. We looked at it, but we want to come back to where we were born and raised,” Dorsey said. “Anything dealing with Black culture, it’s just best to start here.”
Dorsey connects with sponsors who he said have helped the company rake in $100,000 a month specializing in new-age advertising.
“It’s the most organic way because people are more likely to trust a friend than to trust traditional marketing on billboards,” he said.
Dean is a co-founder and the comedian of the group who boasts over a million Instagram followers. He’s part of one of the first major all-Black content houses anywhere.
But Dean said doors don’t always open as wide for creators of color.
“Sometimes, we got to work, honestly, we got to work three times as hard. So that’s gonna make us work six times as hard,” he said.
Dean said the Collab Crib could become a school for the next generation of creators.
“It’s a gateway, definitely an opening there for Black entrepreneurs,” he said.
