The Vicki Kotris Podcast

Episode 57: Alex Cooper: From 'Call Her Daddy' to Podcasting Powerhouse

• Vicki Kotris

Share episode

I love episodes where I can just share the brilliance of writers who have met the change makers and thought leaders and can share their stories with us.

This episode is an article published by Fortune Magazine and linked here: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/alex-cooper-lands-100-million-143000863.html

The author of this article is Alexandra Sternlicht and I do not own the rights to it. I am simply reading the shared story with you. 
Enjoy!

Thank you again for tuning into another episode of the Vicki Kotris Podcast! I want to support you, cheer you on a HYPE you up!! If you're celebrating anything (and I mean ANYTHING), send me a DM and let me highlight you on a recent episode.

If you're looking for support in building a social media content strategy, I'm your girl! Send me an email to vkkotris@gmail.com and we can set up a FREE account audit.

Please subscribe and leave a review HERE:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-confetti-filled-life-podcast/id1391196589

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/00cehOlAGd5HbUpAZ4wuYY?si=4c7353dd4c1e4312

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the Vicki Kotris podcast. I am your host, none other than Vicki Kotris. I'm a retired corporate girly, two-time six-figure founder who's obsessed with brand building, sales generating and digital marketing. My mission with this podcast is to share the lessons I've learned to help you make more magic and money with your own marketing efforts, and to feel inspired to continue on your own journey as a creator and entrepreneur. Here I'll share real life strategies, marketing tips and mindset shifts that have helped me go from cubicle to creator. This podcast is for business owners, creatives or those just looking for a little more sparkle in their day. So let's kick off this week's episode. Something that I love to do from time to time is find a great article about someone that I admire. That, I think is fantastic, that I think we can all learn from because, again, we are all connected, we all have stories to share and there is inspiration in every single person's story. So someone who I admire as a podcaster, as a storyteller, who has taken risks, who has transformed and evolved with her show and who is the number one female podcaster, is Alex Cooper from Call Her Daddy. So something that I have done before is read an article. That is not something that I have written and I will give all of the citations in the episode notes and linked in the episode so that you can find it and reference it yourself. But today I will be reading an article that was originally published in Fortune magazine called how Call Her Daddy. Host Alex Cooper Became One of the World's Highest Paid Podcasters at 30 Years Old.

Speaker 1:

It's Friday night in New York City's meatpacking district and Spotify's most popular female podcaster is cold and looking for a place to drink. Alexandra Cooper started her podcast Call Her Daddy not far from here. She and then co-host Sophia Franklin, taped the show from their Lower East Side apartment, chronicling their sexcapades through the city. Sophia and I walk to the subway every day because we're peasants and we don't have fucking sugar daddies, cooper said in an early episode. Now a limo driver is trailing her around the city, proof of just how much the 28-year-old's life and career have changed since she launched the podcast in 2018. Since then, cooper has transformed her podcaster profile from sex girl her words to role model fans words. She moved to LA. She's gone solo. Franklin left the show in May of 2020, and, instead of rehashing her drunken antics, cooper's weekly episodes now feature self-care advice and interviews with stars like Miley Cyrus, hailey Bieber and Julia Fox.

Speaker 1:

Sex still peppers her podcast, and in November she recounted her effort to get a semen stain out of a suede headboard, but she also tackles topics within the Safer for Work zeitgeist. An October episode followed Cooper as she visited a North Carolina abortion clinic and at one point she asked a male pro-life protester if the government should mandate vasectomies for men. We're regulating the uteruses. We could also regulate the penises, right, cooper asks. Listeners were riveted early on and they remain hooked. The show's popularity earned Cooper an exclusive three-year licensing deal with Spotify in 2021, worth $60 million, a sum that landed Cooper in the same realm as podcast king Joe Rogan, whose three and a half year Spotify exclusive deal is reportedly worth $200 million. Cooper out out earns actual royals, meghan Markle and Prince Harry, who reportedly got between $15 million and $18 million for their three year Spotify exclusive deals in 2022. Cooper's net worth is estimated to be in the tens of millions.

Speaker 1:

The Daddy Gang is a bunch of predominantly women that are excited to engage in a roller coaster where we don't know what happens next, but we're on the ride with Alex. Cooper tells me, referring to her fan base. Let's talk about mental health. Let's talk about sex. Let's talk about dating. Let's talk about other issues. And let's talk about mental health. Let's talk about sex. Let's talk about dating. Let's talk about other issues and let's talk about our successes.

Speaker 1:

Since Cooper joined Spotify, exclusively, the streamer says it's gotten its money's worth. Call Her Daddy was Spotify's second most popular podcast globally in 2021, behind the Joe Rogan experience, and it was the number one podcast among female listeners one podcast among female listeners. She's the equivalent of Oprah or an Ellen, because she's able to touch people. In a certain way, says Spotify chief content officer, don Ostroff. There's a certain ownership of their femininity in a different way, where women feel entitled to be who they are, to be unapologetic about their sexual lives, to be unapologetic about their ambition and talk about things that are important to them. Alex is truly a leader of that movement.

Speaker 1:

Cooper, known as Father among fans, has remade her show and rewritten some of the creator economy rules. Yes, she established a new ceiling for top earning female podcasters, but she also battled for the licensing rights to her content. Call her daddy's intellectual property, the podcast and related merchandise belongs to Cooper alone. According to Cooper, with the amount that I put in to call her daddy. There was no doubt about it that I was going to fight quite literally till the end for that IP. I understood what it would do to my career if I lost that. She also understood what could happen if she owned it. With the IP rights and a fiercely loyal audience, cooper, who's on the latest Fortune 40 under 40 list, belongs to an elite club of top creators who are not limited by the platforms that distribute their content. She's already switched her allegiance once and, despite the mammoth Spotify deal, she's not ruling out doing it again. As Cooper and I roam Manhattan's West Side, she is stopped by three adoring fans within 10 minutes. I'm like freaking out, says Ella Sunshine 21.

Speaker 1:

The New York University undergrad tells Cooper, the podcast helped her transition from childhood to living and dating in New York City, as Cooper once did. Oh my God, I love you, cooper. Coo squeezing sunshine for a selfie. Many creators will tell you they didn't intend to become celebrities. Cooper did.

Speaker 1:

She grew up in Newtown, pennsylvania, a town of 2,000 people, and attended a $46,000 a year prep school. The bleach blonde soccer star starred at Boston University's varsity team and was a midfielder from 2013 to 2015. But she wanted stardom on the internet and majored in film and television. Honing video and audio editing skills she taught herself as a teen After graduation. Her boyfriend at the time, then Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard, helped her score a sales job at a magazine. Cooper hated it and cried tears of joy when she got laid off. I got a job through my famous boyfriend and I was living with him. I didn't have anything of my own. I was completely losing myself, she says.

Speaker 1:

To find herself and grow her fame, cooper started Call Her Daddy with Franklin. The two wanted to recreate the locker room talk Cooper had exchanged with her college teammates. In early episodes, franklin and Cooper encourage a man to stalk a love interest, suggest ugly people work harder during sex to appease their partners and glorify abuse as affection. At best their advice was questionable, at worst it was toxic, as a fan on Gansevoort Street put it. It was two white women talking about sex and sexuality who have the analysis as deep as a puddle, says Raquel Savage, therapist, sex worker and founder of mental health nonprofit Zep Wellness, who argues that Cooper's fame is largely possible because she's an attractive white woman. The conversations they engaged in did not shift feminism in any capacity, at least not in a productive direction. Cooper cringes at some of the content, but she has no regrets. There was no woman out there being so raw, honest and calling it what it was, cooper says the whole time my goal was for people's jaws to just drop and it took off.

Speaker 1:

Just one episode in the podcast, raunchy sex appeal, caught the attention of dave portnoy, founder of barstool sports, the sports media empire known for a macho tone that veers into misogyny. Insider published two stories in 21 that accused portnoy of sexual misconduct. He denied the claims and sued insider for defamation. A judge dismissed the case earlier this year. In 2018, portnoy bought the rights to call her daddy, initially paying Cooper and Franklin each $75,000 a year, plus bonuses based on downloads and merch and branded alcohol sales. The show was so popular that Cooper and Franklin each earned around $500,000 in the first year, according to Barstool Portnoy and Barstool CEO Erica Nardini did not respond multiple requests for a comment. The duo's relationship with Barstool Portnoy and Barstool CEO Erica Nardini did not respond multiple requests for a comment.

Speaker 1:

The duo's relationship with Barstool soured as they sought more money in the show's IP rights. The host stopped recording for over a month as talk stalled. Portnoy blinked first and in May of 2020, he offered the two ownership of the IP, $500,000 starting wages and an increased cut of merchandise sales in exchange for staying at Barstool. As Cooper recounts, she was in, but Franklin balked. The duo parted ways as co-hosts, as roommates, as friends. The moment Dave Portnoy was like I will give you your IP, I was like great, I'll do anything. Cooper says. Franklin tells a different story. Alex decided that, instead of trying to figure this out, I'm just going to take this for myself and run with it, and that's what she did, franklin said on a July 2022 episode of her podcast, barely Famous. She declined to comment.

Speaker 1:

Cooper stayed with Barstool for another year and proved to be an even bigger draw on her own, with Call Her Daddy becoming the most popular female created podcast on Spotify and climbing into the streamer's top five globally. In 2021, spotify itself came calling, offering Cooper a $60 million three-year deal to license Call Her Daddy exclusively. Cooper says Amazon offered her more, but she chose Spotify for its promise of creative freedom. Amazon did not return a request for comment. I knew Spotify was going to treat me the same as Barstool, if not better, because the way they talked about their relationships with creators was exactly what I wanted, which is do what you want. We're here to help, says Cooper.

Speaker 1:

What Cooper wanted was to shift her podcast away from explicit sexual content and towards topics like mental health. She started to pivot after signing with Spotify. I got pigeonholed completely to being the girl that gives a good blowjob and has great sex advice, says Cooper, and no doubt about it. That's why I was so successful, but it also hurt my image. Cooper's embrace of things like themes like mental health and long-term relationships hasn't hurt.

Speaker 1:

Call her daddy's listenership, and in 2021, it ranked number two on Spotify. According to Nielsen, it garners over five million listeners per episode on average. The demographic of Cooper's listener base has changed. It was split 40-60 between men and women early on, but it's now 90% female, according to reports. The loss of male listeners didn't surprise Cooper. The content got a little too heavy for the men.

Speaker 1:

Cooper decides we should drink at a club restaurant, catch, where she once threw back several cucumber, matcha and tequila detox retoxes on a first date. We order around. Be careful you get fucked up, she warns. As Cooper sips her drink, a group of 20-something white women approaches us. Alex Cooper, I'm going fucking nuts right now. I love you.

Speaker 1:

These fans are one reason Spotify shelled out for Call Her Daddy. The podcast's mostly female audience primarily consists of 18 to 29-year-olds. Cooper says Listeners can only hear Call Her Daddy on Spotify, meaning the show draws the coveted demographic to the platform. Those top-end exclusives are most important, says Mark Zuchwitz, senior analyst at Benchmark, who lists Call Her Daddy and the Joe Rogan experience as examples. If these podcasts get you into Spotify, then you get wowed by the curation and how strong their playlists are, particularly relative to Apple Music. You're unlikely to ever leave. Today, over 4.7 million podcasts live on Spotify alone. According to Nielsen, an estimated 66 million American adults tune into podcasts on a monthly basis, up 38 percent in the past two years. Spotify charges brands five times more to advertise via exclusives like Call Her Daddy, since audiences of such content are sales goldmines, enormously loyal with well-defined interests, zugowitz says Spotify stock cratered to a record low in November and it laid off staff at in-house podcast production houses Gimlet and Parcast. The turmoil, however, is unlikely to hurt high-profile hosts like Cooper. In fact, she and her peers may benefit as the streamer concentrates resources on buzzy exclusives, says Ariel Shapiro, lead reporter at Hot Pod, an industry publication. Shows like Call Her Daddy that draw large and loyal listenerships are helping Spotify wean itself off the music business, where it spends enormous sums of licensed content from record labels In public.

Speaker 1:

Cooper is affable and gracious with her fans Back in her dad pad her name for her airy West Hollywood home where she books, records and edits her podcast. Her competitive nature pokes through in the stories she shares In baggy, mismatched sweats and no makeup. Cooper recalls one of her show's most viral moments when actress Julia Fox called herself Josh Safdie's muse in Uncut Gems, pronouncing the film title with a valley girl lilt. The audio clip has been used in over 51,000 TikToks, accumulating millions of views and likes. In edits, one of Cooper's team members suggested that she cut the line. She cites her decision to keep it as the reason she's so hands-on. I know Call Her Daddy better than anyone. She says answering fuck no to the question of whether she'll ever have another co-host.

Speaker 1:

Her sole control of the podcast means she can decide its future. She's in talks with Spotify to pioneer tools for listeners to interact with her content via the platform. That said, she's not ruling out building her own podcast platform or taking Call Her Daddy elsewhere when her Spotify deal expires in 2024. Owning the podcast IP gives her more options than other creators have. She's already won the war that some artists have lost but most never fight. Taylor Swift famously recorded three studio albums after failing to retrieve her catalog from her former label, big Machine Records, and music mogul Scooter Braun. Cooper understands the value of what she's putting into the world, says Philippa Longard, executive director of Columbia Law School's Curation Center for Law, media and Arts. I think that's a wonderful example for young artists. Cooper's medium and deeply personal approach position her for longevity. Listeners engage in more active listening with podcasts than with music, deepening their connection to the content, says Jonah Berger, marketing professor at Wharton School and author of Contagious why Things Catch On.

Speaker 1:

For now Cooper is focused on making her podcast number one in the world. I'm never going to put something over. Call Her Daddy, I'm never going to just do something for a paycheck, she says. If I don't get another deal at the end of this deal, I'm going to keep creating. Don't get another deal at the end of this deal, I'm going to keep creating. I'm here for the long game. This article appears in the December 22 January 23 issue of fortune magazine with the headline the conversation Alexandra Cooper. This article was written by Alexandra Sternlicht for fortune magazine, and an update of from Augustst 2024 says this article was originally published in November of 22, a year after Cooper inked a $60 million exclusive deal with Spotify. In August of 24, cooper signed a new three-year deal, reportedly worth $100 million, to take Call Her Daddy show and podcast collective to Sirius XM, starting in 2025.