Vinnie Potestivo, Talent Development and Brand Strategist
Your World of Creativity
Mark Stinson
5.0 • 45 Ratings
🗓️ 23 May 2022
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Vinnie Potestivo is an industry-leading media and talent innovator who is widely known for his inclusive and impactful approach to brand building and personal brand development.
Vinnie was an MTV Talent Exec from from 1998-2007. I was the guy at MTV who helped artists and celebrities claim their brands and their narrative in the original wave of unscripted television. Traditionally, I hired the VJs and scouted the MTV News Correspondents for all of our networks. Then, because of those relationships, I began developing original programming with artists like Ozzy Osbourne and Jessica Jessica Simpson on The Osbournes and Newlyweds. Then with actors like Ashton Kutcher on Punk'd, Nick Cannon on Wild 'n Out, and Wilmer Valderrama on Yo Momma! I'm the guy who put pop royalty in their first tv films when I cast Mandy Moore in 2gether and Beyoncé Knowles in Carmen: A Hip Hopera.
With over 25 years of experience, he and his teams have become well-trusted connectors who sell, develop, produce, launch, distribute, and amplify some of the most talked-about original series & talent brands in modern pop culture.
Personal brands Vinnie has helped elevate through the use of original content include Mandy Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Jessica Simpson, Ashlee Simpson, Tyrese Gibson, Lauren Conrad, Diane von Furstenberg, Rob Lowe, Danielle Fishel, Peter Thomas Roth, Kelly Osbourne, Kristin Cavallari, Nasir “Nas” Jones, Molly Sims, Vanessa Lachey, Susie Castillo, Damien Fahey, Quddus, Suchin Pak, Gideon Yago, Will.i.am, Ebro, DJ Clue, LaLa Anthony, Hilary Duff, and Leah McSweeney among others.
Corporate brands VPE: Vinnie Potestivo Entertainment, Inc. (vpetalent.com) has worked closely with include Macy’s, Samsung, Nikon, MLB, Peter Thomas Roth, June Jacobs Spa, Naturally Serious Skin, Kiehl’s, Hope Fragrances, Ciroc, Dow, Lady Foot Locker, AARP, Prudential & Allstate.
A conversation with Vinnie guides us to the fact that there is a process to being a successful recognized creative. That the notion of an overnight success is quite wrong. He shares the most insightful tips to help navigate the waters of a recognized creative.
Vinnie insists that artists have to realize that awards are so important. And they are not just handed out randomly they need to be applied for. This means that you need to believe in your work enough and want to apply for an award. Be it the Oscars, the Emmys, or whatever award given to recognize you as a creative.
Secondly, credits are equally as important. He observes that there is so much shame as a creative involved in asking for credit credits. And insists that you have to ask for an executive producer credit. Take credit for your podcast and create credit, for your podcast as well. The importance of credit sort of formalizes your production company. Second, It allows you to tag guests, which is a great way for discoverability
Third, build a team so that even when you are asking for that recognition there are people who deserve it as well in that collaborative effort. So, it made it easy for him to show up and ask for an award for himself and his team to know that they all won together. And so that we reconcile the personal creative platform vision that we have for our work with the thought that if nobody sees it, then you didn't get your message out.
Overall, Vinne gives creatives an amazing do list of valuable tips and tricks. From today's chat, we learn that as creatives we should take credit for our work, enter some awards, and find some collaborators, but also Vinne has encouraged us to tap into that inner mindset that inner creativity takes faith in our work.
"I Have A Podcast with Vinnie Potestivo," a collection of conversations with celebrities and creatives who aim to inspire us in our everyday lives, can be found on Apple Podcasts and anywhere else you listen to yours. IHAP’s companion video series I Have A Podcast on Television can be seen Thursdays on DirectTV, Distro TV, and Channel 285 on STIRR via bspoketv. For more information on viewing times, current episodes, and guest recommendations please visit ihaveapodcast.com.
Vinnie can be seen on linkedin.com/in/vinniepotestivo where he shares business and brand strategies for people looking to inspire and impact with media. You can also find him at instagram.com/vinniepotestivo where he over-shares photos of his two mini-schnauzers @BeauWellington and @DudleyGreenfield.
Vinnie Potestivo
Copyright 2026 Mark Stinson
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back everyone to our podcast on Locking Your World of Creativity, and if you ever |
| 0:27.4 | watched the MTV in the early 2000s and back when they actually played music, and VH1, and you came |
| 0:34.2 | home maybe from school if you're of that generation, and you wanted to see what the top songs on TRL |
| 0:39.4 | were, and you were waiting for Mandy Moore, Ashley Simpson to be interviewed, well then you know the |
| 0:44.3 | work of our next guest, Vinny Potez-Stevo. Vinny, welcome to the program. Yes, thank you for having me. |
| 0:50.6 | It's awesome to be here. I love the theme of this podcast mark. I'm so excited to talk about |
| 0:55.4 | creativity and so many things, so many stories that tell you so much proof that I've seen so that |
| 1:00.4 | people can stop sweating and help them out. Well some people think there's this magic bullet, |
| 1:05.5 | you know, well how did they become overnight quote unquote successes? But maybe we start there |
| 1:11.8 | and we talk a little bit about celebrity brands and media brands, but then we'll launch into how do |
| 1:17.4 | you build this kind of personal brand? But why don't we start with, well you kind of had a formula |
| 1:22.2 | I think there had to be a method to your madness to create the kind of media properties that you |
| 1:27.8 | were working with at that time. You know this is interesting how much credit do we give to MTV, |
| 1:32.5 | but certainly to the people at MTV during that time who actually created space, they created |
| 1:39.4 | shows and space and like actual you know programming time for us to explore how to celebrate talent |
| 1:48.2 | may have evolved from from hosting. I think the first to foray of celebrities sort of being |
| 1:54.0 | themselves. First they're obviously their guests so that they're they're just representing themselves |
| 1:58.5 | and then there was sort of this evolution to representation. So we wanted them to host the shows to |
| 2:03.5 | beat the conduit between the audience and the culture and then that sort of evolved into shows like |
| 2:10.8 | cribs where we were starting to see glimpses of lives and it was a cribs episode where we booked the |
| 2:16.9 | Jack and Kelly Osborne to give us a tour of the Osborne that we pulled and we said hold on a second |
| 2:22.2 | Sharon says that we can put you know the original conceit for the show was Ozzy Osborne once a |
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