LA’s New Hype King Has Cracked How Millennials Spend

Two years ago, before Jesse Lee, the founder of the marketing and public relations agency Dub Frequency Media, aka DFM, prepared to seek outside funding for his company, he drew a Venn diagram. He put Vice Media LLC in one circle, Uber Technologies Inc. in the second, and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in the third, showing investors a three-headed monster that could not only capture young people’s attention, but get millennials and the members of Generation Z to open their wallets. “People don’t want to purchase everything from the same brand,” Lee says. “You eat at Alma,” his company’s critically acclaimed new American restaurant, “you read Mirage,” his glossy photography magazine, “you shop on Basic Space,” his peer-to-peer shopping app, “you learn about people on Westwood Westwood,” his lifestyle news site, “but they’re all under different brands. You might just stumble into a restaurant and not realize that we own part of it.”

Lee got his money, and DFM continued to climb. The eight-year-old company, based in Los Angeles with a full time staff of 30, is projected to do $10 million in revenue this year. While its marketing and public relations arm bolsters the cool factor of established brands (Nike Inc., Calvin Klein Inc.), its editorial shop profiles Next Big Things (the cold-pressed-juice company Juice Served Here Inc., a cauliflower-crust-pizza delivery service). If a brand can’t afford DFM’s fees for orchestrating a marketing campaign ($100,000 and up), Lee might get them featured on Westwood Westwood, and—if clicks translate to customers—soon, in theory, they’ll be able to afford those six-figure fees.