India Mayer and Katy Shah
Anyone who’s ever logged into Instagram (or any social media platform) knows how large and how influential the influencer community has become.
Fashion, home décor, cleaning products, delivery services, you name it—brands love to partner with these online elites. But how do brands and influencers find each other? And what happens when an influencer needs support or a shooting location to create content?
Enter Of Note and its founders, public relations pros India Mayer and Katy Shah. The two saw a need to create a company that would bridge the gap between national brands and Nashville’s booming influencer community, two things they knew well from their respective careers. Of Note does just that, while allowing brands to easily maximize exposure, and offers the services to connect brands with this network of content creators. In addition to offering influencer management, events, and public relations services, Mayer and Shah saw a need for a space that gave influencers a home base of sorts.
Katy Shah and India Mayer
Set to open this fall, Note House, a blend between a content creation studio and a co-working space, will give influencer members a space to produce imagery, video, and audio content while connecting a community that often doesn’t have the chance to meet in person.
“We came up with this concept for the Note Houses and the initial idea was to connect the community, which will allow for brand integration, education, and connectivity in general, and then our company kind of just grew out of that idea,” Shah explains. “So, now we are an influencer marketing company but our differentiator is our physical spaces. The first one is in East Nashville and we’re hoping to open them across the country in the next couple years.”
By gathering feedback from influencers, Mayer and Shah have created a house that caters to the needs of both brands and influencers alike. The bottom floor of the house contains a podcast studio, studios where creators can film video content, and a gorgeous living room that serves as the hub of the space. In addition to glamorously renovated traditional spaces like a kitchen, dining area, bedroom suite, and bathroom, Note House also features a fashion studio space—a rotating closet filled with pieces from multiple brands that influencers can borrow to shoot content in.
“We thought about every space in the house as its own. In the living room, for example, we thought about how do we make it so there are 10 different ways of getting a really cool shot here?” Shah says. “The space is optimized for shooting, so a creator can come here and, in theory, shoot content for a whole month and no one would know that they’re in one space.”
The house is as friendly as it is functional, fostering a sense of community in an industry that can often feel quite isolating. The upstairs of the home is primarily used for co-working space where creators can connect with likeminded people. After all, it’s the supportive, inspiring creators at the heart of it all that make Nashville’s influencer community so unique, and so valuable to brands across the country.
“Whatever the brand, we know that there’s someone here that can authentically work with them to promote their product. I think there’s something special here in Nashville where the community wants to help support each other, and they want to engage with other influencers and share best practices and have that kind of community. That feels unique to Nashville,” says Shah.
From the creative magic that happens within the Note House walls to the resulting relationships locally and nationally, Mayer and Shah strive to support Nashville’s brilliant creators in every way they can.
“These are small businesses, and I think that the influencer industry can get some flak. There are people who don’t believe in its validity as a career, and that’s why we’re hoping to show people that these content creators are super smart business people,” Mayer says. “They know exactly what they’re doing, they know how to work with brands, they know exactly what their following is looking for, so we’re also hoping to add even a further layer of validity to this industry.”
At its core Of Note is about community and connectivity.
“It’s getting everyone in one place. It’s supporting each other—supporting our creators in Nashville, and especially allowing big brands to have a one-stop shop to connect with this awesome community,” says Shah. “There’s certainly going to be a lot of perks and benefits for members of Note House Nashville, but we also want our space to be a hub for the creator community in Nashville whether members or not. We want to support our very large local influencer community.”