Media Buying Briefing: Influencer agencies expand into talent management to reach more creators

For instance, influencer agencies may focus on shifting from transactional relationships to becoming strategic partners invested in long-term creator development — and offering comprehensive support through personal branding, content strategy, audience growth and income diversification.

Influencer marketing agency Socially Powerful expanded into talent management in September through its new influencer and celebrity talent agency, Socially Powerful: Talent, which allows the business to tap into other ways to work with creators in the long run. The unit also combines its work across artificial intelligence tools, consultancy services and expertise in influencer management to manage an initial group of 11 creators globally. The ultimate goal, said Curtis Morton, Socially Powerful’s head of talent management, is to expand the roster to around 30 to 40 creators.

Agency within an agency

In a way, Socially Powerful is trying to build “an agency within an agency” that can service a wide variety of client needs, explained Morton, who was a creator for 14 years before going into digital marketing and influencer management. He said the agency will offer support for creators that lean into AI, from creating commercials to identifying brands that could be potential partners. The agency also plans to launch a content and podcast studio space for creators in October.

“We’re trying to make sure there’s a personality connection, but also trying to build a really diverse roster of talent so that we can serve different clients and different opportunities and different audience groups,” Morton told Digiday. “Rather than building a specific niche, we want to be able to offer a talent that is relevant to any client that can come to us.”

The inaugural group of creators come from entertainment, sports, food and travel, and deliver a combined audience of more than 45 million. The list includes French influencer Tuvok12, who has 15 million followers on TikTok and 8.7 million on YouTube, travel and lifestyle duo Ayca and Martin Dederke, and lifestyle and comedy creator Abby Boom. The talent unit will aim to not just provide strategic guidance on audience growth and partnerships, but also leverage its expertise across merchandising, podcasting and events to find other diverse income streams for its creators.

While talent agencies typically make money via commission of their clients’ earnings, the exact arrangement between these creators and Socially Powerful is unclear.

In January, Socially Powerful launched its AI influencer search platform, Aria, which lets brands search and access up to 200 million influencers globally. The agency also recently added PrimeInfluence, a dedicated consultancy service for enterprise-level brand marketing.

Changing expectations

Influencers’ increased professional needs, like strategy and representation, also means the talent agency side can offer more in terms of long-term development, content strategy and other personal mentorship.

Saad Aslam, co-founder and partner of Genflow Creators Agency, said they agency’s focus is on nurturing a smaller roster of around 50 creators, and GCA managers have a roster cap to ensure there’s enough time devoted to each creator. The full-service creator management agency works with brands like Spotify, Lululemon and Gymshark, and it has assembled some 100 creator partnerships that generated $150 million in creator earnings to date.

“Unlike traditional agencies that often focus primarily on facilitating brand deals, we view ourselves as much more,” Aslam said. “One of the most common frustrations we hear from creators is that they only hear from their managers when there’s a deal on the table.”

Agency-led creator management is increasingly getting involved beyond the traditional role of securing brand deals, and agencies have to offer more “multi-dimensional support that touches on everything from personal brand development to diversifying income streams,” said Aslam.

A different approach

However, some influencer marketing agencies believe that talent management and brand-deal facilitation introduce a conflict of interest when they impact impartial recommendations for clients. For instance, prioritizing creators on their roster could limit the diversity of creators offered to clients, explained Meredith Webber, senior talent partnerships manager at influencer agency Billion Dollar Boy.

As such, BDB has taken another approach to providing talent management for its creators — by using a dedicated talent partnerships team to create relationships with creators and other talent agencies. The agency initially considered adding talent management when it launched in 2014. To address the ethical concerns, the agency instead employs a vetting process for creators using automated and manual recommendations.

“Including talent management in our services would potentially lead account teams to prioritize our roster over a broader, more effective search,” Webber added.

BDB also relies on its FiveTwoNine business unit, a membership program launched in April for creators and other stakeholders, to work more closely with creators and talent agencies. The team emphasizes using the physical space to host events, learning sessions and networking with talent agencies. Whether it’s through partnership teams or establishing talent management services, Webber believes working with creators has to go beyond campaigns these days.

“It’s important to have access to a wide range of unique creators, from micro to macro, who each bring their own unique experiences and perspectives to each project,” Webber said.

Color by numbers

Retail media networks continue to leverage first-party data as a means of attracting more ad dollars. But stakeholders say that challenges like obtaining performance metrics and rising costs are obstacles to growth. Goodway Group and the Path to Purchase Institute collaborated on a study about retail media’s influence on consumer goods, retail partnerships and where commerce marketing dollars are going.

Some takeaways:

• More than four in five brands are investing in more than four RMNs this year — up 66% over 2023.
• 63% of CPG brand, agency and retailer respondents indicated that their CPG organizations or clients/partners have increased investments in RMNs compared to the previous year.
• 47% of RMN investment is coming from a mix of both net-new dollars and allocations from other budgets.
• 34% believe RMNs provide quality data for effective targeting — and half of the market believes RMNs are effective in increasing brand awareness.
• 79% cited performance metrics are the most important factor when deciding to continue working with their current retail media partners.
• 71% cited high costs as the top challenge in integrating retail media within overall marketing strategy.

Takeoff & landing

• Omnicom acquired digital advisory firm LeapPoint, which will become part of Omnicom Precision Marketing.
• True Independent Holdings, which owns digital media agency Coegi, launched Coegi Canada, and tapped Rodney Perry to be its president. He comes over from Chameleon Digital Media where he had been chief digital officer.
• Independent women-owned Media Matters Worldwide changed its name to AXM (Ars x Machina) after being mistakenly dragged into the pitched battle between Elon Musk’s X and the Media Matters watchdog organization. But it’s also rolling out a new marketing mix modeling methodology it’s calling Agile Mix Modeling.
• Account moves: Havas Media Network successfully defended its work for confectioner Perfetti van Melle, which it’s had as a client since 2022 … Cramer-Krasselt won Midwest retail tire chain Belle Tire’s media and creative duties … Hanson Dodge secured media duties for LIXIL, makers of American Standard … Publicis’ Spark Foundry in Australia landed media duties for Revlon in that country … Dentsu’s iProspect India won media duties for chemical firm Ardex Endura.
• Personnel moves: Canvas Worldwide named Anita Patil-Sayed its managing director, head of analytics, coming over from Dentsu where she was evp of commercial operations … Tinuiti hired Andrea Snyder to be its evp and managing director of its emerging portfolio, coming over from GroupM where she was operations lead for the Coca-Cola business … Apollo Partners hired Noel Johnson as its head of growth and marketing, a new position; she comes over from Duncan Channon where she was director of client engagement and marketing.

Direct quote

“When we think about attention … wrapped up in that is a debate around quality, and that’s always been core to [The Attention Council’s] mission. We represent as members many of the major TV networks and they’re particularly interested in understanding how premium content works versus non-premium or subprime content. We’re very neutral in this debate. … So having objective metrics that can give buyers the transparency they need to navigate this complex video marketplace feels a great fit with us. It’s a really important priority for the industry, I think, to provide that kind of transparency, and the debate about quality is one way of potentially doing it.”

— Jon Watts, managing director of the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement, talking about absorbing The Attention Council into itself to help foster and advance attention metrics.

Speed reading

• Michael Bürgi covered OOH agency Billups’ latest hire of a former Dentsu exec to help guide its growth aspirations in the Asia Pacific region.
• Seb Joseph and Krystal Scanlon dug into the numbers and stats revealed in X’s first transparency report since 2021, before Elon Musk took over.
• The pair also looked into Snap CEO Evan Spiegel’s plan to use advanced augmented reality tools to attract more ad dollars.