It’s been a wacky few years in the influencer marketing agency space. There has been a lot of consolidation, with the most recent being yesterday’s acquisition of Captiv8 by Publicis Groupe (pretty quickly on the heels of their $500M acquisition of Influential last year). Casey and I certainly cover this at length in next week’s podcast episode, so if you want to know my juiciest thoughts, tune in to that. In the meantime, I thought a more productive use of this newsletter space would be to focus on why founder-led influencer agencies are a better choice for a lot of brands AND what existing clients of newly acquired agencies should be thinking about as they navigate a sudden relationship with an agency that is no longer founder-led, but part of a massive holding company.
First, just a few of the benefits of working with founder-led agencies:
- More interaction with and input from leaders who have years of experience in the space
- A better ability to be nimble and adapt to changing trends
- Lower (WAYYYYYY lower) overhead, leading to more reasonable pricing
- Consistent teams with less team turnover
I don’t mean to suggest that all holding company clients are miserable. Clearly, there are plenty of happy holding company clients out there. That said, it’s not for everyone.
I met Steve Boehler, the founder of Mercer Island Group, at a Worldwide Partners dinner in Denver a couple of months ago. He recently wrote an incredibly helpful blog post for brands that now find themselves as the unwilling clients of a holdco. The post was written in the context of more macro holding company consolidation, but I think it relates to influencer agency-specific consolidation as well.
As Steve points out, “the fallout of these major holdco upheavals on their existing clients could be dramatic:
- Who’s in charge at the agency?
- Who is still on the client’s business?
- What do the new folks know about my business and brands, and processes?”
Here is the rest of Steve’s blog post, complete with a to-do list for brands that now find themselves in this situation. I hope you find it helpful! (And give Steve a follow on LinkedIn – he’s been killing it lately.)
Danielle