Pru Corrigan leaves PR & events, new focus on the influencer market
Pru Corrigan is set to leave the PR & events space, to focus on the future of influencer marketing and the booming creator economy.
The announcement:
Pru Corrigan, CEO and founder of Sydney & Melbourne based PR Agency One Daydream, has decided after 22 years in the PR & events space to close the division. Since starting One Daydream PR in 2015 she has worked across many global brands including Mercedes Benz, Sephora, The Body Shop, Ole Henriksen, Kat Von D, Vegemite & Sand & Sky, to name a few.
In 2018 Pru launched the talent arm and named it the Dream Team, managing a small team of people who were experts in their field and showing their content creation skills via their social channels. They were all at different levels including macro, micro and nano, and some had launched Hollywood careers only to make it back to Australia to become a content creator.
Pru says: “I knew there were growth opportunities in the space, but the time wasn’t right and Instagram was our only platform. Sometimes you can be too early in business, and I didn’t feel the market was ready for the influencer explosion.”
When Covid hit in 2020 Pru was lucky to be working with some beauty brands who survived the lockdown, however her business took a hit with a decrease of 55% of PR work in April 2020, and with events disappearing altogether.
“I remember standing on my balcony while locked up in Melbourne, and the clients kept calling and within two days I had lost half of my client portfolio. I kept staff, I felt I owed them that and then Job Keeper kicked in, but the aftermath of Covid was far worse, especially in the ‘always on’ PR space.”
Pru says: “During Covid however the influencer space boomed, and I actually hired staff during this time to support me in the Dream Team. More and more brands were wanting content created from afar and we could help them with that.”
“Deni Todorovic approached me during Covid and it gave us time to plan for what the next year would bring. Since we began working together, Deni has grown from 13,000 to 80,000 Instagram followers (and they are real), and their audience is one of the most engaged on the platform. They have gone from dancing in their backyard to being the face of some of the globes biggest brands including The Body Shop, Bonds & AMEX during Mardi Gras, and recently released their first book Love This For You. Deni has hit mainstream media all through the power of the social world.”
Pru says: “So by September this year, I knew it was time to continue building the Dream Team and we now have fifty content creators on our books, also expanding to NSW and QLD based talent. We are not your traditional booking agents, we offer far more to the talent and we act as match makers for brands looking for the perfect content match.”
“The new group of TikTok content creators who we found in Melbourne is really exciting. Generation Z has grown up with social media and they aren’t scared to use it. They are real and raw and want to succeed, and they support each other on the incline. Tik Tok is snackable and quick content, it’s not perfect and it seems more and more brands today can’t get enough of it. The younger generation just tell it how it is, and brands want in on that community.”
It is estimated that a whopping $27billion will be placed into the global creator economy in 2023, with 3 million more people in Australia becoming content creators since 2020.
Pru says: “This is a real job and a real economy now. I mean, I’m starting a new business based around platforms that didn’t even exist five years ago. The key in this space is to stay nimble and roll with the times, because the reality is that we’ll never be able to stay on top of the social wave”.
Source: One Daydream
