The Remarkables ceases influencer representation, pivots to working directly with brands
Influencer agency The Remarkables is winding down the representation part of the business in a big change of strategic division for the four-and-a-half year old company.
In an open letter published on The Remarkables website, Lorraine Murphy, founder and managing director of the company, said: “Way back in May 2012, The Remarkables Group was the first influencer representation agency in the Australian market and now it’s time to pioneer again to meet the changing needs of our clients.
“In the 4.5 years since we launched, the influencer space has evolved and matured significantly, with marketers now having a far greater understanding of the power of influencer marketing. To meet this need many new players have since entered the market offering various solutions.
“The influencer industry has now evolved to such a point that a new business model is called for. We believe that brands and influencers can be best served by a model that provides unbiased, independent advice to brands that will lead them through this rapidly-developing area. During my time at Naked Communications, I saw the value firsthand that an agnostic expert could bring a in a new, yet maturing media landscape, and we are now setting about creating a similar model specific to influencer marketing.”
Murphy says The Remarkables is in discussion with brands on the group’s new strategic direction
The change in direction comes just months after The Remarkables repositioned itself as an influencer connections agency with the group focused on creating strategic connections and ideation between influencers and brands.
Murphy told Mumbrella: “This is a continuous progression of that idea. We were very much an influencer talent agency for pretty much four-and-a-half years and what we did four or five months ago was we separated the business into two parts, one side was the influencer representation and the other side was the owned platforms, so, Remarkable Pets and Rising Social Star.”
The initial repositioning of the agency saw Murphy take on a managing director role overseeing the overall business, while relationships director Sarah Chegwidden was promoted to general manager, leading the traditional blogger side of the group; however, Chegwidden has since resigned.
“Sarah left, she resigned a couple of months ago, so we’re doing away with the representation side of things and continuing on with the owned platforms and adding in the influencer strategy as well,” Murphy said.
In the open letter, Murphy said the group has “explored various scenarios” that allows it to provide strategic advice to brands while also representing influencers; however, “ultimately, we realised that in order to provide unbiased advice, we need to be unbiased”.
“As a result, we have made the major and difficult decision to wind down the representation part of the business to focus on building what will be the first specialist influencer strategy agency in this market.”
The new model for The Remarkables aims to address problems in the influencer space the team has identified, including: double-handling; navigating the fragmenting and evolving influencer space; setting benchmarks; and, transparency.
The new Remarkables Group will see the agency work directly with brands to manage their overall influencer activity.
“My dream project for this is to go into a major corporate who is already doing quite a bit of work in the influencer space, help them do a full audit on what’s working and what’s not working. Then go and meet with each of their different agencies and get a real understanding of what the brand needs to succeed in the influencer marketing space,” explained Murphy.
“Then we map out a strategic direction and identify the ambassadors to have on annual agreements, the people you should bring in on an ad-hoc basis and people you should keep relationships going with, and then we would work with the agencies to implement that strategy. That’s what we want to work towards, us being the retained influencer agency.”
Murphy said the change was partly due to the influencer representation market becoming more crowded.
“I’m estimating there’s about 20-30 representation agencies in the market now of various scales and specialities so now we separate out from that and we can work in partnership with those agencies,” she said.
“Brands are as confused as they have ever been for the reason that when we go and speak to brands we’re trying to sell our services so brands are confused because they’re getting a lot of different mixed messages from different operators in the space.
“But the business is profitable, we’ve got great relationships with our influencers, we could have easily continued going for another few years as we are now, which makes it harder because it’s a greater financial risk.”
The representation side of The Remarkables Group will be wound down by the end of the year; however, the group will continue to operate The Rising Social Star Talent Search and Remarkable Pets.
Part of The Rising Social Star prize was representation for the winning influencers, which Murphy admits a final decision hasn’t been made on how that will work.
“When we canvassed the entrants to Rising Social Star, representation was an element of what drew them to enter but the cash prize and the opportunity to partner with a big brand was really big. To be honest, I haven’t come to a final decision on that, either we will just take representation out of the prize package out all together or we will partner with a representation agency and we can feed the winners through to them,” she said.
On why the group is retaining its Pets representation business, Murphy said: “It’s such a niche offer and I don’t think that’s going to stand in the way of us giving objective advice to other brands because it is so niche.”
The Remarkables launched its Rising Social Star Talent Search in February with Remarkable Pets hitting the market in July.
Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.
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There’s been a big shift in the ‘influencer’ industry and this is probably a reflection of how things are now operating. The problem is that representation agencies came in to essentially act as agents for bloggers, but in order to get the clients the balance was in favour of the brands, not the influencers. As individual bloggers and social media identities have grown, they’ve been able to work directly with brands and negotiate much better deals than agencies were getting (if not in terms of larger payments, at least strategies that are more appropriate and authentic for the influencers).
The most successful ‘agencies’ that exist – and are growing – were set up by bloggers and are run by bloggers. They are not run by middle managers who are trying to get a slice of the action. They do well because the balance is in favour of the bloggers, the content and projects are more authentic, which is better for the readers/followers and everyone benefits!
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Couldn’t agree more, Michael. It’s interesting to see the changes happening.
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Bloggers and Influencers are creatives, they are able to craft bespoke content that has the brand and their following in mind. This is why they are respected and have a following.
Not all, but the majority of them are not great business people. They are not marketers, they are simply creators with a unique tone of voice. By having representation, they are allowing someone to manage not only their brand but look after the business aspect of things, allowing them to create the best work and continue to grow their following.
I’m shocked at this decision by The Remarkables Group. The majority of marketers and PR professionals, who have had direct dealings with Influencers or Bloggers, will almost always have a horror story to tell. If they have no representation or someone who is going to give you a somewhat unbiased opinion, raises major concerns for the transparency on a number of factors. Anyone who’s dabbled in this space will know these concerns.
To Michael’s point: “at least strategies that are more appropriate and authentic for the influencers” – totally disagree with this. Most influencers/bloggers will find a way to make things work from a creative perspective and on paper it will look good – but it’s not always the right fit. That is what Talent Managers or Agencies are able to identify, and are able to offer advice.
The industry is definitely changing, the world is changing with technological advances. However, educated people, with brilliant minds, that are specialists in what they do will always prevail.
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What an interesting shift for The Remarkables – however one I feel that is very indicative of the market. Bloggers/content creators and influencers and becoming more savvy with how to interact with brands and deliver what’s best for their audience – not the brand.
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