The Remarkables Group expands offering and repositions as influencer connections agency
The Remarkables Group is moving away from its origins as an influencer talent agency and repositioning itself as an influencer connections agency, expanding its offering to focus on millennials.
Founder Lorraine Murphy told Mumbrella it will now be focused on creating strategic connections and ideation between influencers and brands, rather than just representing influencers to media agencies and clients in a more talent agency style as it has to date.
“I set out to start a talent agency and that doesn’t do justice to the amount of ideation, strategy and consultation we do with both the influencers and the brands. It’s not a booking model which a talent agency suggests,” Remarkables Group founder Lorraine Murphy told Mumbrella.
“The second element of it is creating other channels that sit underneath that Remarkables Group umbrella and for us to call ourselves a talent agency yet to have all of these developments in the pipeline, it just didn’t make sense.”
Murphy: “It’s not a booking model which a talent agency suggests”
The repositioning of the agency has seen Murphy take on a managing director role overseeing the overall business, while relationships director Sarah Chegwidden has been promoted to general manager, leading the traditional blogger side of the group.
Chegwidden said: “The influencer marketing space is ever-changing and I’m excited to be on this journey with Lorraine. The influencers we represent are true professionals with fantastic creative ideas and highly engaged audiences; and have a direct line to a very powerful demographic. Myself and my team are focused on harnessing all of this for our clients.”
Chegwidden promoted to general manager of The Remarkables Group
Chegwidden will continue to grow the blogger side of the business which represents 20 influencers with an audience of mainly women aged 30-55 while Murphy will be focusing on the new millennial pillar of the company.
The change in the agency comes off the back of its talent competition Rising Social Star which saw the group hunt for talent across fashion, beauty, well-being and travel in partnership with Priceline Pharmacies, Bonds and Qantas.
According to Murphy, the Rising Social Star competition had three times the number of entries expected and will now run annually as part of The Remarkable Group’s Rising Social Star offering which also offers a membership model, events and brand partnerships.
Murphy said: “The business is four years old now and the blogger side is what we’ve become known for and our huge area of strength is that women aged in their late 20s to their mid 50s, it’s what we do really well. But at the same time we know from doing the talent search at the start of the year, there’s a huge amount of social influencers coming through and no-one is helping them learn how to become social influencers.
“It’s a two-fold opportunity: one the opportunity for us is to create an events membership model where we can actually help upskill them and motivate them. The second side is these are very exciting millennial influencers who brands are really excited to work with.
“It’s two-fold – it’s that empowerment model where we help them to be better influencers and then we also help connect them with brands that they want to work with.”
The Rising Social Star membership model is aimed at 15-30 year old influencers with members accepted after an application process.
Explaining the new membership model, Murphy said: “What we’ve done with the membership model is it’s an application process – they apply to be part of the group, we accept them and then they do their payment process.
“We’ve got 120 people in that overall membership group but we’ve highlighted some of the headliners whereby we’ll have some agreements with them – some exclusive, some not. They’re the ones with the big names, big audiences and they might be a little more established than others in the group.
“The beauty of the membership model is we’ve got another 110 influencers and growing that we can matchup when more specific opportunities come through.”
Murphy said the membership model is not a “representation model” where there is no requirement for The Remarkables Group to connect influencer members with brands.
“They’re in our group, they want to hear from us on business opportunities so aside from that there’s no requirement from us or them,” she said.
“The benefit of membership is access to a Facebook group where they are exchanging tips and ticks with other influencers, they also get discounts to events and there’s also exclusive members-only meet-ups and they also hear from us on brand opportunities.”
The millennial side to The Remarkables Group is already seeing talent partnered with brands, with the group working with 303 MullenLowe on a recent influencer campaign for Harley Davidson.
The repositioning comes as the group prepares to launch a two-day conference called Rising Social Star Live which will take place on September 17 and 18 and will feature speakers including vlogger Cartia Mallan, Gritty Pretty’s Eleanor Pendleton and The Entourage’s Jack Delosa.
“It goes back to the whole objective of doing Rising Social Stars, it’s not just about making money necessarily, it’s also about helping influencers get their channels to the next level,” Murphy said.
“We’re looking for brand partners for the event. It’s an amazing opportunity for brands to get all these influencers in one place and influence them.”
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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