Unpicking The Influencer Agency Experience

Somehow sharks and the remora which latch onto them for the ride are the perfect metaphor, but these fish don't charge a 20% cut on a shark's catch

Did we ever tell you about the time we were quietly represented by an influencer agency for about a year? Time to lift the lid on that experience.

When the work of building the brand of GastroGays began to take off it coincided with the dawning of the age of the influencer. Bloggers had come and gone, along with their earned influence, and the measure of success was how big your social media pile was – which has lasted to this day. Anyone who had a notable profile on socials was considered ‘influential’ and through that sprang enterprising influencer agencies to piggyback on success.

Between 2016 and 2020 it seemed every other day - or at the very least once-weekly - we were being cold-emailed by yet another “influencer agency” or “talent manager” setting out their stall for how they could help you grow and earn from your content. Since we grew our social and blog audience simultaneously in the ROI and UK market (having started in Dublin, then established in London, before moving back to Ireland after five years) we had placed ourselves in quite a unique situation, so we were contacted by agencies on both sides of the Irish Sea — and even some in the USA and wider Europe too.

Some of these agencies are literally single-person operations, many of them are virtual (no office, no structure, more of a freelance sales manager than anything else) while a couple of the big players have made it big business with teams of agents, like you might imagine a modelling agency. [Remember The Model Agency on Channel 4? Loved that fly-on-the-wall documentary, hard to imagine it broadcast 13 years ago…]. Some felt like they were flogging an app, others didn’t have any clear strategy.

Do We Have Influence?

We don’t class ourselves as influencers, we may have some level of mild ‘influence’ but have never called ourselves influencers. We have an audience, yes, but we can’t even influence our parents or respective siblings most of the time, let alone anyone else. What we do have is a significant audience, grown slowly over a decade, and the content we produce is authentic, authoritative, transparent and honest, sitting somewhere between approachable and aspirational, which tends to stoke engagement and, ultimately, connection.

We don’t fake things or muddy the waters, we grew every platform we have with integrity (you wouldn’t believe how many out there have paid to inflate their numbers in the tens of thousands overnight) and we engage directly, one-to-one, with our audience rather than decreeing from a digital throne. So the idea of us holding up a product to camera and fake smiling with a caption instructing our audience to “get X% off your first order” or pretending to genuinely endorse a HelloFresh meal kit was never going to fly.

Our content is authentic and considered, so our brand partnerships have always had to be, and we have declined brand partnerships more often than accepted them. For example we have worked with Marks & Spencer Ireland for many years, mostly on recipe development and we showcase the brand and its products by offering delicious context — which means creating something new and exclusive for each brief. Rather than just show we do. Same for Lidl back in the day, same for Bord Bia, same for drinks brands. The list goes on.

What We Do VS. What We Don’t Do

Let’s not beat around the bush here, we want to make money off our content, and we make no secret of that and it shouldn’t be uncouth to say so. This is a business, and you’re reading this via the medium of Substack, where we very much prioritise our paid subscribers above all else. We’ve gotten good at monetising our content over the years, but took over five years of hobbying to even consider turning this into a job. Now it is one, and has been for about another five years since, but it’s a job where the buck starts and ends with us and the bucks need to fuel the effort.

For all the content we’ve worked hard to put out into the world - writing, video, visuals, recipes, podcasts, events - we deserve to not only make ends meet but to carve a profit from the platforms and name we have built so working with an agent has always been a viable option to explore. However, what we do and what we don’t do was the most important aspect with which a prospective agency needed to understand and which we very much needed them to repeat back to us to prove they heard and understood.

The Economics

Consider a shark stalking its way around the ocean, quite often they are not alone… A fish species called Remora has evolved shrewdly within its surroundings to thrive by attaching themselves to sharks and certain other larger aquatic life. These fish have a suction disc on top of their heads which latches onto sharks as they stalk the deep blue. It’s symbiotic in a way, they get a free ride and are protected by this large predator while the shark gets cleaned and groomed by the smaller fish dining on their debris.

Influencer agencies are exactly like that, latching themselves to big-numbered creators and influential names to “represent” them, while sticking on their 15-30%. You didn’t think Influencer agencies were in it for the good of their health, did you? The agency jumps in at some point on the ride, liaising with outside sources and managing campaigns and briefs while intercepting the invoice between creator and client to inflate with their own fee.

Not to call influencer agencies bottom feeders but the business model is built upon being a gofer, a middleman that adds its own cut promising to streamline, smoothen and even improve the supply chain between A and B. But does it actually serve that purpose…?