Following its acquisition of US-based influencer marketing platform Influential last year, Publicis Groupe is now expanding the agency’s operations into Australia. 

Influential brokers contracts between advertisers and online influencers, and its presence in the country will be augmented by way of a related acquisition conducted by Publicis earlier this year – that of influencer technology marketing platform Captiv8, which Publicis acquired in May. 

“The rise of influencers and content creators over the past 18 months remains a powerful marketing phenomenon. To truly optimise investment and impact in this space, an end-to-end solution is essential,” Publicis Groupe ANZ CEO Michael Rebelo says. 

“By integrating our influencer expertise, platform, creative strategy, content production and social media buying, we now have Australia’s most connected influencer and social agency.”

Elevating influencer marketing

The Australian Influential team will be led by CEO Skye Lambley, who leads the Influence Practice at Publicis Groupe ANZ, and recently appointed general manager Cat Wilkinson.

Lambley says the move to bolster Publicis’ influencer offerings was encouraged by the increasing shifts in the marketing industry to treat influencers as traditional media channels.

“You’ve got a lot of work coming through the media agency saying, ‘How do we leverage these influencers as a channel?’ The benefit of that is being able to really measure the impact, which you traditionally don’t have on the awareness side,” Lambley says.

“What we are doing is bringing all that together, underpinned by good AI technology platforms, relationships we have with talent managers and talent directly, right through the impact of these campaigns through more traditional media measurements,” Lambley explains.

The agency employs more than 30 cross-disciplinary strategists, performance marketers, creatives, content creators, and platform and paid specialists.

Wilkinson says unifying these diverse skillsets and balancing cohesion between influencer and brand are key to creating effective influencer content.

“From a content and influencer social asset perspective, the very best performing content is so often something that’s creative and strategy-led, no matter what brand or which creator they’re actually working with,” Wilkinson says.

“It’s that idea of coming up with and helping develop really clever, strategic, creative ways into influencers and then utilising them as a media channel. Then, being able to amplify it to push it out across omnichannel amplification, [such as] taking it out of social, putting it in vertical retail, out-of-home, or other placements [where] we know that type of content is going to have an impact.

“Balancing that with the brand objectives, the output of the media side of the content, and also finding content that creators want to work with and work with us on, is really important to be able to deliver on all of those things.”  

Reputation awareness and regulatory frameworks 

Providing a comprehensive offering for clients includes approaching influencer engagement with a reputation-first mindset and combining PR expertise with regulatory awareness to ensure brand safety beyond transactional or purely AI-driven methods.

“The sweet spot is finding a creator that is aligned with the brand,” Lambley says. 

“I think it’s really critical for us to ensure that any influencer work has that creativity and strategy piece upfront…that really comes down to understanding the brand that you’re working with and understanding the influencers and what they’re loved for, and making sure that the pairing is right,” she says.

Driving strategy and collaboration  

Influential’s model centres on four core strategies: AI-driven creator insights, commerce-led creative content, co-created campaigns with creators and communities, and a measurement framework linking social activity to brand and business outcomes.

Wilkinson says that by continuing to operate as a ‘Centre of Excellence’, they aim to ensure all aspects of influencer and social media work are well-informed, collaborative and thoroughly executed.

“If you are a ‘Centre of Excellence’, you are in the middle of all of the different pieces and perspectives on how influencer and social could be used,” Wilkinson says.

“You get to not only understand, learn, teach and share, but connect those elements and make sure that each plan, each campaign, each brand is getting full due diligence across where all of the different areas of this influencer work or this social work could sit.”

Read more: How creators and brands can both win in influencer marketing