The Truth Behind Influencer Agencies

I'm continuing to try to lift up the veil when it comes to one of the most elusive and secretive industries.

The other day I found myself scrolling through the comment section of an old post when I saw a comment that said ‘They are at the same management. You can tell it’s one big old clique’ and it highlighted to me, again, just how misunderstood being an influencer is. It was under a post advertising a speaking event with someone who, yes, I am friendly with, but someone who I have also never been for lunch with or hung out with outside of a work capacity.

When people are put in a line-up at an event, you sometimes don’t know who else is attending and most of all, you have little to no control over who is joining you. I have been on panels with people who are heavily into diet culture and had to argue my point of view, and sometimes I strike it lucky and it’s a panel of people whose opinion I stand behind. The reason why you might see talent from the same management working together is that it is in the management’s interest to book more of their roster. The brand will be interacting with the manager anyway on behalf of the talent and they might ask the manager if they have slots to fill or the agent might suggest a few names that might fit in and unless that costs the original influencer the job, it doesn’t really affect the first person who was asked and the added benefit of being at an agency is the hope you will also benefit from other influencer’s jobs coming in too.

The influencer themselves though have no control, and often no knowledge about who else is put forward. It doesn’t mean you are friends or even like each other. There could even be people that you vehemently disagree with so it is not uncommon to see someone who believes in body positivity sitting on the same board as someone who is promoting diet culture.