Q: I've noticed that most successful creators are represented by managers or agencies. Is this something I need too?
A: There are many pros to having representation, but also many cons. I used to be signed with an agency, but I declined to renew when my contract expired and I’m much happier keeping it all in-house again. Here’s my advice:
First, don’t sign with a manager or agency until you have mastered negotiating brand deals yourself and know what the norm is. Otherwise, you have no way to gauge how effective the management is. It’s also important to know what the norm is in terms of how timely brands are in paying you.
Also, always monitor your own email inquiries and forward them onto the agency. Don't just list your agency's email address as your contact info.
In order to gauge how effective your representation is, you need to see what percentage of campaigns you were already generating yourself through inbound inquiries. If the agency is not bringing you any new business and they’re simply negotiating deals that were already coming your way, it’s not worth paying them a commission (typically 15-20%).
Also, most talent management agencies collect the payments for you and then pass the funds onto you, minus their commission. Few creators talk about this openly due to confidentiality clauses in contracts, but it’s extremely common for agencies to play games with creators’ payments, claim the brand didn’t pay yet when really they paid months ago but the money hasn’t been passed onto the creator.
And this part is really important:
Creators of color almost always get it the worst. I heard about one Black creator who was owed over $100,000 by her management agency and it was more than six months overdue. After being ignored repeatedly, she finally shamed them publicly online and they wrote her a check for the full amount the next day. There’s a lot of shady behavior like this - even coming from the most reputable agencies in the industry.
If you’re scared of talking about and asking for money, I honestly don’t think you should become a creator. You can’t expect to outsource this whole part of the job to a manager and wash your hands of it. That’s a recipe for disaster because inevitably some unethical person will take advantage of you.
Another thing is that management agencies make it seem like they’re out there actively pitching business on your behalf but from what I’ve seen, that’s not actually how it works. In reality, their business model seems to be to sign as many creators onto their roster to access the incoming inquiries those creators are already getting.
When Creator A gets a campaign inquiry, the manager will say, “Hey, if you sign Creator B and C to this campaign, we’ll give you a group discount.” Creators B and C are like, “Wow! It’s so awesome that my management agency brought me this new business.” But often Creator A got paid less than if the other creators weren’t cross-sold onto her campaign.
Of course, if Creator A is also being cross-sold onto other creators’ campaigns, it’s still worthwhile because they make more overall than if they weren’t with the agency. However, many creators signed to management agencies are often milked for their campaigns, but aren’t actually cross-sold onto other campaigns. So they become a human lead generation source all the while getting little to nothing in return. And sometimes, Creator A is cut out of the campaign completely because the agency pushed Creators B, C, and D onto the brand instead! If Creator A is not fielding her own inquiries, she’d have no idea any of this happened.
There’s a lot of admin involved with brand deals so it’s good to get help, but signing with a talent management agency isn’t the only option. You can easily hire someone and train them yourself. It’s honestly not that hard. I have a part-time virtual assistant who helps me with campaigns and partnerships. I maintain full control over the whole process from negotiations to contracts to payments. I never have to worry about whether a brand is actually late in paying or whether they paid ages ago, and my agency is secretly keeping the money from me. I can account for every dollar with full transparency.
That said, there’s one main reason why I would be open to working with an agency again in the future. And this would have to be that they are willing and able to bring truly big-time deals or connect me with top-level execs at brands in a way that I can’t do on my own. But if they're just bringing me the same caliber of projects I'm already generating on my own, there's not much point.
Negotiating brand deals isn’t hard. All you’re basically doing is answering emails. I worked in ad sales back in the 2000s when sales still meant picking up a phone. As a non-confrontational person, that was terrifying. In contrast, sending an email is so easy! All the agencies who have hit me up since I Ieft my old agency have basically just been offering to do what we’re already doing in-house: answering emails. Yes, they might cross-sell me onto the opportunities of other creators on their roster, but they’re still the same caliber projects we’re already doing.
Handling things in-house, we managed to book more than double the amount of gross revenue booked when I was signed to an agency. So not having access to an outside pipeline of opportunities (A.K.A. not just what’s already coming to us) hasn’t hurt us at all. And I’m much happier giving up some ancillary campaigns they might cross-sell us into if it means having full control of our receivables as we do now.
Now, it’s important to note that many creators do have great experiences with agencies. When it works well, it’s a beautiful thing! But keep in mind that an agency’s business model is to amass a roster of influencers who already have a healthy pipeline of incoming opportunities so they can cross-sell them onto each other’s campaigns. If you’re not already generating much business, they won’t want to sign you and you won’t have to decide whether or not to go this route anyway.
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Take care,
Carmen Sognonvi
