Talent management agency Dopamine Studios, Partnerships Director
What are some of your highlights from your time in Liverpool?
There are tonnes of things I absolutely adored about my course at Liverpool although the main project that immediately springs to mind was a module in Digital Marketing where we were given the topic 'Food Porn' to explore within an online digital community.
I took the opportunity to study the YouTube channel 'Sorted Food' and the module lead encouraged us to create a diary really embedding ourselves into the world of the community, studying the behaviours and in some way’s obsessions with these digital creators. This allowed so much creativity and this online world of YouTube communities was a topic I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about, it was such a new world back then (little did I know I would end up being so heavily involved with digital creators in the future!).
I made friends for life at The University of Liverpool both at halls and on my course. My first living experience was at Carnatic Halls where we were a floor of 12, all 12 of us on that floor are all still friends to this day, the girls ended up all moving into a house together and the boys lived down the road. A lot of us still hang out all the time in Manchester and re-live some of the best times of our lives there!
Are there any memorable courses or projects that shaped your skill set?
Influencer marketing was still a really new industry so there weren't many projects that specifically were tailored to the job I currently do (apart from the 'Food Porn' topic mentioned above) however some of the courses did equip me with skillsets that helped in the early stages of my career such as Marketing Strategy.
In complete honestly the finance modules were not my favourite, but they did help when analysing data in my role which I am required to do often. At the time I studied in Liverpool, there was a module which focussed on the retailer landscape which helped me grasp a better understanding of how that process worked, a few of our influencers had product lines that ended up in retailers so that experience was useful.
What does a typical day in talent management look like?
My role is to oversee the commercial side of our creators’ partnerships, managing the relationships with our brand and agency clients direct with the end goal of creating long-term partnerships, high engagement, and ROI for brands. I work closely with the talent managers and creators to make sure we're aligning them with brands that fit in to their wider strategies for the year.
I am currently based in Manchester but travel down to London quite a lot for work. A typical day may be catching up on emails on the train and then working on a talent's strategy deck with the talent manager to ensure we're looking at it from both a talent and brand partnerships lens.
Once I'm in London I'll have set meetings in the diary with my key clients where we'll chat through partnerships for our creators with the goal of locking in long-term partnerships that align with the talent's wider strategy, an ideal example of this would be a 12-month partnership with a brand that spans 360 across creator content, brand usage, OOH advertising, product licensing and podcast sponsorship.
There are lots of events that our talent attend so the day may end attending an event for a new product launch. Each quarter of the year, I will present the brand data to the team, and we'll re-strategise where necessary based on the findings.
Can you share an example of a successful influencer partnership or campaign in which you’ve been involved?
Due to my relationship with John Lewis and Waitrose as a client, we won a pitch for the Gleam Solutions Arm of the business who were our in-house influencer marketing division to oversee their influencer campaign for the Christmas TV Ad 'Give A Little Love' which went live in 2020.
This was the first year navigating such a large-scale campaign working from home due to Covid so there were a lot of learnings that came from it. The campaign spanned across both digital and traditional celebrities, and it was our responsibility to source and brief all creators on the creative idea that we worked on closely with John Lewis and Waitrose. The goal of the partnership was to drive conversation around the campaign and encourage product sales of their merchandise. The campaign garnered high results and was a brilliant achievement to be so closely involved in one of the biggest Christmas advertisements of the festive period.
For individuals aspiring to work in talent management or collaborate with influencers, what advice would you give them?
Really live and breathe the space where possible, it is such a big industry now with so many creators popping up across various different platforms. If you are new to the industry, it is really crucial to make sure you have your finger on the pulse and that you're aware of trends and changes happening within the industry. If we take TikTok as an example, there are creators blowing up overnight on that platform i.e. Tube Girl - that is the type of creator to try and keep tabs on and analyse where their career takes them.
If you don't have any direct experience in managing talent, it is worth exploring other ways around this. It might be worth looking at account manager type roles where influencer marketing is part of this, that is a really great way to gain experience in working with creators from the commercial side and this experience can sometimes lend itself to talent management/partnership management roles.