CORQ spoke to The Tape Agency co-founder Mary Kate Trevaskis about closing down the agency’s talent management division, its new community for nano creators and her predictions for the future of influencer marketing.
Trevaskis and Camilla Trindle started The Tape Agency in 2016. “We just wrote down all the things we were good at. The main thing was stickiness – making connections and being able to find ways to put those people with other things, whether it’s people, projects or opportunities. Stick them together and send them off into the world,” Trevaskis says.
The agency started out in PR and later branched into talent management. Now, it has pivoted back to its roots – in July, Tape announced it was shutting down its talent management arm. “Our podcasting division is also closing down, partly because it’s very hard to make money out of things that are commission-based or project-based when the funnel of money is moving differently. We would have to change our values too much in order to do what the industry is looking for,” Trevaskis says.
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Moving forward, The Tape Agency will be a communications agency. While it will no longer have a roster of talent, Trevaskis will personally be managing makeup artist Genevieve Turley – “I’m just doing a passion project because I think she’s fantastic,” she says.
One function of the agency is shutting down, but another is opening. “I don’t want to waste what we’ve learned about talent management, because eight years in social media is a long time. We’ve done a lot – but we can do more with it by sharing,” Trevaskis says.
Earlier in September, the agency officially launched The Tape Dispenser, a subscription-based community for nano creators where users can access tutorials, webinars, forums and receive guidance on everything from contracts to social growth.
“I think nano creators hold all of the power – just look at the data around nano creators in terms of engagement and conversion,” she says and adds: “It’s why user-generated content was created, because brands knew they needed nano creators but they couldn’t just say ‘can I have your content?’”. The target audience for The Tape Dispenser is creators with followings of up to 10,000. The lower follower limit? There is none.
The community launched with one tier for a monthly subscription fee of £10, but has plans to launch two more tiers. The second tier will provide access to guest speakers, events and meet-ups, while the third tier will be a mentorship programme with creators. “I hate the term user-generated content, I think it’s manipulative,” Trevaskis says. The aim of The Tape Dispenser is to give nano creators the tools to grow their platforms, make industry connections and land brand deals that will benefit both parties.
“The businesses that currently exist are asking creators to bid for the business. Ours is the other way around, ours is creator first,” she says. The goal is that The Tape Dispenser will give up-and-coming influencers the confidence, knowledge and opportunities they have been looking for. This will include attending press events together, finding other creators in their local area and having a community to lean on in difficult situations.
Trevaskis thinks nano creators will continue to drive the industry forward, and that content will just keep getting “messier” as trends accelerate even quicker than they do now. “What I predict is that big corporates will really struggle, because their parameters and their legality will hinder them from being quick enough,” she says.
By Dina Zubi, news and features writer for CORQ.
