Global scale
VMLY&R Global CEO Jon Cook says the need for this type of acquisition came as he noticed the company had a gap in the agency network’s ability to provide an influencer marketing capability at a global scale.
“This is one of the hottest areas in marketing and an area that we had some experience, but we certainly didn't have depth and any sort of specialization,” Cook said. “We could do one-off influencer marketing, but we have so many clients who have portfolios of products and services. If you look across our client base, they're all operating at, if not a national scale, they're operating at a global scale.”
Obviously makes it a point to be able to work with any type of influencer regardless of the size of their following. The agency has more than 60 million creators in its databases and over 150,000 creators in its preferred network.
“We are really, really good at finding very niche creators,” Karwowski said. “[If] you're a client who wants to do something in southeast Florida around a new restaurant opening. We can do that for you and we can do that for you very quickly.”
Currently, 80% of Obviously’s business is in short-form content such as TikTok, which has been in the headlines recently, including CEO Shou Zi Chew's testimony last week in a Congressional hearing that could influence whether the app is banned in the U.S.
Related news: TikTok CEO defends app to Congress
When asked if she has seen brands pause their TikTok campaigns as a result, Karwowski said it has been “business as usual.”
“Brands have seen so much success with TikTok,” she said. “We don't think anything is going to happen in actuality but if it were to, we're going to be launching campaigns up until the last minute of the last day. And we also just think you can't put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to short-form content. People watch so much TikTok, they're going to go somewhere else to watch a ton of really compelling content.”