What is FARQ and what sets it apart from other agencies?

FARQ is what I like to call an agency with a difference. And yes, it’s my baby - so maybe I’m biased. But our several award wins, great client retention rate, blossoming roster and growing waiting list prove that what I’ve created is pretty special. And I want to tell you more about it…

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*Permission to blow my own trumpet*

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Having been a celebrity journalist for years prior to launching my business, I understand more than most the importance of talent advocacy. Traditionally, the talent I was used to working with were ‘celebrities’. But the sentiment is the same.

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‍People in the public eye need the right people around them. To protect them. To advocate for them. To keep them on track. And to keep them grounded when things can get a little crazy.

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When I left the journalism world in 2020, I left with bags of great relationships that I’d built over the years. Whenever my editor had asked me to storm into an interview and ask a question that I knew would blow up the interview, have them never speak to me again and ruin both my reputation and the magazines’, I opted to do something different.

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I chose to build strong and lasting relationships with the talent (and their agents), so that if they had a story to share, they would trust me to tell it. And that put me in good stead for a future in Talent Management. I had gained trust and built a solid reputation - two things that are hard to come by in a world as fickle as this.

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My reasons for leaving the journalism world I’ll get into in a future post (cue not being valued enough and feeling there was more for me out there), but I’ll be honest - I didn’t know exactly what my next step was. I certainly didn’t have a plan.

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I quickly shifted into Celebrity Consultancy. Which essentially involved being a match-maker for brands and celebrities. I had established relationships with Talent, the means to connect with them and I had an eye for what brands should look for in their ambassadors.

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This wasn’t before the influencer world began, but it was certainly before it turned into what it is now. There weren’t ‘Influencer Marketing Departments’ heading up these kind of activations. And the likes of a brand like Tesco didn’t need a full-time member of staff covering Celebrity Relations. They probably just needed one famous face to front a Christmas campaign. And that’s where I came in on a freelance basis.

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Now it didn’t take me long to realise that if I was given a £50,000 budget, I could get one celebrity or I could activate with 20 influencers. And it opened my eyes to the world of influencer…

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As an outsider looking in, the world of ‘influencing’ seemed very lonely and isolating. And, perhaps a generalisation - but pretty bitchy too.

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It felt like everyone was going about their business in isolation - not willing to help or share with each other, just navigating this new world in silo.

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As a human, I am hard-wired to believe there’s enough success to go around. Sometimes to a fault. So this set-up just didn’t float well with me.

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When I was reaching out to talent for the campaign I was casting in my role as a Celebrity Consultant, so many of them were un-managed. Left to fend this world on their own.

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And it set a spark in me.

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During the pandemic, ‘influencers’ or ‘content creators’ as I prefer to call them blew up in a way we hadn’t seen before.

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Normal people were waking up with hundreds of thousands of people interested in their lives overnight. They didn’t know how to deal with that. How to handle the pressure. How to navigate this new-found fame. Where celebrities had ‘agents,’ influencers had nobody.

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Now, don’t get me wrong - FARQ wasn’t the first influencer talent agency to exist by any stretch. But nobody was doing it how I thought it should be done. So I set about building my own agency and FARQ was born.

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I launched FARQ with a vision in mind and three core business pillars that we never waver from: Community, Support and Education.

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These were three things I felt were imperative to the future of the Talent Management Industry that were missing in all of the ‘big’ agencies already out there.

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So what does this mean for creators that are represented by us? And how does it inform our day-to-day operations?

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Community

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Being an ‘influencer’ or a ‘content creator,’ or whatever you want to call it - is a lonely game. There are no real guidelines, no rule book and no community groups to check you’re doing it right. We are all learning it as we go, and I’m of the belief that we should be doing this within a community.

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Imagine you’re an influencer and your best friend or husband is a doctor or a nurse.

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They’ve just done a 12-hour shift at work, completed intense surgery and maybe even lost a patient. You’ve been paid £10,000 to post a video on your Instagram page. The two are hard to correlate, and they’re certainly difficult to discuss.

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But that doesn’t mean this world is less than that one. It’s just different. And you need to choose the people you share that with.

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At FARQ, our aim is to bring together like-minded individuals. To share the highs and the lows, to celebrate, to collaborate and to win together. And it’s one of my absolute favourite parts of FARQ. The unlikely friendships. The camaraderie.

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When one of our creators win, we all win.

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For that reason, we have to be intentional about who we bring on board. Talent have to fit the vibe and be aligned with our values. If a Talent doesn’t believe there’s enough success to go around or that collaboration beats competition, we aren’t the right agency for them.

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Support

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Our support goes above and beyond the ‘bare minimum’ that a Talent Agency should provide. Yes, we remove the administrative burden from our creators to allow them to focus on the bit they enjoy doing - that goes without saying.

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From inbox management and campaign logistics to negotiation, contracts and invoicing - we handle it all.

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But, more than that - we offer a deeper level of support. We’re strategic partners. We’re advocates. We’re cheerleaders!

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We’re there to brainstorm ideas, pitch to brands and proof-check content, as well as advise on career development and all the things in-between.

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Communication is our love-language.

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From daily messages to weekly touch-points and regular in-person meetings, we are there for our talent in every way.

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Our level of support is bespoke and boutique. And for that reason, we keep our talent to manager ratio intentionally low.

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I’m going to do an entire post on agency red flags, but let me tell you now that one of them is an over-saturated roster. If your Talent Manager is looking after any more than 15 creators (and even that is a lot), I’d be worried.

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Our own software we created, knox, is also a game-changer for support. It offers organisation and transparency in one place and is an amazing tool that all of our creators get access to free-of-charge.

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Education

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The final piece of our puzzle is our commitment to education.

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As previously mentioned, the Creator Economy world is changing by the day. And as an agency founder, I believe it’s my responsibility to support my creators through that rollercoaster as best I can.

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Whether its platform updates, algorithm changes or how to diversify revenue streams, we strive to give our creators all of the information so they can make informed decisions about their businesses.

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Our monthly What the FARQ! workshops are made up of either creator-led conversations and panels or external guests and are a firm favourite on our calendars.

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They are not a commercial opportunity for FARQ, but instead are entirely selfless. An opportunity for us to invest back into the people we work with.

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I always tell creators to ask themselves this:

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“What is my agency offering me that doesn’t directly benefit them?”

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Trust me, it will tell you a lot about who you’re working with.

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