‘The conversation has shifted’: The CFO moved upstream. Now agencies have to as well

CFOs are demanding more from marketing — and not in the usual way. The familiar playbook of squeezing costs and investing in performance spend is still in motion, driven by an uncertain economy and an unpredictable geopolitical backdrop. But CFOs now are asking harder questions driven by a better grasp of how marketing actually works, and a sharper instinct for where it doesn’t.

For example, VaynerMedia’s CEO Gary Vaynerchuk has a new audience: his clients’ finance teams. Across the industry, other agencies are finding the same.

At independent, full-service brand commerce marketing agency Blue Chip, that shift has been more gradual. Execs there aren’t sitting down with CFOs directly, but they are helping their clients get ready for those conversations. “A lot of our day to day right now is helping CMOs prepare for board conversations where finance is in the room and the questions are sharper,” said Sarah VanHeirseele, chief growth officer at Blue Chip.

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How creator talent agencies are evolving into multi-platform operators

The legacy agency model, long overdue for a reckoning, is finally being rebuilt from the ground up — with creators at the center.

The old agency model — brokering deals, manually sourcing talent and running slow, service-heavy operations that treated creators like traditional talent — came of age in a fragmented market. But that model is giving way to something faster, more scalable, and built around how creators actually operate today.

Take Shorthand Studios, an agency based in Los Angeles, which has worked with health content creator Nick Norwitz on his branding and testing strategies across YouTube and Substack for a year. He told Digiday that within the last year, the views on his YouTube channel have grown 442% and his subscribers have grown by over 650,000, while his Substack (written content, without video) has grown by almost 800%.

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