Maja Pawinska Sims 20 Mar 2024 // 6:00AM GMT
LONDON — Agency founders Andrew Bloch and Lizzie Earl have joined forces to launch a new collective of specialist marketing businesses, Stakked.
Lizzie Earl, who founded PR agency Munch in 2016, is the CEO of Stakked, which is backed by industry veteran and Frank co-founder Andrew Bloch who has invested in the business and will be its non-executive chairman.
The collective is made up of four complementary creative businesses across earned, social, paid, and digital, as well as an AI-powered SaaS platform – developed by Earl over the past four years while she has paused Munch’s operations – for brands to connect and work directly with PR freelancers.
Stakked launches with 10 full-time staff and offers brands the option to work with each company individually or ‘stack up’ to deliver all their marketing requirements in one place.
All the businesses in the collective are using AI tools and expertise to analytics, measurement and reporting, deliver and optimise creative content more economically, as well as monitoring and reacting to engagement in real time, and reducing inefficiencies.
The three agencies in Stakked are: Munch, which is reopening after a four-year break, with Earl joined by creative director and founder of Play, Rowan Adams, and clients including Patch Plants and Arena Flowers; social media, paid digital, influencer and live activation agency Flabbergast, spearheaded by creative marketer Faye Williams, formerly of Island Records, Universal and Printwork, which launches with clients including British producer Toddla T and award-winning BBC Radio 1 presenter Jaguar; and Another Blank Page, which specialises in creative digital product development, UX, custom websites and mobile apps, from branding to the design and build, led by MD Marc Herman and with launch clients including superfood-infused coffee brand Not Your Average.
The fourth part of the business is new AI-powered SaaS platform Nibble, which connects brands who don’t have the budget or requirement for an agency with a network of pre-screened PR freelancers. The platform is headed up Natasha Doroshenko, formerly at Weber Shandwick, who has already matched a diverse range of small and growing brands and entrepreneurs across beauty, FMCG, publishing, food and drink, tech, and wellness.
Earl said: “After many successful years growing Munch 1.0, I knew I wanted to help more businesses deliver world-class marketing on a larger scale. I’ve spent the last four years assembling a tech team and building our AI-powered Nibble platform from scratch. Integrating tech and AI into Stakked’s boutiques was a no-brainer and we’re ready to show how top creative talent can collaborate with AI to generate best-in-class, efficient marketing with a bigger impact.
“With Stakked, brands of all sizes no longer face the dilemma of choosing between depth of service and breadth of expertise, and we can provide a holistic birds-eye view of their marketing needs, advising which specialist agency to activate at the right time for maximum cost-efficiency. Our goal is to pass on better value to clients by investing their budgets into the work that gets the results.”
Bloch, who also works with agency selection firm AAR, is a partner at M&A consultancy PCB and is a non-exec to other agencies including Words + Pixels, told PRovoke Media: “I’m genuinely buzzing. I’ve spent four years seeing agencies present and listening to what clients need, and most agencies can’t do everything, and most are not using AI effectively yet. Stakked is designed for what brands need.”
He added: “New agencies launch every month, and the world is definitely not waiting for another agency, so we knew if we were going to do this and be successful, we needed to truly innovate how creativity is harnessed and delivered. With Stakked I believe we have achieved that. Lizzie is arguably the best marketeer I have ever worked with. We first met when she worked with me in one of her first PR roles and I went on to mentor her for over ten years. It’s great to come together to launch Stakked and I have no doubt she will continue to be a force to be reckoned with.”