LONDON — Three former execs at influencer marketing platform Traackr have launched a new digital agency that aims to make influence a more strategic and effective part of brands’ marketing and communications efforts.

Inpulsus has been founded by Robbie Vann-Adibé, who becomes CEO, and partners Delphine Reynaud and Christian Damsen; all three were all part of the senior team at Traackr, while partner Steven Spieczny was vice-president of Hearst’s digital marketing agency iCrossing and SVP at WPP digital agency Schematic.

The agency has been set up to fill the “strategic gap” the team says still faces most marketers when it comes to influence marketing (IM), despite the maturing of the sector.

Vann-Adibé, who was chairman of Traackr from 2011 to 2019, said: “Where the practice has advanced through numerous iterations, we believe that new ideas in how marketing and business organise around IM internally can unlock vast growth potential. As more companies see better direct return on investment from influence marketing versus traditional paid media, the opportunity to become vastly more efficient and drive positive impact to the business is incredible.”

He used the example of Tesla, which continues to bypass paid media in favour of influencers talking about its products: “Many CMOs – whether B2C or B2B – can now see acceleration in their brands by doing the same.”

The agency’s launch offer includes the Influence Maturity Quotient (IMQ) tool, currently in beta, which allows marketers to self-diagnose their current or forthcoming IM programs and receive immediate recommendations to improve their activity.

Vann-Adibé told PRovoke Media: “A lot of organisations don’t know what they don’t know about whether they are good at influencer marketing. This tool is intended to be a self-assessment, with tip and tricks to improve results and executions of your programmes – we give some examples but our hope is that the process triggers the desire for a further conversation about what else we can do.”