Going Viral Doesn’t Work Anymore & Accenture Bets Big on Creators

0:00Jasmine Enberg: Hi, everyone. This is Scalable, a weekly show about the business of the creator economy. I'm Kaya Yurieff. And I'm Jasmine Enberg. Every Thursday, we take you beyond the headlines to tell you what's happening, what it means, and why it matters.

0:29Jasmine Enberg: matters. Automated recovery, clean data, a business that keeps moving no matter what hits. One platform, not a patchwork of stitched together tools and gaps. Don't wait for the next attack. Secure and accelerate your business at rubric.com. Again, rubric.com. Creators are losing control on social media. I've got as many followers as Instagram decides I've got that day. This is a real tension and thing that we have to get right and manage. That loss of control is real. And Accenture Song has acquired Whaler, the influencer marketing agency. This is actually us viewing this as a doubling down on the creator economy, not a walking away.

1:06Jasmine Enberg: We have these stories and why they matter in today's episode.

1:14Jasmine Enberg: Hi, Jasmine. Hi, Kaya. And hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into our weekly show about the creator economy. Can a creator become as big as Mr. Beast if they start today? There are no new creators breaking through to the mainstream anymore. If you think back to the early days of TikTok, new creators were being minted left and right from Charli D 'Amelio to Addison Rae to the Sway House boys. I mean, what an era. But that's no longer happening. The only recent example that we can really point to is Alex Earle, who started blowing up in late 2022, which is nearly four years ago now, which one is pretty crazy and two shows just how long it's been.

1:53It is wild to think that 2022 was four years ago. It literally feels like yesterday, but you're right. I mean, for creators, it is now harder than ever to break through. At the same time though, we're also seeing that creators of all sizes and on all platforms are also having a hard time reaching their actual followers. That includes everyone from a long time YouTuber, Casey Neistat, who recently told Axios, he no longer understood YouTube's algorithm to comedian Matt Reif, who has complained about his followers not seeing his videos on TikTok, to Queer Eye star turned YouTuber Tan France, who said this about Instagram on a recent episode of Scalable.

2:31Jasmine Enberg: I've got as many followers as Instagram decides I've got that day. I don't have almost 4 million followers. I've probably got an average of 20 ,000 followers. So for context, Tan's official Instagram follower count is about 3.6 million. And we're going to dive deep into these dual dynamics, the reasons that this is happening, ahem, algorithms, and what this means for creators and the businesses that rely on them to reach audiences. Later in the show, we're joined by Neil Waller, who's the co-founder and co-CEO of Whaler Group, which just sold its agency division, Whaler, to Accenture Song. While financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, Neil walked us through what the acquisition means for the roughly 170 employees of Whaler Agency, the rest of Whaler Group as a whole, and the future of influencer marketing.

3:13Jasmine Enberg: Disclosure Scalable is a joint venture with The Lighthouse, which is owned by Whaler Group. But first, a quick message from our sponsor. Lions Creators is where creators and decision makers come together to unlock real commercial opportunities. The most influential brands, talent, and experts in the creator economy will once again return to the French Riviera for Lions Creators in partnership with Adobe. So many creators will be speaking across various stages all week, including Zoe Unlimited, JT Barnett, Hannah Stocking, and Stephen Bartlett. As well as so many brands like Elf Beauty, DoorDash, OnePay, Dove, and TikTok.

3:44talk. Also, don't forget to check out activations from Adobe, Linktree, hashtag paid, Microsoft Whaler, and CAA. As a reminder, the festival is happening June 22nd to the 26th, so it's just around the corner. We'll be there. So like we said at the top, breaking through to new audiences on social media is harder than ever. At the same time, creators are also struggling to reach their own followers. Taken together, these two factors are making it increasingly challenging for creators as well as the businesses that rely on them to connect predictably and effectively with audiences. And it's the creator middle class that maybe hit the hardest.

4:17Jasmine Enberg: I mean, this is a familiar story. While they have sizable audiences, they lack the massive scale and recognition of top creators. They also typically don't have the same deep expertise or highly engaged communities of creators. So what's actually driving all of this? Because these two trends are contradictory and kind of make it sound like social media just isn't working for anybody anymore. Kaya, thoughts? It's interesting because social media platforms have actually never been better at helping creators reach new audiences. But that's made it harder for them to keep reaching that same audience and build a loyal audience.

4:51Jasmine Enberg: So the biggest shift that's driving all of this is that social media has moved away from being follower-driven to recommendation-driven. So in the early days, you remember this? You used to choose which accounts you wanted to follow. You saw their posts in reverse chronological order. And creators could largely count on reaching a sizable portion of that audience at any given time. That's why it was so important, like what time you posted, like all of that stuff was very important. But TikTok changed all of this. I mean, you don't open TikTok to watch a specific creator, right? You go there to be entertained and you don't really care by who.

5:27Jasmine Enberg: That's also meant and means that people with absolutely no existing following can go viral overnight or have their videos seen by millions of people. So in the early days of TikTok, it was easier to turn that audience into a career. But as we said, that's not the case anymore. Yeah, I mean, TikTok really changed the game entirely. I think the flip side of all of that was, though, that it made people think that all creators were just overnight sensations. And I still think that's probably one of the biggest misconceptions about the creator economy, though it does seem like we're finally starting to wake up to the fact that being a creator is a lot harder than it looks.

6:01I mean, take it from us as we're now creators ourselves. But anyway, I mean, YouTube is one of the few places that you still go to search for and watch a specific creator. But that's only when you're talking about long form. I mean, if you're scrolling through YouTube shorts, it's basically the same behavior as you see on TikTok. I mean, you're there to swipe and be entertained and you don't really care who's creating that content for you. Still, I would say the most dramatic shift really has been on Instagram, which started as a real social network where you actually connected with friends by sharing photos.

6:34And yes, of course, you're still seeing people you know on Instagram, but you're seeing a lot more recommended content. And Instagram has changed its algorithm so that it's prioritizing smaller accounts as well as original content. And it uses signals like saves and shares actually over follower count to determine what to recommend to people. And that's done a couple of big things that I think speak to exactly what we are noticing is happening on these platforms. So one, smaller creators have found a lot more success on Instagram. I mean, Kaya, you reported this a couple of years ago, and we're still seeing this happen.

7:06But the reality is, is that many of them are, you know, still struggling to turn a viral video into actual followers because people are just kind of swiping through. They're not necessarily clicking onto a profile and hitting follow. And then, of course, and this is the most obvious one, established creators are having trouble reaching their followers. And that's exactly what Tan France was talking about. But what I find so interesting is that it's not just individual creators. It's also things like content aggregators and meme accounts, which are huge on Instagram. And all of this taken together is at least contributing to this perception that you just can't reach the people you want to reach on Instagram anymore.

7:43Jasmine Enberg: Yes. And as you know, we love data here at Scalable. So we asked our friends at Influencer Marketing Agency 4 to pull some data for us to try to help us make sense of what's going on. Jasmine, walk us through the findings. Honestly, it was kind of a mixed bag. I mean, on the one hand, you had nearly two thirds of creators say they had at least one viral moment during their careers. And that shows how important going viral is to actually building an audience and becoming a creator. Of the respondents who pinpointed a specific timeframe for when they went viral, many of them did say that it happened during the pandemic.

8:14So that again, supports the fact that a lot of these breakthrough stars were being made in 2020 to say 2022. But a significant number also pointed to post-pandemic moments. and some of them were as recent as April of this year. So that then suggests that this era of virality isn't totally over, and at least some creators are still reaching new audiences and generating a ton of views. I think the catch is that going viral isn't exactly the same thing as breaking through. I mean, a creator can have one or multiple viral moments and just never turn that into sustainable audience growth like the way that Alex Earle or the D 'Amelios did back then.

8:52And that's, you know, one thing that the survey couldn't really answer. I mean, four asked them how long they'd been creating content and how long it took them to build an audience. And spoiler alert, it was not a short amount of time for most of them. But it didn't really paint a clear picture of how their follower growth kind of spread out over the years and particularly after their viral moments. I also think virality is highly relative, right? I mean, there's no agreed upon number of views, engagements, or sort of lift in followers that defines what going viral means. And for somebody who averages several hundred views on their videos, getting a couple of thousand is probably going viral.

9:28And I think that's especially true now when reaching millions of people, including those who are your followers, just feels harder than ever. So, Kaya, let's talk a little bit about how the social platforms are thinking about this because they're obviously aware of this tension. And you spoke to Instagram about it on stage at the Scalable Summit recently.

9:44Jasmine Enberg: Yes, Instagram knows that this is a struggle. On one hand, they kind of had to pivot their app to be more recommendation Reels driven to compete with TikTok, right? And it's worked. I mean, Reels has become a much bigger rival to TikTok. It's a much better product. And creators are using it and creating original Reels because it is helping them grow and find niche audiences. But like we said, that has a downside of making it harder for them to reach those people once they actually follow them. And, you know, sometimes you actually do hit follow and then you don't see the creator again, right? Like this has been a phenomenon on TikTok for a long time.

10:18Jasmine Enberg: So at our Scalable Summit in May, Tessa Lyons, who is a longtime product leader at Instagram, acknowledged that Instagram needs to strike a better balance between the two. And it's something that it needs to, quote, fix. Here's what she said. This is a real tension and thing that we have to get right and manage. Getting that balance right is like a large part of my job leading the ranking and recommendation teams. We're thinking about like how do we keep the good things of recommendations, which is discovering interests you might never have known you had. Like mine lately is I've become obsessed with the moon mission, Artemis 2.

10:51I have followed this like so closely through Reels. I discovered in my Reels feed because another friend had liked it and I saw it come up in recommendations. At the same time, that loss of control is real. And I think that it's something we need to fix. The reality is that it's not in Instagram's best interest to prioritize friends and follower content. I mean, they need to keep engagement up in order to sell ads. And the best way to do that is through entertaining reels, which often come through recommendations or people you don't follow. Plus, and this is something I've learned time and time again covering social media, what people say is rarely aligned with how they actually behave.

11:28Like, people say they want more pictures of their friends, but there is only so many cat birthday parties, engagement photos, and wedding photo dumps that you can take. okay this is fact i don't think i've seen a birthday cat party but i've seen nobody

11:46Jasmine Enberg: but i think in seriousness like it is natural also for us as humans to just want a variety of different content and your friends and family are typically not making the videos that actually are good and keep you sucked in to instagram or tiktok and to that point i mean i do think there's probably somewhat of a higher threshold for creator content. I mean, people follow a creator because they want to see their journey. They want to see their life. They want to see the content that hopefully is actually good that they're creating. But even then, more people on Instagram are just swiping through and not thinking about the creators themselves.

12:23And Instagram knows this too. I mean, even in that response, Tessa was promoting Reels and how she discovered something that kept her on the app that wasn't, you know, from her friends and people she follows. So they're not really backing down on this at all, even as they say that they need to find balance. Instead, I think, you know, what a lot of their response has been is to give people more choice through things like a friends only feed, or things like my algorithm, but those can only go so far because the onus is on the user to either click onto that other feed or to change their content preferences.

12:56And most people just don't do that.

12:59Jasmine Enberg: I know, I don't even know if they've said any results from this, but people wanted the reverse chronological feedback and they rolled it out. And I'm so curious how many people actually do that because that just reminded me I do have a friend's feed and I only get there accidentally sometimes. But then I'm like, oh, this is nice. I'm like seeing actually some of my friends content. But in all fairness, like not all this is bad, right? Like it is helping creators reach new audiences, which was really hard to do on places like Instagram and YouTube. I mean, I always talk about like Polish language creators finding me on Instagram with like niche cultural jokes and memes, which I love.

13:33Jasmine Enberg: I've also been getting a lot of Americans who moved to Spain lately and people trying to teach me to learn Spanish on reels, which I think is a not so subtle hint from the universe that I need to step up my Spanish lessons. So it's not all bad, right? Like it does help you create, you know, and find content relevant to you. But it's coming at the expense of creators, as we've said, I recently got sucked into all of the content about Finland winning the ice hockey championship. I think Instagram has finally figured out that I'm finished. Anyway. Finally, finally. Exactly. What's really interesting though, it's that it's not just the big platforms that are thinking about this tension.

14:07I mean, even LinkedIn, which isn't really considered a huge creator hub, even though of course they're leaning far more into creators, it's getting more attuned to this now. So it recently began rolling out a new metric that shows creators what percentage of their impressions come from people within their network versus new audiences. Of course, Instagram and other platforms already have features like this. Sam Clannan, who leads creator product at LinkedIn, wrote about the reason for why they're doing this. He said, quote, creators on LinkedIn have made one thing very clear. You want to better understand who is seeing your content.

14:40Is it reaching the right people, resonating within your network, or making moves to wider audiences on the platform? And I think some of this is kind of obvious and we know it inherently, right? Like job promotions are going going to do well within your network the same way wedding photos do well with your followers on Instagram. LinkedIn's algorithm probably isn't going to recommend that more broadly, though, unless of course, you're a high profile executive at TikTok, which we know has had a lot of shuffles lately. That makes news. So they'll recommend it. On the other hand, things like thought leadership posts are probably going to get a wider audience, they're more likely to get recommended.

15:13And people you know, are probably going to care a little bit more about what you're writing. But I do think, having this actual data on hand can help creators better fine tune their content strategies based on their goals. So like, for example, if you are trying to grow your audience, you might want to opt for more thought leadership content and less of the sort of congratulatory job promotion posts. But also like, please know more thought leadership content.

15:39Jasmine Enberg: We've had enough. So just don't post. Unless you have something really good to say. But anyway, so much of what is happening has to do with the algorithms and creators don't have any control over that. But is there anything that they can do? Well, the advice that most platforms and industry experts give to creators to stand out is to go niche. And that makes sense. I mean, general lifestyle categories are so overcrowded. So finding a narrower focus to hook an audience is probably key. Yeah, and a niche can also help creators better position themselves to brands and other partners, many of whom are now prioritizing more targeted and highly engaged audiences over a larger total follower count.

16:19Jasmine Enberg: Over half of influencer marketing budgets in the U.S. will go to micro and nano influencers. That means with 1 ,000 to 20 ,000 followers this year, according to eMarketer. Okay, but what does niche even mean anymore? I mean, it feels like so many so-called niche categories are also saturated or just really aren't that niche. I asked Marissa Hammons, who's the global head of creator marketing and community at TikTok, to give me examples of niche categories that are working well. This was during the Scalable Summit. She told me sports, automotive, TV and entertainment, lifestyle and learning, which honestly just don't feel very niche to me at all.

16:55But then she also said this. One of my favorite educational creators is Charlie Engelman.

17:01Jasmine Enberg: He was featured in Time as one of the most impactful creators last year, was just nominated for a Webby. He talks about odd animal specimens and the etymology of different insects and critters and the wasp who has five eyes. I didn't even know wasps have five eyes. But really niche and he's really built a really engaged community around his love of insects. Okay, so this is just like so hyper specific and it is great to hear that he has been able to build an audience around weird bugs. But how far can you realistically take that? I mean, eventually he's going to have to expand into a broader category, which is going to be more crowded than bugs are and harder to compete in.

17:41And then if you think about like established creators who've been doing this for years, it's much harder for them to heed this advice. Are they really going to be able to find a new niche a decade into creating content? Maybe, maybe not.

17:52Jasmine Enberg: Okay, I don't even know what to say about the bugs. I miss that in real life at the summit. Besides the fact that there really does seem to be a creator for anything, and it does speak to the fact that you can't just really be a food creator anymore. You have to be a vegan, keto, homemade pasta creator. I'm making this up, but maybe that exists. But you get my point. I mean, sports or TV, they're just way too broad of niches now. You have to be a field hockey creator, you know what I'm saying? But bigger picture, you may be asking, what does all this mean? So while brands are increasingly partnering with these niche creators, the reality is that they're always going to want to work with the big name stars.

18:32Jasmine Enberg: So the result of that, like we mentioned at the top of the episode, is that the creator middle class is probably going to be the one that gets squeezed the most. I mean, all of this is a familiar story. Jasmine, you wrote about this all the way back in 2023. But midsize creators are typically the first to feel the impact of any challenges in the industry, whether that's tighter marketing budgets or algorithmic shifts. And the problem is they do have sizable audiences, but they just don't have the massive scale and recognition of top creators. And then they also just don't have the expertise or highly engaged community of the niche creators.

19:02Yeah, I mean, zooming out, I think this is typical of the middle class overall. Like if you just think about the U.S. economy, I mean, middle class families and households are generally disproportionately impacted by economic shifts and turmoil. And they usually don't qualify for things like healthcare subsidies or government-funded financial aid for college the way that lower-class families do, but they still find these things really difficult to afford or just completely out of their reach. And we see similar dynamics happen in influencer marketing. Like when budgets are tight, the biggest and the smallest creators are the ones that are going to do the best.

19:36That's not to say that it's easy for them, especially the smaller creators, but they provide such great value for brands at a time when they're really looking for the biggest bang for their buck. And kind of like you said, big stars are just always going to be popular with brands. And they also have these generally have these businesses that can help them withstand some of the financial and economic turmoil. I think the good news for middle class creators, as we're talking about algorithmic shifts, and also how it's impacting, you know, brand budgets and deals, is that there are now more ways than ever to build a successful business as a creator that don't rely solely on social media or those brand deals.

20:13Again, I'm not saying it's easy, but creators just aren't bound to the social platforms in the ways that they used to be.

20:20Jasmine Enberg: And diversifying away from social media is not a new concept, right? Like we've been talking about this in the creator economy for years, but the issue is that implementing it is still not easy. I mean, even if creators know that they should be doing it, many of them aren't because they're still so focused on creating content for social media, which just takes up so much time on its own. But in general, I mean, you've always needed to diversify away from social media because you're always at the whims of the platforms changing things. And it's just like any business, right? It's risky to have one revenue stream or even one type of customer.

20:49Jasmine Enberg: I mean, if you think about the early days of Instagram, if you were only posting photos, you suddenly had to pivot to video. I mean, think back to the YouTube adpocalypse in 2016, 2017. Advertisers pulled back because of brand safety concerns and YouTubers saw their earnings crater overnight. I mean, there have been so many big wake up moments over the years. the TikTok ban, the meta outage when Instagram was down for many hours. I mean, creators in those moments have realized, wow, if my biggest following is on TikTok or Instagram, like this can disappear overnight and I don't have any way to contact the audience that I've built.

21:21Jasmine Enberg: So there's so many ways to mitigate against this and do this. I mean, there's newsletters, there's email lists, there's community platforms. You can launch physical products, you can launch technical products like an app, you can get into live events. I mean, the key with all of the things that I just mentioned are that they allow you to actually own and reach your audience. This is also what my session at Viva Tech in Paris is going to be about next week. It's a big European tech conference, which I'm super excited to attend. And it's also a big reason that social media is not the focus of scalable.

21:49Jasmine Enberg: Honestly, thank goodness it's not. But we are focused mostly on our newsletter podcast and live events for, you know, many of the reasons we just outlined above. And also, of course, because we're trying to reach or we do reach a professional audience, which although there is more activity happening on social platforms other than LinkedIn too. I still think that's not the primary way people are consuming business content. But anyway, I mean, I think the issue is that despite everything we just said, social media is still important. I mean, it's still the largest distribution channel for a lot of creators.

22:21And Kaya, I also love how you always frame it as a business card. I mean, social profiles are a way to show people that you are a legitimate company, creator, whatever, even if it isn't your primary business model, which I think is why follower accounts still really do matter and why it's such a big deal for creators who are now having trouble building their audiences. Like no follower accounts don't accurately reflect somebody's popularity or reach. They also can't accurately predict business outcomes for creators or the brands that work with them. And I'm so glad that we're moving away from that era.

22:54But the truth is, they're still the quickest way to make a preliminary judgment call, especially as we're all kind of strapped for time. And it's going to remain that way until we come up with a better metric to replace it. But anyway, I will get off my soapbox now and we'll move on to our next story. Whaler Group has sold its agency division Whaler to Accenture Song. While this may seem like a backing away from the creator economy, Whaler Group's co-founder and co-CEO Neil Waller framed it as the opposite. He told us it's an opportunity for the company to invest in other parts of its business that are more focused on creators themselves.

23:28The Whaler Agency is really the primary part of the group that's had the relationship with brands. Brands are the sole customer there and then it collaborates with creators as partners. Every other part of the Whaler Group, really the creator, is the primary customer and we connect with other people. This is actually us viewing this as a doubling down on the creator economy, not a walking away. Still, the deal comes as the agency landscape has been under major appeal. Ad agencies and big holding companies have been snapping up influencer agencies, leading to major consolidation and making it harder for smaller independent influencer firms to compete.

24:02So this year, there have already been at least five influencer marketing agency M &A deals, according to data from quartermass advisors. But what makes this deal different is that Accenture Song is not your typical acquirer.

24:14Jasmine Enberg: No, it's not typical to see a major consulting firm acquire an influencer marketing agency. For those of you who don't know, Accenture Song is Accenture's marketing services arm. And as you mentioned, I mean, most other buyers have been in media and marketing. That includes Publicis, which bought Influential and Captivate in 2024 and 2025. And then there's WPP, which has acquired multiple influencer ad agencies, including Goat, obviously, and Village Marketing. But the move also comes as we've seen other consulting firms pay more attention to the creator economy lately. Edelman, a top communications firm, recently named its first chief creator officer, Kenny Gold, who previously led social and creator at Deloitte Digital.

24:50Jasmine Enberg: McKinsey & Co. also recently named a creator economy senior advisor, Monica Kahn. And major consulting firms like Deloitte and BCG have also been increasingly releasing research on the creator economy. Still, this acquisition takes the trend to a whole new level. When we spoke with Whaler's Neil Waller, he told us that the fact that Accenture is a non-traditional buyer wasn't the primary driver of the deal, although it did play a role. But it was really Accenture's scale, its close relationship with brands, and the fact that they already had a strategic partnership in place. Plus, Neil said that Accenture Song didn't have an established creator practice, which meant that Whaler wouldn't be competing with existing businesses and ways of working.

25:25Jasmine Enberg: Jenny Quigley-Jones told us that that was a big factor in her decision to sell her influencer marketing agency Digital Voices to ad agency PMG earlier this year. She said that she wanted to avoid the potential inviting and reductions that she said has been happening at some of the holding companies that have acquired multiple agencies. And on Accenture Song's side, this is exactly its playbook. It buys specialized agencies, often with tech, to expand its own capabilities. Some of those have had a focus on social and influencer that includes super digital and unlimited, which it acquired in 2024 and 2025.

25:57But when it comes to influencer marketing specifically, it's no surprise that Whaler was an attractive target. Neil told us that Whaler agency has deployed roughly$600 million in creators on behalf of brands since the company was founded in 2016. There weren't that many players of that scale to begin with, and there are even fewer left. Influential, which was founded in 2013, said that it has grossed over$500 million in campaign revenue. And like you said, Kaya, Influential was acquired in 2024. Still, financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed, and Neil didn't tell us when we asked. As for what happens to employees, Whaler Agency said there will be no layoffs, and it's roughly 170 employees and Co-CEOs Joe Kronk and Emma Harmon will move to Accenture Song.

26:40The Whaler brand name will also remain for one year.

26:43Jasmine Enberg: The rest of Whaler Group, which altogether employs roughly 450 people, will remain under the leadership of Neil and his co-founder and co-CEO James Street. Neil also told us that Whaler Group will have a three-year strategic partnership with Accenture Song, though he didn't share much about what that would look like in practice. Whaler Group has many different other lines of business, including Talent Management Company 16th, Educational Hub, The Business of Creativity, Venture Studio Moby Ventures, Data and Operations System Foam, a gaming studio, and The Lighthouse, which is a physical campus for creators, which recently launched Lighthouse Studios.

27:14Jasmine Enberg: And Scalable is a joint venture with The Lighthouse. Whaler Group is a private company, but it's incorporated in the UK where its co-founders are from. And unlike in the US, private companies in the UK have to report their revenue. So while 2025 financial reports are not yet available, in 2024, Whaler Group generated roughly 110 million British pounds in revenue. That was up from roughly 102 million in 2023. But in both 2024 and 2023, the company reported an operating loss of close to 10 million pounds. So when we asked Neil about that, he told us that both years were big investment periods. I mean, the Lighthouse opened in LA and in New York in 2025.

27:51And during those years, Whaler Group also acquired companies like the Business of Creativity and 16th. Of course, the company also took on outside investors to help fund those projects. Either way, according to its 2024 financial report, Whaler Group expects the business to have returned to profitability in 2025. When we asked Neil about the financial filings, he told us the company has been able to, quote, continually reinvest profits to expand into new avenues. He also told us to expect more acquisitions from Whaler Group. I think this is going to free us up to push even more on that kind of six to 18 and 24 month path and just do what we've always done, though.

28:25Like, how do we grow the creator economy? And now we'll just have more money to do it.

28:29Jasmine Enberg: Here's our conversation with Neil, where he also discusses his vision for Lighthouse Studios, how creators will make money in the future, and what keeps him up at night about the creator economy. Spoiler, it is not AI. You've sold Whaler, the agency, to Accenture's song. First of all, congratulations. Thank you. Big news. Why now? You've said before that you weren't up for selling. So what changed? It's one that we were not expecting to do. We had a longstanding partnership working alongside Accenture Song on mutual clients. And then when they approached us with this, it was kind of a long journey of, you know, exploring what that would mean and what the opportunities would be.

29:07I'm not sure I'm allowed to say. I had to try. But yeah, but it was long. You know, it's not been a rushed decision. You know, we were, it's not something we set about doing. You know, it's an extraordinary opportunity for the agency business and the talent of

29:22Jasmine Enberg: our team led by joe and emma matched with the scale yeah of an accenture song global footprint i think it's something like accenture as a business is 750 000 people and over 100 billion dollar market cap you know there is no brands and partners that they don't have relationships with and sit at c-suite and i think it's it's taking the creator economy and working with creators in marketing to a whole new place where it becomes even more integrated into what brands can do The other thing is there is a deep three-year strategic partnership in place with Accenture and Accenture Song and the rest of the Whaler Group as well.

30:00And so it's not like this is a walkaway moment and a goodbye because there is a lot of benefits that Whaler has with the rest of the Whaler Group and vice versa. So it's also not like a complete letting go. So what does that look like in practice, really? So it's sort of strategic relationship to have meetings and opportunities and find ways to work together and like a frequency of touch points and information sharing so that there is still collaboration amongst the group. So I know you can't give us exact dollar figures, but there's been so much consolidation in this industry recently. I mean, what can you tell us about sort of the terms of the deal, the size as it compares to other deals that we've seen recently?

30:39Not a lot. I know I'm allowed to say it is the largest transaction in the greater economy. And then my lips are sealed off to that, basically, on pain of death, I'm told. But good try. We had to try. We had to try.

30:51Jasmine Enberg: Is there anything now, you know, in this kind of next chapter for Whaler Group that you're able to do or that you can, I mean, you have so many different parts of your business. You have, you know, software, you have all these different things now. But is there anything that you haven't done that you're excited to or that you have more bandwidth to do now? Let's take it like this. There's 170 people that are going roughly as part of Whaler to Accenture Song. And I think Whaler Group is about 400, 450 people. So there's a lot of other people working across all sorts of things. And we have been for quite a while now.

31:24I think more it's like this also provides us with capital that we can deploy in the Whaler Group and in the creator economy. So I'm sure you will end up seeing some acquisitions that we make within the Whaler Group. I'm sure we will continue to double down in other aspects of the business and go faster. And then, you know, the way we operate our business is that James, my co-founder, he works 24 months out. He's exploring stuff in the future. What's experimental? Where are things going? Where should we be playing? I'm kind of the six to 18 month guy of, OK, this is now working. Let's double down on this.

31:56I think this is going to free us up to push even more on that kind of six to 18 and 24 month path and just do what we've always done, though. Like, how do we grow the creator economy? The secret source, I think, of Whaler Group has always been proximity. Build proximity with creators. The lighthouse, the most physical effort of the proximity. So that we can hear what's going on and what's needed and where can we help in building out the creator economy and supporting creators in building the best businesses possible. And now we'll just have more money to do it. Tell us a little bit more about why Accenture Song.

32:27I mean, you talked about the scale. You talked about the ability to have deeper integrations for brands. But what else? Why Accenture Song and not another company? I think one thing that really excited us with Accenture Song is that Accenture Song didn't have a creator practice. They were doing stuff with creators and, you know, they got Droga 5 as well, you know, an incredible creative powerhouse of an organization, but there wasn't a robust creator offering. So a big attraction was the fact that, you know, through acquiring Whaler, the team are going to be helping build that practice out and integrate it across all of Accenture Song's business.

33:00That's a hugely exciting opportunity, as opposed to we've already bought five things and we want to connect them together. And there's no inviting. And there's no inviting. Or, look, this is the way we've been doing things. And, you know, OK, we'll try and adapt to your way. It's like, no, no, we want you to bring this to the table and help us scale this. That was a hugely exciting component of it for the team, for example. So what's in it for Accenture's song? Why do you think they were interested in Whaler Agency? I mean, we're pretty good. No, look, I mean, we've been the leading agency in the space, more than$600 million deployed on behalf of brands with creators.

33:39Again, I think it's a recognition of Accenture's song going, creator marketing is not a nice to have. It is an absolute necessity. that again in them helping us think bigger is going to transform marketing in an even bigger way especially as creators form companies and become multimedia and entertainment um empires and you could either build it from the ground up of course you could go and also look at other people to buy there's other people in the market but i think where whaler sits the scale and the reputation that we have is unparalleled and then as i said a big part of this from day one was the ongoing relationship with whaler group you know that's also very unique to whaler and it works both ways.

34:16And so I think they saw great value in that. And that's why that kind of strategic partnership is there. That was never a nice to have either. That was a necessity to the deal as well.

34:26Jasmine Enberg: So we wanted to hear a little bit about kind of what happens to Whaler Group next and what happens to Whaler Agency. So let's start with Whaler Agency. Like, how does this change things? Does it change any relationships moving forward? Or what does it next steps look like? There's going to obviously be some change, I'm sure, because that's part of the desire out of this of how can things go faster and better and bigger and bolder. I think sitting with my cap on, I'm actually less in a position to be able to answer that. That's going to be more for Joe and Emma and the Accenture song team. Does the brand stay?

34:53Jasmine Enberg: Do you know? The brand stays for a year. It's going to be Whaler and part of Accenture Song. And then after a year, it will just be Accenture Song. And what does it mean for you specifically? I mean, how does this impact the work that you're doing day to day? We have, you know, the companies with the CEOs that report into us. So operationally day to day, not having Whaler in the business will not make a great amount of difference to me operationally. If I think about the Whaler Group and the growth that we've had over the years, the Whaler Agency is really the primary part of the group that's had the relationship with brands.

35:25Brands are the sole customer there, and then it collaborates with creators as partners. Every other part of the Whaler Group, really the creator, is the primary customer, and we connect with other people. And so this is actually us viewing this as a doubling down on the creator economy, not a walking away. We are super excited to carry on working in everything in the rest of the group. Now we have more focus. We have more firepower to do it with. I think we've become even more credible in our ability to grow businesses. And so really, you know, it's been our journey anyway. It's focusing on building with creators and helping them build out their businesses and the journey that they go on.

36:03You know, there's no walking off into the sunset. We're excited to work every day. You're not stepping down.

36:08Jasmine Enberg: Oh, God, no. No. Like, A, what would we do the next day? We'd start something. But take the energy at the Scalable Summit. Everything that is being built in the creator economy and that intersection at your event of investors, brands, creators, industry experts, it really feels that we're on the precipice of an incredible way the growth of people, Grilled and Businesses. So I'm not going anywhere. There is so much growth opportunity in this industry. I genuinely believe there is way more in the industry than that Golden Sacks report said really because that was also from like 2023 we still all cited and i think that was also predominantly about advertising you know where i think what's interesting to try and capture is what about all the businesses that creators are going to create yeah and the tens to hundreds to billions that those could be worth is that more the future of the whaler group with the agency now separated do you think now does this the focus for you shift to that part of the creator definitely Yes.

37:04And I think, look, what I've been saying is, you know, there was that stat, something like 80 % of the revenue creators make is advertising revenue and 20 % is in other things, direct audience monetization and licensing and stuff. Like what I've been saying for a while is I think in five years time, that will be 50-50. The 50 % will be higher monetarily than the 80 % is now. It's not that advertising revenues are going to shrink. there's still a huge delta between the spend on advertising and the attention share the share of advertising budgets and the attention share of creators so advertising budgets are going to continue to grow and be a really important part of the greatest businesses but creators are going to build out all these other additional revenue streams as they build a business and i think wayla group has been about supporting that you know look at what we're doing with lyrical lemonade TV, we've greenlit 14 shows, 672 episodes a year.

37:55And we get to co-own that with Cole Bennett. That makes my head spin. I know.

37:59Jasmine Enberg: It's crazy. So much work. Yeah. But it's also like nothing, you know, it's kind of like the traditional comes back. It's like cable TV, right? And these episodes are going to be ranging from eight minutes to an hour. Yeah. And then it's just giving two episodes a day. But there's so much work that goes into even eight minutes. It's true. It is true. Yeah, of course, there's a ton of excitement right now. But is there anything that worries you or concerns you? Like what keeps you up at night when you think about the creator economy and how it's moving? Nothing like existential worries me about the creator economy.

38:31Jasmine Enberg: You don't have AI fears. Look, there is a whole IP protection conversation to go there. Deepfakes, copyright. Yeah, that is going to be an interesting one to navigate. On the whole, as a tool, I'm like creators and nimble teams already punching well above their weight compared to traditional output. They're going to be the ones to scale the adoption of AI tools to enable what they do far faster than legacy is going to do. And I think it's going to allow every creator to operate at 10x the scale an individual can. And that's hugely exciting because it's going to allow them to compete and do even more with the traditional world.

39:06I think the thing is, as this world of a creative business scales, it's going to be the challenge actually that every founder and every startup goes through hiring. And you're going to get missteps. And I think it will be an interesting challenge from creators to go from kind of solopreneurs or small teams to operators. And look, I can say in our partnership, James is the creative one. I don't have a creative bone in my body. So I say this with reverence and respect to creators. They're not the best operators and business people. And of course, sometimes you get the unicorns out. But I say that because I think that's going to be one of the greatest challenges for creators as they start to build out these businesses to solve for and work that out to be really successful.

39:45Jasmine Enberg: I have one more question. Go on then. Do you save the most difficult to last? No, I was just thinking like, what is the future of all this look like? I mean, there's so many, you know, influencer marketing agencies that have popped up. You know, some are very niche, some are regional. I mean, like we said, we've seen so much consolidation. Like, can those smaller players exist in the future? Is everything just going to get gobbled up? Where do you see all of this going? If I was to bet, you're going to have specialists that do particular things extremely well and will probably beat how the generalists do it.

40:17And then I think you're going to see working with creators and influencer marketing, the creator economy become an even more embedded and strategic part. There's a buzzword, I know, but even more embedded and strategic part of brands, advertising and marketing strategies. And I think with that, you can only truly succeed if you sit at the table across their entire marketing strategy. And so I do think that probably anyone independent will struggle to sit at that table and work at that scale. But I think there will always be opportunity for specialists to do really interesting things that are impactful in the industry.

40:55But no, I suspect as an overall, as this becomes just one of the, you know, hopefully becomes one of the largest components of marketing and advertising spend, again, given where attention is spent, then I think it's probably only going to be possible where that organization is operating across all of the marketing stack and holding the budget alongside the brand. Are there certain niches or areas where you think specialists are important right now, where you think there will definitely be a need for them? I'm unclear as to whether I'm a supporter or negative on it, but vertical dramas, micro dramas, like I think live shopping and live commerce is still not mainstay yet.

41:33Jasmine Enberg: You have to know what you're doing. You have to know what you're doing and you have to be free to experiment. And the other thing is when you're in a bigger organization and even Whaler at the scale we're at have this where sometimes it's not worth the absolute fringe experimentation unless all clients are ready for it or half of your clients are ready for it. So I think it's actually better left to others to experiment. And then you come at it when the timing is right on these things. So live shopping, vertical, AI, creators, like not AI for use by creators, but AI created characters. I think those will be the kind of specialists and the fringe of it at the moment.

42:07Jasmine Enberg: Well, thank you, Neil. We appreciate you coming up on Scalable. My pleasure. Happy to be here.