BY GEOFF WEISS
Just as talent managers entered the digital space to guide the careers of influencers who unwittinglyrose to celebrity out of their bedrooms, a similar movement is apparently happening among their canine counterparts.
The Dog Agency,reports theWall Street Journal, is one of the first talent management agency for influencer petsmany of which have hundreds of thousands of followers across social media and high-profile marketers clamoring to collaborate.
The Dog Agency was founded by Harvard Law grad Loni Edwards, who is mother to a famous pooch of her own,Chloe(with 126,000 followers onInstagram). For the most part, famous dogs seem to be finding their groove on Instagram, and Edwards current clients includeThe Dogist, French bulldog sistersPiggy and Polly, and goldendoodleSamson. Thus far, she has inked deals withGoogle,Merck,PetSmart,Ritz-Carlton, andDyson, and is negotiating deals withNikonandEquinox, she says.
Edwards told theJournalthat she founded the agency after notingthat many owners of popular pets had neither the time nor the business savvy to manage the burgeoning careers of their animal companions. And while its surely not as much as human influencers, animals can still command a pretty penny. Dogs with between 150,000 and 250,000 Instagram followers can receive upward of $3,000 for a single postof which Edwards says she takes a standard cut.
With dogs, youre reaching men, women, kids, grandparents. They just have this wide appeal, Edwards said. And as marketing vehicles, the dogsbeing blissfully ignorant of their growing famearent necessarily perceived as selling out. People dont treat them as ads. The dogs are creating content, which is what they like to do.
Read more: http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/the-dog-agency/