Paula has been in the creator economy back when Instagram and Twitter were still new and starting to make waves. The issues she saw in the industry firsthand inspired her to start Intuition Media Group. Today, Paula’s agency has become one of the most trusted names in the influencer marketing space.  

Who is Paula Bruno?

Paula Bruno is the CEO and President of Intuition Media Group, an award-winning influencer marketing agency serving some of the world’s biggest and most iconic brands. The agency takes pride in connecting trend-setting creators with insight-based strategies. They use their experience and technology to create and implement stellar campaigns between brands and influencers. 

Tell me what inspired you to start this business and what’s your vision for the agency’s role in the creator economy. 

Paula Bruno has been in the business since 2008. Paula saw that there wasn’t any way to get to women, similar to how word-of-mouth works. This issue became the impetus for her to start a word-of-mouth company, which eventually involved influencer marketing. 

Fourteen years later, Paula is now the CEO and President of Intuition Media Group. 

What’s your vision for the agency in the creator economy?

Intuition Media Group has been around for over a decade and has established a name in the industry. Paula and the team behind the agency have worked with major brands like Canon, GoDaddy, Hyundai, and many others. The agency has grown from a small startup company to becoming a substantial company and player in the field. 

In the future, Paula wants to sustain that growth. She also aims to be able to work with more brands and influencers and act as an intermediary between the two to educate the brands about the influencer economy and trends that are working. 

Similarly, she also wants to educate creators on the best business practices, rates, approaching brands, establishing a media kit, and just working with brands and staying on top of that relationship.

What sets you apart from other influencer marketing agencies?

“Our longevity is key. It allows us to have a lot of different connections in the creator space.” Paula’s connections make it very easy for her to call or text someone who manages someone big and have an influencer join in one of the campaigns she’s managing. Paula sees their ability to dig deep into their connections as one of the agency’s biggest strengths. 

Another reason why Intuition Media Group is different from its competitors is because they’re an offshoot of the team they’re working with. For example, when they work with brands, they work as part of an extension of the brand’s team. 

Paula takes pride in her agency not solely relying on technology to create and run an influencer campaign from start to finish. The agency only uses technology as a starting point and exhausts resources to complete that extra level of research and vetting. 

How do you identify influencers and creators to work with you and make sure they’re a good match for your clients?

Influencers and creators undergo a vetting process — something which the agency does with Julius, a technology platform. Then, the team uses hashtags, lookalikes, the TikTok creator marketplace, and many others to find influencers and creators. The agency uses different touchpoints to determine which influencers and creators should join them. 

The process includes a lot of hand vetting, meaning the team looks into the influencers’ past content, assesses if they’re brand-safe, and determines if they fit the brand’s aesthetic and other factors. They use a lot of filters to see whether or not certain influencers and creators fit the brands. 

Can you tell me about some of the most successful campaigns that you worked on with your agency? And what do you think made them so successful?

The most recent project Intuition Media Group had was with Canon Times Square. The partnership took place in November, and Canon’s creative agency asked if Paula and her team could help with an event. The event was going to be a big Times Square reveal. 

Paula and her team had to get a group of 20 influencers and have them submit content to them and hand everything to the producer within three weeks, so Canon could produce it. On the day of the event, Paula invited the influencers to Times Square, and it was a big reveal where influencers and their works were shown on the big screens of Time Square.

Paula considers the campaign a success because of the influencers’ presence and their reaction to seeing their faces and works up on the big screen. For Paula, the ingredients to the campaign’s success were her agency’s ability to jump through hoops to get everything done quickly, even though they had a tight budget.

How do you stay up-to-date with the latest trends and changes in the social marketing space?

Paula recognizes the changes happening in the space all the time. Aside from reading many newsletters all the time, she also has someone who gathers the news and forwards everything to her. These are her strategies for staying on top of the trends. 

What do you see are the biggest challenges and opportunities faced by influencer marketing agencies?

Paula considers the rapid growth of the creator market as a great opportunity. She adds, “I feel like there might be consolidation going forward because there are so many influencer marketing agencies out there.” She sees the creator market as a fragment, meaning at some point, there will be some sort of consolidation when businesses either fail, get acquired, or merge into other companies.

What’s the role of technology and AI in your business?

Paula’s agency is still not using AI but is trying to incorporate it in one area. She still has to research more and get more comfortable with AI before fully integrating it into Intuition Media Group. Presently, Paula is still waiting to see how AI evolves and waits until it gets a little more finetuned before she jumps in and uses it. 

What’s next for your business? What can we expect from you in the next couple of years?

Intuition Media Group is currently working with brands to form partnerships. The agency also received the Silver Award for being the Best Influencer Marketing Agency. 

They will also sponsor an influencer conference to be held in New York City. Since conferences are big and coming back again post-pandemic, Paula wants to be more involved in hosting these events for both influencers and brands. 

Long-term, Paula sees the agency continuing to grow, working with more established brands, and looking at working overseas and globally. These are just some of the things Paula has been thinking about for her agency.