Nicolas Bon is setting new standards for creator partnerships through Clark Influence, a multinational agency that has expanded from Montreal to serve global brands like NBA, Starbucks, and Air France. Since its founding in 2017, the company has grown to employ more than 50 professionals across offices in Montreal, Toronto, and Paris.

From Reunion Island to Montreal Innovation

Nicolas’ path to becoming a leader in creator partnerships began 8,000 miles from Montreal. Born on Reunion Island near Madagascar, Nicolas moved to Canada 13 years ago to study at HEC Montreal. During his studies, he identified a critical gap in marketing services.

“When I was a student, I had many friends working in marketing departments, and they said they wanted to activate some influencers,” Nicolas says. “But they didn’t know how to speak with influencers, which influencer is good for the brand, what the statistics are, what the influencer’s audience is.”

He saw an opportunity to help marketing departments choose the right influencer because “in the influencer marketing game, you must find the good influencer – it’s the most important thing you must do in your campaign.”

The market showed clear growth potential. “We saw not so many companies in this industry,” Nicolas explains.

Starting on Montreal’s Clark Street—which inspired the company name—Clark Influence launched when brands needed guidance on creator selection and data analysis. This strategic timing coincided with the industry’s significant expansion.

“Now you see the market is nearly $5 billion. Everyone on the street follows some influencer,” Nicolas says. “It’s the new way to consume media. Influencers take a big part of this pie.”

The company maintains its original vision. “The mission was to completely democratize influence to everyone, to every organization,” Nicolas shares. “At the time, only CPG brands used influencer marketing. But now, every kind of brand can use influencer marketing.” 

“We saw the government use influencer marketing. We saw insurance brands can use influencer marketing,” he adds. “It’s crazy how you see every sector, every field can speak about influencer marketing.”

Strategic Approach to Creator Partnerships

Clark Influence distinguishes itself through creative strategy and deep creator relationships. 

“We have a big and huge department called the strategy department,” Nicolas explains. “We hire the best strategists in the marketing field to provide some interesting insights to give a very original and creative approach to our strategy.”

This approach contrasts with conventional creator campaigns. “When you look at the majority of ads on the market, it’s just promotional; it just speaks about the product,” Nicolas observes. “But when you see a TV ad, you’ll see creativity. Someone thinks and understands insight about the audience. We want to use the same strategy standard for traditional marketing to put on the influencer marketing strategy.”

The agency offers four specialized services:

1. Strategy: “We do consumer studies; we know all the digital trends on TikTok and Instagram. You have to know all the trends, the storytelling, the brand audits, and competitive intelligence. So we do the strategy part – it’s pretty big in our agency.”
2. Creator Partnerships: “Of course, we do influencer marketing, which includes influencer selection, campaign management, negotiation, contracts, and the annual strategy for brands.”
3. Content Creation: “We also create content because we are in the social media field. So, we do UGC branding, video production, and photo production. We can do filters on Instagram.”
4. Social Media Management: “The last area of expertise is management. So we can do community management and create ad content. We know everything we can do to help brands shine on social media.”

This comprehensive approach positions Clark Influence as a strategic advisor. Nicolas notes, “Most agencies doing just influencer marketing can have the methodology, but we have the concrete and specific methodology to address it better for the delivery. So we have all the tools to measure the metrics and all the quantitative results we bring with our campaigns.”

The Clark Talent Factory: Building Authentic Relationships

The Clark Talent Factory is a feature that focuses on developing genuine creator connections. “We invite influencers to the office in Paris and Montreal just to learn more about them,” Nicolas shares. They talk about their lives and the projects they have. We organize parties with influencers in different fields—lifestyle, sports, and fashion influencers.”

This department serves as an intelligence hub. “The goal of this department is just to connect with influencers, for us to know more about the influencers and for influencers to know more about us,” Nicolas explains. “We ask many influencers what their next projects are. We want to do a lot of activation and initiative to be closer to the influencers.”

This proactive approach provides strategic advantages. “If tomorrow we have a specific campaign, we know the market, and we are very close to all the influencers,” Nicolas notes. “So it’s easier for us to make a better selection.”

The Talent Factory combines qualitative and quantitative data. “Of course, you have the qualitative aspect of [whether] the influencer fits [a] brand,'” Nicolas explains. “But we also have a tool that we can use to get all the influencer metrics. So it’s always a good fit when you see the qualitative influencer fit and the quantitative part with all the numbers – what’s the percentage of men, of women, which country follows me, all these kinds of details.”

While metrics matter, Nicolas looks beyond basic numbers. 

“The most important metric is whether people will speak about this brand after seeing the content,” he explains. “Of course, likes are very important, but they don’t mean anything—it could be because you like people’s outfits.”

Nicolas prioritizes deeper engagement: “I always look at the comments. Do comments speak about the collaboration or something else in the content? How many times was the content shared? Did our clients’ website have a huge peak after the content?”

He adds, “You have to see different indicators because not only one indicator of the campaign will tell you if the campaign worked. And, if it’s a conversion campaign, you’re looking for ROI, and maybe with the promo code, you can track if clients came to the website.”

Leading Industry Ethics

Clark Influence recently established industry standards by creating a Code of Ethics.

“We want to put more social responsibility and ethics in influencer marketing,” Nicolas states. “Sometimes, we see influencers don’t say it’s an ad or that they have money for the collaboration—we want to have more transparency in our industry.”

The code emphasizes content authenticity, ethical collaboration, and sustainability. “We don’t want to be the police of influence,” Nicolas emphasizes. “We saw in many markets like France that the law regulates the market. We created this code because we don’t want the law and the government to regulate our market. We wanted something that we can auto-regulate ourselves.”

The initiative has gained momentum: “We have over 40 influencers in Canada who have signed. For some clients, we work just with influencers who sign this code of ethics,” Nicolas shares. “Influencer marketing sometimes makes headlines in newspapers and often gets a bad rep. But we work in this fantastic industry, and maybe we want to speak about the influencer industry with good words.”

Future Perspectives

As technology advances, particularly with AI-generated content, Nicolas sees authentic connections becoming increasingly vital.

“You see artificial intelligence going on the market. Everyone is taking that create fake photo… and the audience always going to ask ‘Is this real content?'” he notes. “That’s why we need more authenticity, ethics, and transparency.”

For brands considering creator partnerships, Nicolas stresses trust and creative freedom.

“When you partner with an influencer, you do a partnership,” he advises. “Many brands want to completely control the message and want it to be like a TV ad. But you sometimes partner with an influencer because they know their audience. You need to trust the influencer and say, ‘I’m going to give you the liberty to speak with your audience because you have your own voice.'”