Parade Founder Cami Tellez Taps UTA Exec to Scale Her ‘Post-Follower’ Agency

Social media has moved past the follower count, but influencer marketing has not. With her new venture, Cami Tellez is trying to change that. Tellez, the 29-year-old marketing guru who in 2019 cofounded the Gen Z underwear brand Parade, launched Devotion earlier this year with the aim of building a creator marketing platform for the post-follower era. Her cofounder and CEO, Jon Kroopf, joined the firm following stints at TikTok and CreatorIQ. On Friday, following a year of rapid growth, the company brought Ed Victori aboard as its first chief operating officer to accelerate those efforts, Tellez told ADWEEK. Victori joins the startup from United Talent Agency, which he joined through its acquisition of JUV Consulting, where he was COO and helped lead the sale. At Devotion, he will oversee day-to-day operations and focus on scaling the team and infrastructure. “Devotion is building for where the industry is going,” Victori said. “The growth the company has experienced since launch speaks to the demand for that approach.” The hire reflects the expanding ambitions of the young company. Since its official launch in March, Devotion has activated more than 50,000 creators, produced more than 80,000 pieces of creator content, and grown its New York team from five to 25 people, according to Tellez. It raised $4 million in funding led by Basecase and Will Ventures and came out of beta this spring with more than 30 clients and seven figures in revenue, according to a company spokesperson. The creator middle class The animating concept at the core of Devotion is that the algorithm has changed who holds influence on social media. Popular creators are seeing a shrinking share of reach as Instagram and TikTok shift from serving posts by accounts people follow to serving posts about topics they care about, according to Tellez. “Now Instagram and TikTok are showing you content based on the topics you’re interested in, not based on people you follow,” Tellez said. “So there’s a lot more distribution going to micro creators and mid-sized creators.” To capitalize on that shift, Devotion works with thousands of smaller creators to produce larger volumes of brand-centric content, rather than prioritizing a handful of larger, albeit more expensive influencers. This yields more “shots on goal,” per Kroopf, at a far more affordable price point for clients. The company works with brands like an agency. It uses its proprietary platform to find creators who fit a brand, review their past content for brand safety, and handle outreach, compliance, and payouts. Creators who opt to participate receive text messages or alerts with opportunities from relevant brands, such as free products or the opportunity to take paid “challenges.” Most of the campaigns also include bonuses tied to views. Through this method, Devotion produces an average of more than 1,000 pieces of content per brand per month, according to Kroopf, compared with the 20 to 30 a typical creator agency delivers. It does so at a CPM below $10, compared to the $100 to $300 conventional influencer programs typically cost, according to Tellez. The performance is a result of the greater engagement that nano creators generate compared to their larger peers. According to an April study from Content Lab, small accounts get 14 times more reach per follower than big accounts. Macro creators still reach larger audiences in total, but smaller creators, who are cheaper to work with, reach a higher percent of their audience with each post. The shift suggests a future in which the barrier to entry for generating influencer content is dramatically lower, inviting normal users to participate in influencer economics. Such a transformation could have profound implications for the content mix on social platforms, but the algorithms will continue to reward only what resonates with users, according to Kroopf. “If it’s too in your face, it won’t perform,” he said.

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Parade Founder Cami Tellez Taps UTA Exec to Scale Her ‘Post-Follower’ Agency

Ed Victori, former vp strategy & business operations at United Talent Agency, joined Devotion as COO

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