*Creators are fast becoming the new word-of-mouth media, making or breaking brands with every post, like or comment.*

This week in our Best of the Best series, we're celebrating the **Creator and Influencer Agency Leads** shaping what influence really means in 2025.

This category encompasses external or in-house agency leaders focused on creators, influencers and social either as an agency or division within an agency.

This list was a hard one to whittle down, with **social media increasingly becoming the driving force of culture and conversation**.

In September, Publicis Groupe Australia launched Influential, a new influencer and social agency designed to evolve how brands connect with culture, creators, and commerce. With a focus on uniting media, creative and communications into a single solution for social and influencer marketing, the freshly formed shop will surely be one to watch in 2026.

There are also a couple of notes. We're only looking at agency folk in this list. Anyone in the creator-tech space or industry associations isn't covered. We have to acknowledge some incredible talent who didn't quite make the list.

Among them is Sophie Keogh, whose innovative work as social account director at OMD Create continues to push the boundaries of what social storytelling can achieve and Alexis Whelan at IPG, whose creator and content leadership has helped shape the agency's modern marketing edge. Erin Brizga of Eleven also deserves a nod for her ongoing influence across TBWA's social ecosystem.

Before you go any further, make sure you nominate suggestions for future *B&T* Best of the Best lists. We read all of your suggestions and we take them into account. Next week, we're looking at the Creators themselves. That's right, we'll be handing down the definitive verdict on which TikTokers, YouTubers and Instagrammers are actually worth their salt when it comes to brand work. Let us know who you think should be on the list by submitting a nomination below:

But before we dive into the creators, it's time to spotlight the agency bosses responsible for wrangling them.

## 10. Emma Barnes, Co-Founder, Click Media

Emma Barnes is the co-founder of Click Media, a creator agency, ventures studio and talent management company representing leading digital talent across gaming, sport and culture. Since launching the business in 2017, Barnes has helped transform Click into one of Australia's most successful creator agencies, brokering more than **$60 million in brand, licensing and content deals** for its roster before its recent $8.5 million acquisition by GameSquare.

Under Barnes' leadership, Click has partnered with brands including Optus, Maybelline and McDonald's, as well as delivering a national youth anti-vaping campaign that combined influencer advocacy with real-world impact.

She has built Click as a business incubator for creators, helping them turn personal brands into long-term ventures by developing IP, launching products and expanding into new commercial territories.

A driving force in Australia's creator economy, Barnes is recognised as a key voice in the development of the local influencer marketing industry. Her focus on innovation, authenticity and entrepreneurial growth has positioned Click not just as an agency, but as a platform for creators to evolve into business leaders, setting a new benchmark for what creator representation looks like in the modern era.

## 9. Sive Buckley, Managing Partner, Born Creators Group

Sive Buckley has built her career around uniting creativity, technology and purpose. As managing partner of Born Creators, she oversees a global collective of independent agencies working across creative, media, digital, CX, and technology, leading integrated marketing solutions that connect strategy with execution.

With more than 15 years of experience across Australia, the Middle East and Europe, she's worked with some of the world's biggest brands, including Telstra, Commonwealth Bank, Flybuys and Salesforce.

Her leadership has consistently delivered results recognised at major award shows, and her influence continues to shape and support the next generation of marketing talent through her role as head of operations at The Aunties.

In 2025, Buckley helped launch Social St., Born Creators' new full-service social and content agency, designed to help brands cut through the noise and create meaningful engagement online.

The agency brings together strategy, creative, production, and media under one roof to produce content that's platform-specific and performance-led. True to Buckley's belief in authentic connection, Social St. is built around data-driven storytelling and high-quality production that drives business impact. It reflects the same collaborative, future-focused mindset that defines her work, one that blends creativity with commercial insight to ensure brands stay relevant in an ever-changing digital world.

![Social St. Agency](https://www.bandt.com.au/information/uploads/2025/07/SocialSt-860x577.png)

## 8. Jamie Searle & Hannah McElhinney, Co-Founders, Snack Drawer

Jamie Searle and Hannah McElhinney have redefined what it means to build a brand in the attention economy. As co-founders of Snack Drawer, they've created a culture-first creative agency built on the idea of earning attention.

Their combined experience spans music, media, entertainment and social strategy, with roots in companies like Universal Music, VICE, Thinkerbell and Brave Bison.

Together with a team of team of 20-plus creatives, they've turned Snack Drawer into one of Australia's fastest-growing independent agencies, known for its sharp understanding of internet culture and its ability to turn audiences into communities.

Released this year, the pairs [Fandomination! report](https://www.bandt.com.au/fandom-isnt-a-niche-anymore-snack-drawer-says-fan-culture-could-be-the-key-to-brand-growth-in-2025/), a brand growth playbook in a culture-driven world, captures the essence of what sets Snack Drawer apart. Based on national research, the report argues that **fandom, not traditional advertising, is the key to brand growth**.

Searle and McElhinney's thinking reframes loyalty as identity, showing how modern audiences form emotional bonds with the brands, products, and communities that reflect who they are. Through their "Fandom Tornado" model and "Five Laws of Fandom," they give marketers a blueprint for cultivating authentic fan relationships.

![Snack Drawer Report](https://www.bandt.com.au/information/uploads/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-22-084254-860x476.png)

By helping brands embrace creator- and fan-made media and build rituals that anchor identity, the duo has positioned Snack Drawer at the point where creativity, culture and community collide.

## 7. Amaury Treguer & Mary Proulx, Co-Founders, Bread

Amaury Treguer and Mary Proulx are the co-founders of Bread, a social and digital agency built on strategy, creativity, and collaboration, nearly three years ago.

Between them, they bring more than two decades of experience across agency and client-side roles, blending Treguer's deep digital and production expertise with Proulx's strategic and creative leadership.

Treguer's career spans continents and categories, from launching Sixtine, a Paris-based creative studio, to leading digital strategies for brands such as Netflix, Universal Pictures, Toyota, and NIVEA. A regular contributor to B&T and judge at Cairns Crocodiles, he's helped shape how brands approach content and community in the social era.

Proulx's background in PR, content marketing, and influencer strategy gives Bread its distinctive voice and personality. Having worked in her native Canada and Australia, she's built a reputation for designing social programs that are equal parts insightful and imaginative. Her portfolio includes work for Amazon, The Body Shop, Virgin Australia, and SunRice, campaigns defined by clarity, creativity, and cultural awareness.

Together, Treguer and Proulx have grown Bread into a trusted creative partner for major brands, including singing with Big W and Woolworths Group's Healthy Life this year alone, with a reputation for delivering thoughtful, high-quality social work that's both strategic and human.

## 6. Ben Mayor, Social Director, Akcelo

Ben Mayor has spent more than 15 years helping brands show up authentically in the spaces where audiences actually spend their time. As social director at Akcelo, he leads the team responsible for developing social-first strategies that sit at the heart of major brand experience projects.

From McDonald's and Gatorade to Spotify and Tinder, his work is driven by a clear understanding of what engages people online and how to make content relevant across markets. Under his leadership, Akcelo's social division has become a key driver of the agency's global growth and cultural impact.

<iframe loading="lazy" title="Mumbrella_Squid Game x McDonalds" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/1098698386?h=c7cc808177&dnt=1&app_id=122963" width="1170" height="658" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin"></iframe>

Mayor's experience spans client leadership, influencer marketing and digital strategy, having built platforms, partnerships and communities across sport, entertainment, technology and FMCG.

His years at We Are Social and time developing IMG Engage in ANZ gave him a sharp view of how audiences interact with brands in real time.

Under Mayor's direction, Akcelo's social capability has become central to the agency's creative success, contributing to a year that saw the business take home the B&T Awards Grand Prix, deliver 25 per cent year-on-year growth, and roll out campaigns across 26 countries.

## 5. Sharyn Smith, Founder, Social Soup

As the founder and CEO of Social Soup, Sharyn Smith has built a business on the belief that people are most influenced by the people around them.

Over the past two decades, she has shaped how brands harness social proof, creators and communities to build authentic connections and drive behaviour change. A pioneer in the space long before influencer marketing became mainstream, Smith has led Social Soup to produce more than 500 campaigns across categories from FMCG and tech to fashion, beauty and not-for-profit.

Her background in behavioural science and data strategy underpins a career focused on understanding how influence works, and using that insight to help brands grow with integrity and purpose.

Smith's commitment to purpose-driven influence extends beyond business. Through her Influence for Good initiative, she has partnered with organisations such as R U OK?, UNICEF, Planet Ark, and Take 3 for the Sea to prove that social platforms can be used for positive change.

Her leadership continues to shape the industry's ethical and strategic direction, combining commercial innovation with social impact. As an entrepreneur, mentor, and respected speaker, Smith has helped define what meaningful influence looks like in a rapidly evolving digital world.

## 4. Georgina McKinnon, CEO, OMG Content APAC (CREO)

As CEO of OMG Content APAC, Georgina McKinnon oversees Omnicom Media Group's content and influencer marketing capabilities across the Asia-Pacific region, spearheading the rollout of its global influencer division, CREO. Under her leadership, OMG has unified its creator and influencer operations across markets, building a consistent, data-driven framework for how brands collaborate with creators at scale.

McKinnon has been instrumental in redefining influencer marketing as a core media channel within OMG. She led the re-launch of CREO in Australia, integrating the group's global tools with Omnicom's Omni platform, a powerful analytics engine that enables precise creator discovery, forecasting, and measurement.

Ahead of launch, influencer content was tested on 10 major OMG clients, including Edgell, Mazda, Nivea, SBS, AAMI, and the NSW Government, proving the model's impact.

Through innovations like AI-powered creator matching and predictive performance tools, McKinnon is helping bridge the gap between content and commerce. Her focus on cultural connection, creativity, and commercial results has driven major success across APAC. By aligning influencer strategy under one cohesive vision, McKinnon is helping brands forge meaningful creator partnerships and take a leadership role in the fast-evolving creator economy.

## 3. Sam Kelly, CEO, Hello

Sam Kelly is the CEO of Hello, one of Australia's fastest-growing independent marketing groups, encompassing Hello Social, Hello Talent, Hello Create, Hello Media, Hello Events and Hello PR.

After four years as managing director and partner, Kelly was last month appointed CEO to lead the group's next phase of growth, both locally and internationally. Under his leadership, Hello has earned multiple international accolades and has built a team of more than 65 specialists servicing clients including Uber, Unilever, Kmart, Paramount+, CBA, and BMW.

![Hello Agency](https://www.paramountanz.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IMG_0903-1024x683.jpg)

Kelly brings over 15 years of marketing and commercial leadership experience across global brands and emerging ventures. He also serves as deputy chair of the Australian Influencer Marketing Council (AiMCO) and is a Board Director of the Audited Media Association of Australia.

Known for his "Creative Intelligence" philosophy, Kelly champions an integrated approach that fuses strategy, culture, creativity and data to deliver measurable impact. His ability to unite creative thinking with commercial rigour has made him one of the industry's most respected modern leaders.

## 2. Suzie Shaw, CEO, We Are Social

Suzie Shaw is the APAC CEO of We Are Social, where she leads a 60-strong team at the forefront of socially-led creativity.

Since joining the agency in 2015, she has overseen its evolution into one of Australia's most culturally influential agencies, driving work that connects brands with audiences through relevance, authenticity, and community. Under her leadership, We Are Social has landed some major partnerships with brands this year, such as Lion and KFC Australia.

With over two decades of global experience, including 14 years in London at agencies such as TBWA, Shaw brings a mix of strategic clarity and creative instinct to every challenge.

She's also deeply committed to industry progress, founding SWIMM (Senior Women in Media and Marketing) to champion female leadership and serving as a Board Director for Sydney FC and Greenpeace.

## 1. Shivani Maharaj, Chief Creator Officer, WPP Media

Shivani Maharaj, chief creator officer at WPP Media, has reshaped the role of social leadership in Australia by placing creators, communities and culture at the core of modern brand storytelling.

As the country's first executive to hold this title, she has pioneered a new operating model that treats creators as collaborators rather than channels. In 2025, she led one of the market's biggest influencer transformations, winning and onboarding L'Oréal ANZ's influencer portfolio across 32 brands, scaling a 30-person team, and delivering record-breaking engagement results within six months.

A driving force in the evolution of the influencer industry, Maharaj is a founding committee member and council leader of AiMCO, where she has co-authored accreditation programs and championed ethical standards for creator partnerships.

Her influence extends beyond Australia's borders, with appearances at Cannes Lions, Meta Festival and collaborations with major platforms including Amazon. Named B&T's Women in Media Social Media category winner, Maharaj continues to elevate the industry… how could anyone else be our Best of the Best!

Who's adland's sharpest ring light wielder? Find out who slays the hardest here.

The Secret Architects of Social Media Fame: Meet the Agency Leaders Shaping 2025's Influencer Marketing

Let's get one thing straight before the industry turns "GEO" into yet another three-letter source of confusion.

Generative engine optimization isn't SEO with a new hat and a LinkedIn carousel. It's a fundamentally different game.

If you're still debating whether to swap the "S" for a "G," you've already missed the point.

At its core, GEO is **brand marketing** expressed through generative interfaces.

Treat it like a technical tweak, and you'll get technical-tweak results: plenty of noise, very little growth.

CMOs, this is where you step in.

SEOs, this is where you either evolve or get automated into irrelevance.

The question isn't **what** GEO is – that's been done to death.

It's how to tell if your GEO is actually working.

## The Primary Metric: Share of Search

The primary metric for GEO is the same one that should already anchor any brand-led growth program: **share of search**.

Les Binet didn't coin a vanity metric for dashboards. Share of search is a **leading indicator of future market share** because it reflects relative demand – your brand versus competitors.

If your share is rising, someone else's is falling, and the future tilts your way. If it's declining, you're mortgaging tomorrow's revenue. That's the unglamorous magic of it.

It isn't perfect. But across category after category, share of search predicts brand outcomes with a level of accuracy that should make "awards case studies" blush.

And yes, GEO affects it, often through PR. When an LLM recommends your brand (linked or not), some users still open a new tab and Google you. Recommendation sparks curiosity. Curiosity drives search. Search is the signal.

Expect branded search volume to rise as generative usage grows, because people back-check what they see in AI results. It's messy human behavior, but it's consistent.

Your first diagnostic: plot your brand's share of search against your closest competitors. Use Google Trends or My Telescope for branded demand, and triangulate with Semrush. Watch the trend, not the weekly wobbles.

And do not confuse share of search with share of voice. Different metric. Different lineage. Different purpose.

## The Two Halves of the Signal: Brand Demand and Buyer Intent

Share of search has two practical layers for GEO diagnostics:

- **Brand search**: The purest signal of salience. Are more people looking for you than last quarter, relative to the category? That's how you know your brand availability is increasing inside generative engines and the culture around them.
- **Buyer-intent traffic**: The money end. Of your non-branded search clicks, how much is clearly commercial or buyer-intent versus informational fluff? And how does your share of that buyer-intent traffic compare to competitors?

You won't know a rival's exact click-through rates – and you don't need to.

Use Semrush to estimate non-branded commercial demand at the topic level for you and them, then compare proportions. Cross-reference with your own Google Search Console (GSC) data. Export everything and segment aggressively by intent. Where tool estimates diverge from your actuals, you'll learn something about the noise in third-party data and the real shape of your market.

If your brand search is flat but buyer-intent share is rising, congratulations – you're harvesting demand but not creating enough of it.

If brand search is rising but buyer-intent share isn't, you have a conversion or content problem – your GEO is sparking curiosity, but your site and assets aren't turning that into qualified traffic.

If both are up, pour fuel.

If both are down, stop fiddling with prompts and fix your positioning, advertising, and PR.

## Category Entry Points: The Prompts Behind the Prompts

GEO lives or dies on **category entry points (CEPs)** – Ehrenberg-Bass' useful term for the situations, needs, and triggers that put buyers into the category.

CEPs are how real people think.

"I just left the gym and I'm thirsty." That's why there's a Coke fridge by the exit.

"I've just come out of a show near Covent Garden and need food now." That's why certain restaurants cluster and advertise there.

These are not keywords. They're human contexts that later materialize as words.

Translating that to GEO: your customers' prompts in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Mode reflect their CEPs.

Newly appointed marketing manager under pressure to fix organic? That's a CEP.

Fed up with a current tool because the price doubled and support disappeared? Another CEP.

Map the CEPs first, then outline the prompt families that those CEPs produce. The wording will vary, but the thematic spine stays consistent: a role, a pain, a job to be done, a timeframe.

Once you've mapped CEPs to prompt families, you can evaluate your **prompt visibility** – how often and in what context generative engines surface you as a credible option.

This is a brand job as much as a content job. LLMs don't "decide" like humans. They triangulate across signals and citations to reduce uncertainty. Distinctive brand assets, third-party coverage (PR), credible reviews, and consistent evidence of capability all raise your odds of being recommended.

Notice I didn't say "more blog posts." We'll come back to that.

## Measure Prompt Visibility, Then Validate in GSC

Once you've outlined your prompt families, test visibility systematically.

Run qualitative checks in the major models. Log the sources they cite and the types of evidence they appear to weight.

Are you visible when the CEP is "newly promoted CMO, six-month plan to grow organic pipeline"?

Are you visible when it's "VP of ecommerce losing non-brand traffic to marketplace competitors, needs an alternative"?

If you're absent, don't complain about model bias – earn your spot with PR, credible case studies, and assets that reinforce what the engines are trying to prove about you.

Next, switch to the quantitative side. In GSC, build regex filters for conversational queries – the long, natural-language strings (4 to 10 words, often more) that resemble prompts with the serial numbers filed off.

We don't yet know how much of this traffic comes from bots, LLM scaffolding, or humans typing into AI-powered SERPs, but we do know it's there.

Track impressions, clicks, and the proportion that are clearly buyer-intent versus informational. If your conversational query clicks are growing and skewing commercial, that's a strong signal your GEO is turning curiosity into consideration.

## The Two-Second Rule: Why Informational Content Won't Save You

Here's a hard truth for the SEO content mills: informational traffic is about to become even less valuable.

Most AI citations offer only fleeting exposure. Brand recall takes more than a glance – in both lab and field data, you get roughly two seconds of attention to make anything stick. Most sidebar mentions and AI Overview snippets don't deliver that, and the memory fades fast anyway.

If your GSC export shows that 70% or more of your clicks come from "how-to" mush with no buyer intent, your GEO isn't working. It's subsidizing the LLMs that will summarize you out of existence.

Fix the mix – shift your asset portfolio toward category entry points that actually precede purchase.

## A Simple GEO Scoreboard for Grown-ups

Here's your weekly CMO/SEO standup. Four lines, no fluff.

### 1. Share of Search

Your brand's share versus your top three competitors, trended over 13 weeks. Up is good. Flat is a warning. Down means it's time to get comms and PR moving.

### 2. Buyer-Intent Share

Your estimated share of non-brand commercial clicks versus competitors (from tool triangulation), plus your actual buyer-intent clicks from GSC. The gap between the two is your reality check.

### 3. Prompt Visibility Index

For each priority CEP, how often are you recommended by major models, and with what supporting evidence? Track monthly. Celebrate gains. Fix absences with PR and proof.

### 4. Conversational Query Conversion

Impressions and clicks on 4–10+ word natural-language queries, segmented by intent. Are the commercial ones rising as a share of total? If not, your GEO is a content cost center, not a growth driver.

### How to Read the Scoreboard

- If those four lines are improving together, your GEO is working.
- If only one is improving, you're playing tactics without strategy.
- If none are improving, stop thinking you can "Wikipedia" your way to growth with topical-authority fluff.

## The Levers That Actually Move GEO

What moves the dial? Not more "SEO content." GEO responds to the levers of brand availability:

- **PR that builds credible third-party evidence**: Reviews, analyst notes, earned features, and founder or expert commentary with substance. LLMs love corroboration.
- **Distinctive assets used consistently**: Names, taglines, proof points, tone. Engines triangulate. Recognizable signals reduce ambiguity.
- **Customer-centered case studies**: Framed around CEPs, not your product roadmap. "Marketing manager replaces X to cut acquisition costs in 90 days" beats "New feature launch."
- **Tighter copy**: Precise, functional language matched to CEPs and prompt families. Kill the poetry.
- **Experience signals**: Your site must resolve buyer intent fast. The conversation from AI should land on pages that continue – not restart – the dialogue.

Content still matters, but only as support for these levers.

Most of your old blog inventory was never going to build memory or distinctiveness, and in an AI-summarized world, it certainly won't. Scrap the vanity spreadsheets. Build assets that make both engines and humans more certain you're the right choice in buying situations.

Yes, content marketing is back in a big way – but that's another article.

## GEO Isn't Just SEO

When AI modes become the default interaction layer, and they will – whether through chat, answers, or blended SERPs – the game rewards brands that are easy for machines to recommend in buying moments. That is GEO's beating heart: increasing AI availability.

Think of it like free paid search.

If you're still obsessing over informational traffic and topical hamster wheels, you'll be caught with the lights on and no clothes. Some of you already are.

SEOs who make the leap become organic-search strategists. You'll speak CEPs, buyer intent, and brand effects. You'll partner with PR, product marketing, and sales enablement. You'll still use the tools – Semrush and GSC – but you'll use them to evidence strategy, not to justify content churn.

The rest of you? You'll be replaced by an agentic workflow that writes better filler faster than you ever could.

## The Humbling Truth About GEO

Marketing rewards humility. You are not the consumer, and you are certainly not the model. Stop guessing. Measure the four lines. Map the category entry points. Build the assets that make you easy to recommend. Cross-reference tool estimates with your own data and let the differences teach you.

GEO isn't mystical – it's brand marketing meeting machine mediation.

So, how do you know if your GEO is working?

- Your share of search rises.
- Your share of buyer-intent traffic rises.
- Your prompt visibility expands across the CEPs that actually precede purchase.
- Your conversational queries convert at a higher rate.

Everything else is noise.

Ignore the noise, fix the fundamentals, and remember the only mantra that matters in this brave, generative world:

- Be recommended by AI, when it matters and not when it doesn't.

GEO performance comes down to proof. Share of Search, buyer intent, and prompt visibility show whether your strategy is creating real demand.

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