Launched in May 2020 for the U.S. and Australia markets, end-to-end marketplace Publicist allows brands to connect with talent in PR and marketing for freelance positions. Users are paid via either a month-to-month retainer or a project-based payment, with Publicist collecting a 20% fee.

All talent on the website and upcoming mobile app is vetted for criteria including years of experience, skills, references, former brand clients and location, using a scraper and staff. Roughly one-fourth of those that apply to be on the platform are approved to list their profiles. Brands can find former executives from major companies such as Estée Lauder Companies, L’Oréal, Net-a-Porter and Glossier.

“We have seen this acceleration and push to freelance, because media companies, agencies and brands have downsized a lot of marketing teams,” said Lara Vandenberg, founder and CEO of Publicist. “A few years ago, 80% of a brand’s team was full-time and 20% was freelance. In the next couple of years, it’ll be closer to 50/50.”

In a Harvard Business Review survey of C-suite executives, half said it was “highly possible” that their permanent full-time workforce would be “much smaller” in the future, two-thirds said they expect to increasingly rely on temporary talent. It also found that there are now over 330 talent-finding platforms for highly skilled workers, and almost all Fortune 500 companies use at least one.

Emma Paton, co-founder of Net-a-Porter and a consultant for luxury brands, used the platform to find a brand client to work with on a five-month project via her new freelance consultancy.

“It felt like a great way of trying to understand what might work for me,” she said. Her experience at Net-a-Porter combined with her later work at her own agency have given her “multiple tools, a wider skill set and a better perspective, overall, to be able to deliver on what I’m doing now in my freelance consultancy capacity,” she said.

Brands can use the platform by creating a project, which involves listing out the dates and pay along with the job description and any requirements. Talent profiles include both descriptions of experience and a list of the brands they have worked with in the past, which can be searched on the platform.

In addition to seasoned former executives, Publicist is also “seeing a lot of Gen Zs that will probably never go into a full-time job,” said Vandenberg. “Gone are the days that people want to work for a brand for 30 years or so.”

So far, 80% of the talent on the platform are individual freelancers and 20% are agencies. Most new applicants have come to the platform via referrals, and Vandenberg said that the company plans to recruit more agencies …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron