The company invests around EUR 50m a year in influencer marketing, booked across markets and agencies with little visibility into what that money actually buys. Rates, deliverables and audience quality were opaque, and no one could see how much of each fee reached real, engaged audiences versus intermediary margin. The brief was not to cut the budget but to understand its true worth and do more with it.
VA exposed the working value versus non-working cost of the programme, then had the client license ICX — VA’s influencer tool — to run that view on their own data as a standing capability, reallocating spend from intermediary margin to real reach.
Chief Marketing & Digital Officer, Head of Social Media, Head of Influencer, Head of Marketing Procurement
The strategic problem
The company invests around EUR 50m a year in influencer marketing, booked across markets and agencies with little visibility into what that money actually buys. Rates, deliverables and audience quality were opaque, and no one could see how much of each fee reached real, engaged audiences versus being absorbed by intermediary margins. The brief was not to cut the budget but to understand its true worth, and then do more with it.
Diagnose & Design
VA ran a spend mapping & cost baseline analysis across the full EUR 50m programme, separating working value — what genuinely reaches and engages real audiences — from non-working cost absorbed by intermediary fees, opaque margins and inauthentic reach, market by market. This set the true cost-to-value ratio for the first time and benchmarked efficiency against the market; the AURA/Influencer Benchmarker quantified the gap between what was paid and what was genuinely delivered.
Ecosystem & Remuneration
On the strength of that diagnostic, the client licensed ICX — VA’s influencer tool — to operate on their own data as a standing capability: a live view of working value versus non-working cost, with benchmarks and negotiation leverage the team now runs internally to challenge opaque fees at source. Vendor scouting & shortlisting via the VA 5,000+ supplier database extended the programme’s creator reach beyond incumbent relationships and intermediary mark-ups.
Rollout & relationship management
Contracting & onboarding and handover, rollout & commitment tracking: AURA/Planner back-plans the ICX deployment and capability transfer, and tracks that the working-versus-non-working governance model and negotiation playbook are embedded across markets before VA steps back; relationship management ensures the team can sustain maximisation independently.
Execution Oversight
VA set the governance, benchmarks and negotiation playbook around ICX so every influencer deal is priced on real delivered value, not headline reach; bid governance applies the same rigour to creator selection as to any other production spend, stripping out non-working cost. The buying power freed at each negotiation is reinvested into more and higher-quality activity — not returned as a budget cut.
Performance Measurement
Not a saving story but maximisation: by shifting spend from non-working cost to working value, the same EUR 50m unlocks an estimated 22% more buying power and 18% more measured value, with approximately 30% of spend reallocated from low-value to high-value activity [illustrative, to be confirmed]; partner performance evaluation via the AURA/Influencer Benchmarker tracks creator ROI on a continuous cadence — the budget does more, it does not shrink (today closure reports; full performance measurement on the roadmap).
Why VA
Procurement instinct says cut; the smarter move is to maximise. VA gives the brand the real cost-to-value of its influencer programme — working value laid bare against non-working cost — and, through ICX, the autonomy to keep maximising it, so the same investment buys more reach, more relevance and more growth without a single euro of additional budget.
Common questions
What is ICX?
ICX is VA’s influencer tool that gives a live view of working value versus non-working cost across a creator programme — benchmarks and negotiation leverage the team runs itself to challenge opaque fees at source and shift spend to real, engaged reach.
Why maximise the influencer budget rather than cut it?
Because the value is in what the money buys: exposing how much of each fee reaches real audiences versus intermediary margin lets the same EUR 50m unlock more buying power and measured value — the budget does more, it does not shrink.
How is the buying power sustained?
By licensing ICX as a standing internal capability with continuous creator-ROI tracking, the team keeps challenging opaque fees and reallocating spend to high-value activity — so maximisation compounds rather than being a one-off review.