The Interview: Blanket Group founding partner Emily Shanks on the evolution of the communications agency
Emily Shanks is a founding partner of Blanket, along with Emma Dawson. If you’d asked anyone in the industry a year ago what Blanket was, they might have said it was a PR and communications company specialising in beauty.
This year however it has rather outgrown that description. The business has meaningfully evolved into a full-service agency that manages PR, communications, commercial talent, brand development and more. First launched in 2018, it has recently added two new wings to its main communications business.
First came Blanket Network, which represents credible beauty industry professionals (such as legendary hair stylist and brand founder Sam McKnight and beauty director Alessandra Steinherr among many others). The network seeks to pair this talent with brands and projects that offer the ability for them not only to endorse products but to educate their many followers.
More recently Blanket Partnerships has been developed offering brands access to the agency’s high-level VIP network of talent (which stretches well beyond the official Network line-up) to help amplify culturally relevant moments be that something as simple as make-up artist sponsorship up to full-scale activations.
What these divisions do (along with the Blanket Ventures side, and more on that later) is formalise the relationships brands have with influential figures, who can truly resonate and connect with an audience, and position a brand in a very specific way.
The key difference with the talent in the Blanket Network, as opposed to certain other influencer agencies, is its credibility. Each member of it is a professional known for having skills and success in a particular field, be it make-up artistry, aesthetics, haircare or wellness. Another differentiator is the diversity, particularly across the age range. There is talent here to appeal from Gen X (and above) to Gen Z, and Gen Alpha is in their sights (though Shanks says it needs to approach marketing to younger people with a huge amount of caution and responsibility).
Emily Shanks
The development of these new sides of the business speak to Shanks’ career background, which began at leading modelling agency Storm, where she worked for a decade between 2007 and 2017. It was there where she witnessed the shift from models largely being silent actors and actresses to becoming more rounded personalities and even brands in their own right. At this time celebrities were also taking on modelling and endorsement roles and the explosion in digital media was well underway.
Shanks found herself more drawn to the commercial partnerships side of Storm, rather than purely booking models. “[The bookings] just didn't excite me as much as the endorsement side. Because I think on the endorsement side, it was all about creating opportunities and looking at someone's overall profile or career and can we incorporate commercial activities as part of that. I think this is what that grounding really gave me, the understanding of the value of the endorsement,” she explains.
Nowadays a great many actors, musicians, celebrities and sports stars have commercial brand partnerships, but it really wasn’t the case in the early days of Shanks’ career. “When I was first at Storm, it was only just when actresses thought it was OK to go on magazine covers or appear in make-up ads or whatnot. Before that, it was like ‘no, absolutely not’. Now it’s the case that they’ve almost all got [commercial] work,” she explains.
Associating with brands is not just about enjoying the commercial upside for celebrities, it can of course mark a whole new career positioning. An early example of this managed by Storm was of actress Emma Watson.
“It's not something that I can take personal credit for, but at Storm it started with Emma Watson. And it was a partnership with the fashion industry and what we did within that industry helped Emma transition from the public seeing her as little Hermione [from the Harry Potter franchise] into Emma Watson. They did that with the Burberry campaign and it shaped her career. Because you can only beat your drum saying ‘I'm a woman now’ so many times. People have to see her. And the best way of someone seeing her is an advertising campaign. You can completely reposition somebody,” Shanks explains.
Storm was also one of the first model agencies to set up a division to manage influencers alongside the higher end editorial side of the agency. It helped professionalise that side of the market ensuring both sides achieved their aims from a partnership. “I think what we did was give [influencers] the respect and the management services to make them into very credible brands,” she says.
It was while on maternity leave with her first child that Shanks met up with Emma Dawson, formerly communications director at L’Oréal, who had just started Blanket. Shanks was beginning to feel the urge to break out from Storm and truly grasp the nettle when it came to managing digital talent. “I felt there was a lot of talent out there that was missing out on digital partnerships. I thought ‘I can manage these people’ and Emma said ‘why don’t we do this together?’” explains Shanks.
The pair agreed to partner on the business. At that point the business already had few brands on board, including content creator Jamie Genevieve. Blanket went on to help establish her trailblazing brand Vieve under the Blanket Ventures division, working with her to secure finance, hone the concept and get it over the line at the height of the pandemic too. “Emma has far more experience on that side [launching brands] than me but I knew what Jamie’s influence was; I knew the data on what she was selling. She did a box with Cult Beauty that was unbelievable [in terms of sales]. So, we had all of that and we knew that we could help her scale it. She’s a real talent.”
That ability to turn content creators into brands was part of the vision from the outset of Blanket. But, despite the clear opportunity to develop this side of the business, Shanks and Dawson were very clear they wanted to build credibility for the business via the communications side beforehand. The communications arm now counts some of beauty’s buzziest brands from Jones Road Beauty to Gisou and La Roche Posay as clients. It has gained a reputation over the past seven years as a leader in the market for representing elevated beauty brands, many of which are founder led.
Through its communications work, it established a strong contact book of influencers and experts, some of whom they represented in an informal way. Many of them formally became part of the Blanket Network late last year. At that point, the business brought in Shelly Whaits, formerly of Premier Model Management, Storm and The Squad Management to take up the role of Group Talent Director.
Talent in the Blanket Network
As well as the aforementioned Sam McKnight and Alessandra Steinherr, talent under the care of Blanket Network includes make-up artists Cher Webb, Saba Khan and Alex Babsky, nutritionist Jessica Shand, hairstylist Luke Hersheshon, founder and podcaster Vanita Parti, beauty director Kathleen Baird Murray and founder and aesthetic doctor Dr Wassim Taktouk among others. Vieve’s Jamie Genevieve is also represented.
This shift to working with talent has been taken one step further this month with the launch of Blanket Partnerships. Think of this as a VIP liaison arm. It’s being run by Joanna Moursi, who was the first employee of Blanket, outside of Shanks and Dawson.
“We’ve now reached a point where we can operate with separate yet complementary divisions. On 1 June, we launched the Blanket Partnerships division, led by the brilliant Joanna Moursi, Associate Director of VIP & Publicity,” says Shanks. “This new division offers a sliding scale of partnerships, from makeup artist sponsorships to full-scale campaign activations, tailored to align with a brand’s goals and budget. Whether a brand is seeking ad-hoc support or more consistent 'always-on' VIP associations.”
The first manifestation of its work was a 70th birthday party thrown for Sam McKnight. Guests included fashion, beauty and acting royalty including Kate Moss, Charlotte Tilbury, Caroline Hirons, Mary Greenwell, Val Garland, Stella McCartney, Pam Hogg, Kristin Scott-Thomas and none other than Tom Ford.
If this was an example of the kind of talent Blanket can assemble in a room (and yes, they were there for Sam McKnight, but nonetheless, it was quite the achievement), then the expansion of the agency looks very promising indeed.
