A new trend in marketing: promoting individual employees.

Agencies will, at their own expense, create and promote top employees as a brand — turning them into professional “stars” to attract and retain new clients. These “stars” are created to work on the most complex and profitable projects, forming a VIP core for VIP projects. The practice emerged under crisis pressure.

Artem Ovechkin, development director at Matik internet-marketing agency, says this is a new marketing trend — agencies previously did not PR their employees, limiting promotion to the company and its head.

Methods of building a “star” team include: a dedicated page on the agency site, a specialist’s personal blog, a personal website, allocating funds for other representational expenses, PR promotion in media for top staff (not just leadership). All these campaigns are agency-funded — the “star” only needs to maintain a first-class professional image.

Such specialists can speak with media without looking back at leadership, speak on behalf of the agency, comment on events, and participate in conferences and seminars under their own name. Such unconcealed self-promotion was far from welcome in agencies a few years ago.

The VIP core handles the most profitable and complex projects, participates in tenders by the largest companies. The specialist’s reputation is used as an argument for acquiring new clients. The first glimmers of this trend appeared before the crisis. Corporate calendars with photos of employees became popular. Some companies began actively building a “Complain to me personally”, “I personally answer for everything” approach — after which CEO and even owner personal contact details appeared on websites. The role of the human factor in choosing an agency rose during the crisis. People trust a known specialist more than a known agency.