From trend to tactic: Tiphaine Neveu on redefining influence as a core marketing pillar

How do you see influence evolving within the marketing mix?

Five or six years ago, it was quite bold and forward-thinking to try to integrate influence marketing at the ‘Head of’ level. The idea was to put influence on par with other key marketing pillars like branding, media, CRM, and product. Influence wasn’t just a “nice-to-have” or the shiny add-on relegated to the corner of the table—it was given equal weight, budget, and resources as the other major levers.

What’s also notable is that influence today encompasses a variety of levers: influencers, social media, public relations, partnerships, and press relations. This whole ecosystem has grown substantially. In the past, we didn’t have KPIs to measure these elements; now, we do.

The evolution has been about accepting that not every component of this ecosystem needs strict KPIs—like PR, which is essentially the offline version of digital influence. We’ve managed to evangelise, demystify, and restore the legitimacy of influence as a core marketing discipline. This also leads to a broader question: should brands rely on agencies or internalise these efforts?

How do you strike a balance? Agencies bring value, but what’s the benefit of keeping things in-house? 

It’s very market-dependent, but I feel the reliance on agencies is very French. There’s a perception that brands lack expertise and that agencies are the only place to find specialists.

But that’s not true. Expertise can exist internally within brands, especially at a deeper level. The product and brand experts are within the company, but when it comes to finer aspects like public relations, press relations, and influencer strategy, brands often feel out of their depth and quickly outsource. It’s as if brands believe their core strength lies only in the product and branding.

However, today, influence, media, and PR are equally strategic pillars. It’s crucial to rebuild internal expertise because relying solely on agencies is not sustainable.

Brands need to reclaim their expertise and view agencies as amplifiers or external resources—not as the sole source of expertise. It’s perfectly healthy to internalize first, develop a solid foundation, and then scale up with an agency when needed. For me, a brand should be able to “grow its own garden” before industrializing.

In my experience, before giving money externally, I’ve wanted to test things for ourselves, leveraging our product knowledge, internal culture, and vision. Influence is about people. You need to experiment, see what works, and define your approach. Once we had the internal experience, we could confidently hire an agency, knowing exactly what we expected and what contracts to sign.

Expertise needs to come back in-house. Agencies should play an advisory or amplifying role, but the core expertise belongs within the brand.

It’s a mistake to rely on an agency to “do influence” without a strong internal lead. If you don’t have someone internally with the right expertise, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

This raises organisational questions. If influence is treated as equal to other pillars, should brands look for hybrid profiles or build hybrid strategies? How do you determine budgets and roles?

You need to think about the ecosystem of these new roles. Influence, PR, press relations, and social media operate with the same codes—they’re all about people, desirability, and recommendation. It’s essentially the same job, executed differently across generations and platforms.

These roles don’t necessarily require distinct profiles; someone working in branding, for instance, might transition into influence if they have the right interpersonal skills. Influence and PR require emotional and situational intelligence because they’re people-centered. Whether you’re managing communities online or working in traditional PR, you need to understand people.