Artist Influence / Response to Agency Brief / 18 August 2026
Here is what we think the right number is, what we would charge, what it buys, and the parts of your funnel we will not pretend to own. Five minutes.
01 / What we are
Artist Influence is a creative distribution and paid media agency. Our edge is making creative at volume and putting it in front of the right people cheaply: 60 to 70 assets a month, a moderated creator network above 20,000, and media bought against audiences built from your data rather than guessed from interest menus.
For you that means three things: your lead sheet becomes targeting rather than a call list, your filmed library becomes a creative engine rather than a folder nobody opened, and your 350 live customers become a lookalike seed, the highest signal audience in your category and free to build.
Assets per month
60–70
Produced, not curated
Creator network
20k+
Moderated, full time
Our explicit fee
$1,700
Per month, months 1 to 3
Term
90 days
Then rolling, 30 days notice
02 / The verdict
Backwards from your numbers: 1,000 net means 1,510 gross activations after churn, about 1,888 closed deals, roughly 7,550 held demos, or 30 every business day. You have one salesperson, who runs about 126 a month.
The number nobody else will tell you
Give one rep every demo they can run and hold budget at infinity. Twelve months later: 421 live accounts, a net gain of 71. Your question 27 describes a month 4 pace toward roughly 400, so we think you already suspect this. Marketing cannot buy past it.
We could not reach 1,000 under any staffing scenario. We will commit to +290 net, with a credible path to +660 if paid social performs and you staff to five reps. Blended CAC lands near $834 per gross account, not $480, which is close to the $900 stress case in your question 29. We have written the plan as though that is expected, not catastrophic.
03 / Scope
We own this
We will not do this, or pretend to
Those five sit between a demo and a countable account. Since we do not control them, we should not be measured on live accounts alone. We propose demos held as the accountable metric, with a performance component on live accounts so we still carry downside.
And three things we would refuse even if asked
04 / The money
| Where the $40,000 goes | Monthly |
|---|---|
| Working media, spent on your behalf | |
| Paid social, matched audiences | $11,000 |
| Google Search + conquesting | $4,500 |
| OpenAI ads | $1,500 |
| Production and creator services, at rate card | |
| Creative production, 70 assets | $7,000 |
| Influencer, operator voices | $5,000 |
| Clipping, creative R&D | $4,000 |
| IRL, one regional show | $3,000 |
| Comment Sentiment | $1,500 |
| Our management fee, and float | |
| Ad management, 10% of managed spend | $1,700 |
| Reserve and testing | $800 |
| Total | $40,000 |
On our fee, honestly
Read the table in three parts. $17,000 is working media we spend on your behalf and earn nothing on. $20,500 buys production and creator services at our published rate card, which carries our production cost and margin the way any rate card does. $1,700 is our explicit management fee.
So the $1,700 is not what we make, and we are not going to imply we work for 4% of your budget. Blended across every line, our margin runs in the low twenties as a percentage, which is below what a $40k retainer would cost you. We are happy to walk the rate card line by line.
What it produces
Roughly 255 demos a month by month 3, rising to 271, about $115 blended per demo held. Paid social does volume at $71 each, Google Search does intent at $192, influencer and IRL do proof. Clipping produces no demos by design: it finds the angle the paid line then scales.
Months 4 to 6, and 7 to 12
Both also total exactly $40,000. Paid social rises to $13,000 then settles at $12,500, and IRL shifts from trade shows into density days. Creative production rises to 80 assets, because creative volume is the dominant lever once targeting saturates. Full line items in the appendix.
Named triggers that move the money
05 / The bet
The wedge
Loman, Maple, and Kea all lead with a version of "AI answers your phone." Table stakes, and invisible. The sharpest thing you showed us on 4 August is absent from your brief: the AI takes an order in Spanish and switches to English mid call, across 11 languages. That is a wedge. It points at immigrant owned independents doing high phone volume, the sharpest edge ICP for your next 250 accounts, and competitors cannot copy it with a landing page rewrite.
The cheapest growth available to you, and it is not marketing
At 5% monthly you install three accounts to keep two. Taking churn to 3.5% adds 73 net accounts a year at zero incremental spend, beating every channel here on cost.
On 4 August, Moe noted there are no long term contracts. We think that is the mechanism. Month to month billing removes friction from a 3 day sales cycle, and it also explains why one in twenty accounts leaves each month. An annual prepay option, or a discount for a 6 or 12 month term at the point of sale, is the highest return change available to this business and costs nothing to test. Your call, not our scope, but we would be failing you not to put it first.
06 / Risk and terms
| Most likely reasons this misses | Odds | What we do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Sales capacity never arrives and the plan hits the 421 ceiling | High | Spend gated on rep headcount from day one. We report unused demand weekly so you see the constraint months before it becomes a result. |
| Sold to live drags past 60 days on POS, Stripe, and owner testing | High | Modelled as its own stage with its own lag, reported by cohort. The fix is a product and operations ask, not ours, and we will say so rather than absorb the blame. |
| Paid social lands at the low band and lookalikes do not scale | Medium | Read by week 4, not month 3. Google Search and IRL are protected in every downside. Budget moves to creative volume. |
| Churn holds at 5% or worsens as we add accounts faster | Medium | Cohort churn by acquisition channel from month 2. A channel that churns above blended gets cut even when its CAC looks good. |
| A funded competitor outspends us 20 to 1 on the same channels | Low | We do not win a spending war. We concede broad paid social, hold Search where intent is already formed, and move into IRL density and operator creators, which cannot be bought quickly. |
When we tell you to stop
Any two of these in month 3 and we tell you the mandate is not achievable: cost per demo held above $200 blended after four weeks of optimisation, sold to live under 60%, or rep two not seated by end of month 2. That goes in the contract, so month three is a calculation rather than an argument.
Terms
07 / Before we start
Appendix / Detail behind the summary
| Line | M1 to 3 | M4 to 6 | M7 to 12 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid social, Meta and Instagram | $11,000 | $13,000 | $12,500 |
| Google Search + conquesting | $4,500 | $5,000 | $5,500 |
| OpenAI ads | $1,500 | $1,500 | $1,000 |
| Creative production | $7,000 | $8,000 | $7,000 |
| Influencer, operator voices | $5,000 | $5,000 | $4,500 |
| Clipping, creative R&D | $4,000 | $2,000 | $2,000 |
| IRL activations | $3,000 | $1,500 | $2,500 |
| Comment Sentiment | $1,500 | $1,500 | $2,500 |
| Ad management fee, 10% | $1,700 | $1,950 | $1,900 |
| Reserve and testing | $800 | $550 | $600 |
| Total | $40,000 | $40,000 | $40,000 |
Demand is gated by sales capacity every month. Every rate is an assumption and editable in the accompanying model.
| Mo | Reps | Demand | Capacity | Held | Closed | Live adds | Churn | Base |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 90 | 126 | 90 | 22 | 18 | 17.5 | 350 |
| 3 | 2 | 255 | 252 | 252 | 63 | 50 | 17.9 | 391 |
| 6 | 3 | 271 | 378 | 271 | 68 | 54 | 22.7 | 486 |
| 9 | 5 | 269 | 630 | 269 | 67 | 54 | 27.2 | 570 |
| 12 | 5 | 269 | 630 | 269 | 67 | 54 | 31.0 | 642 |
| Year | · | · | · | 2,876 | 719 | 575 | 281 | +292 |
| Scenario | Ending base | Net | CAC per net |
|---|---|---|---|
| Downside: low band, 3 reps | 383 | +33 | $14,545 |
| Base: base band, 5 reps | 642 | +292 | $1,644 |
| Stretch: high band, 5 reps | 1,009 | +659 | $728 |
| Ceiling: high band, 8 reps | 1,179 | +829 | $579 |
| Base, churn fixed to 3.5% | 715 | +365 | $1,315 |
| Channel | Spend | Output | On | Kill criteria |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paid social | $11k to $13k | 150 to 170 demos, ~$71 each | Wk 1 | Above $150 per demo held for 3 straight weeks after $5k spent |
| Google Search | $4.5k to $6k | 25 to 30 demos, ~$192 each | Wk 1 | Never killed wholesale. Non brand paused above $350 per demo over 4 weeks |
| Influencer | $4.5k to $6k | 40 to 45 demos, ~$139 each | Wk 3 | Under 15 demos per $6k across two cycles, cut to top three |
| IRL | $1.5k to $3k | 18 to 45 demos per activation | Wk 6 | Under 15 demos across two consecutive events |
| Clipping | $2k to $4k | 60 to 100 tested angles, no demos by design | Wk 2 | No angle beating paid control on cost per demo by week 6 |
| OpenAI ads | $1k to $2k | 10 to 12 demos | Wk 2 | Under 8 demos a month by end of month 3 |
| Comment Sentiment | $1.5k to $2.5k | Shapes comments where skeptical owners check | Wk 4 | No lift in reply rate or sentiment ratio by end of month 2 |
| Week | What ships |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ad accounts and conversion tracking verified end to end. Lead sheet uploaded as Custom Audience and Customer Match, match rate reported. Filmed library inventoried. |
| 2 | Lookalikes built off the 350 live accounts. First 20 assets cut. Google Search and OpenAI ads live. |
| 3 | Paid social live on matched audiences, four angles including the language switch. Clipping brief out. Influencer roster sent for approval. |
| 4 | First creative read, losers cut, weekly scorecard live. Founder filming session one. |
| 5 to 6 | Influencer roster live, 10 to 12 creators. Lookalike expansion where 1% saturates. |
| 7 to 8 | Comment Sentiment layer live. Second creative wave. First kill decisions executed against published criteria. |
| 9 to 10 | First IRL activation at a regional show. Sold to live cohort analysis with drop off points named. |
| 11 to 12 | 90 day review: channel CAC, what we kill, what we scale, and a revised 12 month model built on real rates rather than our assumptions. |
Targeting "small business owner" and "restaurant" is the default, and it looks like it works because CPMs are low and lead volume is high. Nine in ten of those leads are restaurant employees, aspiring owners, and accidental clicks. Four months later your cost per lead is excellent and your cost per demo held is catastrophic. We start from your data instead, which is why week one is an audience build, not a launch.
Sent every Monday by 10am, one page. Demos held, not booked, because no shows run 20% to 35% here. Cost per demo held, blended and by channel, not cost per lead. Sales capacity utilisation, demos held over rep capacity, which governs the whole plan and nobody else will report it. Demo to close rate. Sold to live rate and median days. Net live accounts and monthly churn, net so churn cannot hide inside gross adds.
Account lead at 40%, paid media buyer at 60%, creative editor at 70%, influencer coordinator at 30%, and shared clipping operations running on our existing moderated creator network. Names, seniority, and current account load supplied before contract. Nothing here is subcontracted outside our own network.
Executed many times: paid media at this scale and above, matched audience and lookalike construction, creative production at 60 plus assets monthly, influencer roster management, creator distribution at volume. Informed extrapolation: restaurant technology as a category, B2B SaaS demand generation, and the conversion rates in this model. We have not sold to independent restaurant owners before. Weight our distribution and creative record heavily, and our category knowledge lightly.