A new celebrity talent booking agency, Big Dog Talent (BDT) has launched today with Andrew Bloch and A-list celebrity booker, Holly Adams at the helm.

It aims to fill a gap in the PR space, by helping brands and agencies find the right celebrity talent across a range of mediums such as TV, film and PR campaigns.

Having worked together on various projects for over 20 years, the pair first met when Bloch was in his PR agency heyday and when Adams was cutting her teeth in the reality TV world, working on Channel 4’s Big Brother. Bloch said their professional relationship “ramped up” over the last few years, as he worked with Adams to book talent for “speaker events, ad campaigns and content deals”.

But, the idea to formalise the arrangement and launch BDT, the name of which is inspired by their ownership of large dog breeds, came when the pair noticed a gap in the current PR and creative agency world for booking talent. Adams said this process can get “very complicated for no reason”.

Bloch said that he was able to see “gaps where agencies needed help”, and not just PR agencies, but ad agencies which he says have “very few in-house talent experts and spend huge amounts of money negotiating talent”.

PRmoment caught up with Adams and Bloch to find out more.

What gap in the PR market is BDT hoping to fix?

Adams: “It's become very obvious that…a lot of agencies out there that [Andrew and I] have been working with, actually end up paying much bigger fees for these [talent] deals. They actually don't have to get that complicated. And this is the USP that we bring. Agencies may also get declined by talent, because they are trying to force a square peg into a round hole [with the type of pitch they bring]. In the first instance we can advise agencies that the person simply will not go for the idea, and suggest other people or bring other ideas to the table. Also, there’s no good brainstorming [a creative idea] around a person that is out of the agency's price bracket. It’s a waste of the agency's time, and I often get lists from agencies that want talent who don’t match the budget."

Bloch: "I’m keen on helping to educate PR agencies and ad agencies on how to get these deals done. The days of a celebrity being paid £10k to hold up a Mars bar and smile are dead. What’s exciting now, is we are in a whole new era. The work Holly and I were doing before launch was all around ad-funded programming, branded podcasts and working with digital creators to integrate brands into their streams. It’s a completely different world of celebrity than it was a decade ago…and I’m excited to make life easier for agencies to get this done because often I think they don’t know where to turn. It's a little bit of a wild west in terms of what someone should be paying for talent. I think there's also a bit of an education job to be done in terms of how to shape deals and take them to talent in a way that they're going to be the most receptive."

PR and creative agencies have been working with influencers for a while now, what will make you stand out?

Bloch: "How do you define what a celebrity is? Influencers and content creators are effectively celebrities, but the differentiator is that they've got a platform. Part of the skill set of working with influencers is understanding what makes them interesting to their audience in the first place. And again, where brands can sometimes go wrong is they will approach a big influencer with a very very direct brief of what they want that influencer to do. They're negating the whole value of what that influencer can offer which is [for example] access to millions of viewers on their platform.. I’m not a fan of using influencers for the sake of it, for us it’s about finding the right, authentic matches for brands."

Adams: "That kind of knowledge comes from experience. No one can buy a book that will teach them to be a celebrity booker. It’s all based on knowledge you have based on the celebrity and their quirks. They are human, they do get sick and they can pull out of jobs, but [BDT] is in a position to fix that, we know who is in promo mode and who is active in the UK. We can fix problems [PR agencies] face with talent that might ordinarily mean a deal falls flat."

Controversy surrounding both celebrities and influencers has ramped up, how will you protect brands, clients and agencies from any mishaps?

Bloch: "It's about making sure their followers are genuine and not bots and there's no controversy in terms of their history and their past –l the sort of traditional checks you would usually do whenever a brand aligns itself with talent. Effectively there is a risk and we need to mitigate that risk. When you're dealing in the world of influencers and content creators, they're not as well known as a mainstream celebrity. We need to do a lot of that background work because we don't want to embarrass the brand by aligning them with someone who in three months time might come out as having been a racist or misogynist or sexist or whatever it might be. We have to do all of that. But it's an exciting world and it's a big part of what we're doing."

Thinking of the rise in AI bot-farm attacks and the importance of reputation in a world of cancel culture, are you able to offer support if the worst was to happen?

Bloch: "A lot of the initial process is advising the client on potential risks and mitigating the stuff that could happen further down the line. It will be on a case by case basis. Not everyone will need us or want us to do that, but of course we can do that. My PR background means I understand how to deal with crisis and risk so we will be there and able to offer advice if that happens. But, it's about avoiding that in the first place. Sometimes clients are completely unaware of controversies that may or may not have been bubbling under the surface or even the rumor mill that goes on. Holly has expertise in that area and will make a client aware of something that they might not otherwise have known prior to a booking."