Client work · Business advisory & implementation
Icon Management
It looked like a website replacement. The real opportunity was improving how brands, creators and staff connect through the business.
The situation
- An established talent-management business representing creators. The work could easily have been treated as a straightforward replacement of the existing website. Instead I looked at how the business actually uses its digital presence: how brands find creators, how creators are presented, how enquiries come in and reach the right person, how aspiring creators are handled, and how staff manage all of it.
What I saw
- The business didn't need a better-looking brochure. A set of creator pages isn't the same as a useful way for a brand to find the right person for a campaign. A single contact form doesn't reflect the different reasons people contact a talent agency. Promising future creators were disappearing into scattered emails. And behind all of it, the team needed a proper way to manage creators and enquiries.
The solution
- A broader platform rather than a new website. A creator directory brands can search by what they need, leading into structured profiles the team maintains themselves. Enquiries organised by purpose, routed and assigned to the right person, with a history. A private space where aspiring creators can keep a profile up to date and stay visible to Icon, with no promise of representation — and if Icon does take someone on, their information carries forward. Underneath, the staff roles, notes and administration that make it work day to day.
What it improved
- Brands. A clearer route from finding a suitable creator to making an enquiry.
- Represented creators. Stronger, more structured commercial presentation.
- Prospective creators. A proper way to stay on Icon's radar without implying representation.
- Icon's team. Creator information and incoming enquiries managed in one structured place.
- The business. The website becomes part of how the business works, not a brochure beside it.
How it was optimised
Search, speed, privacy and enquiries were considered from the beginning, across both the public website and the platform behind it.
- A proper creator directory and individual public creator profiles, organised by category and niche, so brands — and search engines — can find the right talent.
- Private prospective-creator profiles deliberately kept private and out of public search.
- The journey from finding a creator to making the right kind of enquiry thought through end to end.
- Around 153 creator and gallery images processed and optimised, substantially reducing page weight and improving the experience on mobile.
The apparent requirement was a website. The real need was for several parts of the business to work together — and in this case I also had the tools to build the answer.