January 10, 2024 |
“There’s no typical day in my life,” says Isabelle Chouvet, the co-founder of The Independents. She’s speaking on a video call from New York, where she’s currently spending the working week. The French CEO and entrepreneur splits her time between the city – alongside Paris, Milan and Shanghai – where she oversees a team of more than 800 people at the global marketing and communications group which operates across the luxury fashion and lifestyle sectors.
“What is always key for me, though, no matter how crazy my agenda, is that I always try to be reachable. Every day I make sure I spend time with the team in some capacity. I like people. That’s why I’m an entrepreneur. And I like to grow together with people. I think that’s how we all learn.”
It’s no wonder, then, that The Independents has seen such rapid growth under her watchful eye. Founded in 2017 as a merger between her own events and experiential content company K2 and public relations behemoth Karla Otto, the group acts as a collective of specialist agencies under one umbrella. Not only does each agency provide its own take on creative services, talent consultancy, digital strategy, influencer marketing and brand experience, but they work together to achieve common goals for clients. A parent to the likes of Bureau Betak, Alexandre de Betak’s eponymous fashion production company, Lefty, an influencer marketing platform working with the likes of Celine, Byredo and Isabel Marant, and The Qode, a PR, events and marketing company based in Dubai, it’s a uniquely collaborative approach.
Earlier this year, The Independents also acquired Prodject, the American agency responsible for delivering the Met Gala. It received a £330 million investment to accelerate its development and international expansion, aiming to double the company’s size by 2025. “I think I’ve always wanted to become an entrepreneur,” says Chouvet, who is a graduate of Harvard Business School. “I started out working in corporate events in economics and politics. My husband Olivier [who co-founded The Independents] started our first company, which was a restaurant club and a small events agency. We were doing events for brands that wanted to communicate to audiences, with incredible parties at Cannes, for example.” At that time, it was the early 2000s. With the rapid expansion of online technology, the couple quickly realised that there was a gap in the market in East Asia where they could nurture their joint vision for events-based marketing. “It’s not easy as an entrepreneur to decide to move countries with your husband. And we had two little kids at that time already. But we decided to go to Tokyo, because that was where we thought there was such room for growth – especially for fashion, luxury art and culture related brands.”
What followed was K2, which opened in 2002. “After Japan, we branched out into Korea and then China, in 2004.” Since then, K2 has partnered with everyone from Berluti and Cartier to Louis Vuitton and Dior. Along the way, Chouvet met German PR legend Karla Otto. “I was really working closely with the Karla Otto team in China on some projects together. Everyone kept saying that I must go and meet Karla herself. So, I flew over to Munich and we had lunch. We spent the whole afternoon talking and I explained my vision for what is now The Independents: this sector of communication that nobody has done before. She was interested in working together, as she always wanted to ensure Karla Otto was a step ahead of the game. And the rest is history.”
What makes The Independents’ proposal unique is that authorities on all sides of the luxury communication and marketing dice get the chance to play together; they inform each other’s work, rather than compete across the board. “We now have quite an interesting group in terms of geography,” says Chouvet. “I think we are now in 10 countries with around 14 offices. It’s very important that we have geography in mind, as we need to understand the unique needs of our clients. We wanted to have a real presence, geographically speaking, in every place where our clients are based. We now have nearly 800 global experts who all have a real synergy when it comes to working together. It really is a new ecosystem for a communications group.”
But with so many different global voices in the mix, how can such a group unite to navigate the 2020s, where a challenging cultural landscape is fluctuating at such a rapid pace? “Covid was hard,” she says. “But then with or without Covid, the questions I ask myself when I wake up every morning have always been the same: what can we do better? What can we do differently? I know that we are stronger together. And that’s also why individual agencies are happy to join us. Our name is The Independents, because we want every agency to keep their DNA and be able to develop themselves. But everyone is taking the best from each other and this, I think, is the future of communication.” Chouvet also has ways of managing personal levels of stress. “When you’re in the events business, as I was when I started out, if you get stressed quickly, you’d have to find another job,” she says with a laugh. “I do think that the older you get, and the more experience you get, the less stressed you are because you learn how to step back and think carefully before acting or responding. It’s so important to never catastrophise, either. For people to grow, they need positive encouragement. If there’s a problem, we work together to find a solution.”
For those who may be just starting out in their careers, and particularly for women who might be navigating their own business ventures in fashion communication, Chouvet also has some sage advice. “Don’t hesitate, be direct,” she says. “For many years, I think that communications people were not frank with their clients. I think, today, we need to challenge our clients. That’s what they’re expecting from us. You must be resilient and sometimes stubborn.” She also believes that starting with details from the get-go is a key component to delivering the best work. “Today, I believe this to be true more than ever before. And with The Independents, we are collectively so detail-oriented and we bring that mindset to our clients to create bespoke experiences. Working globally, it’s important to have a real local understanding of what part of the world you are in. You have to respect different cultures and understand what that culture expects.”
Photography by Benoit Peverelli. Taken from 10+ Issue 6 – VISIONARY, WOMEN, REVOLUTION – out now. Order your copy here.
