Key Takeaways:
The beauty industry is undergoing a structural shift. Earlier defined by boutique PR shops, niche creative studios, and smaller specialist firms, the landscape is now dominated by a new class of multidisciplinary “super agencies,” an expansive, globally connected group offering end-to-end services across strategy, creative, digital, influencer, and communications. These agencies promise an ability to meet the industry’s escalating demands with scale, cultural fluency, and cross-functional expertise.
For an industry long defined by intimacy and specialist expertise, many insiders do not want a one-stop shop. Yet, the pull toward scale is undeniable. These super agencies promise global reach, expanded service capabilities, access to technology and top-tier talent, and a level of strategic integration that’s becoming essential as beauty collides with wellness, hospitality, fashion, and entertainment.
Agencies like Together Group and Karla Otto exemplify this evolution. While the term “super agency” suggests consolidation, the driving force is more complex, rooted in shifting consumer culture, heightened competition, industry convergence, and the need for unified storytelling across every touchpoint of a brand’s journey.
Why Now? The Forces Powering Consolidation
Industries like beauty have always thrived on relationships, trust, and close partnerships, but clients are no longer looking just for relationships. “Beauty will always be a relationship-driven industry,” Lissy von Schwarzkopf, Chief Business Officer at Karla Otto, said to BeautyMatter. “But beauty clients now want relationships-plus,” she continued. According to von Schwarzkopf, the plus means an agency that can integrate across multiple disciplines, including media relations, influencer relations, partnerships, marketing strategy, even content and creative.
This evolution mirrors a broader industry truth, and that is that beauty has expanded far beyond product. Brands today must operate at the intersection of culture, technology, wellness, and lifestyle. They must launch globally, scale digitally, and communicate across platforms that shift weekly.
For Madeleine Boyd, Global SVP of Beauty and Wellness at Together Group, the shift is clear. “Brands today are recognizing the power of a more integrated, platform-based approach; one that is best placed to set brands up for long-term success in an ever-evolving industry. By working with a large, culturally connected partner, they can ensure their brand DNA and messaging remain protected and consistent across every touchpoint,” Boyd said to BeautyMatter.
This consistency matters more than ever as brands scale across continents and categories. Super agencies have the geographic footprint and the specialized verticals (beauty, wellness, fashion, digital, hospitality) to support expansion in ways smaller boutiques simply can’t.
The super-agency advantage is also an integration of complementary strengths. Together Group has built its platform through strategic acquisitions; fourteen to date, beginning with PR powerhouse Purple in 2021 and including trend-forecasting authority The Future Laboratory. Each acquisition expands the Group’s capabilities across creativity, digital experience, foresight, communications, and design.
“Rather than a consolidation, we drive a strategic curation of complementing best-in-class specialists to create a powerful transformational platform that is based on a unique understanding of next generation consumers, high net worth individuals, as well as aspirational luxury communities,” said Dr. Christian Kurtzke, CEO of Together Group, to BeautyMatter. “The real value doesn’t arise from each agency’s independence but from our togetherness.”
Karla Otto has mirrored this evolution from the inside out. Over the past decade, the agency has transformed from a communications firm into a full brand-building partner. It now houses a creative strategy arm that is built on trend forecasters, anthropologists, and data experts, and a brand experiences division that can conceive, design, produce, and execute major global activations.
This broadened service offering gives brands access to deeper talent pools and the technological backbone required for modern marketing. As Boyd said, digital transformation is accelerating faster than most beauty companies can manage alone. “This is a glimpse into a future where commerce is embedded into conversational AI, replacing traditional discovery and search pathways.” Agencies that can integrate data, foresight, and AI-enabled experiences into brand strategy are now indispensable.
Global Reach and Market Expansion
Beauty’s globalization is one of the key forces driving super-agency growth. Brands now need partners that understand the nuance of entering Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and emerging wellness hubs.
Together Group’s global footprint, spanning EMEA, the US, and Asia, allows brands to scale with cultural intelligence. The group’s work in wellness destinations, hospitality, and experiential luxury also reflects a strategic bet on sectors increasingly intertwined with beauty.
Karla Otto, with offices across major fashion and beauty markets, deploys integrated teams tailored to local landscapes while ensuring global consistency. “Our global reach and infrastructure mean we can curate specialist teams to meet any brief,” von Schwarzkopf explained. “Scale never replaces intimacy, because every brief is met with focused expertise and close partnership.”
One of the most persistent criticisms of consolidation is that scale risks flattening creativity. Both agencies rejected that notion. Boyd described the Together Group culture as “rooted in excellence, curiosity, and celebrating the distinct creative strengths of each agency.” Rather than standardizing creativity, she said scale “creates a space where ideas, learnings, insights, and creativity can flow freely between teams.”
Von Schwarzkopf emphasized hiring for “creative, entrepreneurial, and collaborative” talent, adding that she looks for people with “the bite,” a hunger to push boundaries. This, she argued, keeps teams nimble even within a large ecosystem.
How Agencies Are Valued and What Makes an Ideal Target
In the current M&A landscape, creative and marketing agency valuations vary widely, but certain patterns clearly shape how desirable acquisition targets are identified. Agencies with strong digital-first positioning, diversified revenue streams, and long-term client relationships tend to command higher multiples. Those with robust insight capabilities, proprietary intellectual property, or technology-driven offerings can attract premium valuations due to their scalability and relevance in a rapidly evolving market.
Super agency groups are seeking best-in-class specialists that bring depth, not duplication. An ideal acquisition is one that fills a strategic gap, expanding geographic coverage, adding vertical expertise (such as beauty, wellness, hospitality, or experiential), or deepening analytical and technological capabilities. Strong leadership teams, cultural compatibility, and a proven ability to deliver high-caliber work across markets are equally important.
In this environment, boutique agencies with strong reputations, innovative models, and loyal, retained clients are especially attractive. Their value does not only lie in financial performance, but also in their cultural capital; that is their ability to shape trends, anticipate consumer shifts, and contribute to a multiagency ecosystem without losing the distinctiveness that made them acquisition targets in the first place.
Looking forward, leaders agreed that the next wave of beauty agencies will be mostly defined by cultural intelligence, technological fluency, and cross-industry integration. “The next generation of successful beauty agencies will be defined by their ability to think beyond the traditional confines of beauty,” Boyd said. “We blur boundaries between beauty, wellness, hospitality, fashion, and technology, creating ecosystems rather than campaigns.”
Von Schwarzkopf added that agencies must “operate at the forefront of innovation, utilizing new technologies and anticipating market shifts and trends.” In other words, the super agency is not simply an enlarged version of the classic PR or creative shop. It is a new model; one built to orchestrate culture, commerce, creativity and technology on a global stage.
