Veritas Communications has launched Meat & Produce, a new content production offering that aims to deepen the relationship between brands and influencers while creating real-time content.

Named for its approach of meeting and co-producing content, M&P is a standalone agency under the Veritas umbrella aimed at co-creating real time digital content with its clients and influencers. While there is the opportunity for M&P to produce digital content without the involvement of influencers, Krista Webster, president and CEO of Veritas, says influencer marketing is what the agency knows best, and where it sees the biggest opportunity for this kind of offering.

“The challenge and opportunity we see is that clients, are really confused and looking for a way to engage influencers that doesn’t feel as transactional,” she says. “Welcoming clients to be part of the process reduces the time and number of edits it takes to finish a piece of content, but allows us to be innately more creative on the fly. Forming a relationship through the co-creation is going to enhance client expectations of the output, but also create more meaningful experiences for the consumer because it’s based on an authentic relationship.”

Webster adds that on the influencer side of the relationship they have shown an interest in co-creation with brand clients, as it helps them be more informed and involved in the process.

Currently working with Veritas clients, such as licensed producer CannTrust, Microsoft, Subway and Revlon, Webster says M&P will be doing its own outreach for its own client base. M&P also has its own team of ten photographers, videographers, copywriters and art directors, which is being led by Christine McDermott, a VP and influencer content strategist at Veritas.

Webster says that M&P is also taking an approach partially inspired by co-working spaces, where influencers will be welcomed into the space and use the facilities for their own content – even if its for their own, separate clients.

“It’s creating that energy and spirit and idea of having creativity all around that I want people to go out and recruit and bring other people in,” Webster says.

Veritas currently works with 250 influencers, and Webster says meetings with some of those influencers and the agency’s clients about M&P showed the demand for this offering and pushed its launch forward by two months.

“More has changed in the influencer space in the last nine to twelve months than I’ve seen in the past 20 years,” Webster says. “A lot of that has to do with that demand for good content, but good content that is fast. It needs to happen with more agility and be even more creative than ever, because there is so much content out there. But because ‘influencer’ is a channel, a person, a strategy and a tactic, our clients have been more savvy about how to engage influencers, and at the core that’s about the relationship.”