NEW YORK — Breef, which operates an online marketplace for companies to find marketing and advertising agencies, has landed $16 million in new funding led by Greycroft. The platform has transformed project outsourcing for global brands and emerging businesses by facilitating agency connections in under seven days – through a combination of proprietary technology and payment innovations. Total investment to date is $21 million.
The Breef platform hosts more than 10,000 agencies, across 25 countries, and has now passed $100 million in project value created on the platform. Established companies like Pantone, Spotify, and Heineken, as well as emerging brands such as Byte and beverage company Flying Embers, use Breef to find the best agencies for over 50 project types. This includes everything from branding to website development, digital marketing, content creation and more.
“Breef has taken the analog agency model online,” said Ali Schleider, Investor at Greycroft. “The amount of demand we are seeing from brands and agencies flowing through the platform shows companies are looking for a new way to get creative work done. Our belief is that Breef is not only repositioning marketing spend, but creating an accessible solution for quality talent – no matter market conditions.”
Breef democratizes connections between brands and boutique agencies, simplifying and improving the planning, scoping, pitching and payment processes for outsourcing. Its platform allows companies to create a project or access support from a Breef Marketing Strategist, and receive pitches from vetted agencies within seven days. The process eliminates the need for complex and time-consuming requests for proposals (RFPs), delivering on the flexibility to outsource projects in days – instead of months – saving brands an average of 35 percent in fees per project through competitive pricing.
“As brands evolve with the times, we need speed and agility to meet the ever-changing demands of modern marketing,” said Elley Cheng, Vice President and General Manager at Pantone. “Breef has delivered us easy access to new, specialized agencies that can help us quickly jumpstart initiatives.”
Core to that value proposition is Breef’s proprietary technology that allows for the matching between brands and agencies, enabling brands to form partnerships curated to their exact needs, timeline and budget. For the first time, companies are able to transact high-value projects online – in a world where meeting face-to-face no longer matters – and net-30 terms are now replaced by same-day payments.
“We are building for the next generation of work. Our approach is transforming the marketing industry at large by rewarding transparency, creating unprecedented access to agency talent, and helping companies reduce costs,” said Emily Bibb, Co-Founder of Breef. “Brands – big or small – can be agile on our platform and specialized, boutique agencies can finally work with their dream clients.”
