SoSquared

SoSquared is a UK-based influencer and creator marketing platform that connects brands and agencies directly with content creators. Founded in 2019 by Sam Royle and Greg Donnelly, the company was created in response to a perceived lack of infrastructure and standardised process in influencer marketing, where creators often shared payment details informally over social media direct messages and brands tracked campaigns in spreadsheets.

The platform provides creator identification and matching, a purpose-built campaign management system covering the collaboration process end to end, a CRM, an integrated wallet for payments, automated campaign creation, and automated report writing built on API connections with the major social platforms. Alongside traditional influencer marketing, SoSquared supports user-generated content for paid ads and organic social, and social commerce with a focus on TikTok shops. The company also offers a managed, higher-touch service delivered by its own internal influencer and creator specialists.

SoSquared describes itself as sector-agnostic, working across beauty, fashion, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, insurance, lifestyle, home and living, supplements and fitness. Stated priorities include improving forecasting of return on investment from creator campaigns and addressing brand safety when working with large numbers of creators.

Founding story

Sam Royle began his career in real estate asset management before moving into consultancy for private equity and investment banking, focused on emerging-market investments in renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure. Observing that businesses in more mature markets had analytics, CRM, identification and communication infrastructure to transact efficiently, he identified the absence of comparable tooling in influencer marketing while working in the sector, and co-founded SoSquared with Greg Donnelly in 2019.

Business model

SoSquared operates a two-sided platform serving creators on one side and brands and agencies on the other, combining self-serve software tooling with an optional managed service delivered by in-house influencer and creator experts. Payments to creators run through an integrated wallet system on the platform. A new product was described in 2024 as being launched free of charge to broaden access.

Traction

Reported client roster includes Revlon, L'Oreal, The Hut Group and Lamborghini. The company reports that for an insurance client, using UGC creators in place of traditional advertising methods increased inbound leads by approximately 500% month over month. It has also developed a close partnership with TikTok, with Royle speaking at TikTok seminars.

Latest developments

In 2024, CEO Sam Royle described an expansion of the company's remit into the broader creator economy, covering UGC for ads and organic social and social commerce focused on TikTok shops, the development of a confidence-score system for creator selection, and plans to launch a new free product within roughly five to six weeks of the interview.