Agency Partnerships for Product and Brand Growth: Key Findings
Thirty-nine percent of marketers say time, people or budget are among their top three content marketing challenges, according to the newly released B2B Content and Marketing Trends: Insights for 2026 report.
For creator platforms like Kapwing, where clarity, iteration, and speed drive adoption, agency partners must match that energy without slowing teams down.
In this interview with DesignRush, Kapwing Chief Executive Officer Julia Enthoven shares how they vet external collaborators, why user empathy trumps polish, and how agency partnerships have shaped both their brand and their product.
Who is Julia Enthoven?
Julia Enthoven is the co-founder and CEO of Kapwing, the browser-based creative platform helping millions of people make modern videos, GIFs, and images. A former product manager at Google and software engineer at Apple, she started Kapwing to empower creators and teams to tell stories, grow businesses, and share ideas through video.
1. Choose Agencies That Match Your Speed and Curiosity
Kapwing moves fast. Their product cycles are short, and they value action over overthinking.
This means their agency partners need to operate the same way. Agencies who bring scrappy execution, quick turnarounds, and flexibility tend to thrive.
Just as important is a strong understanding of narrative. Kapwing needs collaborators who can help explain a product that straddles technical functionality and creative freedom.
The best partners show real interest in creators, not just branding aesthetics.
"The best agencies are genuinely interested in the creators we serve, not just making things look good, but helping us connect with real people in a meaningful way," Enthoven says.
One clear red flag is when polish comes before experimentation.
"If the conversation centers too much on brand decks or high-level aesthetics without an interest in performance or user feedback, it’s usually a sign we’re not aligned,” she adds.
2. Use Data and Distribution to Turn Creative Into Coverage
Kapwing’s partnership with SEO agency NeoMam led to a standout campaign around AI influencers: an increasingly relevant space for their creator-focused brand.
By combining original data, clear visuals, and strong media targeting, the story earned a backlink from The New York Times.
“The collaboration was successful because it was data driven, with an original survey and transparent methodology,” Enthoven says.
She also credited the campaign’s success to its timely topic and quality visuals that made it pitchable.
The takeaway here is when agencies can merge storytelling with distribution, they become growth drivers.
3. Work With Agencies Who Already Know Your Product
Kapwing’s strongest partnerships often start when the agency is already a user of the product.
“The best way that agencies win our business is when they are Kapwing customers and can give us direct feedback about our platform,” Enthoven explains.
This shared user experience makes for better alignment on tone, product value, and user empathy.
During onboarding, Kapwing walks partners through product features, shares internal data and user research, and ensures the agency understands the voice: friendly, accessible, and real.
It’s a model that cuts learning curves and leads to faster, more relevant creative.
4. Build Structure That Grows With Your Team
As Kapwing scaled, working with agencies taught them an important lesson: deadlines drive clarity.
What used to be an "ASAP" culture internally needed more structure to support cross-functional collaboration.
“Setting deadlines for product launches helps the product and marketing teams work together in the same way that it helped us work with outside agencies to ensure that deliverables met expectations,” Enthoven says.
These frameworks helped Kapwing scale without losing their creative momentum, turning agency discipline into internal muscle.
5. Let Great Partnerships Influence the Product
Some agency collaborations have reshaped more than just messaging. They’ve directly influenced Kapwing’s product roadmap
During a homepage redesign project, Kapwing realized that creating on-brand icons was unnecessarily difficult.
“[The collaboration] taught us how to make our storytelling tools more helpful and collaborative for real marketing teams,” Enthoven says.
In response, they built new functionality to generate consistent branded assets, improving the experience for internal teams and customers alike.
Great partnerships challenge assumptions and spark product innovation.
What Can Brands Takeaway?
Kapwing’s model proves that smart, nimble partnerships can drive better outcomes for both brand and product.
Enthoven and her team work with agencies who understand users, move quickly, and bring structure without bureaucracy.
For brands that want to partner with agile, user-first creatives who can move at your speed, check out DesignRush’s list of top branding agencies.
