Founder of Juna Influência | Influencer Marketing & Creator Partnerships Leader | Talent Management Specialist | Communicator | Creative Strategist
An online education company in São Paulo wanted more enrollments, and roughly 300 creators applied to help deliver them. Plenty of agencies would have activated as many as the budget allowed and hoped the numbers worked out. Julie Orestes went the other way. She narrowed the field, ran the campaign in phases, and watched one of those phases produce about three times the initial sales result. The instinct behind that choice did not come from social media. It came from ten years of contracts, deadlines, and ledgers.
The Operator in a Field Built on Charisma
Julie Orestes is the founder of Juna Influência, a Brazilian influencer marketing and creator partnerships agency she launched in January 2022. In just over four years, she has built a network of more than 30 exclusive creators and a database of more than 300 profiles, and she coordinates campaigns with more than 50 creators at once. In an industry that often runs on personality, she runs on process.
Ten Years of Deadlines Before the First Campaign
Orestes started in operations, well before she worked with creators. In 2014 she became a partner at Souza e Orestes, a family-owned accounting and business services office in Rio Grande do Sul. For more than a decade she handled administration, finance, client relationships, documentation, negotiations, and deadlines, the kind of work where a missed detail has a price.
“Every decision has financial, operational, and relationship consequences.”
That lesson went with her. When she founded Juna Influência in 2022, she was still at the family office, and she kept both roles until the end of 2024. The overlap mattered. She was learning a creative business while practicing the discipline that most creative businesses lack.
“Creativity without organization may generate an isolated result, but it rarely sustains growth at scale.”
From the start, she refused to position Juna as a simple go-between for brands and influencers. She wanted an agency that treated representation as a long-term development relationship, not a string of one-off deals. When she was managing about ten influencers, she began spotting patterns in what worked, and she documented what she learned across seven ebooks.
Her career has also kept widening. Over the years, companies have brought her in as a partner when an operation needed someone who could understand every part of it quickly and see where it could grow. She is currently studying digital marketing at UniFECAF and completed the Digital Marketing Strategy course at the University of Edinburgh in 2026.
Where Attention Becomes Something a Brand Will Pay For
The clearest evidence of Juna’s work is in the creators themselves.
Família Gomes started almost by accident. Vinício created an Instagram account to promote his wife Letícia’s party decoration business, and audiences began following the family as much as the work. They joined Juna at roughly 14,000 followers. Orestes was clear that the goal was never to turn them into something else.
“Their authenticity was exactly what made the profile interesting.”
In the first four months, the account grew to nearly 50,000 followers, and average Reels views rose from about 3,000 to roughly 60,000. Between January and August 2026, it went from 35,600 to 73,100 followers, a 105 percent increase. Two Reels alone drew a combined 1.54 million views, and one reached 1.1 million in a single day. The family, now living in the United States, has more than 80,000 followers and is still represented by Juna in Brazil.
For Orestes, the follower count is the least interesting part of that story.
“A brand is not paying only for the size of the profile. It is investing in the trust the family has built.”
She is careful to share credit. Vinício and Letícia did the filming, kept up the pace, and protected what made people connect with them. The same is true of Carlúcia, a medical student who left Northern Brazil to study at the Federal University of Pelotas and is working to become the first doctor in her family. Since joining Juna, she has worked with several brands and continued to expand her presence and commercial opportunities. The agency has helped refine her positioning and support that growth, while her own consistency, personality, and work remain central to the results she continues to achieve.
The São Paulo education campaign showed what the agency can do at scale. From the roughly 300 applicants, Orestes and her team identified about 80 strong candidates and activated more than 50 creators. One phase delivered about three times the initial sales result, proof that creator marketing can be measured in revenue, not just reach.
Juna’s work also extends beyond advertisements. When Manu, the food and hospitality creator behind @manuporai, launched her Pelotas em Dobro project in April 2026, the concept was hers. Juna handled restaurant outreach and the administrative side, bringing about 120 establishments on board. The launch became one of the strongest in the history of the operation, including compared with launches in Brazil’s major capitals.
Over the years, Orestes has worked on campaigns and partnerships involving GOL, Azul, O Boticário, Coca-Cola, Amazon, L’Oréal Paris, and Netflix, among others. That range taught her something international companies often miss.
“One of the biggest mistakes is treating Brazil as a homogeneous market. Brazil has continental dimensions.”
Global companies have taken notice. Orestes now serves as Influencer Marketing and Creator Partnerships Specialist for Brazil at Meitu, where she works within the company’s global team as its local market expert.
“A global company trusted my ability to help its products gain greater relevance in the country.”
For a founder who built her agency from a regional base in southern Brazil, the appointment shows how far that local knowledge now travels. How she decides which creators are worth backing, and why her choices keep paying off, remains her own.
The Ledger Behind the Spotlight
Three hundred creators wanted the São Paulo campaign. A less disciplined operator would have taken them all. Julie Orestes took the ones that fit, and the results followed. That choice sums up her career: a decade of balancing books, applied to an industry that rarely keeps them. Brazil’s creators bring the charisma. She brings the structure that lets it last.
In a business obsessed with who is watching, Julie Orestes built her name on who can be trusted.
Julie Orestes is the founder of Juna Influência, based in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. She helps brands build creator partnerships in the Brazilian and LATAM markets and helps creators grow their audiences into lasting commercial value. To connect with Julie or learn more, visit her LinkedIn profile.
