When the Global Influencer Council launched at Cannes in June this year, it sparked immediate buzz.
Founded by Jennifer Quigley-Jones, the Council serves as a platform for senior brand marketers to collaborate, share challenges, and shape the future of influencer marketing.
However, some wondered why the Council did not include any influencers, including a few LinkedIn posts criticising the decision.
I spoke with Quigley-Jones about the process behind the curation of the Council, and how she hopes the plans will benefit both brand marketers and influencers alike.
Original plans for the council
According to Quigley-Jones, the Council was created as a confidential, strategy-focused environment where brand leaders can speak openly about the complexities of running influencer campaigns without the added pressure of sales pitches or external scrutiny. Influencer perspectives, she said, still matter and will be brought in through surveys, panels, and exclusive WhatsApp groups. But at its core, the Council is for the people behind the campaigns, not the faces of them.
Instead, the council will remain strictly focused on brand marketers. She highlighted that the group would be putting together quarterly Forbes article reports and educational resources to help benefit all sides of the industry.
Quigley-Jones acknowledged some of the backlash the Council had received for not including influencers, but stressed the issue had already been widely debated. “If you include influencers, you need to include a diverse and representative range. Otherwise, we can’t reflect the industry.”
Then came the question of fairness and payment. Influencers have long fought for fair payment in the industry, with a 2021 Mediakix study finding that 77% of influencers have no standardised pay rate. While a lot has changed in recent years, the Council recognises that influencers shouldn’t be doing free labour or getting underpaid.
“If we're bringing in consultants or influencers, it's not their job to educate this industry on how to do their job,” Quigley-Jones said. “They should be paid for that. That is additional work. And whenever we bring creators to speak at events, we pay them. Because again, they're doing something out of the remit of their job, and their time has value.”
The Council’s buzzing future
Despite the criticism, Quigley-Jones sees the passionate response as validation. She’s keen to ensure creators’ voices are still heard, just in a different format.
She also has big ambitions for the Council’s future. “What I'd love it to be is this active community where we have a cohort every year that becomes the thought leaders of the industry. I'd love it to have an APAC branch as well, because there are so many exciting things happening across the world right now.”
Influencer trade bodies and councils have come a long way, and with the founding of the Influencer Marketing Trade Body in 2021, the number only seems to be growing. The Global Influencer Council is a step to professionalise a nascent industry - a topic we’ll also be covering in depth at CreatorFest this year. The more industry leaders sitting down to discuss how to make our industry better, the merrier.
