Influencer marketing has grown up fast. The systems around it haven’t always kept pace.
Large brands now spend serious money on creators, but many marketing teams are still wrestling with the same questions. How should influencer campaigns be measured? What should creators charge? How do brands scale programs without constantly adding people? And how do influencer teams convince senior executives that creator marketing deserves more investment?
Those issues are helping bring major companies together through the Global Influencer Council, a brand-only community where marketers can talk openly about what is working, what is not, and where the industry still feels unfinished.
The Council is led by Director Kerry Meakins alongside founder Jennifer Quigley-Jones. Meakins, who is also Marketing Director at PMG, previously worked on the agency side of influencer marketing. She repeatedly heard brands asking similar questions about measurement, pricing, creator strategy and internal buy-in. That repetition made something obvious. Brands were facing many of the same problems, but often solving them separately.
Brands Wanted a Place to Talk Without Being Sold To
The Global Influencer Council launched in 2025 with a straightforward idea behind it. Brand marketers needed somewhere to have honest conversations with other brand marketers. The group deliberately keeps agencies, technology vendors and platforms outside its private meetings so participants can discuss problems without every conversation turning into a pitch.
Quarterly virtual sessions give members space to compare strategies, raise difficult questions and share experiences from inside their companies. The Council also holds in-person gatherings and builds annual cohorts around senior and emerging influencer marketing professionals. That structure gives members access to people dealing with similar challenges from very different industries.
The conversations are often practical rather than theoretical. Members have discussed measurement frameworks, creator management, artificial intelligence and the challenge of explaining influencer marketing to senior leadership. Outside formal meetings, the network continues through a wider community where marketers can exchange recommendations, raise questions and discuss developments as they happen.
Major Brands Are Sharing What Works and What Doesn’t
The companies involved show how far influencer marketing has moved beyond its early reputation as a niche social media tactic. Brands represented in the Council have included Unilever, Expedia, Adobe, Walt Disney, JD Sports, Amazon and Wix. Previous participants have also included Google, YouTube, DoorDash, Sky and Bumble.
That mix matters because creator marketing now reaches well beyond fashion, beauty and lifestyle campaigns. Travel brands, technology companies, retailers, entertainment businesses and B2B organisations are all trying to understand where creators fit into their broader marketing strategies.
The Council also brings together marketers at different levels of experience. Senior leaders can share how they approach budgets, organisational politics and long-term strategy, while people working closer to daily campaign execution can explain what is actually happening on the ground. That creates a more useful conversation than one built entirely around executives or entirely around campaign managers.
Influencer Marketing Measurement Still Causes Problems
Measurement remains one of influencer marketing’s most stubborn challenges. Brands can track views, likes, comments and engagement rates easily enough, but those numbers do not always explain whether a campaign changed consumer behaviour or contributed to a wider business goal.
Different companies also want different outcomes. An ecommerce brand may focus heavily on conversions and sales. Another company may care more about awareness, brand perception or reaching a specific community. That makes it difficult to build one measurement system that works for every campaign.
The Global Influencer Council has approached the problem by allowing brands with more developed measurement frameworks to explain how they work. Other members can then question those systems and decide which parts could apply to their own businesses. The goal is not to force everyone into the same model. It is to give marketers better examples of how creator activity can connect with real business outcomes.
That distinction is important. Influencer marketing does not necessarily need one universal metric. It needs clearer links between campaign activity and whatever the brand originally wanted to achieve.
Brands Want to Scale Creator Campaigns Without Adding Huge Teams
Scaling influencer marketing creates another problem. Working with a handful of creators can already involve a surprising amount of administration. Teams have to identify talent, negotiate agreements, approve content, handle usage rights, organise publishing schedules, process payments and track results.
Once a brand starts working with hundreds or thousands of creators, that workload becomes much harder to manage. Meakins has said that many marketers are being asked to expand influencer programs without receiving equivalent increases in headcount.
That pressure is pushing brands toward technology. Artificial intelligence, creator discovery platforms, campaign management software and automated reporting can reduce some of the manual work. More automation will almost certainly enter creator marketing as programs become larger.
Still, software cannot make every decision. Brands need people to judge whether a creator actually fits the company, whether a partnership feels authentic and whether the content makes sense for the intended audience. The future of scale may therefore depend on automating repetitive work while keeping human judgement around the parts that influence strategy and relationships.
Convincing Senior Leadership Is Still a Major Challenge
One of the biggest influencer marketing challenges sits inside companies rather than on social platforms. Marketing teams often understand the value of creators but struggle to communicate that value to senior executives.
Influencer specialists can spend significant amounts of time explaining why creator campaigns matter, how they differ from traditional advertising and why social engagement alone does not tell the full story. That can become frustrating when the same time could be spent improving campaigns, building creator relationships or experimenting with new formats.
Meakins has identified senior leadership education as one of the problems she would most like to solve. As influencer budgets grow, executives naturally expect clearer evidence of what those investments are producing. Creator teams therefore need to translate campaign performance into language that makes sense at boardroom level.
That could gradually change the position of influencer marketing inside large companies. Instead of sitting mainly under social media, creator teams may become more closely connected with brand strategy, ecommerce, customer acquisition and wider marketing planning.
Creator Pricing Still Has No Universal Formula
Creator pricing is another area where the industry remains inconsistent. Follower count alone has never been enough to determine value. Two creators with similar audience sizes can produce completely different results depending on engagement, niche authority, audience loyalty and the quality of their content.
Usage rights make pricing even more complicated. A brand may initially pay for a creator to publish content on their own account, then decide it wants to reuse that content in paid advertising, ecommerce campaigns, websites or other marketing materials. Those additional rights have real value, but there is still no widely accepted pricing model.
Brands therefore continue to compare approaches to rates, contracts and usage rights. Some companies have developed detailed internal systems, while others still negotiate heavily on a campaign-by-campaign basis.
The uncertainty reflects how quickly the creator economy is changing. Influencers are increasingly operating like media businesses rather than individuals selling isolated sponsored posts. Pricing models will likely become more sophisticated as brands ask creators for more content, more rights and longer partnerships.
AI Is Starting to Enter Influencer Marketing Operations
Artificial intelligence has also become part of the conversation among major brands. Marketers are exploring how AI can assist with creator discovery, campaign analysis, reporting and other parts of influencer management that traditionally require considerable manual work.
The interest is understandable. Brands want larger creator programs, but many do not want equally large teams. AI could help marketers process information faster, identify potential creators and reduce the administrative burden surrounding campaigns.
There are limits, though. Creator marketing depends heavily on relationships, judgement and cultural understanding. An automated system might identify a creator with the right audience statistics but still miss whether that person genuinely fits the tone or values of a brand.
The most useful role for AI may therefore sit behind the scenes. It can help marketers handle repetitive tasks and analyse large amounts of creator data while leaving important partnership decisions to people.
The Council Wants to Bring More Insights Into the Open
The Global Influencer Council is not trying to create one giant rulebook for influencer marketing. Its approach is closer to structured peer learning, where brands share experiences and build better strategies from what other companies have already tested.
Some of those discussions have already moved beyond private meetings. The organisation has produced editorial work and industry reports and has participated in events including SXSW and CreatorFest. Its first year also included several in-person gatherings focused on executive-level discussions.
As the Council moves forward, Meakins wants to expand its public-facing work through thought leadership, event panels and partnerships with publishers. The idea is to take useful lessons from private brand discussions and make some of that knowledge available to the wider influencer marketing industry.
That could become valuable because the issues being discussed are not unique to individual companies. Measurement, creator pricing, scaling and executive buy-in are structural problems affecting much of the creator economy.
Influencer Marketing Is Moving Closer to the Boardroom
The existence of a group like the Global Influencer Council says something important about where influencer marketing now sits.
Creator campaigns are no longer experimental side projects for many brands. They are becoming established parts of marketing budgets. At the same time, much of the infrastructure surrounding them is still being developed.
Brands are testing measurement frameworks. Creators are building more sophisticated businesses. Artificial intelligence is entering campaign operations. Teams are being asked to scale without endlessly expanding headcount. Senior executives want stronger proof that creator investments are delivering value.
There is no neat solution to all of that yet.
What is changing is the way brands are trying to find answers. Instead of solving the same problems independently, more companies are beginning to compare strategies and share what they have learned.
That collaboration could help influencer marketing mature faster. The next phase of the industry will not only be about finding bigger creators or spending more money. It will depend on creating better systems for measurement, pricing, operations and long-term creator partnerships.
Sources
Net Influencer — Global Brands Are Comparing Notes to Solve Influencer Marketing’s Toughest Problems
https://www.netinfluencer.com/global-brands-are-comparing-notes-to-solve-influencer-marketing-toughest-problems/
Global Influencer Council
https://www.globalinfluencercouncil.com/
