Creator Marketing Is Growing Up

SPEAKER_1 (0:12)

Welcome to AdExchanger Talks, the podcast devoted to examining the issues and trends in advertising and marketing technology that matter most to you.

Sarah Slus (0:24)

Today's episode is sponsored by Basis, the leading intelligent operating system for autonomous advertising. Its enterprise AI solution transforms campaign briefs into strategies and media plans that integrate directly into omni-channel activation. You can learn more at basis.com.

Victoria McNally (0:52)

Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of AdExchanger Talks. I'm Senior Editor Victoria McNally and I'm filling in for our usual host, Allison Schiff. You already know this if you're a regular listener, I know, but Programmatic IO is coming up at the end of the month. It's kind of a big deal. And I've got a great guest with me this week who will be speaking at the event about a part of the digital advertising agency that doesn't tend to get a whole lot of programmatic play, which is the creator and digital marketing space. So my guest is Jennifer Quigley-Jones. She was the CEO and founder of Digital Voices, which is an influencer marketing agency that was acquired by PMG earlier this year. And she's now a VP of Strategy and Partnerships at PMG. And she's so knowledgeable and so passionate about the creator marketing space. It's really infectious as you're about to find out. But before that, if you still haven't gotten your ticket for ProbiO, I don't know what you're waiting for because it's so soon. It's taking place in New York at the Marriott Marquis on September 20th and 29th. And you can register with a pretty good discount if you type in our code for podcast listeners, that's POD10, so Pod10.

Now, with that out of the way, let's get into it with Jenny.

Hi, Jenny. Thank you so much for joining us here at AdExchanger Talks. It's great to talk to you.

Jennifer Quigley-Jones (2:06)

Thank you for having me. I'm really looking forward to our session.

Victoria McNally (2:09)

Awesome. So the first thing we like to do with AdExchanger Talks, first question we ask, what is something that people who are listening to this podcast right now might not know about you?

Jennifer Quigley-Jones (2:21)

A few secret, hidden things.

I actually spent two years learning Arabic every day. And when I was at college, after doing my master's, I specialised in the Syrian refugee crisis. So I now do not speak Arabic very well. I've forgotten most of it. But that was my initial career plan, was to go and work in non-profits in the Middle East. And with no family background in it, I'm half Irish, half Welsh. Just really, really love the pain of learning difficult languages.

Victoria McNally (2:55)

That is so interesting. Because I had wanted to ask, just from looking at your LinkedIn bio, your early career, your education seems a lot more focused on that sort of international relations, like Middle East kind of stuff. Aside from just thinking it would be hard and wanting to try it, what brought you to that?

Jennifer Quigley-Jones (3:13)

I guess this is timely because it's the 25th anniversary of 9-11, a few days ago. When I was a child, I lived in Kuwait. So I moved to Kuwait at age six and left when I was like 11, 12 And so I was actually there during 9-11. And my family was supposed to move to Islamabad and Pakistan for my dad's job three days after 9-11. So all the facts were just grounded at that point. And I came back to the UK. And I remember just being very confused because my childhood there was quite idyllic. And Kuwait had a very interesting political situation being because the Gulf War, they had historic kind of ties with the US. And then it was a kind of a very, it was a complex situation to grow up with. And so when I came, I remembered having a very safe, sweet, idyllic childhood. And when I moved back to the UK, people were like, how did you live in that awful place? And I remember just being really curious about how these identities formed, how do people, how do you democratize media? How do you help people speak for themselves and define themselves? So I just kind of got very obsessed with politics and ended up doing my masters in Middle Eastern studies and working on the Syrian refugee crisis.

And then straight after college, I was working at Oxfam and I was bored to death. Like the work was just very, was not the most challenging. It was a lot of following processes that had been done before. There wasn't much innovation in the space and I was working on this incredible project and I found it was still moving too slow. So I read this article in The Economist that said, there are two career paths you should go down if you're young and you want to grow your career quickly. One was if you're a very well-rounded person, go into management consultancy.