Insights: Demographics & Background

The following data is based on responses from a survey sent to this year's Influence 100, and where applicable, further analysis. Some percentages might not equal exactly 100% due to rounding.

Who Are The 100? 

Geography

Nearly half (44%) of the Influence 100 are new entrants this year – although a handful are re-entries who are now in different high-profile roles. Unsurprisingly, CMOs, CCOs and corporate affairs chiefs based in the Americas remain dominant, making up 50% of the list, the same as last year.

Asia Pacific representation is roughly the same as last year, at 12%, while EMEA leaders make up the remaining 38% of this year’s cohort. Of these, European leaders make up 28% (including 11% from the dominant regional UK market) and Middle East and North Africa representation at 10%.

Overall, 20 countries are represented in the 2024 data, demonstrating the global reach and power of the communications industry.

Gender

The representation of women in the Influence 100 continues to stay high and well above a gender balance: this year we have 59 powerful women in global comms leadership roles (compared to 61% last year) and 41 men. It’s inspiring to see this female dominance of the listing continue, when in 2019, women were in the minority, with only 47 female influencers listed.

Ethnic diversity 

PRovoke Media continues to be committed to increasing the visibility of Black and ethnic minority comms professionals, but this has always been a challenge within the Influence 100, given that it prioritises the heads of communications and marketing functions, where representation is still not as diverse as we would like to see in the industry. For that reason we apply a certain amount of conscious bias, looking at a wider range of job titles than CMO or CCO. Not only does this make the Influence 100 more diverse, but it also reflects the evolution of the communications industry itself.

This year, representation has risen, with 34% of the list being people of colour, compared to 32% last year, beating our target of 25%. Of these, 14% are Black, compared to 11% last year, putting us close to our target of 15%. When we launched this research, 13 years ago, around 90% of the Influence 100 was white; it’s now down to 66%.

Sector

Our sector categories focus on what the organisations our influencers work for actually do or sell, not how they do it or whether their audience is B2B or consumer. For example, we count Amazon as a retailer, Grab as a transport company and PayPal as a financial services company.

Our categories split out mainly consumer-facing brands, putting FMCG (including fashion and beauty) and automotive together but separating out food and drink. Our ‘social and search’ category includes Google, Meta and TikTok, rather than putting them in the technology cohort. While arguably practically every company is now a technology company to some extent, our technology category is old-school: traditional hardware and software companies, plus telecoms and electronics.

The split between sectors hasn’t changed dramatically since last year, although it’s worth noting that representation of financial and professional services firms has grown from 14% to 20%, making it the biggest category this year, while technology – which has almost always taken the greatest share of the listing – has dropped from 19% to 14%, putting it in third place.

FMCG including automotive comes in second place, with 16% of the leaders in our Influence 100 working for consumer brands. Healthcare saw a slight dip from 9% to 7%, while the industry and energy category rose from 9% to 10%, the same percentage as the travel and transport sector.

Tenure

Our communicators and marketers have been with their current companies on average for just shy of seven years this year, down a little from 8.1 years last year, despite 44% of the cohort being new to the line-up and the departure of long-serving influencers including Conny Braams, who notched up 32 years at Unilever before leaving last summer. The remaining long-players include Jan Runau, who has been with Adidas for 32 years; Joseph Evangelisti, who has been with JP Morgan Chase for 34 years; Bea Perez, who has worked at Coca-Cola for 30 years; and Catherine Chen, who has been at Huawei for 28 years.

Education

While almost all of our Influence 100 are educated to at least degree level, a small number have proved it’s possible to get to the top without a college or university education, with 2% (the same as 3last year) saying their highest formal qualification was “some college”, and another 2% (compared to zero last year) saying they completed their education at high school. There’s been quite a lot of change at the very top of the educational pecking order too, as 37.5% of this year’s cohort hold advanced degrees, up from 27% last year. The number of entrants with only first degree is 59%, compared to 71% last year.

In terms of subjects for study, there is a clear bias towards two areas: degrees focused on political science, social sciences, politics and public policy, followed by communications/marketing. Ten of our cohort hold an MBA. Journalism and economics are less popular areas for study, but still reasonably well represented. There are several linguists among our cohort, with studies in Japanese, English and German represented, as well as a smattering of pure scientists, lawyers, engineers and historians. Sports management, media studies and film studies are also on the list.