CORQ is a privately owned company which publishes intelligence about digital influencers, social media trends and news related to both of these things on this website. Our intention is to provide unbiased, fact-based information about people with significant digital audiences who are talented online content producers. Our editorial team of journalists manually curates which influencers we profile and our independent selection of them is based upon the strength of their story-telling ability and the level of real engagement within the communities they have built. Alongside this, we monitor digital trends and produce reports on the influencer industry. These are based on observations gathered through human research.
Data privacy is important to us and we want everyone who uses this website and entrusts us with their information to understand how we store and use it. In the following privacy notice, we will tell you how long we keep data for and what we do when we no longer need it. We also outline your rights over your data.
1. What personal information do we gather from visitors to this website and how do we gather this?
It is worth noting by “visitors”, we refer to people who are not paying subscribers but simply those consume content above the pay wall of our website, who do not have the ability to log in. We collect information via Google Analytics on what parts of our website you have looked at and how long you have spent there.
2. What information do we gather from subscribers to this website and how do we gather this?
These people will be referred to as clients, who log in to our website and view editorial and analysis under our paywall. We collect information via Google Analytics on what parts of our website you have looked at and how long you have spent there.
3. What information do we gather about influencers and how do we gather this?
Information gathering on influencers is done manually by our team of journalists who review the content published by the influencers themselves on their public digital platforms. Influencers’ information is updated on a monthly basis and if an individual who we have profiled stops publishing, we immediately delete their information from our platform. We also publish numerical information regarding their social platforms which comes directly from these platforms’ APIs. We gather the following information about influencers:
(i) The style of content they create, the industries they cover, their academic and personal backgrounds alongside details which give a sense of their characters and what they stand for (likes, dislikes, political preferences, areas of activism, etc).
(ii) Details of any controversies they have been involved in. This information also comes from influencer platforms and is often supported by reportage from reputable news sources.
(iii) Influencer contact details when they are publicly available on their websites and social media platforms, and their managers’ contact details if they are represented formally by management.
(iv) The audience size and engagement rate of their audiences on social platforms. The latter data is provided via the social platforms’ APIs, which the influencers consent to when they start social media accounts.
Legal bases for data processing – what does this mean and how do we use the data we have gathered?
The following statements outline our legitimate interest in analysing the data of visitors, clients and influencers.
1. Visitors
By collecting data on what parts of our website above the paywall visitors have clicked into and spent time on, we are able to develop our website efficiently based on user experience. This data is stored by Google Analytics for 25 months.
2. Clients
By collecting data on what parts of our website under the paywall clients have clicked into and spent time on, we are able to develop our website efficiently based on user experience. This data is stored by Google Analytics for 25 months.
We also store client email addresses securely for six years after their contract finishes and they have the right to be forgotten subject to the Limitation Act. We store email addresses for three reasons:
(i) These are the “usernames” clients use to access content below the paywall and we require our system to hold this and a password which we create for clients to ensure our system recognises a paying customer and allows them to log in.
(ii) So that we can inform clients of any technical difficulties we have identified on our website which may negatively impact their experience, alongside new feature updates to ensure they are experiencing the full benefit of their subscription.
(iii) To inform them of and invite them to our series of events which they are entitled to attend free-of-charge as a benefit of their subscription to CORQ.
3. Influencers
There are several lawful bases for our data processing in this area:
(i) As a publisher of influencer intelligence and social media trends, CORQ has a commercial interest in helping our clients understand the world of influencers and digital. Our intelligence makes it possible for them to make informed decisions about which influencers to work with, on what platforms, using which content formats and the specific trends which it would be in their interests to tap into. CORQ’s reportage and analysis of influencers’ information and trends in this area allows our clients to act speedily, which is crucial given the fast pace at which digital publishing moves. It is in the interest of our clients to fully understand influencers who they may have an interest in working with as without our journalistic research brands could – and have – entered into partnerships which are damaging to the public’s perception of their image and the products they retail.
(ii) All of the information published on CORQ about influencers has been made voluntarily and publicly available by the individuals themselves on their own platforms to a vastly larger number of consumers than the number of people – the “clients” – who are viewing this information on our platform. This suggests they want people to know this information and are indiscriminate about who sees it. CORQ’s team of journalists curate the facts that are most helpful to our clients and publishes them in an unbiased tone which is informative, easy to read and helpfully in one place.
(iii) CORQ’s profiling of influencers is a way for clients to discover talent to potentially work with commercially and gives them all of the information to decipher whether on not these people would be suitable for their brand (aligned aesthetic, political stance, etc). However, CORQ is very much a starting off point for clients and therefore at every possible opportunity, we link back to influencers’ platforms. Due to this, we are continually sending people who have a commercial interest in these individuals directly to their public social media accounts and websites. Given these people are openly trying to monetise their platforms and their ability to produce digital content, CORQ provides a stream of individuals to them who will help them to do this.
(iv) It is in the interest of influencers that an independent organisation reports on their stories, what they do and why this is valuable in the digital landscape as they themselves are continually and openly trying to monetise their platforms via paid partnerships and commercial agreements with brands, media organisations and advertising agencies – all of whom are CORQ’s customers. Curation, intelligence and editorial analysis of influencers does not exist elsewhere. It is in the interest of both influencers and brands that trustworthy, unbiased information about influencers is available to improve and legitimise this emerging market.
Do we share your information with anyone else?
(i) Visitors’ and clients’ browsing information on CORQ may be accessed by Google as we use its Google Analytics software to monitor traffic and improve our website accordingly. However, we do not sell visitors’ or clients’ browsing data or share it with any third parties.
(ii) Influencer data: our clients pay a fee to access our curation of influencers and the journalistic intelligence we produce about them, their work and digital trends in the areas of social media and influencer marketing. As mentioned previously, all of this information – academic background, personal background, controversies, political stance, email address, management email address, likes and dislikes – has been made publicly available by the influencers themselves on their own platforms.
Your consumer rights
As a visitor to this website or a client of this company, you have rights when it comes to your data. These are as follows:
(i) You have the right to be informed when we are collecting your data and how it is being processed.
(ii) You have the right to access the information we hold on you. To do this, you must send us a Subject Access request to which we will respond within 30 days. To fulfil this request, we will require two forms of personal identification. Please use the contact details below to get in touch for this reason.
(iii) The right to erasure. To cancel all communications with us and anonymise your data, please contact us using the details below.
(iv) The right to restrict processing. Visitors to this website may do this by amending their cookie settings.
How to contact us
Thank you for reading our Privacy Notice. If you would like to contact us with any matter relating to your personal information, please email or write to us at:
Email info@corq.studio
The Data Controller
CORQ
12 Barley Mow Passage
London
UK
W4 5UP