Hey friends,
Welcome back to Creator Etiquette®.
I filmed this one on the ground at Cannes Lions, right before my guest had to catch a flight. Donna is on the communications team at Yahoo, and we had been following on LinkedIn for a while before finally meeting in person at the festival!
A lot of this episode is going to surprise you if you have ever assumed that comms and PR are the same thing, or that brands only want creators for performance marketing. The full conversation is on YouTube and Spotify.
Comms Is Not What It Used to Be, Which Is Good News for Creators
Fifteen years ago, working in PR meant pitching journalists. Now, communications professionals at major companies are working across every channel that shapes public sentiment, which increasingly includes creators. Not just as a performance marketing play, but as a genuine brand extension. Creators are now being brought in to help shape how people feel about a company, tell a company's story, and build awareness in ways that traditional media alone cannot do anymore.
What this means for creators: the comms team and the marketing team at a brand may both want to work with you, for completely different reasons. Knowing the difference and knowing which team you are actually talking to changes everything about how you pitch yourself and what you should be offering.
Why Yahoo Showed Up at SXSW With Cowboys and Cannes …Yahoo has been showing up at major cultural moments in a very intentional way, and Donna walked me through the thinking behind it.
At SXSW, they converted the historic Scoot Inn into the Yahoo Scout-Inn, which was a nod to their new AI answer engine, Yahoo Scout. At Cannes, they transformed the beach in front of the Martinez into the Yahoo Explorer Society built around themes of curiosity and discovery.
The reason brands are doing this is the same reason this show has been talking about IRL all year. There is something that simply cannot be captured over email or DM. In-person experiences create lasting connections and lasting memories in a way that digital touchpoints do not. Someone mentioned to Donna that the streets of Cannes feel like LinkedIn brought to life, which is so true. And the brands who understand that are showing up accordingly.
For creators thinking about conference strategy, the takeaway is that the brands investing in activations at these events are there to meet you. Find out who is on the ground, reach out before you go, and treat the conference floor as the relationship-building opportunity it actually is.
The Three-Message Framework for Any Meeting You Are Dreading
I had done four back-to-back interviews and a friend literally watched me crash in real time. So I asked Donna: if you had to prep me for one more important meeting on zero energy, how would you do it?
Before you walk in, identify the three things you need to communicate. Not every talking point. If you say nothing else, if the conversation goes sideways, or if your energy gives out, those three things have to land. Everything else is a bonus.
I think creators underestimate how useful this is not just for meetings but for any high-stakes communication. You do not need to say everything. You need to say the right things.
The Reason Donna Has Never Media Trained a Creator in Ten Years
Donna has been doing creator partnerships for a decade. In that entire time, she has never media trained a single creator she has worked with. Because the entire value of working with a creator is that they are not scripted and PR trained. The moment you hand a creator a word-for-word script and say this is exactly how to say it, you have lost the thing that made them worth hiring.
If a brand gives you language that does not sound like you, push back. Not aggressively, but clearly. Tell them this will not land with my audience, and here is what will. Donna said that kind of pushback is welcomed. A brand should genuinely want a creator who is invested enough in the outcome to flag when something is not going to work. The brand that ignores that feedback and insists on the script is the one who will not be happy with the results.
What Yahoo's 31-Year Legacy Teaches Every Creator About Brand Consistency
I asked Donna what it looks like to protect a legacy brand, because I think the lesson translates directly to what creators are building.
Yahoo's approach is to identify the things people love that are distinctly yours, and do not let go of them as everything else evolves. For Yahoo, that is the purple and the yodel. Two specific, recognizable brand signatures that have persisted across thirty-one years of the internet changing around them. Everything else can modernize. Those things stay.
For creators, ask yourself what is the thing that only you do, that your audience specifically came for, that no one else can replicate? Find it, name it, and protect it as the non-negotiable core of everything you build. Scale can change. Platforms can change. That core is your equity.
Something Donna said that surprised me was that half of Yahoo's audience is Gen Z and millennial. If you write Yahoo off as a legacy brand that only exists in your parents' browser, you are missing a platform that is actively and specifically investing in creator partnerships on LinkedIn and beyond.
Donna, thank you for squeezing this in before your flight. Go follow her on LinkedIn and keep an eye on everything Yahoo is building! They are moving fast and thinking seriously about creators in ways the industry has not fully caught up to yet.
Welcome to Creator Etiquette®. I am so glad you are here.
Xo, Gigi Robinson
Founder, Hosts of Influence® | Creator, Educator, Speaker, Author, Dog Mom 🐾
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