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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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B
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Digiday Podcast, a show for anyone who wonders what happens when a creator brand deal and politics collide. I'm Kimiko McCoy, senior marketing reporter here at Digiday.
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And I'm Tim Peterson, executive editor of video and audio Digiday Media. What's up, Ko?
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B
Tim? I'm good. We've got a lot to talk about today. How are you?
- [00:31]
A
Yeah. You want to talk tariffs? We haven't talked tariffs in a minute. You want to talk tariffs?
- [00:35]
B
We have not talked tariffs in a minute. And the. Here's the thing. I'm hoping that tariff talk has finally ended, given the Supreme Court has shut down a lot of Trump's tariffs and now that gives advertisers a little bit more play money, maybe. Hopefully. Yeah.
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A
You know where they're not going to be spending that money? Perplexity.
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B
Why aren't they going to be spending on perplexity?
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A
Because perplexity has come out this year and said what's just kind of been assumed since last year of like, hey, actually we're getting out of the ads business. That doesn't make sense. They also kind of pulled in anthropic a bit and shaded the idea of putting ads in AI chatbots at a time when also this week, it seems like the first ChatGPT ads have started to roll out.
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B
A lot of moral grandstanding happening here with the AI platforms. That's something.
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A
Yeah. Speaking of moral grandstanding, tell me about this week's episode.
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B
Yes, so this week we had a mostly B2B creator named Tamika Bazil, who ended a partnership that she had with hootsuite right over its partnering with ice. And what's interesting is that Huda Sweet is not the first brand that's been in hot water because of ICE and not the first to lose a partnership. If you recall, Hil Hilton also found herself in a bit of hot water over not allowing ICE agents to stay and then reversing course one of its franchisees and things like this. So I talked to Tamika a little bit about why the pullback and how she was able to do that, because my first thing was like, how the heck do you get out of a contract?
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A
Yeah, because I mean, that's. There's all kinds of legal red tape, I would imagine, when it comes to that.
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B
Yes, precisely. Hootsuite got so much attention that its CEO, Irena Novoselski, had to come out and write a blog post addressing it. A lot of the reason that the creator walked away from the partnership over concerns was surveillance culture. Right. Hootsuite is a social listening tool. And there were concerns that that social listening tool in partnership with ice, the Department of Homeland Security, would expose people's sentiments and things like that and kind of make them a target for ice. Now, Irina has come out and quote, said our use case with ICE does not include tracking or surveillance of individuals using our tools. Any claim otherwise is false and prohibited under our terms of service, which we actively enforce. So the company itself has come out and said that they are absolutely not doing this. But it hasn't stopped concerns from creators like Tamika.
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A
Right. And it's really interesting to hear that like creators like Tamika can do something about it. It's not just a matter of feeling a lack of agency. It seems like she very much has agency. So I'm looking forward to this conversation. I'm sad I wasn't able to join. I had plumbing issue that took me away from it, but now I get to enjoy it as a listener with everyone else.
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B
Absolutely. Well, with no further ado, let's get to. Tamia. Thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to the show. How are you?
- [03:44]
C
I'm good. How are you?
- [03:46]
B
I'm doing all right. I'm. I'm excited to have this conversation with you today because I was scrolling through my own LinkedIn feed. Right. That's pretty much how I start every day at this point. And one of the posts that I noticed was from a mutual friend of mine who had noted that she had pulled back for work with a brand. Right. It was a SaaS platform. Hootsuite had pulled back from working with that brand because that brand had a partnership with ice. What's interesting here though is cbc, which is a Canadian based news company, had reported that Department of homeland security and hootsuite as a SaaS platform has had a partnership before. But after the murders of Alex Preddy and Renee Good, it has re sparked, Right. Them being under a microscope when it comes here. So I saw my friend on LinkedIn pulled out and then I talked to you and you had also kind of removed your relationship here. Talk to me a little bit about what happened as to how you made that to not cancel that contract, but decide to no longer partner with this platform initially.
- [04:50]
C
When I initially saw conversations around this partnership with ice, I had a lot of just very limited information about what it entailed. Right. So the nature of my partnerships with hootsuite in the past, I didn't fully understand what sort of services they could be providing ICE and the Department of Homeland Security. I also wasn't aware of the previous contract they had with them, which I think was another blind spot that I had as a creator. So I actually didn't do anything initially. I just took the opportunity to say, okay, let me dig and see what sort of information I could find about this and just give myself a little bit more context. Because this just seems like the type of partnership that wouldn't really make sense for the type of platform that hootsuite is. And over time, as I dug into that research, I became aware of exactly to what extent this partnership entailed and. And also what the partnership five years ago entailed and what the backlash looked like for that and how they responded then. And it just gave me a lot more clarity around what the direction was that hootsuite was going in. But then it also just raised a lot of questions for me. Right. This was the first time I've been a creator for about three years now, a little over three years. I monetized my platforms for the last three years. So I've worked with dozens of different brands over this time. And this has never been something that's come up for me. And so for the first time, I was kind of staring down the barrel of, I guess, like an ethics issue for me and whether or not I would continue working with this brand and monetizing my platform alongside this brand, or as somebody who is also still, you know, employed full time. How do I want to move forward as an entrepreneur? How do I want to move forward as a creator? Is this the opportunity for me to build something, something that I can personally be proud of and where I make all the rules for it? Or is this something where I operate in a scarcity mindset, right, where it's like, well, money is money and we all have to live and we all have to pay the bills. And for the first time in my business and as a creator, I was staring down the barrel of that decision making. And ultimately I just came to the conclusion that this in and of itself is my opportunity to build something where I call the shots completely. And I ultimately decided to sever my relationship with hootsuite as well, because I just couldn't find any reason why I would continue to support a brand that I personally could not connect with in that way. I'm a first gen eldest daughter. My family immigrated here back in the 80s. And so it is very important to me that my audience understands that I will 100% stand 10 toes down on not supporting a brand that makes my family, myself and ultimately my morals questioned.
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B
Was this an ongoing partnership that you had with them or was this kind of on again, off again how. What was the partnership that you had or partnerships that you had?
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C
So I personally had a on again, off again partnership with them. So I would have maybe I would say around two campaigns with them a year on average. And so that's ultimately the extent of how I worked with them.
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B
I think what's interesting here is this conversation as I'm talking to creators and influencers that keeps coming up, right? Like not too long ago we had Kaylin Allen, another creator on the show, who talked about how he decided to not re partner with Target because of them pulling back from their, you know, diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. But I think what was most interesting about in having this conversation with you is like it wasn't just pulling back on the partnerships, right. And saying, this is no longer going to work for me. You also went back and started auditing what partnership that you'd had in the past to kind of see, talk to me a little bit about the decision to audit and what does that auditing process look like for you?
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C
Yeah. So I mean, ultimately it's kind of like the best way I could describe this is kind of like finding out like that one friend of yours, right, has been talking behind your back and now all of a sudden you're kind of like, okay, let me give a nice healthy side eye to everybody in my, in my orbit. And that's ultimately what I did. I realized that this was not something again, that I had ever paid attention to ultimately, especially as creators. There is just such limited foundation for what it looks like to be a successful and intentional creator. And it is really one of the only career aspects, or just careers overall that you are frankly having to learn as you go every step of the way. But one thing creators do tend to talk a lot about is protecting ourselves through contracts, right. And through our agreements, right? How do we protect our creativity? How do we protect our RP IPs? How do we ensure that our ideas are not co opted by these brands? And so when it came to how I saw agreements with different brands, that is what I focused on the most, is ensuring, you know, I always had access to my IP and that I never gave that up or that I knew that my content would be owned in perpetuity by a brand. Those are a lot of the conversations we had. And so after everything happened with hootsuite for the first time, I was Realizing, no, like these partnerships go a little bit deeper because I am ultimately aligning my name and my likeness with every collaboration and partnership that I do. So I just decided to take a few hours one day to just kind of go through and do a very high level Google search on all of the partners that I've had within the last year. I looked up just a lot of just relevant keywords for them. I even use AI keywords such as dei, keywords such as AI. I do have quite a few different AI partnerships. I even looked into who were the major stakeholders of a lot of the different brands that I've worked with. Like, who is at the top, right? Who has invested in this brand overall or in this company overall. And ultimately what I was looking for was simple, right? So like, what has publicly been stated about this brand, what has been questioned? A really great resource for me during this time was actually Reddit, because that's where you get a lot of that, like anonymous information that most people wouldn't want to tie their names to. And that actually very much gave me a lot of insight into what the public perception of a brand is and not just what my audience's perception of a brand is. Because again, even as a creator, as much as you grow, Whether you have 10,000 followers or 100,000 followers, that is still such a small percentage of people that are actually impacted or have aligned or brushed shoulders with a brand. And really being able to expand my knowledge of how the brands I work with are perceived in a larger scale just gave me a lot of insight into how I wanted to change what I considered was important to go into my agreements as a creator. And then also in terms of how I did this audit, apart from that high level Google search, I was very intentional about keywords. So as you mentioned, like, DEI was a big one, right? ICE was a big one. Backlash was a big one. Any sort of like CEO or president statements that had been made in the last few years, I tried to look into those as well. By this time, the backlash from hootsuite had gotten so thick that the CEO did put out a statement. And so that immediately had my head spinning. And I was like, okay, well what are the CEOs saying? How are they kind of approaching things? And that's ultimately what I did. I just spent a few hours. Honestly, I don't think it took me more than an hour and a half to two hours to sit down and just do some high level research and see what was out there.
- [12:44]
B
So how was the setup? Did you have like, was this, like, a notepad that you were writing all these things down? Did you have a spreadsheet? Talk to me a little bit about kind of like, what this looked like, pen to paper.
- [12:52]
C
I do keep a spreadsheet. I keep a running list of every brand that I work with, what that working relationship was like, whether they paid me on time or not, what the terms and stipulations of the agreement were. And ultimately, I just added a tab to that spreadsheet, and I named the tab Brand Audit.
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B
Okay.
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C
And then in that brand audit, I just put in any notes that I felt like were relevant to what I was looking for, and then ultimately went from there. Any brands that I felt like didn't really align, and ultimately I didn't really find any glaring red flags with other brands that I had worked with, but that was ultimately my goal, was to outline any notes where I found that there was, like, sincere misalignment and then move them down to the bottom of the list so I know who to avoid or how to approach that conversation should they reach out to me in the future.
- [13:39]
B
You said it took you about an hour and a half. How many brands did you have listed on this document, and how many were kind of moved to the bottom here?
- [13:47]
C
Yeah, that's a great question. I would say that overall, over the last year, I've had to work with somewhere between just under two dozen different brands in one year. So there was a lot of brands to definitely work through. But I can't say that I had found, apart from Hootsuite, any brands that I felt like had glaring red flags, at least not regard to DEI or anything of that nature. Now, there are definitely other stipulations and limitations that I set for myself. Boundaries, overall that I set for myself in terms of how I work with brands. I'm very specific about what type of AI brands that I work with. That's also a big element for me. And so anything where I felt like the AI component was too overarching or where AI was just kind of like stepping in for human creativity, that also just became a red flag for me, and I decided ultimately to no longer work with those brands as well.
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B
That's something else worth noting, too, because I'm curious, kind of like, what this looks like going forward, especially given AI, when there are challenges around climate change, surveillance culture. Right. I'm sure you saw the super bowl ad for Ring and Flopping, that you know, how. How that was perceived. So, you know, what does the audit process look like for you going Forward. Is this something that you revisit quarterly, weekly, that type of deal?
- [15:06]
C
Honestly, as somebody who is also full time employed, I am a full time marketer. And so my number one thing when it comes to AI is that is this being positioned as a stand in for human creativity or human input. And you'd be surprised how many AI companies are positioning their product as a set it and forget it type of element, where it's like, oh, you don't have to do this anymore. You can just set up the AI bot to do this for you and it will comment, it will interact, it will show up as you. That for me is a huge red flag. And I don't work with brands that ultimately serve to replace human beings in the workforce. So that is one red flag for me. Secondarily, especially as AI expands, I think we have to be very intentional about how AI is being used to make our lives easier versus how AI is being positioned to make surveillance easier. And I think on that front, where we find a lot of gaps here or where I'm finding a lot of gaps here is the understanding that, oh, okay, well, sometimes. And as a marketer, again. Right. I think I'm very good at reading in between some of these marketing campaigns lines where it's positioned to us as an emotional pole for what if you wanna find your dog? What if a family member is missing? What if you need access to things to be able to find people? And so for me, that was something that I had to figure out. Okay, well, does that come down to a simple no? If that brand reaches out or what does it look like if something comes out after the fact like it did with hootsuite?
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B
Right.
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C
Where I've worked with this brand in the past and then now later on, I still have content in relation to this brand up, I'm still supporting them publicly and something happens afterwards. And that was ultimately how I introduced the morality clause to my agreements.
- [16:53]
B
That's something else here, right, because so like you do your auditing, right. And I know you said that there weren't a lot of brands that you had to go back and like cancel contracts with, things like that, but talk to me a little bit about how the conversation with hootsuite went. Did you have a conversation with them and say I'm no longer returning to this partnership or what did that look like?
- [17:16]
C
Yeah, I actually did not have a direct conversation with them or the hootsuite representative for a lot of reasons actually. But I didn't think it was necessary considering that I did make a public statement about my disconnect from them. And I went back and forth about how I wanted to approach this. Should I take down the content that had already gone live. I went back and revisited my agreements with them a lot of the time. As creators, your agreements also have longevity clauses where the brand expects a certain type of content to stay up for a certain amount of time. So I went back and revisited my agreements with them to kind of see, okay, like, where do I have space here? And ultimately I decided that a public statement would be the best direction for me to go in. And that was for a few reasons. One, the number one reason being that as a creator, in my opinion, I owe more to my audience than I do to the brand. And so in terms of balancing, who needed to hear from me first and foremost, I felt like my audience needed that direct line of communication from me so that they understand that my content and the space and the community that I'm building will continue to be safe for them. And so in doing so, that made me put out a public statement, mention hootsuite directly in the public statement and include screenshots and a link to the article for any sort of context for my audience. I think ultimately that would have 100% allowed Hootsuite to see where I stood. And ultimately that is what I prioritized in the moment, is ensuring that that messaging to my audience was received.
- [18:56]
B
I want to touch on the morality clause in a moment, but, you know, going back to relationship with those, were there any posts that you had to pull down after deciding to no longer partner with this brand?
- [19:05]
C
Yes.
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B
Yeah.
- [19:06]
C
I ultimately pulled down about four or five different posts from my partnerships with hootsuite.
- [19:12]
B
Yes. And this is across several platforms. I know mainly you work on LinkedIn.
- [19:16]
C
Mainly LinkedIn, yes. That was predominantly the platform where I worked with them. And so, yes, that was where I pulled down those posts.
- [19:23]
B
The last thing that I want to ask about hootsuite, because it seems pretty cut and dry that you were able to, you know, catch that, flag it and pull back. Was there anything that you had to pay back? Was there any, like, you know, I guess, repercussions for like taking down the post, cancellation fees or anything like that?
- [19:42]
C
Not that they've mentioned. And maybe that's the. That's the luck in not hearing from them. Right. Is that they have no legal recourse that they want to stand on. So, yeah, so I think ultimately, if it does come to that, I would be ready with my lawyer and my manager to discuss what my options are. But ultimately, because they have not reached out and they have not responded. And I think another additional element that makes me lucky in that way is the amount of public backlash. And I think overall as a brand, I don't expect them to push back on my decision because it would just be in addition to all the PR disaster that they are experiencing right now. And I think overall as a brand, I as a marketer myself, sometimes you have to let the BS die down so that your brand can move on. And my hope in my expectation is that that's what they are doing.
- [20:43]
B
Absolutely. And I would also imagine that it makes a very big difference for if this had been a long going partnership, long term partnership where you guys are locked in, you're a brand ambassador for like a year, it'd be very different from an on again, off again because
- [20:56]
C
I would have been ending a like a currently intact agreement. Yes. So for me, the only thing in my agreement that I would. I was ultimately pushing against is the longevity of how long posts would have to stay live on my. On my account.
- [21:10]
B
Got it, got it. When was the last time you had worked with them? Was it back in 2025?
- [21:14]
C
Yes, got it.
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B
Yes.
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C
I had a partnership with them, I think either spring or summer 2025.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Because I remember it was both a LinkedIn and an Instagram partnership.
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B
Got it. So there was a little bit of time in between, but still recent enough for you to go back and find it in the feed.
- [21:33]
C
Yeah. So ultimately anything within 12 months I audited and Hootsuite fell within that 12 month time. And they were the ones that came up with the issue anyway.
- [21:43]
B
So, okay, so you've got your. The incident with ICE happens with hootsuite and their partnership. You decide to longer Inc deals with them, you do the brand audit, you pull down these posts. Next up you've got the morality clause that happens here, right? What does? What changes happen in the morality clause after you've gone through this process of auditing?
- [22:04]
C
Yeah, that's a great question. And I also want to kind of give flowers here as well to my manager, Tiff. She was definitely a very big help here. I reached out to my manager immediately and was like, hey, this is what's going on. This is the statement that I decided to put out. This is what I need from you moving forward, especially as we continue to field brands for partnerships. I knew that I wanted a morality clause that said three things, predominantly one, that the brand understood because a lot of the time a brand will reach out to you and you'll kind of get the sense that they don't necessarily know the depth of your content. So my morality clause stipulated one that the brand understood in full how my brand shows up in the digital space. Because I am not necessarily quiet about these things. I talk a lot about the intersections of being a black woman and being a black creator. And so it's important that any brand that reaches out to me recognizes that this will not stop and that this is also a part of how my brand shows up. So that was number one. Number two was that if and when there was any interjection between how my brand is represented and how the brand that I'm working with is represented, and there was some sort of friction there, whether it is you are representing something that my brand cannot publicly be associated with or negatively using my name and likeness in a way that I would not agree with that that would make our agreements null and void, no matter where we were at in the. In the agreement process. And that was another thing that I wanted to outline as well, because especially as a business creator, for the most part, being a business creator, there are. There's two kind of worlds there. There is one creating content and collaborating with brands, but there's another world where they do use your name and likeness to help promote their products. Right. Especially if it's a product that you use a lot. You might find yourself on the website, and all of these are agreed to beforehand. But you definitely want to cover your ground there because it's not just your content anymore. There is kind of like a intertwining that happens when you work with a brand in the B2B space. And ultimately the last part for me was that if a brand stakeholders, even if they are not representing the brand itself, but if a stakeholder or somebody on the board or somebody who is responsible financially for that brand or even their leadership team makes a statement that reverberates negatively on that brand, that would also give me grounds to terminate the agreement as well.
- [24:45]
B
Is this different from how. I'm assuming this is different from how it's approached in the past? It seems like you're giving yourself a much better upper hand than has historically. Historically, creators have had. Right. And even the idea of being able to walk away from, you know, publication, pulling down content and things like that, how is that different from what we historically know, the relationship between creators and brands to have?
- [25:07]
C
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely. Again, as I said earlier, this is. This is one of those career paths for me that Is every day is a learning opportunity. It is a never ending battle to see, okay, in what ways will I'll be swindled today. And it's unfortunate, it's unfortunate that as creators we have to learn the hard way, but that's ultimately how we end up learning and how we end up sharing information between ourselves is that one creator has a vastly negative experience and then shares that negative experience amongst their creator community. And so for me, being a creator, it can feel like an island if you do not have other creators to bounce ideas off of or learn from because it does ultimately feel very lonely and very much like you are at the mercy of these brands that you work with. No matter what, even though you are a business owner and this is your empire as a creator, there is still a power dynamic there that exists between the creator and the brand that I think a lot of people don't talk about brands responsibilities, first and foremost is to protect their brand and it's to ensure that they protect their budgets and how the brand shows up. And so they are going to, they're going to pull whatever strings necessary in order to ensure that they maintain that upper hand. And as creators, we are responsible not only for being creators and being creative, but there's also a certain element of. You have to understand legalese. Right. You have to understand a lot of legal terminology that you probably have never interacted with before. Corporate has its own linguistics that nobody talks enough about.
- [26:46]
B
Right.
- [26:47]
C
So even when you are in these calls and they're throwing out measurements, KPIs ROI, like, you know, as for the regular Social first creator, these could be, this could be terminology they've never encountered in their lives. And so when even the language goes above your head, it's very easy for you to end up in a situation where you do sign a contract where your content is now owned in perpetuity.
- [27:10]
B
Right.
- [27:10]
C
Or when you do sign up. Yeah. Or where your name and likeness is being used to promote something else completely different than what you had initially signed your contract for. And it happens a lot more often than we like to give ourselves credit for. And I think the biggest reason it does happen is because there is such a lack of communication between creators after
- [27:33]
B
you decide to do your audit. Right. What does the group chat then there look like? You know, are you talking to others about how they audit theirs as well to kind of again, strengthen numbers type deal?
- [27:42]
C
Yes, absolutely. And I think one of the best things that I ever did for my, I don't think I would have made it as far As a creator, if I did not seek out creator relationships in full transparency, the. The ability to create and have something born from you is amazing, but at the same time, it is. It is only sustainable when you have others to bounce ideas off of and to support your growth. And so, yeah, I hit up the group chat immediately. I mean, honestly, the group chat was hit up the second I saw the hootsuite articles coming out, because I was like, y', all, what is this? Especially knowing that there are other creators in the group chat who also had partners, partnerships with hootsuite. And I ultimately wanted to get their. Their impact and their feedback as to, like, kind of what they were seeing about this. But also, do you have information that I don't? Do you have context that I don't? Before I go out and say something publicly and let's make sure none of us have egg on our face, because what we do is also highly public, highly visible.
- [28:48]
B
Right.
- [28:49]
C
And I think the beauty of having this sort of creator community is that we all understand the sacrifice that we make in order to be creators, and we all help each other protect our. We protect the community in the midst of that sacrifice. And so, yeah, like, I would not have had enough context, information, or support to have made the public statement that I made if not for the creative community that I have.
- [29:13]
B
Did hootsuite ever say anything to you?
- [29:15]
C
No, never heard from them.
- [29:17]
B
Okay.
- [29:18]
C
I'm not surprised, considering the letter that the CEO put out afterwards.
- [29:24]
B
Yes, yes, yes. I'm curious. Now that you've got kind of this audit, I'm assuming it's like a template that you'll revisit. What is now. What are now. Excuse me, the parameters. You've got ICE mentioned, you've got DE and I mentioned, but kind of. What's your checklist of parameters?
- [29:40]
C
Yeah, Honestly. And this was, again, a stipulation that my manager was amazing at. We kept it pretty general.
- [29:48]
B
Right.
- [29:49]
C
So we kept the morality clause open to interpretation so that we could be able to dictate when the time came up what the stipulation might be, if there is one. And I think that that's important because, again, as a creator, I didn't see the situation coming. Right. And so I also had to create an opportunity for me to consider, okay, maybe something might come up later that I never saw coming, and I would need enough space as a creator to say, hey, this doesn't work for me. We need to address it. So under the morality clause, we do keep it pretty general, but we do also hold the brand accountable for recognizing how my brand shows up in the digital space. Right. So I talk openly about blackness. I talk openly about queerness. I am very social forward. If your brand does not align with that or if there is a gap there, we put the likeness and the onus on the brand to recognize this and choose not to partner with me.
- [30:48]
B
Okay. Okay.
- [30:50]
C
And if you do and you sign this creator agreement, or if we redline the creator agreement, that. That's usually how it works. A brand will send you an agreement and then my manager and I will go through and redline any areas we feel like need to be stipulated. And so then, yeah, if you decide to move forward and you decide to sign with me as a creator, then that is you taking on the onus of we recognize where your brand stands, we find that we align, and if anything comes up, then you can let us know.
- [31:20]
B
Has the morality clause been enacted? Well, not enacted, but have you signed any new deals where you've been able to have this morality clause on the table? How has that kind of gone over?
- [31:30]
C
Yeah, I have not had a single brand pull away from me for including that, at least not yet. And it's been a short time. Realistically, I'm pretty sure it's been only like maybe a few weeks, maybe about six weeks since everything with hootsuite went down. But ultimately, a lot of the brands that I work with are actually longer term partnerships. They are brands that come back to me for multiple campaigns over time, which is great because they definitely know how my brand shows up over, like, you know, they are definitely aligned with me and how I show up as a creator and the things that I do stand for and that I don't stand for. So that has been amazing. But I have not had a single brand push back on my morality clause thus far, and I think that that's amazing. I've also given it some thought as to how I would approach it if they do. And ultimately, I think where I'm at in my creator journey, I think I'm far enough to start to become comfortable with simply saying that this is not an aligned partnership and walking away from it. And I know that that is something that could be difficult for a lot of creators, but I think overall, in terms of how I grow as a creator, learning to say no and learning when something just isn't aligned with me is also an important part of this actually being a sustainable career.
- [32:45]
B
How often going forward do you plan to do a brand audit? Right. Is it a matter of every six weeks? Every Quarter. And how far back do you. Do you go back in these audits to ensure that the brands that you're working with are, you know, on their best behavior?
- [33:01]
C
Yeah. If, if, if a new brand that I have never worked with reaches out to me, I immediately do the audit now.
- [33:07]
B
Okay. Okay. So new brand, new audit. Okay. And then for recurring partners, do you do a recurring audit for them as well, or I don't do a recurring audit for them.
- [33:17]
C
Yeah, once they're in there and if something does come up, especially because they have been accepting my morality clause. Got it. Yeah. So then that is an opportunity for me to kind of disconnect in that way. But otherwise, yeah, I think ultimately, as long, as long as there's a new brand and I'm just starting to work with them, between how I use Clarence, who is my ChatGPT, and how I do my own initial research, I kind of look into them that way, ensure that there's alignment and then move forward in the conversation there. And then if any red flags come up as we talk through the agreement and things of that nature, then that's addressed on the spot as well.
- [34:01]
B
How do you keep tabs going forward? I know first time we talked, you had mentioned having like an assistant or what is it called, like Google Flag or something like that to be able to say, hey, here's what a CEO said. Like, I'm only curious because as executives and leadership and company policies change.
- [34:18]
C
Right.
- [34:18]
B
What does that then mean for your relationship with them? So how do you keep tabs going forward?
- [34:23]
C
That's a great question. I'm a huge fan of Google Alerts. I have a everything. Yes, yes. I have a Google.
- [34:28]
B
I'm giving you Grandma. I'm sorry.
- [34:32]
C
You're fine. I have a Google Alert for my name. I have a Google Alert for my favorite brands. I have a Google Alert for everything. And it just keeps me up to date around, like, what I really want to know about, especially as a creator. Information overload is a very real thing, and I just cannot rely on scrolling or seeking information in the online space to be enough because sometimes you have to disconnect and I just need to know what I need to know when it happens, and that's it. So shout out to Google Alerts because that was a really great invention that they came up with there. But ultimately, you know, as somebody who's also still in the corporate space. Yeah. Like, I know leadership transitions over pretty often. I know things change and things of that nature. Sometimes I'll work with a brand and the person that I worked with on that brand two years ago is now a completely different person in that influencer marketing seat.
- [35:24]
B
Right.
- [35:24]
C
And the way they process and the way they manage and the way they see resources is vastly different. So that turnover is something that you have to get used to as a creator and ultimately what I like to do as well. In addition to having stipulations for my agreements, I have general templates for how I communicate with brands. The first time, the second time, and then after I've reworked with you for a while, it's just casual conversation. Like, hey, yes, great, sounds like a fantastic campaign. Like, send me the agreement. But those. These templates allow me to ensure that I say everything I need to say the first time I'm meeting you.
- [36:01]
B
Okay.
- [36:02]
C
No matter what. And that first meeting happens so often, like you are constantly meeting somebody for the first time as a creator that it just made sense for that to become a templatized process for me. So, yeah, so I'll edit it depending on, like, what the nature of the conversation is, but that still allows me to communicate everything I know is important to me up front and without missing anything and ensuring that the relationship is. Gets off to. Gets off on the right foot.
- [36:29]
B
So glad to be able to pick your brain today and kind of learn a little about what the audit process looks like, how you go about that, plans for moving forward and kind of this changing relationship between brands and creators, especially, as you know, politics becomes a bigger part of culture. So thank you so much for spending some time with me. I so appreciate you. Thank you.
- [36:50]
C
Thank you for having me. I'm glad we could have this conversation.
- [36:58]
B
Well, that brings us to the end of this episode of the Digiday Podcast. Thank you to everyone for listening. And please don't forget to share this episode with someone who you think would enjoy it. You can even rate us and leave us a comment on Apple Podcasts. We'll be back next week with another episode of the Digiday Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us.