Full Transcript for We Wanted the Scare Factor Out of It with Erin Miller, Yahoo!

that kept us in touch more. ⁓ And ended up at almost every place I've worked since Porter Novelli at the beginning of my career, then ended up intersecting with those people again. And it's brought me to places like Yahoo today where I'm with people I worked with at Meta and at Say Media earlier in my career and other places. So I feel like it's really important. I always stress that with early talent up in the field to ⁓ do the network, ⁓ not just reporters but with others in comms. Joe Gallo: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's one thing that maybe wasn't prevalent maybe fifteen years ago. Yeah. Like it's just been more important to do the industry meetings, not just the media relationships. Erin Miller: Exactly. That's how we met, right? Through things like Mixing Board and and other places that bring the community together. Joe Gallo: Alright, we're at Cannes. It's hot. ⁓ Erin Miller: It's hot. It is very hot. Yeah. Joe Gallo: had a great piece in PR News online about like first timers, what to expect, how to do things. Let's talk a little bit about that. Yeah. Erin Miller: what we recommend for first timers, I would say one of the biggest things is like as building out your schedule, say yes to everything initially because you never know ⁓ what are gonna be worth your time and what aren't or what you're learn about when you get to Cannes and you get invited to and you say yes. I feel like so much of Cannes too is the serendipity of it and you're gonna make friends here that you would have never met otherwise. And so I think that's the beauty of it. And then I look at my schedule too as I'm the day out from going and say, okay, I'm gonna color code my calendar. Here are the things I have to go to. It's speaking event with one of my execs or a press meeting. ⁓ here are the things that are optional. And then as I'm going through my day, it helps me assess, you know, what I have time for and I'm actually gonna be able to stop at Joe Gallo: Yeah, yeah, the color coding thing, that wish I could be that organized. Erin Miller: Yeah. of my colleagues used AI kind of help them with their calendar too and incorporated the weather ⁓ and for changes or showers and refreshes. Good for them. which I thought was really smart. ⁓ Joe Gallo: Yeah. I will say know last year was my first year. Yeah. And everyone was like, ⁓ you gotta bring two outfits a day. Yes. ⁓ did not believe them. And I had like long sleeves and everything and I was just like I know. ⁓ ⁓ Erin Miller: Now you know that's very the good thing is you can shop here. You just might spend a small fortune, you know, making up the rest of your wardrobe if you do that. Joe Gallo: Yeah, that's not on my list. No. Going shopping in Cannes is not on list. Erin Miller: No, no. Joe Gallo: Cannes has a little bit of a an image when think about it. I mean you've been at ⁓ agencies, been at agencies, and everyone's like, ⁓ my god, you're going to Cannes, it's gonna be so much fun. Even people outside of PR are thinking that. When I got last year, I was like, it's just a conference pretty much outside. Right. Like you still do the walks and you still do the prep work and stuff, but like ⁓ the speaking engagements are speaking engagements, and you're still going from to panel. It's not ⁓ what you would it's not the giant party that people think. Right. what's one from the last three years that you were like, ⁓ that's the moment I remember. ⁓ That's like it be a party, it could be a panel, ⁓ but like ⁓ like a core memory. ⁓ Erin Miller: Yeah, so I've only been with Yahoo and my role here and I actually think our beach is always so special and the activations that our ⁓ events team put on are just amazing. Like whether it's here or South by or CES, all these industry events we go to, but my most memorable moments are actually at the beach, seeing our brand come to life ⁓ party is always well known and unforgettable, and just being with my colleagues and getting to experience it all together after all the hard work is truly the best part. And it is ⁓ backdrop. Doesn't hurt hurt either that you're sitting on the water and watching it all. So Yeah. And it's funny, I was saying to a colleague earlier, ⁓ a friend in the industry a month ago to the film festival here and she said that like a backyard barbecue compared to Cannes Lions because of way that everybody activates here and puts on these, you know, ⁓ special moments build outs the beach. They don't do that at the film festival. So it's much ⁓ Joe Gallo: the beaches are fantastic. Erin Miller: It's funny to say it's like almost more casual, minus, you know, the movie premiere settings Yes. But yeah. So it's pretty cool. ⁓ Joe Gallo: Yeah, no, that's awesome. let's get back to your your story for a minute. You also talked about measurement. Yes when it came to Cannes. Yeah. I last year ⁓ we ⁓ I almost twenty panels and you know, ⁓ media a little more sparse here than people would probably think. Agree, yeah. and you know, you you get the clips and you get the panels and you get the video shots and all that stuff. But like ⁓ and that's from a volume perspective, ⁓ but when think measuring ⁓ actual like was this impactful? Yeah. How do you actually like think about it? How do you what's your framework for it? Erin Miller: So that's interesting. I think our our philosophy around it has evolved too. So of course, yes, we're thinking about the speaking engagements, we're thinking about the press meetings, and there's a lot of things that have a long life beyond can. ⁓ thing that we've done this year, which I think is an area that we've just been investing in overall, is our LinkedIn presence around it too. And that's something that I think carries beyond the festival. ⁓ doing this thing this year called so we launched an AI answer engine at Yahoo called Scout. ⁓ there's a series that's kicking off now, ⁓ we Launched a little bit last week, but really we'll we'll start to produce content today called Scout It

At, where we have four partners who are here who are creators like Emily Sunberg, who will be Scout It At pieces on LinkedIn. And it has nothing to do with Yahoo. It's just like here's the things that they're scouting in can. interesting. And I think it's cool how we're tying in the brand, but also bringing it outside the festival for people at home to see what it's really like here on the ground, and just how that helps with engagement and our own channels will be really interesting. Joe Gallo: you've here three years. This is my second year. Yeah. ⁓ If ⁓ someone me who's a little bit ⁓ less experienced you, wh how would you tell them to up level their game? ⁓ Since they've done the entries, they understand the st what's happening on the ground. ⁓ Is there any like and tricks for those folks that have been here a couple of years? Erin Miller: I think ⁓ it's the things that don't happen on the croisette that are sometimes the most interesting and most meaningful. things like last year I actually saw this event that happened in New York City that I saw a reporter I'm friendly with go to and I was like, what's that all about? And then I noticed they were doing it in Cannes. And it was the first time they did it last year. It's called Brands and Culture. Okay. they have a villa that's, ⁓ as said, off the croisette and we went and it was not this massive as many things here aren't, but it was really curated, ⁓ great audience. And it was not people that we see every day in New York or San Francisco or places where a lot of us daily. and the conversation got a lot of reach and it was like really authentic, really interesting people that our CCO participated in. So we're back again this year and both sponsoring and at it. And I think the off the croisette are sometimes the most valuable and and are gonna get a seasoned vet kind of of their wheelhouse. Joe Gallo: Yeah. Yeah, get out of the crowd. For those who don't know, it's thousands of people walking down the croisette Erin Miller: Which is also awesome. And like we said, serendipitous, you run into all these old colleagues and friends from the industry you don't see all the time. But these other events are also fun to check out and people sometimes discredit them because they're not official programming. Right. Joe Gallo: Yeah. think it was last year, maybe it was the year before. You s you were on a PR week panel here. ⁓ you talked about br brands being braver, evangelizing employees. Yeah. ⁓ feel like that's a challenge across any How do especially nowadays with the morale in the employment world and whatnot. are you thinking that that you can actually like that are things that people can actually take and do now? Erin Miller: Last year, yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. ⁓ I think it's just being authentic to who you are as a company. So Yahoo, we just had our 30th last year. Last year at Cannes we actually threw an alumni happy hour because Yahoo's had many iterations of itself, whether it was

AOL or Oath or Verizon. But people have a real affinity for the brand, ⁓ unlike anywhere else I've worked or seen. they all these came to our beach to reconnect and just reminisce. So often like tap into that, nostalgia. We while we're going through this transformation that many are aware of, we also want to stay true to our roots and not shy away from from our history. And so I think that's one thing where we take a risk, right? Because there's been some good and some bad in that history. ⁓ Joe Gallo: company with that length of time is you know, PayPal's twenty five twenty-five ish years. Erin Miller: Yeah, exactly. You've seen ups and downs. And so I feel like we're brave in that we do tap into the nostalgia factor and really lean in and we've seen great results out of it. we we l use our employees a lot in that way too. Like ⁓ at a product company as well. We do dog fooding and other things ⁓ on, well before we bring in clients or partners or ⁓ to experience these features, we we bring our employees in to test and learn and like they really feel like they're on the journey with us, which helps. Joe Gallo: How do the current employees feel about like an alumni reunion type thing? Erin Miller: Well, we have a really interesting employee base because we have people like myself who joined, you know, two plus years ago in a lot of ways we feel like a thirty year old startup with our culture. ⁓ I have people on my my own team who this week are celebrating, you know, thirteen years, eighteen years at the company. ⁓ it's a real mix and interesting ⁓ employee bases. Sometimes there's growing pains with that and people who miss way things used to be. ⁓ but there's also people who are really excited about where we're going and all the innovation in the way that our brand is being seen today. So I think that's cool. Joe Gallo: well let's talk a little bit about AI. I feel like we have to talk about AI. you just did something very interesting. Yes. You hired an AI operations role within comms, not separate, outside of the function. That's right. You know I have a keen interest in understanding that a little bit, and we can talk about that off camera. But tell us a little about how that came about, because that's not something you're seeing certain ⁓ companies start to dabble it, but not Dive that far. Erin Miller: That's right, yeah. So I would say it was actually this time last year, right after Cannes, ⁓ had a day for the whole comms team, internal, external, ⁓ we said this is an AI day. Don't take meetings as much as you can in PR and dedicate your day to learning something about AI, whether it's like listening to a podcast or reading an article, testing something and building something. And it could be very lightweight, but we just kind of wanted to get the scare factor out of it for our team and to build some confidence and learning. And the results were awesome. Everybody kind of shared them out in a doc, and then we had a meeting where we talked about it. and from there, then we went on to doing another day ⁓ we built broke the team down into three. Groups and they picked projects they wanted to do. So one team decided to innovate on the the press release in ways that we could fix our newsroom, to cater to the LLMs, but also just make it you know better for search results overall. ⁓ then we had a team that did something more operational, and like there's some tasks within the team that people find grinding and take up a lot of time. How can we ⁓ can we scale those and like ⁓ time for the more strategic work ⁓ AI? And then ⁓ another group did a media. trainer and using AI. And there was a few other projects as well that that's just to name a few. ⁓ then ⁓ Kept building on that, but we were like, we really need somebody who's dedicated to this who can really be because a lot of people I think felt a weight like wanting to do it, but also needing to do their day jobs. So we got the go-ahead, we had a lot of buy-in internally. Our team has actually been one of the first movers at Yahoo to really dive into this AI work, ⁓ so we ⁓ someone on our team two weeks ago. ⁓ she's very fresh in the role, ⁓ it's really exciting, and I feel like the industry is. really excited to learn more about it too. So Joe Gallo: So did that came out of kind of these AI days. Yeah. ⁓ then ⁓ it your C CO who said, you know what, we need this or was it brought to her as like a ⁓ like a business case or like Erin Miller: brought to her as a business case. I mean she we're a pretty lean team at Yahoo. ⁓ I lead corp comms but our internal comms leader is actually one of our most active in using AI just because she's simply really interested in it and has built things like a bot for our CEO and other things to test audiences with. and we were all chatting and we kind of came to her and said ⁓ We have a great business case for this role and and she loved the idea. So it didn't take a lot to convince her. Joe Gallo: great 'cause I feel like that's part of the challenge. It is. Yeah. The the the very senior people are not the ones that are in the technology. Yes. Erin Miller: Is like We're very fortunate that our CCO is actually like she participated in the AI Day and built and learned from it too. So ⁓ Joe Gallo: Yeah, that's I think that's a key piece of the puzzle that maybe many companies don't get. Yes. 'cause like, you know, at the manager level ⁓ you know, whoever can be doing it, but like, they're not gonna know how to sell it up. And then you get so much because it's a bottom up push ⁓ and that work Erin Miller: Exactly. Yeah. So I think it will be really interesting to talk six months from now and see how this role has evolved. But she's already gone in and looked at all the prompts the team's using and built out a prompt library. And now one of the big tasks we wanted her to start off with is we use all these tools that we pay for. Yep. Do we need to keep using them or could we build something internally that

could be just as that's a good great or great and also cost saving and all the things and that's so ⁓ we've also brought her some other tools that we wanted to consider but again hadn't had the bandwidth within the team to really experiment with. So I'm excited to see what thinks as she dives in here. ⁓ Joe Gallo: Good question. Yeah, that'll be really interesting. Yeah. I'm always curious about the building your own AI internally. Yes. Like yes, it's the and I'm speaking from a regulated company perspective, like it is the safe way to do it. Right. But can it keep up to date with all the frontier models and everything else that's happening and just the advancements that are coming out, like literally I mean I think my Claude app gets updated literally every day. Erin Miller: Yeah, I know. And we so I think that will be one of the things is like what do we think is better to outsource and what do we think is better to build ourselves that we can keep up with. Yeah. even Sona CCO built ⁓ a coverage assistant during one of these AI days. And even morning we had an article come out and I put it through it and it was pretty dead on. It was like this is positive. Here's the narrative pull through, like here's some the quote that landed the best, here's something you might want to fix. It was it's so ⁓ there's things That are really interesting, even just to play around with. ⁓ Joe Gallo: Absolutely. do you obviously we're talking this ops role, but going to more traditional comms like let's try look three months down line if we can. Yes. And I'm gonna say three, not six, not nine. Or we could go but how do you think AI really gonna change our indust not even our industry, but like how we operate day to day? ⁓ Erin Miller: Yeah, I think it's really about scaling the work, like we were talking about. There's things where I feel like there was the Wall Street Journal article now, maybe two weeks ago, that was all about the role of CCO, which actually our team was represented in, and things that like you really comms, human comms voices still. but there's areas like mentioned with these tools where you can take work off of our plates and help us spend the and the work we really want to be doing that humans can never be replaced on. Yeah. And so I think there's certain things that I feel like here even today I've been hearing a lot about the LLMs as an audience and how are we thinking about earned media and which outlets should we be putting our emphasis on because those are the ones that show up ⁓ you know how we're thinking about our GEO strategy overall and that's something I think that's going to continue to be a hot topic. even today I've been hearing a lot about the LLMs as an audience and how are we thinking about earned media and ⁓ which outlets should we be ⁓ putting our emphasis on because those are the that show up and ⁓ you know how we're thinking about our GEO strategy overall and that's I that's going to continue to be a hot topic. Joe Gallo:

Yeah, that I mean, GEO is one of those things that I feel like is still a little bit of a black box. Yes. I had a conversation with a colleague last week ⁓ ⁓ I was like, Okay, you wrote this GEO release, how are you measuring it? She's like, I don't know. ⁓ And I'm like, Well what prompts do you want to measure against? I don't know. ⁓ Like, did you do any auditing? ⁓ ⁓ Yeah, that I mean, GEO is one of those things that I feel like is still a little bit of a black box. Yes. I had a conversation with a colleague last week ⁓ ⁓ I was like, Okay, you wrote this GEO release, how are you measuring it? She's like, I don't know. ⁓ And I'm like, Well what prompts do you want to measure against? I don't know. ⁓ Like, did you do any auditing? ⁓ ⁓ There's no benchmarks, no auditing, no nothing. It's just we everyone thinks, okay, let's write the content and it'll just show up. Right. It's like, but how? Right. You know? Yeah. Because I'm gonna write a prompt differently than you are. Right. And I might include a brand, you might not. Like all of these pieces that nobody like people are just like, ⁓ GEO, it's the saving grace. Like it's there's so many like on the edges pieces of it. There's no benchmarks, no auditing, no nothing. It's just we everyone thinks, okay, let's write the content and it'll just show up. Right. It's like, but how? Right. You know? Yeah. Because I'm gonna write a prompt differently than you are. Right. And I might include a brand, you might not. Like all of these pieces that nobody like people are just like, ⁓ GEO, it's the saving grace. Like it's there's so many like on the edges pieces of it. Erin Miller: Yeah. I know. It's been really interesting for us too because I mentioned we launched this AI answer engine that's still in beta, but we really thought about it with publishers in mind too and the sourcing. And I feel like it's exciting for us as comms people because if we place the story in Axios, for example, it'll prom- it'll prominently link back to it and that's helpful to everybody. So that is more used, that could be interesting too how that influences things. Joe Gallo: absolutely. Erin,thanks for joining us. Great. Yeah. ⁓ Yes. It ⁓ Literally this was not planned until Thursday. ⁓ Erin Miller: ⁓ thank you for having me. This is so fun. This was a serendipitous example. Yeah, until a couple days before we came. So I love that. Joe Gallo: Yes. Where can people find you? Hear about the latest Yahoo's doing through you, through your team. Erin Miller: Yeah, I would say pay attention to myself on LinkedIn. Also, like I mentioned earlier in the conversation, we we do a lot with our brand channel and we're having a lot of fun with it. So if you want to see what Yahoo specifically is up to, ⁓ there. We ⁓ but then also you can find me on LinkedIn myself and ⁓ active on there. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Joe Gallo: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Aaron. Thanks everyone for joining us for our first in-person Comms Confidential. subscribe to hear all the other episodes, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. We're Erin Miller: Awesome, thank you.