Creator Access Isn't Earned Media Anymore — Act Accordingly

There's a moment in most PR careers where you realize a tactic you've been using for years has quietly become something else entirely — and you've just been too busy to notice. That's exactly what's happening with creator interviews, and the Zuckerberg situation last month made it impossible to ignore.

In case you missed it: a Substack creator published an interview with Mark Zuckerberg alongside content featuring Meta's AI glasses. She clarified she wasn't paid to post about the glasses. But as one commenter on the (now-deleted) thread put it, "the timing of posting the glasses on the same day as your interview with Mark and reposting his comms person 🫶'ing your collaboration on Instagram reads very influencer marketing to me. Which is totally fine, it just reframed how I think about your content."

That comment is doing a lot of work. And it should make every communications professional a little uncomfortable — not because the creator did anything obviously wrong, but because we helped build the system that created this confusion.

HOW WE GOT HERE

According to Dami Oyefeso, managing director and founder of Agile PR — who spent over a decade leading communications for tech companies, including time on Meta's integrity comms team — the shift happened gradually enough that most PR teams didn't course-correct.

In the early days, creator outreach was straightforward. You shipped a phone under embargo. The creator got early access; you got an honest review. No CEO time, no exclusive sit-downs. As Oyefeso notes, when she was working on the OnePlus US launch at Weber Shandwick back in 2016, seeding products to YouTubers and tech reviewers was the whole play — and it was earned media, because access was the only currency changing hands.

But somewhere along the way, executive time stopped being a journalistic privilege and started being a campaign asset. Now creators are getting:

• Exclusive executive interviews
• Coordinated messaging and talking points
• Gifted or loaned products
• Distribution amplification from brand accounts

That's not earned media. That's a partnership. We just haven't been calling it one.

THE DISCLOSURE PROBLEM IS ALSO A STRATEGY PROBLEM

Here's what frustrates me about the Meta situation: the disclosure conversation is important, but it's downstream of a bigger issue. Comms teams have been slow to define what this hybrid relationship actually is — and that ambiguity doesn't serve anyone. Not the brand, not the creator, and definitely not the audience.

Consumers aren't naive. Meta was already running a paid campaign with Kylie Jenner — a relationship everyone instantly read as advertising. The scrutiny landed on the Substack creator precisely because the arrangement looked editorial while carrying the hallmarks of a paid partnership. When there's a gap between how something looks and how it's structured, trust erodes.

And here's the part nobody wants to say out loud: routing executive access through creators instead of traditional press isn't just a disclosure issue — it's sometimes a way to avoid hard questions. Tough interviews from journalists improve products, sharpen messaging, and build credibility. Trading that for favorable creator coverage is a short-term win with long-term costs.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR PR STRATEGY

If your team is still filing creator interviews under "earned media" by default, it's time to audit that list. A few things worth pressure-testing:

• Executive access is compensation. If you're offering a creator a CEO interview, exclusive content, and product gifting, that relationship has a dollar value. Treat it accordingly — and disclose accordingly.
• Creators should negotiate. If the arrangement looks like a partnership, it should be structured like one. That protects them and it protects you.
• Don't use creator access to dodge scrutiny. Prep your executives for hard questions from real journalists. That's what builds durable trust — not a friendly 30-minute Substack Q&A.
• Update your media categories. Earned, paid, and influencer need clearer definitions inside your team before they get blurry in public.

The creator economy isn't going anywhere, and that's genuinely good for PR. But we owe it to the people we work with — and the audiences they've built — to be honest about what kind of relationship we're actually asking for.

Need help thinking through how your media strategy maps to this new reality? Winsome Marketing works with brands to build PR strategies that are clear-eyed about where earned media ends and paid partnerships begin — so you're not the next case study in a prdaily think piece.

This post was originally inspired by Why comms teams should stop treating creator interviews as earned media via prdaily. We encourage you to read the original piece for full context.