Marketing and communications teams are competing over who should manage creator relationships as brands increasingly rely on influencers to build credibility, reach new audiences and drive sales.

Why it matters: Things get messy when different teams approach the same creator with competing priorities, budgets and expectations.

Case in point: A comms team spent months nurturing an earned relationship with a creator, unaware that their marketing colleagues had offered that same person a lucrative paid campaign.

What they're saying: "The biggest mistake really is allowing different departments to independently approach the same creator with different asks, budgets, messaging opportunities," says Justin Johnson, a creator economy expert who headed talent partnerships for several tech companies.

• Johnson generally favors marketing taking the lead, with one point of contact coordinating requests and keeping other departments in the loop.
• "The creator should only be hearing from one voice, or it's too many cooks in the kitchen," said Nicole Kasper, co-founder and head of management for creator talent agency Odyssey Entertainment Group.
• "It's usually influencer marketing, because they're working with the creator day to day on the campaigns," she said.

Yahoo chief communications officer Sona Iliffe-Moon said ownership should depend on the company's goals.

• "It's not about which team owns this area of engagement. It's what you're trying to accomplish," she said. "When the goal is to earn attention and a place in the cultural conversation, comms should be driving."

Between the lines: Kenny Gold, Edelman's global chief creator officer, argues companies should think beyond the traditional comms-versus-marketing divide.

• "By boxing it or nesting it underneath those areas of a company, you're kind of diminishing the full potential of what a creator strategy can do for your organization," Gold says.
• He advocates having someone responsible for both the execution and innovation of creator relationships, potentially in a role that sits alongside comms and marketing.

How it works: Internal alignment needs to happen before anyone approaches a creator.

• Teams should first establish what they're hoping to achieve, whether that's building credibility, reaching a new audience or driving sales, and agree on who manages the relationship.
• Once a creator is selected, companies also need to give them room to speak in their own voice. Overly scripted content, Kasper warns, risks undermining the audience trust that makes these partnerships valuable.
• "You can pay for a collaboration, but you can't buy genuine advocacy. The relationship comes first," Iliffe-Moon emphasized.

Zoom out: "The areas in which a creator can live go far beyond the marketing apparatus," says Edelman's Gold. "So we push to bring creators in further upstream."

• Involving creators earlier in strategy, product and messaging discussions — rather than only when it's time to promote something — can help identify what will resonate with their audiences.

Yes, but: The value of creator involvement beyond individual campaigns can be harder to measure, especially if comms and marketing define success differently.

• Even when looking at marketing-driven hard metrics, companies should consider taking a longer-term view of the relationship.
• Companies should measure value over time, said Manish Goyal, founder of Friendbuy. "A creator who drives fewer first purchases may turn out to be a better investment if those customers stay and keep buying."
• For example, TED Countdown found that creators in its Ground Crew program discussed climate change more frequently in content beyond their contracted posts. The initiative gives creators the tools and confidence to discuss the issue in their own voices.

The bottom line: Mixed messages and competing agendas can undermine the relationships and trust that make creator partnerships valuable.

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My colleague Mady Mills with today's massive breaking news:

Jensen Huang resigned as CEO of Nvidia after he reportedly had two affairs, including one with a purported Chinese spy.

Why it matters: It's impossible to overstate how critical Huang is to Nvidia, to the AI buildout, to the stock market and economy.

• His departure could, per Wall Street sources, be the catalyst that endangers a ballooning AI bubble.

Driving the news: Nvidia's board named longtime CFO Colette Kress interim CEO while it launches a search for a permanent replacement.

• Kress, who joined Nvidia in 2013, will continue serving as CFO while overseeing the company.
• Harvey C. Jones was appointed Nvidia's first-ever board chair.
• The board said it expects Nvidia's operations, customer commitments and product roadmap to continue without interruption.

By the numbers: Nvidia shares fell more than 10% after news of Huang's resignation.

• One of Wall Street's most prominent voices on tech, analyst Dan Ives, said Nvidia was worth 25% less without Huang.

🚨 Stunning stat: At these levels, Nvidia will have lost about $1.4 trillion in market capitalization in the two weeks since the initial New York Times report about linking Jensen Huang and the purported spy, Alice Huang.

Axios' Emily Peck and Matt Phillips put in context Nvidia's massive influence:

If anything, a focus on Nvidia's massive size obscures how important the company is.

• It dominates the market for the graphics processing units, or GPUs, that are the costliest input into AI data centers — about 75% of a data center's total cost, per Goldman.
• It also finances and backstops significant chunks of AI computing power.
• That means Nvidia is bankrolling a small army of AI firms: AI coding companies, data center operators, neoclouds.
• For example: Nvidia has put more than $2 billion into CoreWeave, the troubled neocloud that's seen its borrowing costs soar in recent weeks. It has equity stakes in Anthropic and OpenAI.

And Zachary Basu with the Huang origin story:

Huang's rise was the stuff of Silicon Valley legend: The Taiwanese immigrant went from cleaning toilets at a Kentucky boarding school and waiting tables at Denny's to building one of the most valuable companies in history.

• Huang and two fellow engineers hatched the idea for Nvidia at a Denny's booth in 1993, launching a chipmaker that would revolutionize gaming, transform modern computing and ultimately power the AI revolution.
• Clad in his trademark black leather jacket, Huang became a global AI rock star — with a cult of personality that drew adoring crowds, calmed markets and commanded the attention of world leaders.

Simon's thought bubble: This is a perfect corporate affairs storm: a sudden massive crisis across corporate and investor comms, risk and reputation, employee comms, government affairs and more.

• You have a brusque CEO transition, with the company's legendary founder unceremoniously dropped with no clear permanent successor.
• There's the looming congressional scrutiny over the national security implications of Huang's affair with the purported Chinese spy threatening to keep the story going past the resignation.
• And the company is set to report earnings in just five days.

Go deeper.

I'll dive into all of this for an upcoming exclusive Mixing Board member edition. Have thoughts on how this is playing out? Reach out!

In non-Nvidia news...

🎙️ Winning congressional candidates made nearly three times as many podcast appearances as their losing opponents, according to Spotify data. (Axios)

🥊 An agency feud goes public. Publicis responded on Instagram after WPP CEO Cindy Rose criticized agencies winning accounts through "this pitchless CEO handshake thing." (Marketing Brew)

📬 "To my friends in the PR industry: Please stop following up." Freelance writer Joshua Hunt's plea on X set off a debate in his replies and quote posts, with some reporters disagreeing with him and PR pros chafing at being told how to do their jobs. (X)

• For what it's worth, I do appreciate the occasional follow-up. Two follow-up emails, though? Too much.

🪑 Fewer comms and corporate affairs leaders joined Fortune 500 boards in the last two years compared with the previous two years, according to the Observatory on Corporate Reputation. (Communication Breakdown)

• There's also wider trend of fewer first-time board member appointments, with companies opting to give seats to more seasoned operators.

As Harley-Davidson's head of government and corporate affairs, Dylan Riddle's workday can span meetings with policymakers on Capitol Hill, product launch conversations with reporters and crisis training with a factory.

Why it matters: For an American icon like Harley-Davidson, business decisions can carry political and cultural weight far beyond the boardroom.

What leaders should know about comms: "What we do is tactile," Riddle said.

• "It's not just about being at the table, but rather being embedded in the process and involved from the beginning with me or someone on my team engaged in the steps leading up to the moments when substantive decisions are made."
• "Think of it like a chef seasoning a dish: You don't just salt once at the end, you're seasoning along the way," he said.

What builds trust and influence: "Preparation, preparation, preparation."

• "Identify possible scenarios — good and bad — and rep them with your team and stakeholders across the business," said Riddle.
• "Nothing builds trust like being the calm person with a plan when an unexpected crisis or late-breaking win comes across your desk."

Trendspotting: The fragmentation of media consumption.

• AI is accelerating those dynamics, he said, but the implications extend to "how we communicate across cultures, how we talk about things internally within a company, and how the corporate news resonates in the news cycle."

Life lessons: "Stay intellectually curious," said Riddle, who earned his MBA taking night courses "well into my career."

• "I love to identify a subject and read several books to get a strong understanding of the nuances of an issue — my wife will tell you I know far too much about United Fruit Company and the banana industry, for example."

Best advice: Read bylines alongside coverage.

• "It forces you to think critically about every story: why was it written, who are the sources, what's the author's point of view, how did the piece come together and more."

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