How YouTube built the creator economy and how brands are still missing out - Pedro Pina, YouTube

**Jon Evans** (0:00)
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored CMO. This is recorded all the way from YouTube Creator Club in Cannes. I'm joined by the incredible Pedro Pina. He runs YouTube for Europe. So I'm testing him out on all the things he knows about how to be a success on YouTube. What brands don't know about being successful, how to work with creators. And we've got a new report here from Little Dot Studios with a YouTube confidence gap full of really interesting insight and information about how to win on YouTube. So if you want to be a success on YouTube, and most of you do, because I know that from the report, this is the episode for you. Now, one tip Pedro gave me in this episode is get people to subscribe. So ladies and gentlemen, here we go. Please hit the subscribe button and never miss an episode again. Thank you and let's go.
Welcome to the show, Pedro.

**Pedro Pina** (1:36)
Thank you for having me. Delighted to be here.

**Jon Evans** (1:38)
We got to talk about this set, man, because this is like we are inside YouTube now.

**Pedro Pina** (1:41)
I know. We built this for the first time at Cannes Lions because we wanted to bring to a physical space the evidence that creators are now becoming a major force in media. We have about 600 creators roaming through Cannes Lions, so we wanted to give them a home. We wanted to give them a physical home at Cannes Lions the same way we are giving them a home in the digital space. And this is a trend that is becoming bigger and bigger. Last year when we were here, we did not have this set up, and we had so many YouTubers reaching out to us saying, hey, where can we hang out?
Can we have time to sit down? Can we have time to meet each other? Can we have time to meet advertisers? And we have the Google Beach set up, which was amazing, but it was too expensive, too big, too dispersed. So we decided, okay, let's find a corner and give them a proper home. And we're delighted. It's the first year we're going to do this. It's going really well. I mean, this is day one and a half, and so far it's going great.

**Jon Evans** (2:46)
And I've already seen lots of content out there. This is the thing, of course. I just don't wait seven days to produce something. It's like done in the next few minutes, isn't it?

**Pedro Pina** (2:55)
Like you, you're a YouTuber. Here you are producing content. Look at this.

**Jon Evans** (2:58)
Exactly. I know. This is a dream for me, because me and producer James can turn up and use your studio.

**Pedro Pina** (3:04)
You need to leave now.

**Jon Evans** (3:06)
Yes, exactly. Now, how long have you been coming to Cannes? Because one of the interesting things about...

**Pedro Pina** (3:10)
You're going to age me, aren't you? Yeah.
I've been coming for about 20 years, maybe. And Cannes has changed dramatically. It's gone through phases. So when I started coming to Cannes, I was working on the advertising industry, and it was all about the creative agencies. Creative agencies were the heroes of the place. They came here to just celebrate their creativity. It was all about winning lions and who won more lions and the ranking of lions and who got the best campaigns and the best. And at a time was traditional media format-led prizes. So it was the TV, the 60 seconds, the 30 seconds, and then the outdoor, and then the radio, and then things evolved. But it was all about the creative directors, the creative teams, and the best ideas.
Then there was a second phase, which was about media. And as digital exploded, it turned out that it was not anymore about interrupting your life with advertising, but it was all about media. So as the attention of consumers started diverting and changing, so did the beach, and so did CanLion. So all of a sudden, the media companies started arriving. You could see first the traditional media rising, and then, so the media agencies rising, and then you could see the digital players arriving. So at the time, Facebook, today Meta, then Google, and many others started arriving, and they became the talk of the town. And then the big question is, how are you present in the digital space? So how are you at Google or YouTube or at a time Facebook or Instagram?