Write a creator brief and agree terms that head off the usual disputes.
When a business works with a creator and it goes wrong, the cause is usually something that was never written down. Each side ends up with a different idea of what was promised, and both feel let down. You can prevent this with two pieces of writing agreed before any filming starts. The creator brief describes the content, and the terms describe the deal between you.
Mei Ling (an invented example) makes custom cakes. On her first try at working with a creator, she sent a parenting creator a cake for the creator's daughter's birthday. With it went a friendly note saying it would be lovely if she shared it. What appeared was a photo of the cake in the background of a party story, which was gone after a day. Mei Ling had been hoping for a video, while the creator felt a story was a generous return for a free cake. Nothing had been agreed, so neither of them was in the wrong. The trouble was a gift sent with expectations that stayed unspoken.
A creator brief is a short document that tells a creator what you want from a collaboration and leaves them room to make it their own. Keep it to one page and cover four things: the goal, the main message, what must not be said, and the deadline.
Write the goal as one sentence about what the collaboration should achieve. A cake collaboration might aim to show parents that a custom cake can travel safely to a party venue.
The main message is the single thing viewers should remember afterwards. Give only one, because a short video has room for one idea and the brief should keep to the same limit.
Under what must not be said, list claims you can't back up, names of competitors, prices that may change, and anything your industry's rules forbid. Mei Ling's brief, for instance, tells the creator not to describe her cakes as healthy or sugar-free, since they are neither.
For the deadline, give the date the content should go live. If you want to approve it, add the date you'd like to see it beforehand.
Once those four items are down, finish the brief and leave the script to the creator. Their audience follows them because it trusts the way they talk and what they choose to show. Writing your words into the creator's mouth destroys that trust.
Both sides need to write down and accept the terms before anything is made or posted. An email will do, or a simple written agreement. The terms should cover:
the fee, the product, or both, that you are giving the number of posts, the platforms and the format whether you see the content before it goes live, and how many rounds of changes you may ask for how quickly the creator will reply to you the posting date and how long the post stays up
Reuse is the term people leave out most often. It covers three questions: whether you may share the creator's video on your own account, whether you may run it in your own ads and for how long, and whether you may edit it. By default the creator usually owns what they make. If you want to use their video in your own posts or ads, agree that explicitly and attach a time period. The course Paid ads: Meta, Google and TikTok covers paid use of creator content in ads.
If the agreement is large, or any legal term leaves you unsure, get proper advice. For most small collaborations, a clear email that both of you answer with "agreed" is far better than having nothing written.
Plenty of businesses think of sending a free product as an informal favour. It is a form of payment, because the creator receives something of value in exchange for possibly featuring you, and two things follow from that.
First, a gift needs clear terms, just like any other collaboration. Before the product goes out, say whether you expect a post and agree what kind of post. If the creator has no obligation, tell them so. Either of those lines in Mei Ling's note would have given her and the creator the same expectations about the cake.
Second, a gift needs disclosure. When a creator posts about something they were given, their audience should be told. Lesson 8.3 explains how creators should disclose gifted products.
Once money changes hands, many businesses want a say over the words, the shots, the music and the angle. Hold back on most of it. When a creator talks about something they really use, the video tends to perform like their usual posts. When it sounds like your marketing copy read out by someone else, it tends to perform like an ad, and viewers scroll past it the way they scroll past any ad. The approval step is for catching errors and anything on your must-not-say list. It is not a chance to rewrite the creator's voice.
Farah got a better result on her second attempt at a creator collaboration. She gave a working mother the goal, the one message, two things not to say and a date, then let the creator film her real morning. The finished video sounded like the creator, and the creator's audience responded to it as one of her own posts.
For the activity, draft a one-page brief for a collaboration with your top creator or partner, and make sure it says who approves the content and how you may reuse it.
Draft a one-page brief for a collaboration with your top creator or partner. Include usage rights and approvals.
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