Insights for Creators & Marketers

For creators and brands, it is important to be transparent about the partnerships you engage in. Honesty and transparency are vital for creators to maintain a trusting relationship with their viewers, and sometimes that means following guidelines set forth by the FTC. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has a set of rules regarding disclosures when it comes to creators getting compensation or free products in return for their endorsement. Creators and brands must abide by these guidelines to continue their partnership. The FTC guidelines dive into more detail, but below is a brief outline of when and how to disclose a relationship between an influencer and brand.

Brands over the past 5 years have realized that marketing with influencers can be a powerful tool. Being able to educate varying audiences about a brand’s product or service through creators can be essential to a brand’s success. From a creator and brand standpoint, it is important to keep the Halo Effect in mind when partnering with companies.

If a brand wants to maximize their potential to land sales and educate prospective buyers on their products, they must consider their media presence. Influencer marketing has become a vital tool for many brands. By utilizing their loyal fanbase, an influencer can use their testimony and “influence” as a reliable review of the brand’s product or service. With that being said, some types of brands, products and services can benefit more from influencer marketing than others.

Does this sound familiar? Explaining to your accountant what you do for a living feels like you’re speaking in a foriegn language. When you applied for a mortgage, the loan officer couldn’t understand why you didn’t have a W2. Or when you try to explain to your credit card company that you need a bigger limit, they ask why you don’t have three months of recurring pay stubs.

Social media sponsorship opportunities can be and are extremely exciting for both the brand and the creator. But with that being said, it is extremely easy to get caught up in the numbers aspect of sponsorships, constantly thinking: How much can I charge? What is the increase from last time? How much time will it take to do this sponsorship? How many pieces of content do I need?

Within the past decade, we have seen a huge shift in the commercial advertising arena. As social media continues to grow at an exponential rate, many brands are transforming their marketing strategies by collaborating with creators.

We’ve all seen videos, stories, and posts that promote products and services that seemingly come out of left field. Now, these are impressive in their own right, but there certainly is something refreshing, engaging, and impression-making when seeing promotions that fit seamlessly within the content and existing branding of the creator.

The most obvious answer to this question would be, “that depends on the brand.” It’s the right answer, though, because each brand is different. Each brand has different goals, different values, a different mission, a different target demographic for advertising, a different advertising budget and strategy, and different unit economics. Those are a lot of variables at play that all help determine what a brand looks for in an influencer. 

If you have been doing sponsored integrations with brands long enough, you’ve probably been through at least one round of unfair edit requests from a brand. Brand managers aren’t content creators, so they often do not know how much work it can be to edit a video or reshoot an element.