How to Brief an Influencer So the Content Doesn't Miss

A brand sends a creator a two-paragraph brief: the product, the promo code, and "please be authentic!" The creator posts something that never mentions what the product actually does, because nobody told them, and the brand is left wondering why a good creator produced a post that doesn't sell anything. A different brand sends the opposite: a shot list, three mandatory phrases, and a line-by-line script. The creator posts it because they're being paid, and it reads exactly like what it is: an ad wearing someone else's face. Both campaigns had a brief. Neither had one that worked.

How to do influencer marketing: a small business guide covers the brief in four sentences, because a full campaign plan has a lot of other ground to cover. This post is the deeper version, for the actual writing of the brief: what goes in, what stays out, how disclosure works, and how to ask for a revision without rewriting the post yourself.

A brief has one job: remove the guesswork, not the creator

The failure mode on both ends of the example above comes from the same misunderstanding. A brief isn't a content order form and it isn't a script. It's the set of facts a creator can't invent on their own: what the product does, what you need said, what you're not allowed to say, and when you need it by. Everything else, the wording, the shot, the pacing, is theirs, because their audience follows them for a specific voice and a script erases it in one read.

Get this balance right and the creator does the actual creative work you're paying for. Get it wrong in either direction and you've either bought a post nobody could act on or a post that sounds like every other ad in the feed.

The five things a working brief states plainly

What the product or service does, in plain terms, and who it's for. Not your tagline. The actual mechanism: what problem it solves, who buys it, and what makes someone choose it over the obvious alternative. A creator who understands this can talk about it in their own words. A creator who only has your tagline repeats the tagline.

One thing you need said, not three. A promo code, a specific claim, a single call to action. Pick one. Briefs that list several "key messages" produce posts that hit none of them well, because the creator is splitting attention across your priorities instead of landing on the one that actually moves someone to act.

What's off-limits, specifically. Not "keep it appropriate." Name the actual claims your industry can't make (health outcomes, guaranteed results, anything a competitor could dispute), and name any comparison you don't want drawn. Vague guardrails get tested by accident. Specific ones don't.

How the post has to be disclosed. In Canada, a paid collaboration needs a clear, unmissable disclosure: #ad or #sponsored (or the platform's own paid-partnership tag) placed where someone scrolling past would actually see it, not buried in a line of twenty other tags. The Competition Bureau and Ad Standards Canada both treat a hidden or ambiguous disclosure as misleading advertising, and it's the brand's problem as much as the creator's if it's missing. Put the requirement in the brief in one line. Don't assume the creator will remember or that it's obviously their job.

The deadline, and what "done" looks like. A post-by date, and whether you need a screenshot, a link, or nothing beyond the post itself going live. Vague on this point is how a campaign quietly slips two weeks with nobody agreeing it slipped.

Read three of their posts before you write the brief

The fastest way to write a brief a creator can actually use is to spend five minutes on their account first. Pull up their last three posts in the format you're hiring for. Notice the actual pattern: do they open with a question, a joke, a direct statement? Do they show the product first or themselves first? How long are their captions, and do they use exclamation points or keep it dry?

You're not copying their style into the brief. You're checking that what you're asking for is something they'd plausibly say. A brief that asks a creator who never uses hashtags to open with three hashtags, or asks a deadpan reviewer to sound excited, produces content that reads as off for their own audience, the people whose trust is the entire reason you hired them instead of running a display ad.

Give feedback on what's missing, not on how it sounds

A revision request works the same way the brief does: name the gap, don't rewrite the line. "Can you mention the 30-day return window, that's missing" is a fixable, specific ask. "Can you make this sound more excited" asks the creator to perform a voice that isn't theirs, and the result usually sounds worse than the first draft, because now it's neither their natural voice nor your intended one.

Two revision rounds is a reasonable standard to hold, on either side of the deal: enough room to fix a real gap (a missing disclosure, a claim that needs softening, a forgotten promo code) without turning into an open-ended editing process that eats the fee's value for both sides. If you're asking for a third round, the brief was probably missing something the first time, not the creator.

A six-line brief you can actually copy

Here's a real one, for a Toronto coffee shop launching a new seasonal drink:

Product: New maple oat latte, $6.25, available through November. Made with a local Ontario maple syrup, not a flavoured syrup. What to say: Mention the code MAPLE10 for $2 off, once, naturally. What not to say: No health or caffeine-content claims. Don't compare it to a specific competitor chain. Disclosure: #ad or the platform's paid-partnership tag, visible in the post, not just the caption's last line. Format: One Reel or one feed post, your choice, 15 to 30 seconds if it's video. Deadline: Live by November 14. Send us the link once it's up.

Six lines, no shot list, no script. Everything the creator needs to decide is theirs. Everything they couldn't have known without being told is on the page.

Timing: brief early, review once, don't chase

Send the brief at least a week before you need the post, longer around a holiday or product launch when a creator's calendar fills up fast. Ask for a draft or a rough cut before the post goes live if the format allows it (video especially), so a genuine gap gets caught before it's public rather than after. Then hold the two-round standard above rather than a running back-and-forth that neither side agreed to at the start.

Where Sixth Degree fits

We built the collaboration flow around exactly this shape: a structured brief up front, a defined revision process instead of open-ended back and forth, and usage rights handled explicitly through the Ad Rights Rider (see what an ad rights rider actually covers) rather than assumed. A single influencer post and a first UGC batch both run on the same discipline underneath.

We're in private beta, opening Fall 2026, so the marketplace isn't public yet. If you want to run a campaign with a brief this tight when it opens, join the waitlist below, or email hello@sixthdegree.app with what you're briefing and we'll give you a straight read on it.