Do you have enough time to run a creator campaign before your launch?

You have a date. The product lands in stores, the retailer's page switches over, the season starts, and someone has asked whether creators can have videos up before it. The question is usually put as a request for a number of weeks.

There isn't a number to hand back, and a number from somebody else's guide is a number for somebody else's process. Two things belong to your campaign instead. The window is what you have: the stretch between today and the day the video has to be live. The floor is what it takes: the shortest that stretch can be for this campaign. The floor is worth working out before you agree to the date, because it isn't built out of your effort and can't be lowered by adding more of it.

For a countertop ice maker: it lands on shelves in the first week of June, and marketing wants the videos live the week before. That live week is the date everything works back from.

What has to fit between now and the date?

The guide on what to do when a creator doesn't reply already runs this walk backwards, for a different purpose. It lays out everything that has to happen between today and the day the video is live: the offer and their answer to it, the brief, the shoot, and the rounds of changes you set aside. It gets two dates out of that walk. The last day a yes is still usable, and, once you subtract the room to ask the next name, the day you stop waiting on one silent account. The day you stop waiting is the one that guide goes on to use. The last usable yes is the one this question needs.

Those four are the skeleton. A real campaign hangs its own items on it — the decision that has to happen before anyone can write the brief, the sample that has to reach the person filming, whatever else this particular job needs. Write yours out before you sort them.

Two things follow. The lengths belong to the job in front of you, and that same guide makes the job the unit rather than the campaign: two creators on one campaign share both dates when they have the same job, and the one you asked to shoot a file instead of posting has different ones. The answer also isn't a schedule anybody can hand you, because neither the list nor the lengths are the same for everyone — the items depend on what you're buying, and the lengths depend on the people doing it.

For the ice maker: the walk backwards starts from the week the videos are wanted live, which is the week before the shelf date and not the shelf date itself.

The list alone doesn't answer the question. Sort it a second time, by who is waiting on whom.

Which of those waits are yours?

Go through your list and ask one thing of each item: who has to act next, and can you put a second person on it? If the next move belongs to someone you don't employ, the wait isn't yours.

Some of them are. Deciding what the video has to say, writing the brief, packing the sample and getting it out the door, reading the draft when it arrives and deciding whether it's right. These clear faster when you clear other work out of the way, when a second person picks up half of them, or when you decide something on Tuesday instead of the following Monday.

The rest aren't. Your first message goes out and then the answer comes back when it comes back. The box takes the days the carrier takes. The shoot happens on their calendar, inside the window your offer named — and a yes is a yes to that window, not to a date you pick afterward. The changes you asked for get made in the time the person making them has. None of these move because you cleared your afternoon.

That split is the whole calculation. The floor is the sum of the waits that aren't yours. Note what does and doesn't go into it: a wait has length and adds up, while a date somebody has to be free for has no length at all — it decides which week works, not how many weeks it takes.

For the lengths themselves, you have two sources and both are already in hand. Your own record of what the last campaign actually took, date by date rather than as a remembered total. And, for the shoot, the window you put in the offer — the first-message guide has you name a window rather than a day when a window is what you have, and that window is what bounds this wait.

For the ice maker: four items sit on somebody else's calendar. The offer has to be answered by someone who didn't know it was coming, the machine has to reach them, the video has to be filmed, and the changes have to be turned around. Lay those four end to end and you have the floor. If they don't fit before the week the videos are wanted live, nothing you do on your own side changes the answer.

This is also the test for any suggestion that promises to save time. Ask which wait it removes. If the answer is one of yours, it has made your weeks more comfortable without lowering the floor. That's worth having when your own side is what's running late. It's worth nothing when the floor is.

What does the fee buy?

Not a place in anybody's week, unless you put one there. What you're paying the creator for is set by the terms you settle before the shoot: a video, made to a brief, with the terms and the rounds you agreed. The budget guide prices those alongside everything else the campaign costs. None of what you hand the creator is a claim on when the work happens.

There is one arrangement that does put a claim on the calendar into the deal, and the retainer guide describes it: "Take the output out of a retainer and what's left is a claim on time." That is the only thing you can pay a creator for that bears on the floor at all — a claim you can call in, rather than a video you've ordered. The catch is when you'd need to have it. That guide's subject is what gets committed ahead of a campaign, and a claim on somebody's time is worth holding when you have work to call in. Set one up today and it lowers the next campaign's floor, not this one's, and it does nothing at all for a campaign that starts by writing to somebody new.

For the ice maker: no arrangement is in place, because this is the first campaign for the product. So the money settles what you get and the terms that come with it. The live week has to be met by starting early enough, which is the calculation above and not a line in the deal.

What do you change when the window is short?

Mostly you change the shape of the job. Of the four changes below, one takes an item off the floor, one moves the last step onto your own calendar, one keeps you from paying the same wait twice, and the last isn't the job at all.

Give up the rounds of changes. This is the one that removes a wait. What those rounds were holding, according to the settle guide, is the ways the things your brief settled could come back wrong, plus the room for what you couldn't list yet. Without them, what comes back is what you run.

Buy the file instead of the post. This doesn't shorten the floor, but it moves the last step. The pay guide draws the line: buy a post and the thing you're paying for happens on their account, on a day you can both see, while buy a file and "it happens when the file reaches you, and there's no posting date in the deal at all." The date stops being a day they have to be free for and becomes a day you have to be ready for. What you give up is on the other side of that trade, and the guide to hiring UGC creators is direct about it: you've bought the making alone, and getting the video in front of people becomes a line you fill yourself.

Ask several names at once instead of one after another. The floor is the same either way. What you stop paying is the answer-wait twice over: you ask, you get a no, and you start the same wait with the next name. It spends the room the no-reply guide tells you to hold back for asking the next name, and it can leave you with more yeses than slots, which you then have to answer.

Move the date. The one that isn't the job. Mostly the date belongs to a retailer, a season, or a shipment and isn't yours to move, but it's worth checking. The other three all cost something and this one might not.

For the ice maker: the shelf date isn't movable, so that one's out before you start.

So what if the answer is no?

That answer is allowed to be no. A no you reach this week costs a planning meeting. The same no reached after the offers have gone out costs the offers and the answers.

For the ice maker: say you drop the rounds, the one change that takes an item off the floor, and buy the file on top so the posting day stops being theirs. The three that are left, their answer, the shipping and the shoot, still run past the live week. What's left is to let the videos land from the shelf date onward instead, and be about a product people can already buy. That's a real campaign too. It isn't the one that was asked for.

Frequently asked questions

The launch date just moved. Do we redo the whole thing?

Redo the window, not the floor. The no-reply guide has you do the calculation once per job, and moving the date doesn't change what has to fit: the same offer still has to be answered and the same video still has to be filmed. Measure the new window against the floor you already worked out.

The exception is when the date moves and the job moves with it. If the ice maker's ship date slips and marketing also switches from posts to files, that's a different job, and it gets its own calculation.

Could we save the time by skipping the brief?

No, and it can cost you time. Writing the brief is on your calendar, so cutting it buys back your own time and leaves the floor exactly where it was.

It can also push the floor up. What the brief doesn't answer becomes something the creator has to ask, and their question and your reply are a round trip where the half you're waiting on isn't yours. The brief guide is about what's worth putting in one; the scheduling argument for writing it properly is that an unanswered question costs more than the paragraph would have.

See what this looks like for your brand

Here's how we answer the same question about our own campaigns:

Four to five weeks from kickoff to published videos — that covers building the campaign, matching and reaching out to creators, and the review rounds on what they send back.

Or email us: business@popow.ai