Should you ask a creator to send you their past work?

Three names are left on the list and one of them has stalled you for two days. The account is right: the videos are the kind of videos you want, and the comments underneath read like people rather than a crowd. What isn't there is a single post with a brand in it. So you start the obvious message, could you send over some of your past work?, and then you sit on it, because the only answer you have for what would that settle is whether they're any good, and you can feel that isn't an answer.

Send it. Be clear first about what you're sending it for, because the reason you probably have in mind is the one thing it can't do.

What is it you don't have?

Most of your original list is already gone, cut by what a profile can settle and in what order. This candidate survived that, so the question in front of you isn't whether you know enough about them — it's which specific thing is still missing. That guide answers it in a line. An account with no brand work on it is "something you don't know, not something you've learned," and what stays unknown is narrow: how that audience reacts when a product turns up. Nothing else on the profile answers it.

For the backpack: say it's a commuter bag whose whole claim is that it opens flat, so you can reach the laptop without digging. You can watch this person film the walk from the station, and you can read the comments and see what people come back for. What you can't see is what that same crowd does the first time something on camera is there because somebody paid for it to be. That's the gap.

Why an account can be quiet about work that happened

A brand video doesn't have to go up on the creator's account at all. In one arrangement, the creator films and edits what the brand asked for, hands the finished file over, and the brand runs the result as advertising. The creator's feed never carries it. That isn't concealment; it's a different job that ends somewhere else.

So a profile with no brand work on it covers two people who look identical from the outside: someone who has never made a brand video, and someone who has made some that you were never going to see. The account can't tell you which one you're looking at. They can. Whether that's worth a message depends on what knowing it would change.

Does what they send fill the gap?

No — and being exact about what the gap is decides how you read the reply.

The gap is about an audience — this audience, meeting a product. Now line up what they could send you. What went up on their own account you could already see, so that isn't the part you're asking for. The part you're asking for is the rest — work that never went up on this account, so this audience was never shown it.

For the backpack: the files that come back were made for other brands and ran as their ads. You will recognize the walk from the station and the way this person talks over it. What isn't in them is the crowd that shows up for it.

So what does it settle?

Something real, and it's the reason to send the message anyway.

Everything you've looked at so far is work nobody briefed. The same guide is direct about what that's good for: those posts "show you what someone reaches for when nobody's asked them to reach for anything." It is nearly all of what you have.

What they send is the other kind: work somebody briefed. Same person, but with a brief in hand, a product that has to get on camera, and somebody else's requirement to satisfy. It's the one look you get at that before you're the one writing the brief. You can see what the product does to the video, and what this person does with a constraint instead of a blank page.

Two things to hold while you read what they send. It is chosen: they picked what to put in front of you and they led with their best, so what you are seeing is the best of what they chose to show. And where the reply states results, those are figures they are telling you rather than figures sitting under a public post you can open and check. Neither is a reason to discount what arrives. The second one is a reason to keep those figures out of any comparison between two creators: each one came from a job you didn't see.

For the backpack: two files come back, neither of them anything like a bag. In one, the product arrives in the middle of a walk the person was already narrating. In the other, the video stops, the product is held up to the camera, and the walk picks up again afterwards. You have now seen both things this person can do when the requirement isn't theirs.

Who do you send it to, and when?

Not to anyone you are still deciding about.

The published check order rests on a rule that reaches this request too: "A check earns an early slot by being cheap and able to settle whether someone fits." This one fails the second half. What comes back is worth having, but it isn't a verdict on fit — fit turns on what this person films and who turns up for it, and none of that is inside a file made for somebody else.

So it isn't part of the cutting. A candidate who is going to be cut by what's on their profile will not be saved by what's off it. It goes to someone you would otherwise be ready to approach.

It costs a message, a wait, and someone's willingness to do you a favor on a job they haven't started.

For the backpack: it isn't the message you send while they are still one of three.

Which settles when. The first message is doing one job, and everything not needed to answer it waits. Asking someone to go and gather files is not needed to answer it, and it turns a yes-or-no into an errand. The window is after they've said yes and before the brief goes out. That's where what comes back can still change something.

Which work do you ask for?

Ask for one named category — the work that never went up on their account.

Have you made anything for a brand that didn't go up on your own account? That's the part I can't see from here. That's the message.

We've written before about asking a creator for the numbers only they can see, and the shape of the ask carries over: the open version leaves them aiming at a question you never put in the message. What's different here is the thing on the other end. That guide is about a video they have already made for you, where the ask is small enough not to be work. This is somebody you haven't hired, and what you're asking for is assembly, which is most of what makes it expensive in the first place.

Say what you want it for, too. I want to see what one of these looks like when you've had a brief asks for something a person can hand over. It also tells them which of their files is the useful one.

For the backpack: you send that line the day after they say yes, and the files come back with a note saying one more is under wraps. That is the whole exchange.

Frequently asked questions

What if the work they send is all for products nothing like ours?

That's fine. You're reading it for what happens to a brief in this person's hands, and either a skincare video or a hardware video shows you that.

Whether this person films anywhere near your situation was already answered by their own posts, before you asked for anything, and a bag they once shot doesn't make them a better fit for yours. If what you want to settle is which kind of video to make, that's a different call.

Can we ask for the brand names instead of the videos?

A list of names tells you the work exists, which their answer to your question already told you. It doesn't show you the work.

Names also invite a comparison you can't complete: you'd be reading a brand's size back onto a video you haven't watched. The video is the part you asked for. If names are all that comes back, you're where you started, and what their own account shows you is still there.

See what this looks like for your brand

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