Should you ask a creator not to work with your competitors?

Say you sell a cordless handheld vacuum — the one that lives in the trunk and gets the sand out of the seat rails without anybody dragging an extension cord down the driveway. You've picked a creator whose account is full of cars getting cleaned out, and whose followers are the people with sand in their seat rails. You're writing the offer. Then somebody on the call asks whether you should stop them from making one of these videos for a competitor while yours is running.

It's a fair question, and it's a different kind of question from the rest of what you're settling. Everything else you settle before the shoot attaches to the video you're buying and where it lands — where it posts, what you may do with it, how many changes you get to ask for. This one doesn't attach to the video at all.

What is the ask made of?

Time on their calendar that they'd otherwise sell to somebody else.

The brief still settles what the video has to land. The agreement still settles what you can do with it afterward.

What the ask changes sits somewhere you'll never look: for a stretch of time you name, a competitor of yours can't get this person to make the thing this offer would pay them to make. That's a real thing to buy, and it's why the way you priced the rest of the offer doesn't carry over to it.

For the vacuum: the sand-out-of-the-seat-rails video is identical whether or not this line is in the offer. What the line would buy is the video that doesn't get made — same account, same driveway, somebody else's vacuum.

So what would you be checking?

Nothing, and that's the part worth sitting with before you pay for it.

Usage rights are permission to run their video somewhere, for a while — your channels, written down. Whitelisting is permission to run ads from their handle, so the claim arrives in their name rather than yours. Both of those name a video, and when the time comes you can look at where it ran and see whether you got what you bought.

This ask names no video. It names a person, a stretch of time, and work that doesn't exist yet and now won't, so nothing arrives that you could hold the line up against. What you'd have at the end is an account that stayed quiet in one specific way.

Deciding what your plan needs from this video won't answer it. The question has to be asked one step earlier, about the campaign, before there is a file to point at.

Does your plan lean on it?

Two things you already know decide it, and both were settled before you opened the offer.

Why you went to this person. You either went for the people attached to that account, or you went for what they can make, in which case the file was the point. If the account isn't what you bought, what they post on it next isn't either.

What your video asks the viewer to take on their word. The one line the video has to land can work two ways. Some videos ask the viewer to believe a demonstration: here's the sand, here it is gone, and anyone competent could hold the vacuum. Others ask the viewer to take somebody's judgment — this is the one I keep in the trunk — and a line like that carries an implied rather than the others inside it.

Put the two together. If you're buying the people on that account and what you're buying from the person is their judgment, then a second video handing that judgment to a competitor takes back what you're paying for: the line you're buying is this is the one, and the same account would be saying it about two things. If either half is missing, the other video on their account is one more thing your campaign was already up against — a demonstration anyone competent could carry doesn't take anything back.

For the vacuum: you went to this creator for the people who follow them, so the first half holds. And what you're buying isn't only the sand coming out — it's this is the one I keep in the trunk, said by somebody whose trunk the audience has seen. The second half holds too. So this is a plan that leans on it, and the question turns into what exactly you're asking for.

What you name is what you're buying

Three facts. There's no file to fall back on if they're vague, so the line you write is all there is.

What counts as a competitor. Not a label somebody else wrote, but your own answer to what a viewer would put beside the thing you sell while deciding. A cordless handheld vacuum and a plug-in wet-dry vacuum may both count as cleaning, and only one of them is what somebody with sand in the seat rails is picking between. Leave it blank and you find out you disagreed after the other video is up.

When it starts and when it stops. A start and an end date, both off your own calendar, the way usage rights are. Leave either blank and you've asked for something with no edges — the version they can't price and you can't defend.

Which of their work it covers. Posting on their account is one thing. Filming for another brand's ad account, where their name never appears, is another. Leave it blank and each of you is left with the version you assumed.

Those three are also the price. There's no rate to look up for the fee, and there's nothing to look up here either, because what's being priced is work you can't see: which offers they'd otherwise take, what those pay, how often they come. They're the only one holding that.

What you hold is how far the ask reaches, and each of the three moves it — a longer stretch of time, a bigger idea of what counts as a competitor, more of their work inside it.

For the vacuum: no videos for another cordless vacuum people use in cars, from now to the end of the road-trip push, on this creator's own account. Three facts, one line, and the ask stops where the claim you're buying stops being at stake.

Where does it go, and when do you ask?

In the offer, before the shoot, with the rest of the terms.

Timing decides what the ask gets weighed against. Before anyone films, it sits among the other terms and gets priced against your campaign: what you're buying, who from, what's riding on it. Raise it afterward and it stops being one term among several and becomes an ask of its own, weighed against nothing but itself.

The brief is a different document. It tells them how to make the video, and it can point at where the terms live the way it does for the rest of them — but nothing about this one tells them how to make anything, so it belongs with the terms.

Frequently asked questions

They posted for a competitor last month. Does that rule them out?

That question belongs to choosing, not to this. A post that already exists is evidence about this person: what they'll put their name on, how their audience took it. You read it the way you read anything else on the account.

The ask in this guide points forward and costs money. The two get confused because the same word — competitor — sits in both, though only one of them is something you buy.

We're only buying a file for our ad account. Do we still need it?

Probably not — name what you're picturing instead.

If what worries you is a competitor's ad carrying a video by the same person, that's the same ask pointed at a different piece of their work: the filming, not the posting. Say that version instead. If what worries you is what they'd post on their own account, notice that their account isn't what you bought this time. You never bought silence on it.

They said no. What now?

They're allowed to. You asked to buy something they'd rather keep selling, and that answer is information about their side rather than a problem with yours.

Ask which of the three the price is sitting on — the stretch of time, how wide your idea of a competitor runs, or how much of their work is inside it. Re-cut that one and put it back. If the answer is still no, the campaign goes ahead without it.

See what this looks like for your brand

Got a creator picked and an offer half-written? Bring it and we'll go through what's worth asking for.

Or email us: business@popow.ai