Should you ask a creator to keep their post up?

You're nearly done writing the list of what you're asking for, and somebody on the team asks how long the creator's post has to stay on their account.

Nobody in the room knows. The agreements you can find have somebody else's number in them — a term written for a campaign you know nothing about. The number is easy to copy. What it can't tell you is whether your campaign needs one at all, and the answer to that is in your own plan.

The product is a silicone baking mat, the roll-up kind that stores in a drawer instead of taking up a shelf. One creator is making one video for the launch, and the plan behind it has two lines you'll come back to.

What are you asking for that you don't already have?

Two things are yours before this question comes up.

The file is one. The video was made for you and handed over, and it sits wherever you keep your creative — it would still be there if their account disappeared tonight. The other is your own window, if you bought reuse. Usage rights come with a clock and a channel list, and as the settle guide puts it, "The clock covers what you run." That clock can be written to start the day they publish, which makes it easy to assume the clock depends on their post. It doesn't — it sits alongside their post, on your side of it, covering the reuse you paid for.

Set both of those aside and look at what's left on their account. Their name is at the top of the post. The people who already follow them came with the account — "attached to the account, not to the file," in the settle guide's words. Under the post is a comment section that belongs to it. None of that came with the file, and none of it is covered by a reuse window.

So this ask is shaped differently from the rest of the list you were finishing. Those terms are about something being made, handed over, or allowed. This one asks for something to keep existing after all of that is done, on an account that isn't yours. It's also what the settle guide left outside its four questions — "if you need it to stay up, that's a fifth thing to say out loud rather than one of these four." It's that fifth thing. Whether your campaign has that ask to make is what the rest of this settles.

For the mat: what's in question is the launch post, sitting on the creator's account after the launch.

What in your plan stops if the post isn't there?

Open their account tomorrow, find the post gone, and name what in your plan was relying on it. Whatever you name is what the ask is for. If you can't name anything, there's nothing here to ask for.

Two answers worth checking for first.

Ads that run from their handle. If your paid ads go out as the creator rather than as you, that's whitelisting, and what that plan pays for is "more people meeting that post, as the creator made it, where it lives." On TikTok that route puts the money behind the post that's already on their profile. So the post isn't raw material the ads were built from — it's the thing being run.

A code or a link that rides inside the post. A creator's discount code goes out inside the video, and the offer only reaches the audiences that hear it. If your plan counts on people finding that video later, the post is where the offer is. Same for a tracking link in the caption.

And two that don't land. If you bought reuse and the same video runs as your own ad from your own account, nothing you're doing reaches back to their profile. That ad was built from the file and sits inside the window you bought, and their account isn't carrying any part of it. Posting the video on your brand account is the same: "you're adding a post, not moving one."

For the mat: the launch plan has the ads going out through the creator's handle, and their code in the video. Both answers land, so you have an ask. Change both lines of that plan — ads from your own account instead, no code — and the same test comes back empty. Same creator, same video, no fifth thing to say.

So how long?

The date you're asking for is the last day of the thing you just named — or, when that thing has no last day, the next moment you'd decide whether it still needs the post.

That's the whole of it, and no agreement you've read can give you the date, because that date exists only in your plan. If two things need it, the later one sets the date.

For the mat: the ads go out through launch and stop at the end of the launch run, and the code is live until the same date. So that date is the one you ask for — the last day of the run you've already committed to.

Some plans don't have that day on a calendar. A plan whose ads keep going out from their handle year-round, with the creative reviewed every quarter, doesn't stop needing the post on any date you could write down today. What you can name is the review — the move the settle guide makes for its own clock — because that's the moment you'd decide whether the ads carry on. A date at the next review is shorter than an open-ended one, and it's the one your plan can stand behind.

What you're asking for isn't whatever they'll agree to. Asking past the date your plan needs means asking somebody to leave something on their account for a reason you can't state.

When do you say it?

With everything else you're asking for, before the shoot.

It isn't one of the four questions settled there, but the same thing happens to it that happens to any term left open. Once the video is live, "reopening it later is a new number, asked of a creator who by then knows exactly which video you want," as the budget guide has it.

The sentence itself is short, because it only has two parts: which post it will be, and until when. The reason goes next to it if you want it there: the run that needs the post, and the date that run ends.

For the mat: you say it to them — Keep the launch post up on your account through the launch run, to the same date the ads stop. That's the sentence, said while the rest of the terms are still being written.

What the ask doesn't cover

It covers one post, to the date you named, and nothing else.

You're not asking for a say in the account. Nothing about this reaches the rest of what they post, what they take down, or what they work on next. A creator may clear sponsored posts off their account after a while; this ask doesn't reach that.

Frequently asked questions

We never said anything about it, and the post is still up. Can we ask now?

You can — it's the new number the budget guide described, not a term being filled in.

What changes is what you bring. The post exists now, so bring the run that needs it and the date that run ends.

The post came down before the date we named. What do we still have?

What's gone is the part your plan was relying on the post for — whatever you named in the test.

The file is still yours, and so is the reuse you bought, on your own clock. Nothing else in the deal was leaning on that post.

Where does this sit in the fee conversation?

A term raised while the fee is being worked out is part of what you're both agreeing to. The same term raised after the video is up is the conversation in the first question above. That part is between you and the creator — the fee is its own question.

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