Should you put a creator on a retainer?

Say you publish board games, and the creator who filmed your last release did it well. Instead of going back out to find someone every time, why not put them on a retainer for the next few months?

You can. A retainer is a fixed amount for a fixed output, so much per video or so much a month, and it's a form both sides already have a name for. We'll call the deal itself the arrangement from here, because what follows applies to anything that commits to videos before a campaign exists. Whether an arrangement is worth writing depends on what it can settle in advance, and that list is shorter than it looks.

What can you fix before a campaign exists?

Three things, and they have something in common.

The rate, against an output you can name. A number for a video in its default shape: made to a brief, posted on their account, nothing after it. You can agree that now because you're describing a shape, not a campaign.

How many, and how often. Two a month, or six across the quarter. You can count them before any of them exist.

How quickly they turn work around. A turnaround you agree to, sized against the one you've already watched happen. That's one observation, and it's worth saying so out loud when you write the number down.

Call those three the first list. What they share is that you can answer them today without describing a campaign, and that is the test for anything else you're tempted to put in the arrangement: can you answer it now, with no campaign in front of you? If the honest answer is it depends what the campaign turns out to be, it isn't a term. It's a decision the campaign hasn't handed you yet.

For the board game: you can write down a per-video number, four videos across the fall, and a two-week turnaround, because the last one took ten days. Nothing on that list needs to know which game.

What does it leave open?

The things you were probably hoping to stop repeating. Call these the second list.

Whether they're right for the campaign. Each campaign brings its own sentence, the one thing a viewer should walk away with, and the test is whether the moment that sentence describes has ever appeared in their work. We've already said what having worked together does to that test: having worked together isn't an answer to it, it just means you're running the test on a name you already know. The name is on the paper before the campaign exists, and the test still gets run on it.

Whether you can use the video afterward. Usage rights are bought against a plan, and a plan nobody has written can't be the thing you buy against. Reuse you might want later names no channel and no end date, because there's no plan yet to read them off.

What the specific job is worth. The rate you agreed covers the output you described. A campaign that asks for something else — a longer edit, a second location, a shoot that has to happen in a particular week — is a different job to price. The number in the arrangement is attached to the shape you named, so put the two jobs side by side before you let it do any work on the new one.

So take whatever you wanted from keeping them on and sort it into the two lists: what the arrangement fixes, and what each campaign settles again. Most wants are a mix, and some split across both.

For the board game: what you wanted was to stop hunting for someone in November. The arrangement puts a name on the paper before November, which isn't the same as the answer. Whether that name is the one for November is the first thing on the second list. What you also wanted, quietly, was to stop having the pricing conversation. That one splits: the four videos in their default shape have a number, and anything the fall campaign asks for on top of that shape doesn't.

What does the arrangement change about disclosure?

One thing, and it covers more of their account than a single campaign does.

Paying a creator creates a material connection between the two of you, and the FTC's guidance for influencers is that such a connection should be disclosed clearly, where people will actually notice and understand it. An arrangement doesn't change what disclosure is. It changes how much of their account it touches, because the connection exists for as long as the arrangement does and not only on the days a campaign posts.

• Disclosures 101 for Social Media Influencers

Read it yourself, and if the stakes are real, ask a lawyer rather than us.

Say that out loud at the start rather than discover it in month three. A creator who is under an arrangement with you and mentions your product in a video that isn't one of the four still has a connection to disclose, and how they write it is theirs.

For the board game: they play games on camera, so yours already turns up in videos nobody briefed. What changes is that there's now a connection riding on each one.

Does it keep them off your competitors?

No. Agreeing a number of videos doesn't contain it.

Brands assume it's included, because an arrangement feels like the kind of deal that comes with it. Put it through the same question instead. How far the ask reaches — what counts as a competitor, when it starts and stops, which of their work it covers — you can answer today. Whether this campaign leans on it you can't, because that turns on two things each campaign settles before you make the offer. So the reach can go in the arrangement, and the decision to buy it belongs to a campaign.

For the board game: four videos over the fall says nothing about the other publisher whose release lands in October. If that matters, it goes in the arrangement by name, next to the rate and the count.

So how do you decide?

Count the campaigns you can describe, then count the videos those campaigns need and set that against what the arrangement commits you to.

A campaign you can describe is one you could brief this week if you had to: a sentence, a rough date, a reason for the video to exist. Not the ones you assume will show up. Count what each of those campaigns needs, because a campaign isn't automatically one video.

If the videos you can account for cover what the arrangement owes, it's buying you something real, because everything in it has somewhere to go.

If they don't, you're agreeing to a number of videos and hoping the campaigns arrive behind them. That's the cost that doesn't show up in the number. A retainer with more videos in it than you have campaigns for doesn't lie idle: the month passes, the output is owed, and the brief that gets written is the one you could write in a hurry rather than the one you'd have written for a campaign you'd thought about.

Booking per job costs you the search each time. It costs you nothing when a month turns out to have nothing in it.

For the board game: the fall release is describable now, with a sentence, a date and a reason for the video to exist, and it can carry two of the four. The holiday gift guide isn't describable yet; it's a season you're assuming will need something. So two videos are accounted for against four committed, and the other two need a reason to exist that you can write down this week.

Frequently asked questions

Is a brand ambassador the same thing?

The market uses that name when the arrangement runs longer than a one-off collaboration and asks more in what's agreed. For what you have to write down, that changes nothing.

The name doesn't arrive with anything already agreed. Whatever you would have written down for four videos still has to be written down for a year of them.

We want first call on their time, not a set number of videos. Is that the same deal?

It's a thinner one. Take the output out of a retainer and what's left is a claim on time.

That has value when you have work to call in and none when you don't, and the same test applies: you can agree what first call means and what it costs, because both are answerable without a campaign. What you can't do is treat it as a discount on the videos you eventually order. There's no output in this one to have priced ahead, so those get priced when they're described.

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