Should you write the caption and hashtags for a creator?

The brief is nearly done. You've picked the creator, you've written the sentence the video has to land, and you've settled how many rounds of changes you're allowing. Then you get to the bottom of the page, where there's a field called something like caption and hashtags, and you stop, because you don't know whether you're supposed to fill it in.

Filling it in feels like too much. Leaving it empty feels like you forgot something. Both instincts are half right.

What is the caption for?

By caption we mean the text posted alongside the video, not the words burned onto the screen during it. It's a small field and it's easy to treat as an afterthought, but it's doing something the video can't.

A video is one continuous thing somebody watches. Everything in it is part of the story the creator is telling: the room, the pace, the way they hold the product, the line they land at the end.

The caption is somewhere else. It's a separate field attached to the same post, and unlike the video it doesn't have to belong to that story. So it's where things go when they're true about the arrangement rather than true in the video: facts that exist because of how this post came to be, not because of what it shows. And because it sits outside the story, you can put something there on purpose without writing any of what the video shows.

That's why things get required of a caption for reasons that have nothing to do with the video.

For the linen: the video will be a bed getting made, once, slowly, in morning light. There's no moment in that where somebody can say this was paid for without it becoming part of what you're watching. It has to be said somewhere other than in the video, and the caption is where it goes.

So what goes in it?

Two things, and they get there for different reasons. One you owe. One you choose.

What the arrangement is. You owe this one, and it isn't ours to explain. The brief guide covers disclosure, including the FTC's own guidance and the advice to ask a lawyer rather than us if the stakes are real. What matters here is only where it lands: in the caption, because the video has nowhere to carry it.

A string you'll search for later. This one you choose. You will go looking for this post again: when somebody asks what ran last quarter, when you're deciding whether to work with this creator again, when you want the file. So you decide now what you'll be searching for, and you put it in a field you can add to without touching the video. A hashtag is one way to do that, though nothing here needs the hash: it's the deciding in advance that does the work.

A line you owe and a line you chose are not the same kind of line. The one you owe isn't yours to trade away. The string is the only one of the two you can still change your mind about.

For the linen: the arrangement, and the brand's own name as the string. That's the whole list for this campaign.

Why do those go in as facts rather than as sentences?

Start with what doesn't survive.

The brief guide's rule runs one way: "If you wouldn't ask for a change over it, it doesn't belong in the brief." A caption sentence you wrote to sound right fails that on the spot. You wouldn't ask somebody to rewrite the way they talk because the draft read flat to you, and the guide to what to ask a creator to change already put how somebody talks out of reach.

Your two items clear it, and they clear something else as well. That test is built around what a draft of the video could ignore, and a caption line sits outside that by definition. So does disclosure, which goes in the brief regardless: the CTA guide calls it "the exception that proves the shape", a brief line carried for its own reasons rather than for the sentence the video has to land. The arrangement is that line. The string rides in beside it for the reason the brief guide keeps any fact only you have: ask where the answer lives, and the answer to what will we search for is on your desk and nowhere else.

Their shape follows from what they're for. A fact is something you can hold the post up against afterwards: it's there or it isn't. A sentence you drafted can't be checked that way, because what you'd be checking is whether somebody phrased it the way you had in mind.

So the list is short and dull, and dull is the point. Here's the arrangement. Here's the string we'll search for. Each one says what has to be true and says nothing about how to say it.

What do you lose by writing the words?

The thing you hired.

The CTA guide already settled this division for the ask inside the video: "You write the place. The creator writes the words." A caption is a different field with a different job, but the split lands the same way. An ask is mostly manner, and so is the rest of a caption once those two facts are in it. It's the part of the post where somebody talks in their own voice about a thing they just filmed. Hand over a finished one and the part that was theirs goes with it.

The caption already gets treated that way somewhere that has nothing to do with briefs. When a creator's post runs as an ad, the whitelisting guide puts "which caption" on the short list of things to settle with them beforehand, next to which cut runs and whether a changed version goes past them first. It doesn't assume the caption travels with the video. It treats the caption as theirs to agree over.

For the linen: somebody drafts Nothing beats getting into a freshly made bed and it isn't wrong. It also isn't what this creator would have said. Into the brief go the facts. The sentence stays in the doc.

What is a hashtag doing there?

One job we can stand behind: it's a string you chose in advance, which is what makes it a string you can go back and look for.

Be clear about which search that is. Our guide to finding creators describes brands typing their own brand name and product name in as plain words, and what comes back is people who filmed the product without being asked. That one goes looking for posts you didn't know about. This is the other kind: one post you already know exists, looked for again months later by somebody who needs it.

Here is what we aren't telling you. Whether a hashtag makes a video travel further is not a question we're going to answer, because we can't. We'd be handing you somebody else's assertion with our name on it. Pick it for the reason above, which holds either way, and leave the other question open until you have evidence of your own.

Be exact about what that buys you, because there's a nearby thing it is not. A hashtag lets you find the post. It tells you nothing about the people who arrived, and putting a name on those arrivals is a separate job with a separate instrument — discount codes are one, and both what a code costs and the rule for issuing one belong to that guide.

Neither instrument answers whether the video did its job. That's still the list you wrote before it posted, read afterwards.

For the linen: the brand name with a hash in front of it goes in the brief, and the team writes down the one thing it's for: in November, somebody will need to find this post, and this is what they'll look for.

How does this land in the brief?

As two lines, each with the reason it's there.

The reasons matter more than the lines. You're telling the creator what the arrangement is because they cannot know your arrangement unless you say so, which is the same logic the brief guide uses for every other fact that only you have. Not because they'd otherwise leave it out. You're naming the string because it's the one thing in the post that gets chosen with being found again in mind, and nobody else has a reason to choose it. The list is short precisely because you're only supplying what isn't available from where they're standing.

Then stop. The rest of that field is theirs, and you'll see it when the draft comes back.

For the linen: two lines at the bottom of the brief, each with half a sentence saying why. The field underneath stays empty, and this time that's the finished version.

Frequently asked questions

The creator asked us to send over a caption. Should we?

Send the facts, and say that's what they are.

Those two lines are the part you hold, and they're a real answer to the question. What's tempting is to add a sample sentence underneath, and that's the thing to skip. The brief guide notes that a creator reads every line as a requirement and builds around all of them, and a sentence arriving from the brand is a line like any other, whatever you label it. If they want a steer, give them the sentence the campaign is standing on. That's already in the brief, and it's the part you're allowed to be exact about.

We might run this as an ad later. Does the caption come along?

Not automatically, and it's a separate thing to agree.

Running their post as an ad is its own arrangement with its own permissions, and as the section above says, which caption runs gets settled with the creator rather than inherited from the post. So the caption is a question you put to them again, not one the ad buy answers for you.

See what this looks like for your brand

Got a brief open with that field still blank? We'll go through it with you and mark which lines are yours.

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