What to settle with a creator before the shoot

You've picked the creator. The brief is written: the one sentence a viewer walks away with, the format, and the element that has to stay intact. Now you're writing the offer, and the offer needs a number in it.

The number goes last. It's a price for something, and nothing you've written down yet says what you're buying. Four questions decide that, and your brief settles none of them.

Where the video posts. Whether you can put money behind it, and whose handle it runs from. How long the reuse lasts. And how many times you get to send it back.

What this guide covers

• Why can't the brief settle these?
• Whose account does it post on?
• Can you put money behind it — and whose handle?
• Until when?
• How many rounds?
• Why settle it before the shoot?
• Frequently asked questions

Why can't the brief settle these?

Three of them aren't properties of the video at all. The fourth is a different kind of thing, and it's worth separating them before you price any of it.

We've written before that one question sorting a brief is whether a line governs the video or the deal. Three of these came off that list: the reuse and its clock, the handle, the rounds. No file she hands you can be mistaken about those three. She can miss the sentence. She can shoot a format you didn't ask for. She cannot deliver a video that's wrong about whether you're allowed to run it as an ad in October. So no revision request settles them. The offer does, and the agreement it becomes once she accepts it.

Where the video posts is the odd one out. That test doesn't decide it, and it doesn't have to. It isn't a permission you're buying for later — it's the shape of what you're buying, and she builds the shoot around it. A video going up on her account and a file going to your ad account are not the same commission, and she has to know which one this is before she films. So the answer lands in two places: the offer settles it, and one line of the brief tells her. It goes first below, because it decides what you're buying and the other three are terms on that purchase.

You're not guessing at any of the four. The answers come out of things you already hold: the media plan, the brief you just wrote, the reason you went to a creator rather than a production crew, and what you know a round of changes costs you.

So take one plan and keep it fixed. A mineral sunscreen stick, going out with a creator whose account is all everyday makeup: five minutes at a mirror, three products, no studio. The brief settles three things — the sentence, that it's one continuous take at the mirror, and that the stick has to read as a stick and not a lip balm. The sentence is that you can reapply over makeup without starting the face again. It's a summer push on TikTok, nothing runs after August, and the paid side is two placements running out of your own ad account. You went to this creator because the people who already follow her are part of what you want to buy, you know a refilm runs you two rounds, and you haven't worked with her before.

Whose account does it post on?

Two versions of the same commission. In the first, the video goes up on her account, the way everything else on her account goes up. In the second, she films it and sends you the file, and the only place it ever runs is your ad account.

Same creator, same brief. Different purchase.

The signal: whose audience are you buying? The people who follow her are attached to the account, not to the file. Take the posting away and what you've bought is her craft: how she shoots, how she talks, what she knows about making three products at a mirror worth watching. That's a real thing to buy, and your offer should know which one it's pricing.

Her account is the whole asset this question is about: a specific place with specific people already following it. It's also where the platform enters most directly, and it comes back once, in the handle question below. How long and how many rounds would read the same for a video you were commissioning for anywhere at all.

For the stick: you went to a creator instead of a production crew because of who follows her, and a file you run yourself doesn't include them. So she posts, on her account, and the offer is priced for a post.

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Can you put money behind it — and whose handle?

Only if the agreement says you can. That's what usage rights are.

Running her video as paid media from your own account is a question of usage rights: whether you're allowed to reuse it that way at all. Running it through her handle instead of yours is whitelisting, and we've said before that this is a separate permission, because the right to reuse somebody's video isn't the right to advertise as them.

They buy different things. Ask what the ads are claiming. Your account running her video is your brand showing people something a creator made about the stick. Her handle running the same file is the same claim coming from her. If what you need the ads to say is the second one, if the claim only works coming from her, then whitelisting is what you need.

So: open the media plan and read which account the money runs out of. Then ask whose name the ads need to be in. Whether you'll end up spending at all is a decision you can leave for later. Those two are not, because that's what this question is asking.

For the stick: it's your own ad account, and the two placements on that plan are your channel list, written before anyone drafted an offer. As for the handle, it's a product claim, and the ads can carry it in your voice. So you're buying usage rights and no whitelisting.

Until when?

Usage rights come with a clock as well as a channel list — how long, on which channels.

Find the last day you'd still be running this video on the channels you just listed. The clock covers what you run. What stays up on her account is her side of it, and if you need it to stay up, that's a fifth thing to say out loud rather than one of these four.

For the stick: nothing runs after August, so the end of August is your answer.

Now change one thing about that plan. Say the video is going into an ad account that runs all year, you review its creative every quarter, and you mean to keep this live while it earns its slot. There's no last day on the calendar, because the date depends on something that hasn't happened yet, and the rule gives you nothing. What you can name is the review, because that's when you'd decide whether to pull it. A term to the next one is shorter than you wanted, and it's the one your plan actually supports.

Either way the answer is yours and not ours, and it isn't in what other people put in their agreements.

How many rounds?

The cap on revision rounds is a term of the deal too. It's the budget for this whole conversation, and it decides what you can afford to send back.

List the ways the things your brief settled could come back wrong, then ask what each one costs you to fix. Some you can answer with a change to what's said. Others mean filming again, and you already know what a refilm costs you. A round carries all your notes at once, so it's the most expensive one that sets your floor, not the number of them. How far above that floor you go is a judgment call: how much room you want for what you can't list yet.

The listing you can do right now, off your own brief. The notes worth sending are the ones that collide with something the brief settled — we've been through that test — so the brief you wrote is also the list of what could come back wrong.

For the stick: three things could, because the brief settles three. Price them against your own turnaround. A missed sentence you can answer with what she says next time; the continuous take and the stick reading as a stick both mean going back to the mirror, and a refilm runs you two rounds. That's the most expensive one, so the floor is two. You haven't worked with her before, so there's more you can't list yet: the third is the judgment, made on purpose.

Set it with room, and be clear about what room costs. If your cap is priced when you agree to it rather than per round you spend, then whatever the spare round adds, you've added it either way. What it buys is the option to be wrong once more than you expected.

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Why settle it before the shoot?

The first reason was structural: three of these are past the reach of any revision request, and the fourth decides what you're paying for. Either way the offer is where they land. Here's the second, and it's smaller than it sounds.

Right now, if the terms don't work, you still have whatever your alternative was when you picked her. It's a worse option than her, which is what picking her meant, and it's an option you can price.

After she's filmed it and you've watched it, that option is still there and it stops being comparable. Not because anything went wrong, but because what you'd be giving up isn't a video anymore.

It isn't that you'll get worse terms later; we have no idea what you'd get. It's that you want these terms priced against the campaign rather than against how much you like one file.

None of which is a reason to rush anybody. Have the conversation while it's still a conversation about terms, before either of you has seen the video.

Frequently asked questions

We haven't decided whether we're putting spend behind it yet. Can we leave that one open?

You can leave the spending open. Leave the permission open and you haven't bought one.

Needing a permission you never agreed to means going back to a creator about a finished video, in August, with the campaign already running. You'd be pricing the sunscreen stick's usage rights against a video you've watched and want.

Does any of this go in the brief at all?

One line, pointing at it.

The agreement settles all four, so the brief's line doesn't repeat the other three. It says where they live, so she isn't hunting through two documents to find what she agreed to. What it does carry is the posting answer, because she builds the shoot around it and nothing else in the brief would tell her.

Write that part flat, the way you'd write any other fact she has no way to reach. The line she reads is You're posting this on your own account — a fact. We'd love for this to live on your account is a negotiation you already finished.

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