What belongs in an influencer contract

What gets made, written so it cannot be read two ways

"Three Instagram posts" is not a deliverable. It is the start of a conversation about what a post is.

Write it out:

Also write what does not count. If a Story frame that disappears in 24 hours does not satisfy a deliverable, say so in the deliverables clause, not in an email during the campaign.

• Format. In-feed, Reel, Story frame, carousel. If carousel, how many cards.
• Count. Per platform, not in total.
• Duration. For video, a minimum and a maximum. "60 to 90 seconds" prevents both a 12-second clip and a 4-minute one.
• Lifetime. How long it stays up. Permanent, or 30 days, or until the campaign ends.
• Raw files. Whether you receive them, in what resolution, and by when. This one is skipped constantly and it is the difference between owning an asset and borrowing a post.
• Link and code handling. Which link, in which placement, live from when.

Usage rights: the clause that costs the most when it is vague

This is where the money is, and it is the clause most often copied from a template written for a different kind of campaign.

Five things have to be explicit:

Channels. Organic on the creator's account is one thing. Your own channels is a second. Paid media is a third. Whitelisting, where the ad runs from the creator's handle rather than your brand account, is a fourth, and it needs naming specifically because it is legally and practically different from boosting.

Duration. Rights that expire are cheaper than perpetual rights and are usually enough. Six months covers most campaigns. Buy perpetual only when you know why.

Territory. A Swedish creator's fee assumes a Swedish audience. Running the same asset in Poland is a different deal, and pretending otherwise is how relationships end.

Exclusivity. How long the creator agrees not to post for a competitor, and what counts as a competitor. Be specific. "No competing brands" means nothing. Name the category or name the companies.

Edit rights. Whether you can cut, subtitle, reframe or re-voice. Vertical crops for a different placement are edits. Say whether they are allowed.

Price each of these separately in the negotiation. A creator who says no to perpetual worldwide rights will often say yes to twelve months in the Nordics for a smaller number.

Approvals, and the deadline that applies to you

Every contract sets a review process. Very few set a deadline on the brand.

Include both sides:

The third is the one that matters. Without it, a campaign that slips because your legal team took nine days becomes the creator's problem, and you pay for it in goodwill you will want later. Two working days is a normal window. If your approval chain cannot do two days, write five and plan the calendar around it.

Name the approver. One person, by role. Campaigns with three approvers and no hierarchy produce contradictory feedback, and the creator has to guess.

• How many revision rounds, and whether that is per asset or per campaign
• How long the brand has to respond to a draft
• What happens if the brand misses that window

Disclosure, and who is responsible for it

In Sweden and Norway, disclosure is not a nice-to-have. Marknadsföringslagen and markedsføringsloven both require that commercial content be identifiable as commercial, and both consumer authorities have published guidance on what that looks like in practice on social platforms.

The contract should state:

That last point is the one to negotiate calmly. Unmarked content is a compliance problem for the brand, not only the creator. Agree in advance that it comes down, gets corrected, and goes back up, and that nobody is fined by the other party for an honest mistake.

Do not copy disclosure language from a US template. The requirements are not the same.

• That all content is marked as advertising, in the local language, at the start of the caption and in the platform's own disclosure tool where one exists
• Who checks the marking before publication
• What happens if a post goes up unmarked

Payment, and what starts the clock

Write the trigger, not just the terms.

"Net 30" means nothing on its own. Thirty days from what? Publication, invoice, approval, or the end of the campaign? These can be a month apart.

Creators are small businesses. A payment term that would be unremarkable between two large companies is a cash flow event for one person with a camera. If the campaign runs for three months, consider paying on delivery of content rather than on completion of the flight.

Also specify the currency, who absorbs conversion cost, and whether VAT is included in the quoted fee. Cross-border Nordic campaigns get this wrong routinely.

What to leave out

Some clauses cost more than they protect.

Unlimited revisions. Perpetual worldwide rights on a small fee. Broad morality clauses with no definition. Approval rights over the creator's unrelated content. Each of these makes good creators decline, or quote higher to cover the risk, and you pay for a protection you will never use.

The best creators have the most options. A contract that reads as though it was written to win an argument tells them what working with you will be like.

The clause almost nobody includes, and should

If you intend to measure whether the campaign moved anything, the contract has to allow it.

That means three things. The content must be permitted to run as paid media, because a study that only observes organic posts is measuring a fraction of the campaign. The publication schedule must fit inside the measurement window rather than trailing after it. And the creator has to agree to the timing, which is easier to arrange in the contract than in a phone call three weeks later.

None of it can be added retroactively. A campaign that was not set up to be measured produces a report about delivery: impressions, engagement rate, assets shipped. Every campaign produces that report. It does not tell you whether more people know your brand now than did in March.

Deciding that at contract stage costs nothing. Deciding it afterwards is not a decision, it is a regret.