I’m back from my summer holiday with what I call a tan and my Eras Tour lanyard around my neck. Judging by the hundreds of OOO messages I received two weeks ago, many of us are still out there holidaying and living our best lives. 

To everyone who is still at work, let’s get into it. 

In this issue, I want us to focus on briefs. As a writer and content marketer, I’ve given and received my share of briefs —some excellent, some terrible.  

The best briefs create a smooth process. A bad brief creates constant back and forth, confusion, stress, missed deadlines, and poor content. 

If you feel personally attacked by that last sentence, here are 3 mistakes influencer marketers told us they’ve made and what these mistakes can teach you about creating better briefs.

Because influencer marketers are the last people on earth who need more steps in the process. 👇

MISTAKE #1

Your briefs say too much without saying anything at all

“Influencers don’t read”

2 out of 3 influencer marketers I speak to say this exact thing. I get it. I’m a content marketer at a software company. Do you know how many times people ask us questions about things that are on numerous pages on our website?

But we’re doing ourselves a disservice if we don’t ask ourselves: “Wait, why aren’t they reading? Why didn’t they notice this? What can I do to improve this brief?”

A very long influencer brief often becomes unreadable because there’s simply too much information.

You’ve tried to cram everything about the brand, products, do’s, don’ts, and your CEO’s breakfast order. So, it’s not immediately clear what is important and what isn’t. Influencers may even stop reading.

If you’re guilty of sending lengthy, convoluted briefs, here’s how to fix it.

💡Keep briefs to the point & well-formatted

Cut out unnecessary information, make it easy to scan, and only include the most important elements, like:

• Company and product overview

• Campaign overview

• Objectives & KPIs

• Deliverables and timelines

• Caption guidelines and inspiration

• Visual guidelines and inspiration

• Payment and contact details

• Communication expectations

At first glance, that might seem like a long list. But with some creativity, you can keep each section short, sweet, and well-formatted.

For example, we packed more than half of those essentials into two slides.

Take a look at your current brief and check:

• What can you cut out?

• What can you consolidate and make even more concise?

• How can you reformat it so influencers can quickly scan it?

MISTAKE #2

Your brief is overly rigid

You opt for influencer marketing because the influencers create content that resonates with their target audience.

Handing out scripts and trying to control everything won’t work. An overly detailed word-for-word script (with marketing language to boot) is never going to sound real.

Sarah Saffari from InfluencerNexus told us about an influencer who partnered with a skincare company. The brand asked the influencer to create an Instagram Reel in which she read off the ingredient list for one of their products one by one.

The influencer knew it wouldn’t resonate with her audience and wouldn’t be good content. She warned the brand, but they asked her to do it anyway. The post —as Sarah put it— “bombed.”

Guilty of sending overly rigid, prescriptive briefs?

💡Provide structure, not protocols

A good brief gives an influencer:

• Direction and guidelines for content

• The goals you want to achieve with your campaign

• Brand messaging and product information

• Timelines, communication outlines, and deliverable expectations

You want your brief to provide structure but still be loose enough for creators to make content that is authentic to them.

Take this recent partnership between Neutrogena and Corporate Natalie.

Instead of reading off a list of ingredients (like the unnamed skincare brand Sarah told us about), Natalie created a video called “Pointless Facetimes with my Bestie.”

This video is so true to the type of satirical and relatable skits this creator is known for that it took viewers a while to realize that it was actually an ad.

(Neutrogena, if you’re reading, I’d love to see the brief behind this genius TikTok. Something tells me it was loosey-goosey!)

The most convincing part of moving away from overly rigid briefs is to take a look at the results of this video.

1 million views, 103.4k likes, 703 comments, 4028 shares, and 33.6K saves.

This is the opposite of bombed.

MISTAKE #3

You don’t change up your brief

As with anything in marketing, it's important to experiment and test new formats.

Andreea Moise from Hype Maven told us that one of the common mistakes she sees when working with brands is that they rarely change their briefs.

As I said, if you find that creating content with influencers feels way too hard, takes too long, is peppered with miscommunication, and leads to poor-performing content, you have to ask yourself: Is it my brief that’s the issue? 

At Aumio, the team changes its brief format and content seasonally. Anna-Maria Klappenbach told us how one of those updated briefs led to their best-performing campaign of the year.  

The idea was simple: ask the creator to start at one emotional state and end at another. 

The first page of this 2-page brief offered different scenarios where the Aumio app might be helpful. They instructed their creators to start their audience off with a certain emotion: stress, anxiety, at their limit.

Then, creators were instructed to highlight the tool, share their personal stories about what it did for their kids, and lead the audience to a happier emotional state: relieved and hopeful.

This brief is also a good example because it’s short but packed with essential information. It provides structure but also allows for a lot of creative freedom. 

10 out of 10 brief.

💡Update your briefs

That’s it. That’s the tip. Change up your briefs. 

How often? 

Andrea recommends doing it every 3-4 months.

📩 Here are a few briefs to use as inspiration.

A Q FOR YOU

HANDPICKED JOB OPENINGS

• HelloFresh is looking for an Influencer Marketing Lead in London.

• Tangle Teezer is looking for a Senior PR & Influencer Manager in London.

• Harry’s is looking for an Influencer Marketing Manager in New York (Hybrid).

• Current Body has a few open positions, including an Influencer Marketing Executive (German), an Influencer Marketing Executive (French), and an Influencer Manager (Europe). All roles are based in Alderley Edge, England.

See you in the next issue of ROI!
Eleni Zoe xx
Marketing @ Modash. Say hi on LinkedIn or visit Modash.