So you’ve been approached by a brand to work together and maybe they’ve asked you for your collaboration contract, or they’ve sent one over for you, but you’re not sure what you should be looking for. We’ve put together a list of things that you will want to make sure are set out before you agree to anything.
Who does what
First, you’ll want to figure out who is doing what – also referred to as the deliverables. Is the brand going to be providing a product to review? What are you expected to do for the payment? Is there a specific hashtag to tag all of your related posts with? Do you need to link to specific items? Will the brand be sending over some images that you can use if you need to? Obviously, this is all very dependent on the campaign being done, but this is where you’ll specify what is expected of you.
Deadlines
The next most important part about any sort of collaboration discussion is when the deadlines are set. When you would expect any products to be delivered by and when you will post the blog post by are the two main deadlines that you would come up against but having the dates for anything that needs to be done set out is always a good idea.
Payment
Possibly the most important thing to get sorted out (at least from your point of view!). Things to cover in this section includes things like how any payments will be made to you (PayPal, direct transfer, cheques, etc), whether the payment will be split into an initial amount up front then the remainder paid x days after the posts are published, if it’s an ongoing arrangement when any regular payments are to be mad, how much any late fees will be if the brand doesn’t pay on time.
Rights and Restrictions
Something you might not have considered are the rights and restrictions of any campaign. First, the rights – can the brand use the images you create in their own advertising or on their social media channels? Is there a time limit on when they can use these images – maybe they can only use them for 3 months after your post, or maybe they can’t use them for a week after you publish.
There could also be restrictions that the brand want to impose regarding working with competitors – for example, if you did a post with Coca Cola, they may want to prevent you from working with Pepsi within 6 months.
Disclosure
Always an important one! This is more for your benefit, but you could use this section to explain how you will disclose that you have worked with the brand, the wording etc that you use. We’ve all experienced when brands try and get you to not disclose something so including this section means they will understand how you will do it.
Amendments and Reviews
This is the section where you’ll detail how any amendments and changes will be dealt with – whether you’ll send the post over for review beforehand, how any changes to the brief will be handled, etc. You could also detail in this part how any disagreements are dealt with, and whether the brand has any right to request for changes in your post. If these things can’t be dealt with amicably, then how will you go forward with the project – it seems like a major thing to be discussing up front, but you don’t want to get to the point where you’re unable to move forward with things and not know where to go next.
Other things to consider
If the brand sends over a contract to you, then make sure to read it through and make a note of any terms and phrases that you’re unsure of to look back at later. Make sure all your details are correct as well – you never know what could end up delaying your payments!
This isn’t a definitive list by any means, but hopefully this helps you figure out what you need to get down in writing before starting any project.
