How to brief an influencer marketing agency in two paragraphs
Playbooks6 min read
A good influencer brief is two paragraphs long. The first says what you want and for whom; the second says what it can cost and by when. Everything else — creative routes, creator names, formats, the shot list — is what you are paying the agency to propose, and a brief that has already decided those things has left the agency nothing to be good at.
The four lines
Objective: one sentence, one outcome. Launch a product, drive trial in one city, build recall for a category — pick the one that decides whether the campaign worked, because the agency will plan against the first thing it reads. Two objectives in one sentence is a brief for two campaigns with one budget.
Budget band: a range you are willing to spend, not a number you would like to hear. An agency cannot plan the mix without it, because the same objective is a different campaign at different scales. A band is also the honest version — it says what the money is, and leaves room for the agency to say what it will and will not buy.
Market: the cities and the languages. Not the country. If the audience is Tamil-speaking in Chennai and Coimbatore, say that; if it is a national audience, say that, and expect a different plan. Timeline: the date the first post must be live, and any date behind it that cannot move — a launch, a sale, a festival.
What to leave out
Reference reels from other brands, a list of creators you have already decided on, a script, and a tone essay. Each narrows the agency toward imitation before it has looked at your category. If you do have creators in mind, say so in a sentence and let the agency check them against the objective; a name is a hypothesis, not an instruction.
Leave out the metrics you would like to see as well, unless you have a measured baseline of your own. A target that is not tied to a method is a number somebody will be asked to defend later. Better to name how you will know the campaign worked — a code, a link, a lift survey — and let the agency propose the rest.
What a good agency asks back
A good agency does not quote straight away. It asks what the product is for and who buys it, whether the claim has been cleared, what has been tried before and what happened, and who approves the work. It asks whether the content will run as an ad, because that decides the usage rights and therefore the fee. It asks about exclusivity — whether other brands in the category are off the table.
If an agency replies with a price and no questions, it has priced a campaign you did not describe. Treat the questions as part of the service: they are the agency finding the gaps in the brief while they are still cheap to close.
What should come back, and when
A shortlist, a plan and a cost with its parts shown. At vexo.club the shortlist comes back in 18 hours, then the creator fees appear as separate lines at rate-card prices, with a fixed-percentage management fee added, and one senior operator is named on the brief. Contracts and briefing then take inside a week. The plan should say which creators, in which formats, in which languages, with the usage rights stated against each.
Read what comes back against your four lines. If the plan answers a different objective, the brief was unclear or the agency was not listening; either is worth finding out before money moves. If the plan is close but not right, say which line it missed, and ask the agency to revise against that line. A second round that starts from the four lines is quick; one that starts from a general feeling is not.
Keep the reply in writing and keep it to the same four lines. If the objective has changed, change the brief and send it again, so the agency is planning against what you want this week and not what you wrote last month. A brief that is amended in conversation is the one nobody can find when the plan is questioned later.
The brief template, open
The four lines are laid out as a document on /resources/templates, with room for the approver, the claim and the usage window. Use it as is or cut it down to the two paragraphs above. If a creator rather than an agency is on the other end, the shorter version for them is in the post on briefing a creator, at /blog/briefing-a-creator. When it is ready, start a brief on /contact.
