The six ways brands work with creators
Almost every influencer campaign is one of six formats, or a combination of two. They differ on three things that matter: what you pay, how much control you keep over the message, and whether you can prove it worked.
| Format | What you give | Control | Trackable? | Use it when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gifting / seeding | Free product, no fee | None | Rarely | You have product margin and want volume of honest coverage |
| Paid post | A flat fee per deliverable | High | Partly | The message has to be right and the date is fixed |
| Affiliate | Commission on sales | Low | Fully | You can afford to pay for results but not for attempts |
| Whitelisting | Fee plus ad spend | Total | Fully | A creator post performs and you want to buy more of it |
| Ambassador | Retainer over months | Medium | Partly | You want repeated association, not one mention |
| Takeover | Fee, plus your account | Medium | Partly | You want their audience on your channel, not theirs |
Gifting and seeding
You send product; the creator owes you nothing. Some post, most do not, and the ones who do say what they actually think. It is the cheapest format and the only one that produces genuinely unpaid coverage, which is also why it is the least predictable.
It works when your product has enough margin to give away at volume and enough quality to survive an honest opinion. Fenty Beauty's launch is the clearest example on this site: over a hundred creators seeded before anyone could buy, chosen so their coverage would verify the brand's central claim rather than merely repeat it.
Paid posts
A fee for a specified deliverable — one Reel, three Stories, a YouTube integration of a stated length — with a brief, an approval step and a date. This is the format most people mean by "influencer marketing", and the one where agencies earn their fee, because the negotiation covers usage rights, exclusivity and what happens when the post underdelivers.
Affiliate and codes
The creator gets a unique link or discount code and a share of what it sells. You pay only for results, which sounds strictly better until you notice that top creators will not accept it — they are giving you their audience and taking your conversion risk.
Its real value is attribution. Even on a paid campaign, giving every creator a distinct code turns a set of posts into a ranked list of who actually sells. Daniel Wellington built a watch brand on this mechanic.
Whitelisting and creator ads
The creator grants you permission to run ads from their handle. You get their face and their credibility with your targeting and your budget, and the post keeps performing after their audience has scrolled past.
This is the highest-leverage format for a brand that already knows which creative works: find the organic post that performed, then put media behind it. Expect to pay the creator an additional usage fee, typically as a percentage of spend or a flat monthly rate.
Ambassador programmes
A retainer over months in exchange for regular content and, usually, category exclusivity. More expensive per post than one-off work and considerably more effective, because repetition is what turns a mention into an association.
Gymshark is the reference case — a named roster, kept for years, where creators talk about the brand in posts nobody paid for because they are actually part of it.
Account takeovers
The creator posts to your channel for a day. It brings their audience to your account rather than borrowing yours on theirs, so it grows an asset you keep. It also means handing someone else your login or your publishing queue, which is a real operational risk and the reason it is the least-used format on this list.
Picking between them
Start here
- Pick the format from the objective, not from the budget
- Give every creator a distinct code, whatever the format
- Buy usage rights up front — they cost far more later
- Run one format properly before combining two
Common errors
- Gifting a product that cannot survive an honest review
- Paying for posts, then measuring on sales you cannot attribute
- Offering affiliate-only terms to creators who have alternatives
- Whitelisting without agreeing the usage fee first
Keep reading
Creator tiers
Nano to mega, what each tier costs, and why engagement falls as audience grows.
Pricing
Creator rates by tier, how agencies charge on top, and where budgets actually go.
Measurement
Reach, engagement, EMV and conversions — which numbers mean something and which flatter.
Disclosure
What the FTC requires, what each platform requires, and who is liable when it goes wrong.
Choosing an agency
What to ask, what the answers should sound like, and the terms that matter in the contract.