When is an influencer agreement commonly used in Singapore?
An influencer agreement is commonly used whenever a business engages a social media influencer or content creator to promote its products or services to the influencer’s audience, covering arrangements ranging from a single sponsored post to longer term brand ambassador relationships involving ongoing content creation.
Influencer agreements are used across virtually every consumer facing industry, including fashion, beauty, food and beverage, travel and technology, reflecting the significant role influencer marketing now plays in many businesses’ overall marketing strategies alongside more traditional advertising channels.
Businesses commonly use these agreements both for one-off campaigns tied to a specific product launch or promotion, and for longer term relationships where an influencer becomes closely associated with the brand over an extended period, with the appropriate agreement structure depending on the specific nature and duration of the intended relationship.
Because influencer marketing involves specific considerations around content ownership, disclosure obligations, and the influencer’s personal brand and reputation, businesses engaging influencers should ensure their arrangement is properly documented rather than relying on informal understanding, and should seek legal advice to properly structure the agreement for their specific campaign or ongoing relationship.
Which parties should sign the agreement and who should have authority to bind them?
The brand or business engaging the influencer, and the influencer themselves, or in some cases the influencer’s management agency acting on their behalf, are the parties who sign an influencer agreement, and where an agency is involved, the agreement should clearly confirm the agency’s authority to bind the individual influencer to the specific commitments involved.
Where the business is engaging multiple influencers as part of a broader campaign, each influencer relationship should generally be documented through its own agreement, or clearly addressed within a master agreement structure, ensuring the specific deliverables and compensation for each individual influencer are clearly and separately defined.
Where the influencer operates through a business entity, such as a personal services company, rather than contracting as an individual, the agreement should properly identify the correct contracting party and confirm that whoever signs has authority to bind that entity to the agreement’s terms.
Because influencer marketing relationships often involve less formal industry norms compared with more traditional advertising arrangements, businesses should ensure the same rigour around proper party identification and signing authority is applied as with any other significant commercial agreement, rather than relying on informal engagement through direct social media messages alone.
What essential commercial terms should be included?
The agreement should clearly specify the required deliverables, including the specific number and type of posts, stories, videos or other content pieces required, the platforms on which content should be published, and any specific content calendar or timeline the influencer needs to follow for the campaign.
The agreement should address creative control and approval rights, specifying whether the brand has a right to review and approve content before it is published, and any specific brand guidelines, messaging requirements, or restrictions the influencer needs to follow when creating the sponsored content.
Disclosure requirements should be clearly addressed, requiring the influencer to properly disclose the sponsored or paid nature of the content in accordance with applicable advertising standards, such as through clear hashtags or platform-native disclosure tools, since both the brand and the influencer can face consequences for inadequate disclosure.
Because these commercial terms directly determine what the brand can expect to receive from the engagement and what creative latitude the influencer retains, both parties should ensure they are clearly and specifically documented, avoiding vague deliverable descriptions that could lead to disagreement about whether the influencer has properly fulfilled their obligations.
How should payment, performance standards and timelines be addressed?
Payment structures for influencer agreements commonly involve a flat fee for the specific agreed deliverables, though some arrangements include performance-based components, such as additional payment tied to engagement metrics or sales generated through a specific tracked link or discount code provided to the influencer.
The agreement should specify clear deadlines for content delivery and publication, along with the process for the brand’s review and approval of content before it goes live, ensuring both parties have a clear shared understanding of the campaign timeline from content creation through to publication.
Where payment is tied in whole or part to performance metrics, the agreement should clearly define how these metrics will be measured and verified, since disputes can arise if the parties have different expectations about what data will be used to calculate performance-based compensation.
Because payment and timeline disputes are a common source of friction in influencer relationships, particularly regarding content approval delays or disagreements about whether delivered content meets the agreed brief, both parties should ensure these terms are clearly documented from the outset rather than relying on informal back and forth negotiation during the campaign itself.
How can liability, indemnities and limitations of liability be drafted?
Brands typically seek assurance from the influencer that the content they create does not infringe third party intellectual property rights, such as using unlicensed music or images, and that any claims made about the product in the sponsored content are accurate and properly reflect the brand’s own approved messaging.
Influencers typically seek assurance from the brand regarding the accuracy of any product claims or information the brand provides for the influencer to include in their content, since the influencer’s own personal brand and credibility with their audience can be damaged if they unknowingly promote inaccurate claims provided by the brand.
Both parties should consider how responsibility is allocated if the sponsored content fails to comply with applicable advertising disclosure standards, such as inadequate disclosure of the sponsored nature of the post, since both the brand and the influencer can potentially face consequences for non-compliant advertising under the Code of Advertising Practice.
Because influencer marketing carries specific risks around content accuracy, intellectual property use, and disclosure compliance that differ somewhat from traditional advertising arrangements, both brands and influencers should ensure these risk allocation provisions are properly addressed, and should seek legal advice particularly for higher value or longer term influencer relationships.
What termination rights and consequences should be included?
The agreement should specify the circumstances in which either party can terminate, such as a material breach of the agreed terms, or conduct by the influencer that could damage the brand’s reputation, such as controversial public statements or conduct inconsistent with the brand’s values, sometimes addressed through a specific morality or reputation clause.
The consequences of termination should be clearly addressed, including whether any previously published sponsored content needs to be removed, and how compensation is handled for any deliverables completed before termination compared with those that remain outstanding.
Where the relationship involves an exclusivity commitment, such as the influencer agreeing not to promote competing brands during the engagement period, the agreement should address whether and how this exclusivity obligation is affected by an early termination of the relationship.
Because influencer relationships can be affected by reputational considerations in ways that differ from more conventional commercial relationships, brands in particular should ensure they have appropriate termination rights addressing potential reputational risk, while influencers should ensure any such provisions are not so broad or vague as to create excessive uncertainty about their own security under the agreement.
How should confidentiality, personal data and intellectual property be handled?
The agreement should clearly address ownership of the content created by the influencer, including whether the brand receives a licence to use and repost the content on its own channels, and if so, for how long and across which specific platforms, since usage rights for influencer-generated content are a frequently negotiated and sometimes contentious term.
Where the brand wants to use the influencer’s content beyond the influencer’s own social media channels, such as in the brand’s own paid advertising or other marketing materials, this broader usage right should be expressly addressed, since a licence to post on the influencer’s own account does not automatically extend to this wider commercial use by the brand.
Where the campaign involves collecting personal data, such as through a giveaway or promotion the influencer runs on the brand’s behalf, the agreement should address compliance with the Personal Data Protection Act, including which party is responsible for properly handling any personal data collected through the campaign.
Because usage rights for influencer content are one of the most commonly contested aspects of these relationships, with brands often wanting broader usage rights than influencers are initially willing to grant, both parties should ensure this specific issue is clearly and expressly addressed in the agreement rather than left to assumption based on general industry practice.
