A Global Branding &
Digital Marketing Agency
You have probably paid for reach that never turned into anything, and had no way to prove it either way. This page sets out how we pick creators, what we agree with them in writing, how we disclose paid partnerships to ASCI, and what we report back.
We will read it and come back with a view on whether influencer work is the right spend for you — and say so if it isn’t.
Most briefs that reach us open with a bad experience. Here are the six worries we hear most often, and what we do about each one.
“Half those followers are bought”
We check the account before it reaches your shortlist: the follower growth curve for overnight spikes, comment quality, audience location and language, and how views track against follower count. We ask the creator to screen-record their own insights rather than send screenshots. Anyone who will not show the dashboard does not make the list.
“We got reach. Nothing else”
Reach is not the goal, so we do not sell it to you as one. Before a single creator is booked, we agree the one action the campaign has to produce — saves, site visits, code redemptions, enquiries — and brief every creator to it. Placements that cannot carry a link or a code get dropped.
“One post, then he vanished”
Book a run, not a post. Contracts cover a set number of posts across agreed dates, usage rights so you can run the strongest piece as paid media, and a minimum period the content stays live. Payment is staged against deliverables, with the final instalment held until the last post is up.
“We cannot tie it to sales”
Every creator gets their own code and tracked link, every campaign its own landing page, and your enquiry form gets a “where did you hear about us” field. We match all of it against posting times. Some response will never attribute cleanly — we tell you which part rather than folding it into the total.
“Their other posts become our problem”
We read the back catalogue, not the media kit: past posts, past brand ties in your category, comment sections, and anything public they have said that you would have to answer for. The contract carries a category conflict clause and an exit clause that lets you pull content and stop payment. Someone here watches through the live window.
“Is the ASCI label our problem?”
ASCI requires paid partnerships to carry a clear disclosure label, placed where it cannot be missed and written in the language of the post. We put it in the brief, check the post within the first hour of it going live, and keep the approvals on file. A creator who resists labelling has told you something useful.
If one of these rows is the one that burned you, put it at the top of your brief. It is the first thing we will answer.
Before any creator is looked at, write down who the post is meant to reach. Age, city, language, what they buy now, what would make them switch. That description is the brief for selection. Without it you are choosing creators on taste, and taste is how a budget gets spent on the wrong audience.
Then look for creators whose followers actually resemble that buyer. We ask the creator for their account insights — the age split, the gender split, the top cities, the languages they post in. A creator with a large audience in the wrong cities costs you the same as one in the right ones. Overlap beats size.
Next, the account itself. Follower growth plotted against posting dates, so bought spikes show up. Comments read one by one — are they about the post, or emoji from the same few handles arriving within seconds of each other? Views, saves and shares against follower count. Story views. Anything that looks purchased, we raise before you pay for it.
Then what else the creator has posted and taken money for. Which brands, in which categories, how recently, and whether a competitor of yours is on that list. Whether their paid posts carried the disclosure label ASCI requires. What their audience said the last time they sold something. A creator who endorses everything endorses nothing.
Nothing gets made until the terms are on paper: posts, formats, dates, approval rounds, the disclosure label, how long the post stays up, and whether you may run it as a paid ad — on which platforms, for how long, at what extra cost. Send us your brief and we will start where this list starts, with your buyer.
Attribution is easy to promise and hard to do honestly. Here is what you should expect from us.
Some things are properly trackable. Unique discount codes tell you which creator drove a purchase. Tracked links and UTM parameters tell you which post sent traffic and what that traffic did next. A dedicated landing page per campaign, or per creator, isolates the visits and the conversions so they are not lost inside your general site traffic. Where your commerce platform supports it, we can hook codes and links to order data, so you see orders rather than clicks. That part is proof.
Other signals are real but weaker. A rise in branded search, a lift in direct traffic, a jump in saves or shares during the campaign window — these usually tell you something worked, but they are inference, not attribution. Someone who sees a creator’s post on Tuesday and searches your brand on Saturday will look like organic traffic. People also screenshot rather than click. Anyone who promises to attribute every rupee of that behaviour to a specific post is guessing and charging you for the guess.
Your monthly report says so plainly. It shows spend by creator, the content that went live with links to it, code and link performance, on-platform numbers straight from the creator’s own analytics rather than retyped by us, the site-side data, and the softer signals set beside the campaign dates so you can judge them yourself. It names what underperformed. Where we cannot separate influencer effect from your other marketing, the report says that instead of claiming credit.
If you already have a benchmark to beat — a CAC number, a code redemption rate, a last campaign that disappointed — send it with your brief and we will tell you before we start whether we think it is reachable.
Influencer marketing earns its budget when a purchase involves thought. If your buyer reads, asks around and compares before spending — appliances, health, education, finance, travel, anything with a considered ticket — a creator they already trust can do work no ad unit will do. It earns its budget on launches that need showing rather than telling: a product with a demonstrable difference, a first use, a before and after. And it earns its budget as a content engine. A campaign run properly leaves you with a library of real-world footage and stills you own the rights to and can put behind paid spend, on your product pages and in retail. That library is often worth more over twelve months than the organic posts were on the day.
It is the wrong spend in three situations, and we will say so. If you have a short window and a hard performance number — this quarter’s sales, this month’s cost per acquisition — buy performance media instead. Influencer work builds interest and evidence, and interest takes longer to convert than a search ad. If your product cannot be shown or explained in a creator’s hands, you are paying for a caption over a stock-looking shot, and the audience can tell. And if the brand has no clear point of difference, influencer marketing will expose that rather than fix it. A creator can make your product visible. They cannot make it different.
Send us the brief with the business problem in it, not the channel plan. If the honest answer is that your budget belongs in paid search or in fixing the product page first, you will hear that from us before you spend anything.
You send a brief, or we build one with you: what you sell, who you want to reach, the market, and what a result looks like. From that we shortlist creators and put a plan in front of you — who, why them, how many posts, which formats, on which platforms. If the budget cannot buy a result worth having, you hear that at this stage rather than after the invoice.
You approve twice. Once on the creator list before anyone is briefed, and once on scripts and drafts before anything goes live. No creator is booked on your behalf without your name against them. Paid partnerships carry the disclosure ASCI requires, and that is not a line item you can ask us to drop.
Content belongs to the creator unless you buy the rights, so we agree it in writing before the shoot, not after a post performs. You choose the window — organic post only, or the right to run it as a paid ad, for a defined period, in defined places. Longer windows and wider media cost more, because the creator is giving up more.
There is no rate card, and any agency that publishes one is guessing. Cost moves with how many creators you use, the tier they sit in and the usage rights you need — change any one and the number changes. Send a brief and a budget range, and you get a costed plan you can compare.
Send us the brief — the product, who you want to reach, the budget you have in mind, and what you would count as the campaign working. A rough note is enough. You do not need a creator list or a shortlist of names.
You will get a reply within two working days: our read on whether influencer marketing is the right spend for this, the kind of creators we would look at and why, how we would measure it, and what we would need from you. If we think the money is better spent elsewhere, we will say so in that first reply.
Use the form at the top of this page, or send it to contact@reddashmedia.com.
