An Indian influencer brief should include 11 things: the business goal, one primary KPI, a specific target audience, exact deliverables, brand guidelines, usage rights, an exclusivity window, a timeline, payment terms, the approval process, and mandatory mentions including the disclosure label. Three of those are now shaped by law, and most one-paragraph briefs miss all three.
The brief is not paperwork that precedes the campaign. It is the campaign. A clear brief gets usable content from an average creator; a vague one wastes a great creator's best work on the wrong audience or a post that comes down because nobody agreed the label. This version is rebuilt on sources you can check.
The 11 points, in order
- Business goal. The outcome you want (sales, app installs, store visits, sign-ups), stated as an outcome, not a metric.
- Primary KPI. The one number that decides whether the campaign worked. Name three and the creator optimises for none.
- Target audience. Not "women 18-45 in India". Something a creator can picture: "women 22-32 in metro cities considering their first skincare purchase above ₹2,000".
- Deliverables. Format, count, length, and where each is posted. "One reel of 30 to 45 seconds, three stories with a link sticker, one carousel post."
- Brand guidelines. Tone in five bullets, words to avoid, claims the creator may and may not make, music and visual restrictions. The brand book is an attachment, not the brief.
- Usage rights. What the brand may do with the content beyond the creator's own post, for how long, on which channels. Decide before you send, because every grant beyond organic resharing carries its own price.
- Exclusivity window. Days before and after the post the creator will not work with a competitor, and which brands count.
- Timeline. Draft due date, review turnaround, posting date, and how long the post stays live. Allow 48 hours per review round.
- Payment terms. The fee, GST handling, the due date, and who deducts what tax. The law sets outer limits here, covered below.
- Approval process. Who signs off, how many rounds of changes are included, and what happens if you disagree.
- Mandatory mentions. Handle, hashtags, link placement, and the exact disclosure label. The point brands most often leave to the creator, and the one where the law names the brand too.
What does Indian law require the brief to say?
That the post carries a disclosure, that the claims in it can be backed up, and that the brand answers for both. The first two are rules for the creator. The third is a rule for you.
The ASCI Guidelines for Influencer Advertising in Digital Media, in the version published with the 17 August 2023 addendum, define a material connection as anything that "may affect the weight or credibility of the representation made by the influencer", and list money, free products, discounts, gifts, trips and media barters among the triggers. Clause 1.5 is the one for the brand: "Responsibility of disclosure of material connection and also of the content of advertisement is upon the advertiser for whose product or service the advertisement is, and also upon the influencer." The label is your line to write, not the creator's guess.
ASCI does not fine anyone. The money sits in the Consumer Protection Act, 2019. Under Section 21, the Central Consumer Protection Authority may impose on a manufacturer or endorser "a penalty which may extend to ten lakh rupees", fifty lakh for a subsequent contravention, and may bar the endorser "from making endorsement of any product or service for a period which may extend to one year", extendable to three. The endorser has a defence if "he has exercised due diligence to verify the veracity of the claims made in the advertisement", which is why a careful creator asks for substantiation. Put it in the brief.
The CCPA's guidelines of 9 June 2022 say at clause 14 that a connection which "might materially affect the value or credibility of the endorsement" shall be "fully disclosed in making the endorsement", and the Department of Consumer Affairs' Endorsement Know-hows of 20 January 2023 add that disclosures "must be prominently and clearly displayed in the endorsement, making them extremely hard to miss", suggesting the terms advertisement, sponsored or paid promotion. So point 11, written properly, reads: label "Ad" in the first line of the caption and on the reel for a third of its length, paid partnership tag on, no claims the brand has not documented.
How should the payment terms be written?
With a date, a tax line, and an awareness that the law caps how long you can take.
If the creator is a registered micro or small enterprise, which a solo creator with a Udyam registration is, Section 15 of the MSMED Act, 2006 applies: "in no case the period agreed upon between the supplier and the buyer in writing shall exceed forty-five days from the day of acceptance or the day of deemed acceptance", and where nothing is agreed in writing the period is fifteen days. A brief that says "net 90" to such a creator offers a term the Act does not allow, and the creator has a free statutory route to interest and recovery, covered in our guide to late payment for creators.
Barter has its own line. Where the creator keeps product worth more than ₹20,000 from you in a financial year, Section 194R of the Income-tax Act (Section 393(1) of the Income-tax Act, 2025 from 1 April 2026) requires a 10 percent deduction on the value of the benefit, and someone has to fund that tax when no cash changes hands. The brief should say who. Our Section 194R explainer covers the creator's side.
Why do briefs go wrong in the first place?
Because the brief gets written after the budget conversation instead of before it. In the Influencer Marketing Hub Benchmark Report 2026, a global survey of more than 600 respondents published in May 2026, rising creator costs are the top challenge named, at 35.4 percent, ahead of fake engagement at 12.73 percent and measuring ROI at 8.70 percent. Cost is what an open-ended brief inflates: undefined rights get priced at the widest reading, undefined deliverables get a buffer, and undefined approval rounds become unpaid revisions on one side or a re-quote on the other.
The same report has 55.1 percent of respondents naming brand awareness as their primary KPI, which is fine as a goal and useless as a brief; point 2 turns it into the one number you will actually read.
Three phrases to cut from any brief
- "Be creative and have fun." Shorthand for "I do not know what I want, so I will reject your first draft." Replace it with the audience, the hook you like, and the one thing the reel must show.
- "Match our brand voice (link to website)." If the voice is not in five bullets inside the brief, the creator will not reconstruct it from thirty pages of site copy.
- "Open to ideas on usage rights." You are not. Decide now, or the creator assumes the widest grant and prices for it.
What the brief form on Qolab actually captures
A campaign on Qolab is a name, an optional budget and an optional one-line description; the substance lives in the brief sent to each creator. That brief captures the following, and nothing more.
- Deliverables picked from four types (reel, story, post, or a combo of all three). No count field, so "three stories" goes in the text.
- Where the shoot happens: digital only, product shipped, a store visit, travel, or an event, with the details each one needs.
- An offer that auto-fills to the creator's own rate. The brand can change it; an unpriced deliverable means the creator quotes back; a fixed rate can only be accepted.
- An optional posting deadline, and a brief text the form will not send under 20 characters. The 11 points above are what belongs there.
- Counter-offers in one thread, each with an optional note whose placeholder reads "e.g. usage rights 30 days", because that is the term most often traded against price.
Once accepted, both sides sign a short written agreement generated for that booking. It fixes what most briefs leave open: the brand may reshare the published content on its own social channels with credit, and any further use (paid ads, website, packaging) needs the creator's separate written consent; the creator submits a draft for review and the brand may request reasonable revisions consistent with the original brief; the post stays live for at least 30 days; and the creator labels the content as a paid partnership in line with the ASCI guidelines.
Payment is collected from the brand before work starts and held by Qolab until the creator submits the live link and Qolab verifies the post is up. The brand does not release the money and the creator does not chase it. Every creator booked on a campaign also gets their own tracked short link, so point 2 has a number per creator.
What the form does not do: it does not write points 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 or 10 for you, there is no brief template, and there is no field for exclusivity or revision rounds. Those come from the brand, in the brief text, in plain sentences.
What changed since this post went up
This post first ran on 2 April 2026 and was rewritten on 21 September 2026.
- The earlier version opened with an anecdote about a beauty brand and a ₹14 lakh spend, and rested on a "412 anonymised campaign briefs" study (2.1x reach per rupee, 2.3x engagement lift, 94 versus 61 percent on-time delivery, 1.6 versus 4.3 approval rounds, 4.5 versus 2.7 satisfaction). None of it could be verified against any data we hold, so all of it is gone, along with the claim that a pre-brief call "saves 50 percent of campaign budget" and the unsourced cost ranges in the FAQ.
- It pointed to "a free contract template linked from our help center" and said a brief template, a contract, a payment hold and creator vetting were "all built in". There is no public help centre, no template and no vetting workflow. The section above says what exists.
- The legal section said "ASCI guidelines are enforced" and stopped. It now quotes the guideline, the Consumer Protection Act and the CCPA instruments, and adds the MSMED Act and Section 194R points a payment clause has to respect.
If you are about to send a brief, write the 11 points as plain sentences, paste them into the brief field, and let the agreement handle the rights, the hold and the label. A brand workspace on Qolab is free to set up, shows every creator's rate before you send anything, and holds your payment until the post is verified live.
