Q: Should I mention a brand I love if I'm not being compensated for it, or is that giving away free publicity?
A: If a brand doesn't pay you and you make content about them, are you a sucker who's giving them free publicity?
Not necessarily.
But you *do* need to be clear on your goals and priorities.
First, if this is something you genuinely think will make life easier or better for your audience, then absolutely recommend it! I've never been paid by CLEAR, either as an influencer or as an affiliate, but I recommend them all the time because I know firsthand how much time it can save travelers. Am I dumb for not getting a kickback from CLEAR? Possibly, but I'm happy knowing so many families are now getting through airport security quickly.
Also, if that brand wasn't going to pay you anyway, you're not really losing anything. Meanwhile what you are doing is being a valuable resource to your audience by recommending tried and true products and services that you actually use.
But (and this is a big but) there is one way you can actually lose money. Brands and agencies vet creators before they reach out to them for paid campaigns, and one of the considerations is whether you recently posted about a brand they consider to be a competitor. To put it simplistically, Coke isn't going to pay you for a campaign if three weeks earlier you were gushing about Pepsi.
The tricky thing is that it's often not a Coke versus Pepsi situation. Sometimes brands cast their competitive set very, very broadly. So if you've previously posted about your favorite high-yield savings account at Charles Schwab, you could be turned down for a campaign to promote Capital One Venture X. They might not want to see any previous financial services content, even if high-yield savings accounts are in no way competitors to credit cards.
It sounds absurd, but I've seen it happen before. So consider carefully before you post organic content about a brand, or before agreeing to post on a barter basis where they give you free product or comp service.
Here's an example from our own experience: There’s an agency many creators work with in the automotive space. They offer creators access to a newly-released car for a trip, in exchange for posting about it. We've worked with them before and it's great because you can try a brand new car on the market and you save on a rental car for that trip.
But had we done a project with this agency one particular year, we would have missed out on one of our first ever five-figure projects, which was a shoot with an automotive brand. One of their requirements was to make sure creators hadn't worked with other car brands in the past year, whether that was on a paid or barter basis. So if we had worked with that agency to save a few hundred bucks on a car rental we would have lost five figures of revenue.
I do think that many creators early in their career get too hung up on money. When brands aren't exactly knocking down your door yet, there's not that much risk of you missing out on a big payday by posting organically about a brand you love. So in the early stages, focus on being a value to your audience. That's how you grow. But in intermediate to advanced stages, be more cautious about non-paid projects.
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Take care,
Carmen Sognonvi
