Contracts and Boundaries With Brands

The short answer

The fee is rarely the part of a brand agreement that costs you most. Usage rights, exclusivity and open-ended approval loops are where the real money leaks, because they quietly extend how long the brand owns your work, what else you are forbidden to earn from, and how many unpaid hours you spend on revisions. Read those three clauses before you read the number.

This is general information, not legal advice. Contract terms vary and the consequences are specific to your situation, so have a solicitor look at anything significant before you sign it.

The five things to check first

1. Usage rights

What can they do with the content, where, and for how long? A post on your own channel is one thing. The same asset running as paid advertising across their media buy is a different product at a different price.

Check the scope: organic only or paid too, their channels or yours as well, which territories, which formats, whether they can recut it. "Perpetual, worldwide, all media" is a full buyout dressed up as boilerplate, and it should be priced like one.

2. Exclusivity

What are you barred from doing, for whom, and for how long? Exclusivity is the clause that most often costs more than the fee, because it removes income you cannot see yet.

Check how the competing category is defined. "Fitness" could exclude half your potential clients. "Protein powder brands" is specific. Check too whether it starts on signature or publication, and whether it survives the campaign.

3. Term

How long the rights last, which is separate from how long the exclusivity lasts and from how long the content stays live. A twelve-month usage term is common. Perpetual usage on a one-off fee is a transfer of an asset, not a campaign.

4. Approvals and revisions

Uncapped revisions turn a profitable project into an unpaid one. You want a stated number of rounds, a defined approval window, and language covering what happens if they go quiet for three weeks and then want changes.

Watch for approval at "sole discretion" with no obligation to pay if they decide they do not like it. If that stays in, tie payment to delivery rather than approval, or take a substantial deposit.

5. Payment terms

When you get paid, and what triggers it. Thirty days from invoice is normal; sixty or ninety is common with larger companies and is effectively an interest-free loan from you to them. Check whether the clock starts at delivery or at approval, since approval-triggered payment plus vague approvals means an indefinite wait.

For larger projects, ask for a deposit up front. It is a standard commercial request and it filters out the timewasters efficiently.

The clauses that quietly cost the most

Whitelisting or ad rights on your handle. This lets the brand run paid ads from your account. It is genuinely valuable to them and should be priced separately, with a defined spend cap or duration.
Morality clauses. Increasingly common and often written so broadly that anything embarrassing lets them terminate and claw back. Ask for a reasonableness standard and a link to conduct rather than perception.
Indemnity. You accept liability for claims arising from your content. Reasonable in principle, unreasonable when uncapped or extended to how the brand later edits your work. A cap at the fee value is a fair ask.
Assignment of intellectual property. Different from licensing. Assignment means you no longer own the work and could need permission to use it in your own showreel. Push for a licence, not a transfer.
Content removal on demand. Fine alone, expensive when paired with a requirement to keep it live for a set period.
Automatic renewal of exclusivity. Rare but it exists. Look for it.

Negotiating without souring the deal

The person sending you the contract is usually a marketing manager, not its author. They pulled a template. Questions get treated as normal commercial process far more often than as an attack. What works:

Be specific and short. "Happy with everything, three points: can we cap usage at twelve months, narrow the exclusivity to direct competitors, and cap revisions at two rounds?" That is an easy email to forward internally.
Trade rather than refuse. "I can do perpetual usage, that would be X" is a better move than "no". You are pricing a thing, not blocking a deal.
Lead with what you are agreeing to. Enthusiasm about the project buys a lot of latitude on the terms.
Pick your three. Marking up the whole document creates friction disproportionate to the wins. Usage, exclusivity and revisions are almost always the right three.
Put it in writing, kindly. Verbal agreement on a call then a short summary email. It is not distrust, it is how everyone senior operates.

A note on tone: the deals that go wrong are rarely the ones with a firm negotiation at the start. They are the ones where nobody wanted to seem difficult, so nothing was defined.

When to walk away

Some situations are not worth fixing:

They will not put it in a contract at all. For anything beyond a small gifted item, no.
Full IP assignment with a single-post fee. They are buying an asset at rental prices.
Broad exclusivity in your core category with no uplift. The lost future work will exceed the fee.
Payment contingent on performance metrics you do not control. You cannot guarantee reach, so do not accept payment terms that assume you can.
Pressure to sign today. Legitimate campaigns have timelines; artificial urgency stops you reading.
They ask you to conceal the partnership. UK advertising rules require clear disclosure of paid partnerships, and the liability lands on you as much as on them. Check the current ASA and CAP guidance if you are unsure how to label something.

Walking away from a bad first deal is not the end of the relationship. Handled politely, it fairly often produces a better offer later, because you have shown you know what you are doing.

A practical habit

Keep a one-page note of your standard terms: usage duration, exclusivity limits, revision cap, payment terms, what costs extra. Send it early, before the contract exists. Most disputes are two parties who never wrote down what they assumed.

Where this fits

Brand work multiplies the operational load: extra edits, extra versions, extra chasing, all on someone else's deadline. CORE handles repurposing and channel management, which keeps the organic side running while a campaign eats your week. If contracts keep arriving faster than you can properly read them, that pressure is usually a capacity problem rather than a legal one.